Eight shared family calendar apps, by what each one is for
Google Calendar, Apple, TimeTree, Cozi, FamilyWall, Calendara, Skylight and ours, compared by price, ads, and whether they meet the calendars you keep.
Compare › Best shared family calendar apps
Quick answer
Every adult on Google: Google's free Family calendar. Every adult on an iPhone: Apple's free Family calendar. A free calendar for a big group, ads accepted: TimeTree. A free calendar with a grocery list, ads accepted: Cozi. One cheap plan for a large family: FamilyWall. Photographed flyers on iPhone: Calendara. A screen on the kitchen wall: Skylight. A family calendar that syncs with everyone's own calendars and carries chores and lists too: ours.
Most families already have a shared calendar. If the adults use Google, there is a Family calendar in their accounts; if everyone has an iPhone, there is one in Apple's Calendar app. Both are free, and for many households they are the right answer. The rest of this list is for the reasons people go looking past them.
Those reasons differ, so this list is ordered by reason. It starts with the two calendars you probably have, then the free shared calendars, then the paid organizers, then the two that do one job, then ours. We make one of the eight and it is marked. Prices are from each product's own site, as restated on our head-to-head pages, and Apple's details are from its support pages.
The list
Best for: A family where every adult already lives in Google
Often the right answer, and the one to try before paying anyone. A Google family group holds up to six people, and creating it creates a calendar called Family that every member can add to and edit. Each person's own reminders apply to it, it is already on every Android phone and it runs on iPhone and the web. Against it: Google's help pages say members are not notified when someone else creates, edits or deletes a Family event. An event has guests but no owner, there are no chores, everyone needs a personal Google account in the same country, and the group stops at six. Our guide sets out when it is enough.
Cost: Free with a Google Account.
Apple Calendar
Best for: A household where everyone has an iPhone, iPad or Mac
The Apple version of the same idea. Joining a Family Sharing group of up to six people adds a shared calendar called Family to everyone's Calendar app, and events on it appear on every member's devices. Any iCloud calendar can also be shared person by person, with each person allowed to edit or only to view. Unlike Google, Apple has a Show Changes setting that tells you when someone else changes a shared calendar. Against it: Apple says the people you share a private calendar with need an Apple Account and iCloud. There is no Android app, and Calendar on iCloud.com needs a tablet or computer, so someone with an Android phone gets only a read-only public link.
Cost: Free. It comes with an Apple Account and Family Sharing.
Best for: A free shared calendar for a large, loose group, if ads are fine
A polished calendar built for sharing. You make a calendar, invite people, and everyone sees the same events, with comments and photos on each one, memos for lists, and Event Scan to read a photographed flyer into an event. A calendar holds 500 people and an account can have 20 calendars, which suits an extended family or a club. Against it: it keeps its events to itself. A shared calendar does not update from Google or Outlook on its own, and its help center says events cannot be exported or reflected in another calendar, so it becomes a second place to check.
Cost: Free with ads. Premium $4.49/mo or $44.99/yr per account, with no family plan.
Best for: A free shared calendar and grocery list, if ads are fine
The long-running family organizer: a color-coded shared calendar with shopping lists, to-dos, a meal planner and a family journal beside it, and simple to pick up. Gold adds the mobile month view, calendar search, change notifications and up to three reminders per event. Each person can have a chore list with daily or weekly repeats, and Cozi Max, $79/yr, reads emails into events. Against it: the free tier carries ads and adds events only 30 days ahead, its connections to Google, Apple and Outlook are read-only, and we found no points or rewards for chores.
Cost: Free with ads. Cozi Gold, $39/yr for the whole family, removes them; Cozi Max is $79/yr.
Best for: A large family that wants calendar sync and much else for one low price
The most complete of the ready-made organizers. The free tier has a shared calendar with reminders, lists and family messaging; Premium adds Google and Outlook sync, calendar subscriptions, Magic Import from forwarded emails, school timetables, location with place alerts, meals, budget and documents, for as many people as you like. That is cheaper than us and covers more people. Against it: the sync is a Premium feature, and the recurring complaint in its app-store reviews is notifications that do not arrive and calendar sync that drifts.
Cost: Free tier with calendar, lists and messaging. Premium $44.99/yr, or $4.99/mo on its website, for unlimited members.
