Every 'Free' Booking Plan's REAL Limits (2026)

"Free plan" almost never means free

Search for completely free appointment scheduling software and every result says the same thing: free plan available. Then you sign up, invite your second staff member, or hit booking number 51 that month, and the upgrade screen appears.

That's not an accident. In scheduling software, the free tier is the top of a funnel. The product manager's job is to make it generous enough to get you in and capped enough to get you out — one event type here, 200 appointments there, SMS reminders just out of reach.

This post is the audit we wished existed: every major "free" booking plan's actual limits, in one table, with a link to the vendor's own pricing page for every number. No third-party blogs as sources, no numbers from memory. Everything below was verified against each vendor's live pricing page on June 11, 2026, and anything we couldn't confirm on the vendor's own site is shown as "—" rather than guessed.

Two disclosures before the table:

1. We make RZRV, a booking system whose entire product is free — unlimited everything, no credit card. We obviously have a horse in this race. That's exactly why every claim here links to the competitor's own page: check us.
2. Where we couldn't verify, we say so. Two well-known tools (Vagaro and Appointy) serve their pricing in ways our verification process couldn't read, so they appear in the "couldn't verify" section with no claims at all — not with numbers copied from someone else's listicle.

The table of record: free-plan limits compared

What each tool's free plan actually includes, as of June 11, 2026. "—" means the vendor's own pricing page doesn't state it (we don't fill gaps with guesses). "No free plan" means a trial is all you get.

Last verified: June 2026, against each linked pricing page. Spot a change? The vendor updated their page after our verification date — tell us and we'll re-verify.

The pattern is hard to miss. Every "free" plan picks one or two levers and pulls them: the booking cap, the staff cap, or the messaging meter. The rest of this post goes tool by tool, with the receipts.

Calendly: free means one event type on one calendar

Calendly's pricing page (verified June 11, 2026) gives the free plan 1 event type and 1 connected calendar. That single event type is the whole story: the moment you offer a consultation and a follow-up, or a 30-minute and a 60-minute slot, you're shopping for a paid seat.

What moves you to paid, per their own page:

• More than one event type — unlimited event types are a paid feature.
• Collecting payments — Stripe and PayPal collection is listed from the Standard plan ($10/seat/mo) up.
• Automated reminders — reminder workflows appear from Standard up.
• A team — every plan is priced per seat ($10/seat/mo Standard, $16/seat/mo Teams on annual billing), so the bill scales with headcount.

Worth noting what's absent: Calendly's pricing page doesn't mention SMS or text notifications at all, so we make no claim about them either way — which is itself useful information when other roundups confidently list "SMS on paid plans."

If Calendly's model fits you apart from the price, see our 7 best Calendly alternatives — and if you're choosing between the big three meeting schedulers, the Calendly vs Cal.com vs Acuity comparison goes deeper.

Setmore: 200 appointments a month, then the wall

Setmore markets the most "generous" free plan of the incumbents, and credit where due — it allows up to 4 users, includes email reminders, and lets you take payments via Square, Stripe, PayPal or LawPay on the free tier.

But setmore.com/pricing (verified June 11, 2026) states a "200 appointments monthly limit" on the Free plan, verbatim. A busy two-chair salon does 200 appointments in a fortnight. And the reminder channel that actually cuts no-shows — SMS — only exists on the Pro plan at $5/user/mo (annual billing).

So the real shape of Setmore Free: a solid trial for a business that's still small, with a hard ceiling exactly where a growing business starts to need it. We've broken down the full switch math in our free Setmore alternative page.

One honesty note that cuts the other way: a "100 email reminders/month" cap for Setmore circulates in other comparison posts. It is not on Setmore's live pricing page, so we don't repeat it. Their page lists email reminders on Free without a stated cap.

SimplyBook.me: 50 bookings, 1 provider, 1 feature

SimplyBook.me's pricing (verified June 11, 2026) gives the free plan 50 bookings a month for 1 provider — and exactly 1 "custom feature."

That last cap is the one to understand, because SimplyBook.me's architecture makes almost everything a "custom feature": deposits, memberships, coupons, intake questions. The free plan lets you pick one. The paid ladder (Basic from €11.90/mo on annual billing, as geo-served to us in EUR) is mostly about buying more bookings, more providers, and more feature slots — 100 bookings/5 providers on Basic, 500/15 on Standard, 2,000/30 on Premium, per their own page.

