Cal.com vs Doodle

Cal.com is an open-source scheduling platform positioned as the Calendly alternative you can own. The hosted version is free for individuals with unlimited event types; teams pay per seat for round-robin, routing forms and workflows. The code is on GitHub, and companies can self-host or embed scheduling into their own products with Cal.com Platform APIs and atoms.

It supports many calendars and conferencing tools, includes its own Cal Video, and offers payments, workflows (reminders), and dynamic group links. Development is fast and public.

The product occasionally feels less polished than Calendly, and self-hosting requires maintenance, but for price, openness and embeddability it leads the category.

Cal.com offers an Enterprise plan with SSO and dedicated support, and exposes bookings, availability and routing through a public API and webhooks. That is why product teams often treat it as scheduling infrastructure rather than a standalone booking link, which is the clearest difference from Calendly. For individuals the practical advice is simple: start on the free plan and pay only when you need team features such as round-robin or routing forms.

Doodle is a Swiss scheduling tool from Zurich, created by Michael Näf and Paul Sevinç and fully acquired by media group Tamedia, now TX Group, in 2014. It is best known for the group poll: the organizer proposes time slots, participants vote without needing an account, and the most popular slot becomes the meeting. It later added booking pages, 1:1 links and sign-up sheets.

The four meeting types are Group Poll, Booking Page, 1:1 and Sign-up Sheet, all synced with Google or Microsoft calendars to avoid double booking. Free includes one of each and three basic sign-up sheets, with ads. Pro costs $15 per month or $11 billed annually and unlocks unlimited polls and pages, deadlines, reminders, hidden participants, video links and no ads. Team is $21 per seat ($16 annually) from two seats and adds an admin console, booking on behalf of others, branding and Stripe payments. Enterprise starts at $15,000 per year.

Doodle is strongest for finding a time across many external people, such as committees, academic groups or multi-company workshops, where participants should not need an account. For sales and customer booking, Calendly has deeper routing, workflows and CRM integrations, Cal.com offers an open-source option, and YouCanBookMe is simpler for single booking pages. The free plan is now quite limited.

Doodle lists SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA (with a BAA) compliance, which helps regulated and European buyers. Tip: occasional pollers can stay on Free; anyone scheduling weekly should take Pro annually, which Doodle prices about 26% below monthly billing.