A free Cal.com alternative with team scheduling included
Cal.com is great for one person, but round robin, routing, and analytics jump to a per-seat Teams plan the moment you add a teammate. 42min gives your whole team those features for $0, fully hosted, with no per-seat bill.
No credit card · No servers to run · Teams included free
The team features, without the team bill
These are the tools Cal.com unlocks on its paid Teams plan. In 42min they're on by default for everyone on your team. Here's what they do for you.
Solo is free on both. Teams isn't.
Cal.com's free plan is good for one person. Add a teammate who needs round robin, routing, or shared branding and you're on Teams at $12 per user, per month. On 42min those exact team features are free no matter how many people you invite.
Open source, but you run the servers
Yes, Cal.com is open source and you can self-host at $0 in license fees. That means standing up Postgres, juggling OAuth credentials, applying updates, and owning uptime yourself. 42min is fully hosted and maintained for you.
Invite the whole team for $0
Cal.com Teams is $12/user/mo and Organizations is $28/user/mo, and every seat bills again next month. On 42min the price is $0 at one user and $0 at fifty.
Where Cal.com is stronger. Cal.com is open source, self-hostable, and has a developer platform and a large app marketplace, all real advantages if you want to own the code or embed scheduling in your own product. 42min is the better pick when you want full team scheduling, free and hosted, without per-seat pricing or infrastructure to manage.
What Cal.com costs once you add people
Solo is free on both. Here's the yearly bill once a team needs round robin and routing: Cal.com Teams at $12/user/mo billed annually (Organizations at $28/user/mo for 50) next to 42min.
| Team size | Cal.com | 42min |
|---|---|---|
| 2 people (Teams) | $288 / yr | $0 |
| 5 people (Teams) | $720 / yr | $0 |
| 20 people (Teams) | $2,880 / yr | $0 |
| 50 people (Organizations) | $16,800 / yr | $0 |
Cal.com figures use the annual Teams rate ($144/user/yr); the 50-seat row uses the annual Organizations rate ($336/user/yr). Monthly billing runs about 25% higher. Self-hosting removes license fees but adds infrastructure and maintenance. 42min is $0 at any team size.
42min is free because one more user on shared infrastructure costs us very little. We'd rather earn a base of teams who rely on us than charge per seat from day one.
Skip per-seat billing and the servers
Same round robin, same routing, same workflows. All for $0, hosted for you. Bring your whole team over today.
No credit card · No servers to run · Teams included free
Feature by feature
Everything in the 42min column is free. Cal.com's team columns bill per seat. The last group shows where Cal.com is ahead.
| FEATURE | 42min FREE · teams included | Cal.com Free $0 · solo only | Cal.com Teams $12/user/mo* | Cal.com Orgs $28/user/mo* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRICING & TEAM ACCESS | ||||
| Team scheduling (2+ people) | $0 | Not available | $12/user/mo* | $28/user/mo* |
| Per-user (per-seat) billing | Never | — | Yes | Yes |
| Credit card / trial clock to unlock teams | No | — | 14-day trial | 14-day trial |
| Self-hosting / DevOps required for free use | No (hosted for you) | No (solo cloud) | — | — |
| Remove branding for a team | Soon, $12/mo | ✗ | ✓ Paid | ✓ Paid |
| EVENT TYPES & SCHEDULING | ||||
| Unlimited event types (solo) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Round robin (load-balance a team) | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Collective / managed event types | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Recurring meetings | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Reschedule a whole series | ✓ Free | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Countries for holiday blocking | 20 | 200+ | 200+ | 200+ |
| Per-event language | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Daily / weekly / monthly caps | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| FORMS & ROUTING | ||||
| Routing forms | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| If-then logic (AND / OR) | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Route by custom variables | ✓ Free | ✗ | ✗ | Paid (Orgs) |
| Route by detected country & language | ✓ Free | ✗ | Limited | Limited |
| Submission analytics + CSV | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| AUTOMATIONS | ||||
| Trigger-based workflows | ✓ Free | Limited | Paid | Paid |
| Email reminders | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS reminders | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Rich HTML email builder | ✓ | Text only | Limited | Limited |
| Webhooks & custom API | ✓ Free | Webhooks only | Paid | Paid |
| Google / Outlook 2-way sync | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zoho / Yahoo / Fastmail presets | ✓ 1-click | Manual CalDAV | Manual CalDAV | Manual CalDAV |
| TEAMS, ADMIN & ANALYTICS | ||||
| Shared teams & sub-teams | ✓ Free | ✗ | Teams | Unlimited (Orgs) |
| RBAC roles & admin controls | ✓ Free | ✗ | ✗ | Paid (Orgs) |
| Booking & funnel analytics | ✓ Free | ✗ | Paid | Paid |
| Company subdomain | ✓ Free | ✗ | ✗ | Paid (Orgs) |
| CSV export | ✓ | Limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| WHERE CAL.COM LEADS | ||||
| Open source / self-hostable | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| App marketplace breadth | ~10 native + API | 100+ | 100+ | 100+ |
| Embeddable scheduling platform (SDK) | REST API only | Limited | ✓ | ✓ |
| SAML SSO & SCIM provisioning | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| SOC 2 / HIPAA / ISO 27001 | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
* Cal.com Teams and Organizations are billed annually; monthly billing is higher. Tier gating and prices per cal.com/pricing, June 2026.
