Is Acuity Scheduling Free? No, but Here Is What the Trial Covers

No free plan, and that is on purpose

No. Acuity Scheduling has no free plan for new accounts. You get a free trial with no credit card, seven days on its own or 14 days when attached to a Squarespace website, and then you need a paid plan ^[1]. The cheapest is Starter at $16 a month billed annually, or $192 a year ^[2]. A free plan does exist, but only for some legacy accounts. Over a first year, then, the cheapest way to run Acuity is Starter on annual billing, and the cheapest way to try it is the longer trial you get through a Squarespace site.

The position is deliberate. Acuity sells to businesses that charge for their time, and it bundles payments, reminders and client tools that cost money to run. Its own hair salon page argues that free scheduling apps often come with limitations, and it offers a trial instead. The pricing FAQ answers the question directly: there is no free plan, but you can use the free trial before committing to a paid version. The PayPal partner page agrees. Starter, the entry ticket, includes one calendar, unlimited services and appointments, payments and deposits, intake forms, email reminders, video meeting links and the mobile app. It leaves out texts, packages and the waitlist. Our full Acuity pricing guide walks through every plan.

The free trial: seven days, or fourteen with Squarespace

The trial is the free part of Acuity, and it is a genuine free test. It opens every feature of the plan you try, so you can test Premium tools like the Booking Assistant before buying. You sign up with an email address or Google, and you do not enter a card. At the end nothing is charged unless you choose a plan, because nothing renews automatically. A clinic can start on Premium, read the BAA, test the Booking Assistant and the API, and then subscribe to Standard or Premium depending on what it actually needs.

If you use Acuity by itself, the trial lasts seven days. Seven days is short for a business that books weekly clients, since each regular client will appear at most once. It is wiser to book test appointments with friends or staff than to wait for real clients to find the booking page. Attach Acuity to a Squarespace website and the trial doubles to 14 days. You can still start a trial without a Squarespace site, and the website trial is also 14 days. If you plan a Squarespace site anyway, start there.

That choice comes at the very start, and it cannot be changed later. You either use Acuity by itself or attach it to one Squarespace site. Attached accounts share the website's billing and contributor limits, while standalone ones have unlimited contributors, and a trial attached to a website cannot be deleted without deleting the website. Decide before signup. If the clock runs out too soon, you can ask Customer Support to extend the trial. Support works by email around the clock and by live chat on weekdays. Ask before the trial ends, with a reason; waiting for text verification is a good one.

What you can and cannot test during the trial

You can build the whole account: services, calendars, hours, limits, forms, the scheduling page and embeds. You can connect Stripe, Square or PayPal and accept real payments for appointments. The mobile app works from day one, and clients can book you. The core works. That makes the trial good for judging setup, the booking flow and checkout, which are the parts a new business usually worries about first.

The gaps are the parts that keep clients coming back. During the trial you cannot send emails, customize notifications or send automated texts ^[1]. Clients still see the confirmation page, but your reminders will not reach them, and email templates cannot be customized either. Texts are blocked outright, since they belong to Standard and Premium and not to free trials. They also need business verification, which can be pending for several weeks, so start it on day one.

The result is a lopsided test. Confirmation emails, reminders, follow-ups and texts all stay off until you pay, so you can judge how clients book and pay but not how Acuity cuts no-shows. If you test with real clients, remind them yourself. Better, test with friends. One last oddity is easy to miss: first and last name fields have a 35-character limit on a trial. Most names fit, and the limit disappears once you pay, so it only matters if a test booking fails oddly.

When the trial ends

You cannot cancel a trial early, and you do not need to. If you do not upgrade when it ends, the subscription is canceled automatically and nothing is charged ^[3]. Walking away is free. Three things happen at that point: your subscription lapses, your settings stay saved, and your clients lose the ability to book. Services, calendars, forms and client records stay in the account, so you can come back later and start where you left off.

The real risk is the booking link. If you shared it with clients during the trial, it stops taking bookings the moment the trial ends, and clients see a closed scheduler. If the trial ends on a Friday and you forget to upgrade, anyone who opens the link over the weekend finds it shut. Upgrade before you publish the link widely, or keep the trial private until you do. Do not print QR codes yet, and set a reminder for the day before the trial ends.

A seven-day test plan

Seven days is enough if you plan them. This order front-loads the slow steps and leaves the decision for the last day. The slowest, text verification and Google approval for Reserve with Google, can each take days or weeks, so starting them on the first morning gives them the best chance of finishing in time. The plan assumes one owner and a few staff, so adjust it for classes or clinics. Keep notes as you go.

1. Day 1, services and hours. Create services with real durations and prices, add add-ons, and set weekly hours and holidays. Start text verification now. If you want Reserve with Google, apply on the first morning too, because Google's approval could take days.
2. Day 2, calendars and limits. Add a calendar for each staff member or room, invite staff as contributors, and set how far ahead clients can book and how late they can cancel. Calendar limits override account limits. Check that the calendar count fits the plan you will buy.
3. Day 3, the booking page. Add your logo and colors, choose the monthly, daily or classes template, hide what clients should not see, and embed the page or set up a custom link. Book three test appointments from a phone.
4. Day 4, forms and policies. Build intake forms with a checkbox for your cancellation policy. File uploads accept one file up to 5 MB each. If you need signatures, test your third-party signature tool now.
5. Day 5, payments. Connect Stripe or Square, and PayPal if you want Venmo. Choose full payment, deposits or a saved card, and turn on tips or pay-what-you-want pricing, not both. Run a test payment and refund it.
6. Day 6, sync and video. Connect Google, Outlook or iCloud, and Zoom, Google Meet or GoToMeeting. Each calendar takes one video provider. Book a video session and check the link in both calendars.
7. Day 7, decide. List what you could not test, count calendars, choose a plan, and upgrade before midnight so your booking link stays live.

