The iOS App Store is home to a very large collection of apps. Owing to the popularity of the platform, developers from around the globe make their apps available on the App Store in an effort to get a piece of the pie. It’s often difficult to find a good app for yourself, especially for something as essential as a calendar or planner app for iOS. In this article, we’re bringing you a roundup of 7 of the best calendar apps for iPhone & iPad, so you can pick the one that best suits your needs and requirements.
We’ve highlighted the apps’ pricing and their Pros & Cons upfront, so it’ll be easier for you to find the best calendar app for iOS. Let’s dive right in.
1. Fantastical
Pricing: Free with a Recurring Subscription of $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr
Devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch & Mac
Pros: Packed with features, multi-platform, feels very polished.
Cons: Expensive in the long run, the new version has a few annoying bugs.
As the name suggests, Fantastical is a fantastic Calendar and To-Do app from the house of Flexibits. It has won several accolades for itself since its debut on the Mac almost a decade ago. The app is immensely popular among power users and packs in a long list of nifty features. Fantastical is known for its gorgeous user interface, a delightful user experience, and its Natural Language Parsing capabilities.
Earlier this year, Fantastical moved to a subscription model that was met with backlash from its users. The developers introduced a single recurring subscription of $4.99 per month or $40 per year that enables access to some nifty Premium features across all the platforms. While you can still download Fantastic for Free from the App Store, it does end up being expensive in the long run.
2. Timepage
Pricing: Free Trial, followed by a Recurring Subscription of $1.99/mo or $11.99/yr.
Devices: iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch
Pros: Beautiful Design, Personalization options, Weather, and Maps integration.
Cons: Has a bit of a learning curve, lacks a Free version, requires a recurring subscription.
Timepage is a beautiful calendar app from the house of Moleskine, the global brand known for its notebooks & planners. Timepage takes an interesting approach to calendaring with its design and UI. You see the whole week at a glance and scroll to see what’s next into the future. The design is gorgeous, and the calendars can be customized with authentic Moleskine themed colors.
Timepage combines events, contacts, maps, and weather, attempting to be a single app to boost your productivity. It has basic Natural Language Parsing for event creation, saving you precious time and clicks. Overall, Timepage is a beautiful and functional calendar app, and whether you end up using it really just boils down to two things (i) whether you like the design aesthetic of the app and (ii) whether you think the $12/year recurring subscription is worth it.
3. Calendars by Readdle
Pricing: Free, with an optional upgrade of $6.99. A Full pack of PRO unlocks is just $12.99 (one-time).
Devices: iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch
Pros: Incredible set of features, natural language event creation, Conference Call integrations, 200+ Interesting Calendars, one-time purchase.
Cons: Lacks a Mac app.
Calendars is the most elegant and easy to use calendar app available for iOS. Part of Readdle’s incredible lineup of productivity apps, Calendars is by far the best calendar app for iPhone and iPad.
What makes Calendars so good for your iOS device is its ease of use and intuitiveness. Creating and managing your events in Calendars is super simple. You can Drag & Drop events to reschedule them and quickly jump between dates. Calendars works with multiple calendar accounts on your devices, so you can plan and schedule your week just the way you want. The app UI really shines on the iPad, but also adapts graciously on the smaller screen of the iPhone — you’ll love using the app on either device. You can subscribe to over 200 Interesting Calendars from around the world with a few quick taps.
Another notable feature in Calendars is its ability to work offline. If you’re in an area with spotty or no internet, Calendars will still let you create or reschedule events and plan your day. All these changes are automatically synced the next time you have a stable internet connection. Calendars also has a gorgeous Apple Watch app to help you stay on schedule when you’re on the go.
Calendars is also a fantastic To-Do app for all your tasks. It helps you get more done with an intelligent task-manager and organizer. You can organize all your tasks, assign due dates and calendars will remind you about them.
The latest release of Calendars integrates conference call services like Zoom, Google Hangouts & GoToMeeting. When you create an event in Calendars, you can automatically create & add a link to the conference call on one of these services with a few simple taps. No more scrambling to find the call joining link 5 minutes before the meeting. The integration also saves you a lot of time you'd otherwise waste in manually creating & scheduling the call.
You can also now see your teammates’ availability in Calendars. Just select a few teammates and add their schedules to your own calendar. This lets you instantly see when is the best time to arrange a meeting with a person or write them a message.
Calendars is available for FREE on the App Store, and you can continue using the app for as long as you want. To upgrade and unlock the PRO features like multiple-accounts, natural language input, etc., there’s only a one-time IAP of $6.99, which means there are NO recurring costs. Optionally, you can subscribe to Interesting Calendars separately for just $3.99/year (or $8.99 one-time) and grab a huge discount on the Full pack at just $12.99 (one-time).
