Cal.com vs Square Appointments Comparison 2026
Both cover scheduling & booking. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Open-source scheduling you can host yourself
Booking and payments in one account
At a glance
- Cal.com starts cheaper, at $12.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Cal.com | Square Appointments | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $12 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial (they differ) | 14 days | 30 days |
| API | Yes |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Cal.com
Open-source scheduling you can host yourself
Cal.com does what Calendly does and publishes its source, which matters to anybody who wants booking on their own domain and their own database. The individual plan is free with no meeting cap. Self-hosting is real rather than theatre, though it is a weekend rather than an afternoon.
Our note
Taking payment for calls is free here and is a paid feature almost everywhere else. That single difference is the reason most people switch.
Only on this side
- Covers project management
Square Appointments
Booking and payments in one account
Square Appointments runs a booking site, staff calendars and reminders, and takes the payment through Square rather than through a separate processor. The free plan covers one location with no monthly fee at all, and the processing rate is where Square earns instead. Paying lowers that rate and adds the scheduling controls a team needs. Anybody who only wants a calendar link and never takes a payment is paying attention to the wrong half of this product.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.