The 7 best free appointment scheduling apps in 2025

• Buffer time: This feature allows you to add a break between appointments to rest or prepare for the next meeting. This time isn't shown to the customer. Appointy and Square don't offer buffer time; instead, you’ll need to make your customer slots longer to accommodate your buffer time. Then, you’ll have to choose another setting to hide the slot duration from the customer. It's not straightforward, but it's possible. In other apps, you can add buffer time without making it part of the appointment slot duration.
• Last-minute booking window: This lets you block off a minimum amount of time between when a customer books and when the appointment takes place, so you can avoid last-minute hassles and be fully prepared for the appointment. Given its usefulness, all apps have this feature in their free plans.
• Cancellation window: This allows you to limit the timeframe when customers can cancel their appointment to prevent last-minute cancellations and save you time and money. All the scheduling apps have this feature in their free plans.
• Add time off: This feature allows you to mark a day off or add vacation time to your schedule. This prevents bookings on days that you’re unavailable. All scheduling apps offer this essential feature.
• Automatic time zone conversion: This lets you show your availability on your booking page in your customer's local time. This is another fundamental feature, and each app includes it except for Picktime and Square.
• Embed a booking page on your website: All apps allow you to embed your booking page on your website. This provides a seamless booking experience to customers that land on your website.
• Add custom fields to the booking form: Except for Appointy and Square, all of the apps allow you to add custom fields to your intake form. With custom fields, you can ask customers additional questions to qualify them, get more context, and prepare for your appointments.

All apps stand fairly equal in terms of features that add convenience, but Square, Picktime, and Appointy fall short on one or two. Simplybook.me has two features under their custom feature section, and with the free plan, you can only opt for one.

Summary of the limits and functionalities

Zoho Bookings

This free plan doesn’t compromise on core functionalities. Zoho Bookings offers unlimited access to most core features, with the only limits on the number of users, event types, and calendar connections. Businesses can schedule unlimited appointments for an event type and send multiple email reminders, which is a great advantage for getting started with scheduling software.

Zoho Bookings also offers features like two-way calendar sync, integrations with online meeting platforms, and iPaaS solutions like Zapier and Zoho Flow, which help businesses strengthen their scheduling automation.

Calendly

Calendly's free plan, although limited, offers a good scheduling setup to begin with if you’re not worried about sending email reminders.

It covers the essential features, including a booking page and two-way calendar sync. The absence of iPaaS integration and email reminders, however, limits businesses from enjoying the perks of advanced customization and integrations.

Simplybook.me

Simplybook.me offers the core functionalities needed to create a flexible booking system. In the free plan, you can choose from one custom feature, which could be two-way calendar sync, iPaaS integration, or the option to add custom fields to booking forms.

Apart from this, the free plan is capped at 50 bookings and 50 email reminders per month. Any business taking at least 10 appointments a day will exhaust this limit in under a week.

Picktime

Picktime's free plan allows businesses to generously create unlimited event types and schedule unlimited appointments for up to three users. It provides essential features, like the ability to set availability, share booking pages, and configure online meeting integrations.

However, it lacks several core functionalities, including email reminders, two-way calendar sync, and iPaaS integration. Picktime's free plan is a good option for small teams that can work around the absence of two-way sync and automated reminders.

Setmore

With Setmore's free plan, businesses can create unlimited event types to get started with. The catch, however, is that you can only book 200 appointments and send 400 emails per month.

Although Setmore offers all the other basic scheduling functionalities, it doesn’t offer the two-way calendar sync. This is an important limitation that can lead to scheduling conflicts and create rescheduling hassles later. Setmore would be ideal for businesses with multiple users and a low monthly appointment volume.

Appointy

Appointy's free plan provides essential scheduling features, including email reminders, iPaaS integration, and online meeting capabilities. However, you can only create 100 bookings per month and send one email per appointment.

While the option to create up to five event types is a possibility, Appointy restricts two-way calendar sync and the ability to directly add buffer time between appointments. Appointy’s free plan is ideal for solopreneurs or small businesses that don’t expect an increase in their monthly appointment volume.

Square Appointments

Square Appointment’s free plan is particularly well-suited for retail businesses. A big advantage it offers is the option to add unlimited appointments, services, and staff members. This, however, comes at the cost of many essential features like two-way calendar sync, online meeting integration, automatic time zone conversions, and more. This makes Square Appointments an ideal choice for businesses that offer in-person appointments and operate from a particular location with a team.