A reliable calendar is an essential companion for busy professionals. While Google Calendar is undoubtedly a widely used tool for scheduling meetings, appointments, and events, its shortcomings become apparent as your workflow expands. Fortunately, there is no shortage of feature-rich calendar apps to simplify your life. Here are the five best Google Calendar alternatives to help you manage your time better than ever before.
5 ManagerTask
LeaderTask is not just a Google Calendar alternative. With calendar, tasks, team management, collaboration, focus mode, Pomodoro timer, and more, it can make your workflow tremendously more productive. Unlike some Google Calendar alternatives, LeaderTask has native apps on all major platforms, providing a unified experience across all your favorite devices.
The list of features includes notes and reminders, the ability to create tasks from emails, shared projects, recurring tasks, labels for better organization, daily planner, team statistics, different project views like Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and more. Focus is an interesting add-on where the app hides other tasks and assignments from the main view and lets you focus only on the main tasks.
The only thing I'm unhappy with about LeaderTask is the user interface. The interface looks outdated and could use a decent overhaul to keep up with established competitors.
4 Notion Calendar
Are you surprised that the popular productivity app Notion offers a calendar? In June 2022, Notion acquired the well-known cross-platform calendar app Cron and integrated its offerings directly into Notion's main workspace. Whether you use Notion on the desktop or the web, your weekly or monthly schedule is just a click away.
As you would expect from a Notion product, their calendar offering follows a minimalist approach without sacrificing key features. It offers month, week and timeline views, multiple customization options, two-way sync with Google Calendar, drag-and-drop support, recurring events and tasks, and more.
One of the best features of Notion Calendar is its integration with your current Notion pages. You can easily connect your calendar to an existing database and get a glimpse of upcoming meetings from a single place. However, Outlook and iCloud Calendar are not supported.
3 Fantastic calendar
Next on the list is an Apple exclusive Fantastical Calendar. It is only available as a native app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. It supports all popular calendar services like Google, iCloud and Microsoft 365. Unlike other apps, Fantastical uses natural language to create events and tasks. For example, you can just type “meeting with Harvey on Friday at 1pm” and the same calendar entry will be created in a snap, saving you several clicks.
Fantastical shines with its beautiful interface. It is easily the best looking Google Calendar alternative on the list. Its features include weather forecasts, integration with video conferencing apps, event and task templates (a must for busy people), custom event colors, a large number of macOS widgets, Handoff support, and more.
If you're heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, you can't go wrong with this. Fantastical used to follow a one-time pricing model, but the company has moved to subscriptions, with prices starting at $7 per month or $57 per year.
2 Thunderbird
While Thunderbird is known for its elegant email management, Mozilla's offering also offers powerful calendar integration. Thunderbird used to look quite dated, but with Thunderbird 128 Nebula, the company has completely turned the tables. It looks modern, fast, stable, and can replace your Google Calendar setup with style.
With email, tasks, calendars and contact management, Thunderbird can be your productivity center to get through a busy day. It supports Google Calendar and allows you to compose an email with all the relevant information such as categories, status, reminders, descriptions and event attachments.
Thunderbird also supports multiple tabs to allow users to seamlessly switch between different add-ons. As always, Thunderbird is completely free to download and use and has native apps on all major platforms.
1 Microsoft Outlook
When we talk about the best Google Calendar alternatives, how could we leave out the main competitor from the list? Yes, I'm talking about Microsoft Outlook. In 2015, Microsoft acquired a popular service called Sunrise Calendar and integrated it into the Outlook inbox for Microsoft 365 users.
Microsoft got an early head start and improved its calendar service through numerous updates, making it one of the best calendar apps available. It supports both Outlook and Gmail calendars and allows you to subscribe to a calendar from the web or from a file.
Since it is a Microsoft 365 product, it is tightly integrated with Microsoft Teams. You can also add Google Meet or Zoom as an add-on and schedule your video conferences in a snap. Outlook also beats Google Calendar with its sports and TV schedule. For example, you can follow your favorite NFL or Formula 1 team and check their upcoming schedule right in the calendar view. I subscribed to Liverpool and Formula 1.
Outlook has native apps on all major platforms and is free to download and use.
Escape Google's access
While Google Calendar is popular, it's definitely not the perfect solution for everyone. Mac users will love Fantastical, while Notion enthusiasts will appreciate the built-in calendar. Thunderbird is perfect for those who value privacy, and Outlook is great if you're in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Either way, you can't go wrong and won't miss Google Calendar if you switch your workflow to one of these alternatives.
In addition to a calendar app, you can also invest in productivity apps to create a smooth workflow. Check out our separate guide for the best productivity apps for Windows.