Testing payments, HIPAA and the Premium extras

Payments

Taking real payments is the best way to test checkout. Acuity suggests a real test charge of $2, refunded through the processor, because the processor fee is not refunded. That fee, a few cents, is the only real money you spend while trying Acuity. Book once with a deposit and once with a tip, then check what lands in Stripe or Square. A checkbox for a 24-hour cancellation policy plus a saved card also gives you a record of consent and a way to charge a late cancellation, and it costs nothing extra on any plan, including Starter.

HIPAA and the Booking Assistant

Clinics can review the HIPAA paperwork before buying. Start a trial of Premium and you can download and read the BAA, though the account becomes HIPAA-enabled only after one is signed for it. Read the list of features HIPAA mode disables before you decide. The Booking Assistant is also a Premium feature, switched on with a toggle in its panel. It chats with clients, recommends services and joins them to waitlists, and it replies only in English or Spanish. Ask it the questions your clients ask, and see if it answers well.

The mobile app

The iOS and Android Admin app comes with every plan, with push alerts, in-person payments and payment links, and it works during the trial. Test bookings, alerts and the checkout tab on your phone; card readers are your own cost. Just do not buy the plan inside the app. The help center says you can "subscribe in-app at a higher price" or on the web. Subscribe in a browser instead, where it costs less.

The legacy free plan, and who still has it

There is a free Acuity plan, but you cannot sign up for it. It belongs to legacy accounts only ^[4]: the small number still billed by Acuity directly and using the original login. Those accounts can downgrade to it at any time, and they move to it if they end a subscription or a payment fails. Clients can still book through it. New Squarespace-billed customers never get it; when their plan lapses, booking simply stops. Check which billing you have before you count on it.

It is stripped down, though. The free plan has no group classes, two-way calendar sync, online payments, packages, coupons, reminders or integrations such as Zoom, Mailchimp and QuickBooks, and you cannot add a logo. Downgrading to it cancels every active client subscription. So a legacy business keeps its booking page online but quietly loses most of what made Acuity useful. It is a parking spot, not a product.

What comes free inside the paid plans

Paid plans include several things rivals charge extra for, which makes the price predictable rather than free. There are no setup, cancellation or support fees, and Acuity takes no cut of your client payments; the processor charges its own fees. On Standard and Premium, text messages carry no per-message fee, with one reminder per appointment. Clients pay their standard messaging rates, which most US phone plans include, and they can reply STOP to opt out. A salon sending 300 reminder texts a month pays nothing extra on Standard, while a tool that sells 100 texts for $8 would charge $288 a year.

The mobile app is included on every plan at no extra cost. Webhooks and Zapier work on every plan too, while the full API needs Premium. For a small business that wants a spreadsheet of bookings, Zapier on Starter is enough. You can also offer free services inside a paid plan. Leave the price blank and clients book without entering a card, which suits a free consultation or a free first class. Free services keep friction low. They also attract no-shows.

Making the first year cheaper

Acuity is not free, but year one can cost less. Creator-page promo codes and Squarespace promotions give 20% off the first payment of a new plan. Squarespace offer codes work the same way: you redeem them when upgrading after the trial, they need a Squarespace login, and they cannot be combined with each other or with other discounts. Legacy accounts cannot use them. Squarespace Circle, a free program open to all Squarespace customers and used mostly by designers and agencies, adds a discount on the first annual payment, extended trials and priority support. None of these discounts repeat after year one, but freelancers should join anyway.

The closest thing to a free month is the refund window. Under Squarespace billing, if you cancel an annual plan in the first 14 days from purchase, you get your money back. That gives you two more weeks of real use with emails and texts switched on, the part the trial hides. On the floor price, Starter costs $192 a year on annual billing or $240 monthly, and $576 over three years on annual billing, with tax on top where it applies. Monthly costs $48 more but lets a new business cancel at the end of any month.

Free alternatives, and when they are enough

Several schedulers do have free plans, taken here from each vendor's pricing page. They suit one-on-one meetings better than service businesses. Most limit calendars, event types, bookings or providers, and charge for payments, texts or teams:

The pattern is clear. Free plans are generous for meetings and stingy on the tools service businesses rely on: deposits and saved cards, packages and memberships, gift certificates, intake forms with file uploads, class capacity, resources for rooms, text reminders or HIPAA. Square comes closest on payments, though a $100 online booking costs $3.60 in processing there. None matches Acuity on all of them. Fifty SimplyBook.me bookings a month suit a part-time coach, but a practitioner seeing six clients a day hits that cap in under two weeks. Our Acuity alternatives guide compares the paid options too.

So stay free if you book meetings, not paid services. A consultant with one meeting type, a tutor who invoices separately, or a team booking internal calls does not need Acuity's payment and package tools; Calendly Free or Cal.com covers that. Pay when clients pay you. A massage therapist who loses two $90 sessions a month to no-shows is out $2,160 a year, so deposits and reminders that prevent even half of those cover Starter more than five times over.

The bottom line

Acuity Scheduling is not free and does not pretend to be. It offers a seven-day trial, or 14 days with a Squarespace site, with no card required, and then costs at least $16 a month billed annually. Use the trial for setup and payments, upgrade before your booking link goes dark, and lean on the 14-day refund to test the reminders the trial hides. If you only need free meeting links, use a free scheduler. If clients pay you, read our Acuity Scheduling review to see what the money buys.