In Summary
- A calendar is a great tool to manage your tasks, events, meetings, and appointments.
- If you’re on an iPhone, the App Store offers plenty of calendar apps for iOS to help you manage and schedule your day.
- But to make things easier, we’ve curated a list of the best calendar apps for iPhone that cover pretty much all the essential calendar features one needs in a calendar app to boost productivity.
A calendar app is a time management and scheduling service that lets you schedule and manage your appointments and tasks for the day. Using it, you can easily manage your meetings, appointments, to-dos, among other things, right on your smartphone.
While iOS already has a default calendar app—Calendar—to assist you with a lot of these functionalities, it does sometimes fall short of features—and hence isn’t ideal for everyone.
Thankfully, the App Store is filled with plenty of calendar applications to suit the requirements of different individuals. In this listicle, we’ll share some of the best calendar apps for iPhone to stay organized.
Table of Contents
The 7 best Calendar apps for iPhone
- Fantastical – made for power users
- Calendars 5 – ideal for busy users
- Informant 5 Calendar – calendar + project planner in one
- Google Calendar – for Gmail and Google Suite users
- Things 3 – for keeping your tasks and calendar together
- Timepage – for beautiful design and function
- Busycal – for flexible calendar options
Along with these seven apps, we have also listed down three other Calendar apps which we think deserve a mention and possibly be a winning option for a small subset of users.
1. Fantastical
Fantastical is one of the best third-party calendar apps on iOS. It has a sleek and clean interface that lets you create and manage tasks/events easily.
What separates Fantastical from other iPhone calendar apps is support for natural language parsing. For the uninitiated, natural language processing allows you to input text in natural language to create an event, reminder, or to-do. For instance, inputting “lunch with John at 14:00” will create an appropriate event in your calendar.
Fantastical also gets you multiple Calendar integration with the ability to quickly toggle them on or off as required. As such, you can combine duplicate events and respond to invitations in one place. Moreover, you can also integrate other services such as iCloud Reminders, Google Tasks, Todoist, etc., to manage your tasks and reminders within Fantastical.
Free (in-app purchase)
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch
2. Calendars 5
Calendars 5 is another popular calendar app for iPhone. It comes from Readdle, the same team behind apps like Spark Mail and Documents, and excels at managing both tasks and events.
Similar to Fantastical, Calendars 5 also features natural language input for quick calendar event creation. But what separates it from other calendar apps is its event-focussed interface that gives you a quick overview of all your upcoming events and tasks. You also get to choose between different views (day, week, month) to unveil your schedules.
Besides, Calendars 5 gives you the ability to create custom events, set custom alerts, and invite people to your events within the app. And more importantly, you can create, edit, and delete events or tasks even when you’re offline and sync them back once you’re online.
$29.99 (in-app purchase)
Available for: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
3. Informant 5 Calendar
Informant 5 Calendar is an ideal calendar app on iOS for power users who want more control over their tasks and projects. It actually aligns more with a planner than a calendar, thanks in part to features like daily/weekly planners, projects, triggers, etc., that are focused on helping you stay on top of your agenda.
One of the best things about Informant 5 is that it’s the easiest calendar app to set up and use: it doesn’t require an account, and you can use your current calendar accounts to use it. However, to unlock Informant’s full potential, you need to set up an Informant sync account.
One of the newest additions to Informant is support for Siri, which enables you to create tasks in the Informant Calendar using voice. Similar to other iPhone calendar apps, Informant 5 also lets you sync your events and tasks from other calendars and task managers to make your life easier. Plus, since it’s a planner, you can integrate your emails too and turn them into tasks right within Informant with ease.
Free (in-app purchase)
Available for: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
4. Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a free iOS calendar app from Google. If you’re heavily rooted in Google’s suite of apps for everything from email to notes and tasks, Google Calendar is the perfect calendar app for you.
One of the biggest advantages of Google Calendar is that all your events and tasks are accessible in one place, thanks to the built-in integration. As a result, everything from your reservations and appointments to upcoming tasks and meetings gets added to your calendar automatically, so you never miss out on what’s on your schedule.
Google Calendar also aids you with smart suggestions to help you create new events to save you some time. Besides, there’s an option to integrate other calendars, including Exchange and iCloud too. And if you’re into fitness, you can integrate Google Calendar with Apple Health to track your workouts and mark your goals.
Lastly, being a part of Google Workspace, Google Calendar provides you (and your team) the option to do things like schedule meetings, publish calendars, access data on other devices to help you collaborate better.
Free
Available for: iPhone and iPad
5. Things 3
Things 3 is one of the best paid calendar apps for iPhones. It has won awards on several occasions for its design and functionality and still continues to impress users with new feature rollouts every once in a while.
When stacked against other iOS calendar apps, Things 3 doesn’t get the upper hand just for its attractive and intuitive interface but also because of how simple and straightforward the app makes it to plan your schedule and manage your projects. Similarly, everything from what’s on your schedule is presented in a neat and easy to comprehend manner under lists.
Plus, to help you isolate the different spheres of your life, Things 3 lets you create an area for each one of them, so you can have areas such as work, finance, home, etc., to hold all your relevant tasks, projects, and plans. And, it also gets you a neat widget that shows all your lists right on the home screen.