Best for: Photographing school flyers into a calendar that syncs both ways, on iPhone
One job, done well: photograph a flyer, a schedule or a handwritten note and it turns it into color-coded events for each person. Its sync with Google and Apple Calendar runs both ways, so an event can be edited in either place, which is better than ours. Against it: it is an iPhone app, with no Android and no web, and beyond the calendar it has shared lists and little else.
Cost: $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr for unlimited members. Seven-day trial, no ads.
Best for: A family calendar on the kitchen wall, bought as an appliance
A purpose-built touchscreen that syncs the family's calendars and works out of the box, with a companion app for editing from a phone. It is the answer when the problem is that the children cannot see the calendar. Against it: you are buying hardware, and meal planning, chore rewards and importing school schedules sit behind the Plus subscription.
Cost: About $150 to $600 for the display, plus about $79/yr for Skylight Plus.
Chickadee Bandit
That's usBest for: A household whose family calendar has to meet the calendars the adults already keep
Each adult connects their Google, Apple or Outlook calendar, or any CalDAV or ICS calendar, and it syncs into the household calendar. The family's events go back out as a calendar of their own in iCloud or Outlook, or as a private feed that Google Calendar subscribes to, so an adult who never opens the app still sees the pickup in the calendar they check at work. Events can be filtered by member, recurring series edited one occurrence at a time, and other apps such as Carpool and Co-Parenting put their events on it. Around it sit chores, grocery and task lists, a Family Inbox that turns a forwarded school email or a photographed flyer into events you confirm, and a wall display on a tablet you already own. Against it: it costs money where Google, Apple, TimeTree and Cozi are free, the sync is not two-way: events are edited in the hub, a copy changed in Apple or Outlook is replaced the next time the event changes here, and in Google they are read-only. A household stops at ten members.
Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for the whole household, up to 10 members, with every app in the library. 30-day trial, no card, no ads.
Prices and features are from each product's own site as of September 2026; where a product has a head-to-head page here, its entry restates that page. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.
Choosing between them
- If every adult uses Google, start with Google's Family calendar. It is free and already there.
- If everyone in the house has an Apple device, start with Apple's Family calendar.
- If the calendar is for a big group, an extended family or a club, and ads are fine, TimeTree.
- If you want a free calendar with a grocery list and can live with ads, Cozi.
- If you want one cheap plan for a family of more than ten, with sync and much else, FamilyWall.
- If paper flyers are the problem and everyone is on an iPhone, Calendara.
- If the calendar belongs on the kitchen wall and you want to buy a screen for it, Skylight.
- If the family calendar has to sync with everyone's own calendars and carry chores and lists too, ours.
The calendar at the edge
The question that decides most choices is whether the family calendar has to meet the calendars the adults already keep. A parent whose working life is in Outlook will not move it into a family app, and a family calendar that does not reach Outlook becomes a second place to check, and then a stale one.
The products here answer that differently. Google's and Apple's are already inside the adults' calendars, as long as every adult is on the same one. TimeTree keeps its events to itself. Cozi's connections are one-way feeds. FamilyWall syncs with Google and Outlook on Premium. Calendara syncs both ways with Google and Apple, which is the strongest answer here. Ours reads every adult's calendar in and sends the family's events back out, but each direction is one-way. In iCloud and Outlook the events land in a calendar of their own, and an edit made there is replaced the next time the event changes in the hub. Google gets them as a subscribed calendar, which is read-only there. Either way, family events are edited in the hub.
Who hears that something changed
A shared calendar is only as good as the last change everyone noticed. Google's help pages say members are not notified when someone else changes a Family event. Apple's Show Changes setting tells you when someone does. Cozi lists change notifications among its Gold features. Before you choose, move a test event and see who finds out.
Ads, and who pays
TimeTree and Cozi are free because the free tiers carry ads, and both charge to remove them; TimeTree charges per account, so two adults who both want it ad-free pay twice. FamilyWall's Premium covers unlimited members for $44.99 a year, Calendara's covers unlimited members for $39.99, and ours covers up to ten for $60. Skylight is a display to buy plus an optional subscription. Google and Apple are free with no ads in the calendar.
Before you switch
Most of these cannot import each other's events. Connect the adults' own calendars first, re-enter the recurring family events by hand, and keep the old calendar open for a few weeks until nothing new lands there.
The feature list is not fixed
Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.
Where this list comes from
We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product was checked against that product's own pricing and feature pages on the date above — not against another review site — and where we could not find a published price we say so rather than quote one. The order is by what each product is for, not a ranking of merit.
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