Where Cal.com's free plan actually stops
For a single person, Cal.com's free tier is one of the most generous available, with unlimited event types, payments, and a long list of integrations at $0. The limits show up when a second person, a routing flow, or a dashboard enters the picture. Below is where the free plan ends (verified against cal.com/pricing in June 2026) and what 42min includes instead.
One user (no team scheduling)
The free plan is a single-seat product. Round robin, collective events, and managed event types all require a teammate, and a teammate requires the paid Teams plan.
Routing forms are paid
Qualifying leads and routing them to the right person or event lives on Teams and above. On the free plan there's no routing layer at all.
Analytics behind the paywall
Booking and funnel analytics start on Teams. The free plan gives you the bookings but no analytics on them.
Team branding removal is paid
A solo user can polish their own page, but removing branding across a shared team setup is a Teams feature.
Self-hosting trades dollars for DevOps
The OSS route unlocks team features for $0 in license, but you inherit the database, the OAuth app credentials, version upgrades, and uptime. That is real engineering work, and it is yours to maintain.
Recurring events are paid
A weekly or monthly series booked from one link starts on Teams. Even there, a series can't be rescheduled as a whole: Cal.com only lets you cancel its remaining dates.
42min lifts every one of those limits but branding. Invite your whole team and turn on round robin, routing, workflows, SMS, and analytics the same day. There is no card, no countdown, no per-seat upgrade, and no server to run. Removing 42min's branding comes with the White label plan, at $12 a month per organization once it launches. The screenshot below shows daily, weekly, and monthly caps with buffers, ready to go on the free plan.
How to switch from Cal.com in 4 steps
Your bookings already sit in your calendar, so 42min picks them up as soon as you connect it. There is no database to export, and any server you were running can be switched off. Plan on about ten minutes.
Create your free 42min account
Sign up with email or Google, with no card to enter. Team features are on from the first minute.
Connect your calendar
Two-way sync with Google, Outlook, Apple iCloud, Zoho, Fastmail, or any CalDAV server. 42min reads your existing busy times, including bookings made through Cal.com, and writes new ones straight back.
Rebuild your event types and team
Recreate your one-on-ones, group events, and round robins, then invite the whole team. There's no per-seat math to do: everyone's free.
Swap your booking link
Point your email signature, site button, and bios at your new 42min link. Your bookings live in your calendar, so there is nothing to migrate or export. Most teams are live in about ten minutes.
Hosted for you and shaped around you
Self-hosting Cal.com means you own the upgrades and the uptime. On 42min we run all of that, and when you need something the product doesn't do yet, you send us an email and we usually build it.
Zero infrastructure
We host it, patch the database, manage the OAuth credentials, and run the version upgrades, so your team just schedules.
Request a feature, get a feature
Send the request through a short form and it lands on a public build board. Because we ship in the open, you can watch it move. No enterprise tier required.
Who 42min is best for
Pick the tool that fits. A quick guide:
Pick 42min if…
- ✓Teams that need round robin, routing, and analytics but won't pay per seat for them
- ✓Founders who want hosted scheduling without running their own servers
- ✓People who'd rather send a request and see it shipped than file an issue and wait
Cal.com may fit better if…
- •You specifically want open source you can self-host and modify down to the code
- •You're building scheduling into your own product and need Cal.com's developer platform / API
- •You require SOC 2, HIPAA, or ISO 27001 attestations and SSO/SCIM provisioning right now
Several of these are on our roadmap. If you need one, ask for it.
Questions, answered
42min is free because one more user on shared scheduling infrastructure costs us very little. We'd rather earn a large base of teams who rely on us than charge per seat from day one.
Teams already scheduling with 42min
Leave the per-seat bill and the servers behind
Connect Google, Outlook, or iCloud, recreate your event types, invite your team, share your link. Everything Cal.com charges per seat for is free here: hosted, maintained, and ready to use today.
No credit card · No servers to run · Teams included free