Choosing an app for sharing family calendar entries: nine listings, read on one day

How we compared, and two things we will not pretend

We put six questions, in the same order, to every shared calendar app for families among the nine. Every answer comes from the app’s own store listing, read on September 18, 2026, so the table shows what the stores printed.

• What the free version stops. Not what it allows, which is everything on the box, but where it puts the wall.
• What paid costs. The App Store prints a list of purchases, and on several of these listings the period is never printed at all.
• Who else sees the entry. The whole household, one chosen person, or a court.
• Where it runs. Phone, tablet, desktop, browser.
• What happens to the data. If the app closes, what leaves with you.
• When it was last updated. On each store separately.

First thing we will not pretend: Alpacto is our own app, and its row carries dashes instead of store figures, because quoting our own listing back at you proves nothing. Second: of the four round-ups on the first page of Google here, three are written by calendar apps about their rivals. Motion, Maple and Lifestack each rank their competitors; the fourth, a parenting site, is the only one that sells no calendar of its own.

The best calendar app for families, case by case

The best calendar app for families depends on who needs to see the entry. Cozi suits one household account, TimeTree several calendars, OurCal a chat on every event, and OurFamilyWizard two separated parents. The table lists all nine apps with price, rating and who sees the entry.

Four columns, because a phone screen holds four. Everything in the third column was read on September 18, 2026 from the listings linked in the first.

The nine family organizer apps, one by one

Among the nine family organizer apps here, Cozi has the most App Store ratings (399K). FamCal comes closest to a chore board because it hands jobs to a named person, and OurFamilyWizard is the only one built for separated parents. The others differ mainly in where the free version stops.

Cozi

The one every thread names first, and the one with the most ratings here by a distance: 399K on the App Store alone. Its listing is unusually straight about money, saying that all the features it lists are free and that Gold is an optional ad-free subscription. The wall is specific, and no round-up we read named it: without Gold you cannot add, edit or view events more than 30 days ahead.

FamilyWall

Everything in one wall: calendar, lists, meal plans, shared documents, a family budget and messages. That breadth is the reason to pick it and the reason the free tier ends sooner than you expect. Its listing prints Monthly Premium at $7.99 and Yearly Premium at $44.99, and then two more Premium lines at $7.99 and $1.99 with no period attached at all.

TimeTree

Built around several calendars rather than one: a family calendar, a work shift calendar, a calendar for two. That is exactly what one parent in the thread below did not want, having asked for one calendar for the whole family. It is also the only app here rated 13+ on the App Store, which matters if a child is meant to have their own login.

FamCal

A calendar with lists where a job is handed to a named person, which is closer to a chore board than most of this list. The two stores disagree about it more than about anything else here: 4.9 from 28K ratings on the App Store against 4.3 from 9.05K reviews on Play. Its listing runs into the App Store’s display cap of ten purchases, as Cozi, FamilyWall and OurCal do, with Gold alone printed six times.

OurCal

The newest idea in the set: a shared calendar with a messenger built in, where every event has its own chat and every change posts into it. Its own listing calls it the first calendar messenger, and its prices are group sizes: $6.99 for up to six people, $12.99 for twenty, $29.99 for a hundred. It is also the smallest here by a wide margin, with 1.1K App Store ratings and 294 Play reviews, so the ratings rest on far fewer people than the rest.

OurFamilyWizard

Not a household organizer at all: it is for two parents who have separated, and its listing says courts and family law professionals across all fifty states use it. That changes what the calendar is for, because the record is written to be read by somebody else later. It also explains the prices, which are the highest here by an order of magnitude: $149.99, $219.00 and $299.99.

Google Calendar and Apple Calendar

The two that cost nothing because the household already owns them. Google Calendar has purchases on its listing, but they are Google One storage plans, and the calendar itself is free. Apple Calendar has no separate listing at all: it ships with the system, sharing runs through an iCloud family group, and it stops at the edge of Apple devices.

Maple

Google still recommends it, and its own comparison article still ranks on the first page. Its home page opens with a banner above the farewell letter: Maple will sunset on December 31, 2026.

Cozi alternatives: what the free plan now limits, and which app fits which need

Cozi is still free, and the paid plans are Gold at $39 a year and Max at $79 a year. Cozi’s own plan pages, read on October 15, 2026, put the limits of the free version in three places.

It is supported by ads and sponsors. Events can be entered from the Agenda view for the next 30 days only, where Gold gives unlimited future calendar access. And the month view on the phone is a Gold feature.

One Gold subscription covers the whole family. It removes the ads and adds the phone month view, calendar search, up to 3 reminders per event (free gets 1), change notifications, a birthday tracker, shopping mode and priority support.

Max is Gold plus three AI tools: event import, recipe creation and a meal planner. Cozi’s FAQ says a purchase on its website starts with a 2-week free trial. The App Store lines above differ from the $39 list price, so check which price your phone shows before you pay.

Which of the apps in the table replaces Cozi depends on what you were using it for:

• You only need the shared calendar, free. Google Calendar costs nothing and has no 30-day wall, and Apple Calendar does the same inside an iCloud family group on Apple devices. Neither has a family grocery list.
• You want the same all-in-one organizer. FamilyWall puts the calendar, lists, meal plans, documents and a family budget in one place, at $7.99 a month or $44.99 a year, so it costs more than Gold.
• You need several calendars. TimeTree keeps a family calendar, a work shift calendar and a calendar for two apart, with different people in each.
• You want jobs handed to a named person. FamCal does that, and its listing prints a Yearly Discount line at $19.99.
• You want to discuss each event. OurCal gives every entry its own chat, and charges by group size instead of per year.
• You are two separated parents. OurFamilyWizard is built for that and starts at $149.99.

Maple is not on this list: it was a Cozi alternative until it announced its closing, covered below. We did not test where the free version of each of these apps stops, so read its listing before you move the whole household.

One of the apps on the first page is closing in December

Maple, a Cozi alternative that Google’s first page recommended on September 18, 2026, is closing. Its home page says it has been acquired and will sunset on December 31, 2026. Accounts close then, families are told to export their data first, and no store links are left on the site.

Google recommended it twice that day, once through Maple’s own comparison article and once through the summary at the top of the results. None of the four round-ups mentions the closing, and one of them cannot, because it is Maple’s. That is worth asking of any shared calendar before a household moves in: where do three years of birthdays, school terms and appointments go if the company is bought?

The second thing nobody compares is smaller and closer to home, because a shared calendar records that something is happening without recording who agreed to do it. A parent in the r/Mommit thread below put it plainly three years ago: sticky notes and a fridge whiteboard work, but are “not portable and doesn’t play well with our digital tools”. The rest splits the same way: google calendar for family dates with an iPhone list for groceries, TimeTree plus a wish for “shared shopping list and todos”, Cozi for one login.

Three things the price of an app for sharing family calendar entries hides

Store prices for family calendar apps mislead in three ways. The billing period is often not printed, “free” means a different limit in each app, and some listed purchases are not the app at all. We found all three reading nine listings on September 18, 2026.

• The period is often not printed. TimeTree shows Premium at $4.49 and at $44.99 and never says what either one buys, so an article calling either a yearly price is filling in the store’s blank. OurCal answers a different question in the same place: eight of its ten purchases print the group size, from six people at $6.99 to a hundred at $29.99.
• “Free” means a different wall in each app. Cozi’s wall is thirty days ahead, and it is written in the description rather than beside a price. That is where a free family calendar actually fails: the summer holiday you try to put in during spring.
• Purchases on a listing are not always the app. Google Calendar’s purchase list is Google One storage. Reading it as the price of the calendar would be wrong by the whole amount.