SMS reminders are never included on any plan — they're prepaid credit packs (100 credits listed at $8).

Square Appointments: free for exactly one human, inside one ecosystem

Square's appointments pricing page (verified June 11, 2026) positions the free plan "for solo professionals taking payments and managing schedules." Payments work on free — through Square's own processing, which is the point: the free scheduler is a door into the Square payments ecosystem.

The moment you're a team, you're on the paid Plus or Premium tiers. Here's where our verification process hit something interesting: Square's team-plan prices aren't in the page source at all — they're rendered client-side, so we can't cite them. A pricing page where the prices resist automated verification is a small thing, but it tells you how these pages are built: for the funnel, not the record.

If you're outside Square's supported countries, don't want your payment processor chosen for you, or simply have a second staff member, see the free Square Appointments alternative breakdown.

Zoho Bookings: one user, one event type, one calendar

Zoho Bookings has a forever-free plan, and Zoho's pricing page (verified June 11, 2026) is upfront about its shape: 1 user, 1 event type, 1 connected calendar, with email notifications and two-way sync (Zoho/Google/Microsoft 365 calendars) included.

It's a fine free plan for a solo founder with one service. It's also a textbook example of the genre: every axis that matters for a team — users, event types, calendars — is capped at exactly one. Zoho's paid per-user prices, like Square's, weren't server-rendered on the page we verified, so we don't cite them.

Cal.com: the most honest free plan of the incumbents

Fair is fair: Cal.com's free Individuals plan (verified June 11, 2026) is genuinely good — unlimited meetings, unlimited event types and calendars, email and SMS notifications, and Stripe/PayPal payment collection, all on free.

The one cap is the big one: it's for exactly 1 user. Cal.com Free is an individuals-only plan; the moment you're a team, it's $12/user/mo (yearly billing), and organizations run $28/user/mo. For a solo consultant, Cal.com Free is arguably all you need. For a salon with four chairs, it was never on the table.

The tools with no free plan at all

Half the names people search "free alternative" for don't have a free plan to compare. As of June 11, 2026, on their own pricing pages:

• Acuity Scheduling — no free tier, 7-day trial, then from $16/mo (annual) for one calendar. SMS reminders need the Standard plan at $27/mo (annual). Full breakdown: free Acuity alternative.
• Fresha — the famous "free" Fresha is gone. It's now a paid subscription priced per bookable team member (7-day trial), with client messages metered at 20 free per month, then per-message fees. Full breakdown: free Fresha alternative.
• Booksy — $29.99/mo + tax, plus $20/mo for every additional team member. Reminders are free and plans include 2,000 marketing SMS/month — but via its Boost client-acquisition program, Booksy takes 30% of a new client's first visit, per its own pricing page. Full breakdown: free Booksy alternative.
• GlossGenius — no free tier (2-week trial), from $24/mo (annual), with client texts metered at 500 credits/mo on that plan.
• Microsoft Bookings — not a standalone product at all: it's a Microsoft 365 feature, so every bookable staff member needs an M365 seat from $6/user/mo (Business Basic, annual billing). Full breakdown: free Microsoft Bookings alternative.

The ones we couldn't verify — so we won't pretend

Two tools you'd expect in this table are missing on purpose:

• Vagaro — its pricing page renders entirely client-side (no figures in the page source), and its support center blocks automated verification. The "$23.99/mo per calendar" figure you'll see in other roundups may well be right; we couldn't confirm it on Vagaro's own pages, so we don't print it.
• Appointy — its website, including the pricing page, returned errors to our verification process. The widely-cited "free plan: 100 appointments/month, 1 staff" caps are therefore absent here.

This is the standard the rest of this post is held to. A comparison table is only worth quoting if every cell traces to a source — including the empty cells.

What "actually free" looks like

RZRV's pricing is one plan: $0, forever. Unlimited bookings. Unlimited staff. Unlimited locations. Unlimited SMS and email reminders. Google Calendar sync, REST API + webhooks, and an embeddable booking widget — all included, no credit card anywhere in signup.

In the table language used above: every cap column reads unlimited, and that's verifiable by creating an account, because there is no paid tier to hide features in.