Get Calendars for Free from the App Store →
4. Google Calendar
Pricing: Free
Devices: iPhone, iPad, and the Web.
Pros: Google’s native calendar app; uses a familiar design language
Cons: Requires Google Accounts, cannot add Accounts only in the app, no Apple Watch app
Google Calendar is the official calendar app offered by Google for iPhone and iPad devices. It features the familiar design language that you typically see in other Google apps on iOS. The app has a long list of interesting features that make it a damn good calendar app for iOS.
My favorite feature of the Google Calendar app is its ability to automatically pull events from your Gmail account, such as flight reservations, hotel or restaurant reservations, concerts, movie screenings, etc. If you’ve received an email with these details in your inbox, Google Calendar will automatically create the corresponding event for you. It also supports To-Dos and Personal Goals to keep you motivated and on track.
Although Google Calendar works with multiple accounts from different services, you need to have a Google Account to use the app. You also can’t manually add accounts from the app, it only supports the calendar accounts that you’ve added system-wide on iOS. For a completely Free app, Google Calendar is a pretty good experience.
5. WeekCalendar
Pricing: Free with an optional Recurring Subscription of $19.99/yr.
Devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac & Apple Watch
Pros: Minimal and elegant design, lots of customization options
Cons: Mac version looks like a bigger iPhone version
WeekCalendar is one of the earliest calendar apps that I’ve known on the App Store. It features a beautifully designed interface, coupled with many powerful features that make it a solid calendar app replacement for iPhone and iPad.
WeekCalendar allows you to clean up your messy schedule by color-coding your events. You can even automate & customize your events, such as specifying that all meetings with X should be color-coded blue. This way, you can get a quick overview of what’s important and what has low priority. It also offers custom app icons if you find the default one too boring. There’s a built-in Calendar Store that lets you subscribe to calendars focused on events such as world sports, nature, religion, etc. It supports all calendar services supported by iOS and with its smart integration, users can join a scheduled video conference directly from the app.
Unfortunately, WeekCalendar requires an ongoing recurring subscription of $20/year to take advantage of many of its features.
6. Vantage Calendar
Pricing: Free with optional “Unlimited” unlock for $11.99
Devices: iPhone & iPad
Pros: Unique & Bold UX, Lots of Customization options.
Cons: Unfamiliar UI may be confusing to some.
Vantage Calendar is easily the boldest and dynamic calendar app on this list. It features a unique scrolling UI that will immediately remind you of the Star Wars opening crawl.
Vantage Calendar follows the concept of “Stacks” at the core of its UI. The important days are stacked on top of one another, so you can scroll through the timeline much faster and not worry about the clutter that is usually associated with a calendar full of tasks. A taller stack in Vantage denotes a busy day. Events can be added using Natural Language Input as well.
As with other calendar apps, Vantage too integrates To-Dos in the app. You also get to color-code your events and add cool stickers if that’s your thing. Even the UI can be customized to your liking. There are plenty of features that make Vantage Calendar one of the boldest calendar apps for iOS. If the stacks-based UI floats your boat, that is.
7. Spark
Pricing: Free
Devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch & Mac
Pros: Integrated directly with the incredible Spark Email experience, Familiar UI, also available in the Spark Mac app.
Cons: Only works with the Google, Exchange, and iCloud Email Accounts you’ve added in Spark
When we’re talking about the best calendar apps for iPhone and iPad, Calendars by Readdle is right at the top. But how can we ignore the built-in calendar feature of our Spark Mail app? If you’re already using Spark, you already have access to a beautifully designed and feature-rich calendar app right next to your emails. You can selectively enable or disable the accounts for which you want to use the calendar feature with, so there’s no need to have all your accounts there. For example, if you have set up two or more Gmail accounts in Spark, you can only enable your primary Google Calendar account to use with Spark Calendar.
Get Spark for Free →
There are hundreds of Calendar apps available on the App Store today, many of which are built with the bare minimum set of features. In this article, we've rounded up the best calendar apps that you can download and install on your iOS device to plan your day and schedule your events better. Each of these apps featured above have one or the other unique trait about them, so we urge you to take them all for a spin.
If you're in a time-crunch and are looking for the absolute best calendar app for iPhone & iPad, get Calendars by Readdle for Free from the App Store. The app features a beautifully designed UI, coupled with some delightful interactions. It packs all the essential calendar features to help you plan your agenda and schedule your events. With the integrated To-Do List and Planner, Calendars is a wholesome calendar app that is a must-have for your iOS devices. And with the latest update that adds Zoom, Hangouts and GotoMeeting integrations, you can create a conference call directly from within Calendars and save a lot of time.
Get Calendars for Free from the App Store →
Preshit Deorukhkar 