Having been tailored to the iPhone, Things 3 features deep system integrations, allowing you to share, create, and import content between apps. Not just that, it also gives you the ability to automate your workflows using Shortcuts.
Paid ($9.99)
Available for: iPhone and Apple Watch
6. Timepage
Timepage is an iOS calendar app with a rather unique concept. Unlike most other calendar apps that usually feature a calendar-based interface, wherein you tap on a day/date to find out the schedule, Timepage’s interface puts everything upfront.
All your information is presented in a consolidated manner on Timepage, which reduces unnecessary UI clutter and lets you easily glance at what’s important. One of the best features of this calendar is its intuitive heatmap feature that shows when you’re busy and free in a month.
Similarly, since Timepage integrates all your events, maps, contacts, and weathers into one place, it gives you animated temperature and rainfall forecasts to help you schedule your outdoor events. Plus, if you’re an Apple Watch user, you can access all of this information right on your wrist via its Watch app.
Of course, like most calendar apps, Timepage supports integration with various calendar services (iCloud, Google, Outlook, Exchange, etc.) and offers a widget to put your tasks on the home screen.
Free (in-app purchase)
Available for: iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
7. BusyCal
BusyCal is another powerful calendar app for iPhone. With flexible calendar options, this app lets you manage your busy schedules, events, and tasks all in one place with complete control over each of their different aspects.
Similar to a couple of other calendar apps, BusyCal also supports natural language entry to make event and task creation easy. But what really makes it shine are features like customizable calendar views, integrated to-dos, maps integration, and search functionality, which make the app versatile—and take away the need to rely on other apps for the specified tasks.
As for advanced features, BusyCal lets you add tags to events and projects for easier tracking, add attributes (location, last edit time, time zones, attendees, etc.) to display when viewing/editing events, use alarms to get notified, schedule to-dos, among other things.
Besides, you can personalize BusyCal to assist yourself with birthday (and other events) reminders; display live weather forecasts, view phases of the moon, etc.
Paid ($4.99)
Available for: iPhone, iPad, and Mac
iPhone Calendar Apps: Honorable Mentions
8. 30 Boxes Calendar
30 Boxes Calendar is a minimal-style calendar app for iPhone that works with all your existing calendars. It doesn’t require a signup to use, nor does it display ads within the UI. The best thing about 30 Boxes is its patented natural language parser, which lets you make entries to your calendar a lot easier.
9. Edison Calendar
Edison Calendar is a goal-oriented calendar app for iPhone that helps you fight stress and manage your goals effortlessly. The idea behind the app’s working is simple: it breaks down goals into different subgoals and assigns them to you over the course of days, weeks, quarters, and months. That way, you’re always on top of your goals and can schedule your time and tasks accordingly.
10. Microsoft Outlook Calendar
Although not a standalone calendar app, Outlook is a good calendar option if you’re into Microsoft services. Using it, you can access all your tasks and meetings from your email and directly add or schedule them to the calendar. Moreover, you also have the ability to add other email exchanges to import their tasks and meetings.
Choosing the Right iPhone Calendar App Based on Your Needs
Our recommendations above should help you choose the right calendar app for your iPhone that suits your needs.
In our opinion, Google Calendar makes for the best free calendar app for iOS if you’re looking for a free option. On the other hand, if you need one of the best user experiences, Fantastical is the way to go, whereas, for advanced features, Things 3 and BusyCal are the best calendar apps of choice.
FAQs About Best iPhone Calendar Apps
2. Apple Calendar vs Google Calendar: Which one is better?
Well, choosing a calendar app between Google's and Apple's comes down to your dependence on either platform. If you're an iOS user, you're very likely invested in Apple's ecosystem—and so you use Apple's built-in apps for emails, reminders, etc., in which case, you can benefit more from the Apple Calendar than Google Calendar.
On the other hand, if you use a lot of Google services—or if you've recently moved from Android to iPhone—and are dependent on its mail or task management apps, you're better off using the Google Calendar.
3. Best free calendar app for iPhone?
Google Calendar is by far the best free calendar app for iPhone. It's easy to use, and you can easily manage your events, tasks, and meetings on it. Moreover, there are a few additional features, too, including the ability to integrate other Google apps, which makes the service even more powerful and useful.
4. Best calendar app for iPhone and Mac?
Fantastical and BusyCal are two of the best calendar apps you can use on your iPhone as well as Mac to manage your events and schedules effortlessly.
5. How do I change the default calendar on my iPhone?
Apple's calendar app does a lot of things well, but not everyone wants to use it. To change the default calendar on your iPhone, go to Settings > Calendar > Default Calendar. Once you're there, tap on the calendar you want to use as your default and click on the back arrow on the top left. Your selection is auto-saved.
6. What is the best iPhone calendar app?
As we have mentioned in our article above, there are many good third-party iPhone calendar apps (both free and paid). But for us, Fantastical is possibly the best of the lot. It has a sleek and clean interface that lets you create and manage tasks/events easily. It also supports multiple calendars with an easy to toggle option.