Honesty requires the other column too — what RZRV does not do:

• No payment processing. RZRV doesn't process customer payments today — which also means no processing fees and no payments lock-in. If collecting deposits at booking is non-negotiable for you, Cal.com (free, solo) or Setmore (free, capped at 200/mo) handle that today.
• It's young. Acuity has two decades of edge-case features; we don't. The bet we're making is that unlimited-and-free beats feature-complete-and-capped for most small service businesses.

Why free? Because we're building the product and the user base first. If RZRV ever charges for anything, it will be new, optional capabilities for larger organizations — never the scheduling features you're already using. (More on that in the pricing FAQ.)

If you're coming from a specific tool, the per-tool breakdowns go deeper: Acuity, Setmore, Square Appointments, and Fresha. For the broader landscape including paid picks, see our best scheduling software for small business guide.

How to read any "free plan" pricing page

Leaving you with the checklist we used, so you can run this audit yourself on any tool:

1. Find the booking cap. It's often a footnote ("200 appointments monthly limit"), not a headline.
2. Count the seats. "Free plan" and "free for your team" are different products. Most free plans are 1-4 users.
3. Check who holds the SMS. Reminders cut no-shows, and SMS is the reminder channel that works — which is why it's the most reliably paywalled feature in this table.
4. Look for the meter. Credits, message packs, per-text fees — metered pricing is a cap that bills you instead of stopping you.
5. Check the payment terms. "Free with payments" sometimes means "free inside our processing ecosystem."
6. Date what you read. These pages change. Every number above carries its verification date for exactly that reason.

FAQ

Is there a completely free appointment scheduling software?

Yes, with caveats by tool. RZRV is completely free with no caps — unlimited bookings, staff, and SMS/email reminders, no credit card. Cal.com's free plan is genuinely uncapped on bookings and event types but is limited to 1 user. Every other "free" plan we verified carries a hard cap: Setmore stops at 200 appointments/month, SimplyBook.me at 50 bookings/month, Zoho Bookings and Square Appointments at one user (solo).

What are the limits of Calendly's free plan?

As of June 11, 2026, Calendly's own pricing page lists the free plan at 1 event type and 1 connected calendar. Payment collection (Stripe/PayPal) and automated reminders require the Standard plan at $10/seat/mo, and all paid plans are priced per seat.

What are Setmore's free plan limits?

Per setmore.com/pricing (verified June 11, 2026): a 200-appointments-per-month limit, up to 4 users, email reminders included, payments via Square/Stripe/PayPal/LawPay included. SMS reminders are not on the free plan — they require Pro at $5/user/mo (annual).

Does Fresha still have a free plan?

No. As of June 11, 2026, Fresha's pricing page describes a paid subscription calculated per bookable team member, with a 7-day free trial. Client messaging is metered: 20 free messages per month, then per-message fees. Fresha was famous for being free for years, which is why so many roundups still list it that way — Fresha's fees, explained unpacks the full structure.

Which free booking plans include SMS reminders?

Of everything we verified on June 11, 2026: RZRV (unlimited, free) and Cal.com (listed on its free plan) include SMS notifications free. Setmore paywalls SMS behind Pro ($5/user/mo), SimplyBook.me sells SMS as credit packs on every plan, and Calendly's pricing page doesn't mention SMS at all.

What's the catch with RZRV being 100% free?

There's no hidden cap — no booking limits, seat limits, metered reminders, or commissions, and no credit card at signup. The honest trade-offs: RZRV doesn't process customer payments today, and it's a younger product than the incumbents. The business model is to build the user base first; any future paid offering would be new, optional capabilities for larger organizations, with everything that's free today staying free.

Why are some cells in your comparison table blank?

Because the vendor's own pricing page doesn't state that number, and we only print claims we verified at the source. Blank cells ("—") mean "their page doesn't say," and two tools (Vagaro, Appointy) are excluded from the table entirely because their pricing resisted verification. We'd rather have gaps than guesses.

How were these numbers verified?

Every cap, price, and limit in this post was read from the linked vendor's own live pricing or plans page on June 11, 2026 — never from third-party blogs or review sites. Each claim links to its source. We re-verify monthly and bump the "Last verified" date when we do; if a vendor changes a page between checks, the dated claim tells you exactly what we saw and when.