TidyCal Pricing 2026: Free, $29 and $79 Lifetime Deals, Pro at $99 a Year, and the 1% Fee

What TidyCal costs, in short

TidyCal sells four plans in US dollars ^[1]. Free costs $0. Individual Lifetime costs $29 and Agency Lifetime $79, each paid once on AppSumo. Pro costs $12 a month or $99 a year. On top of that, a 1% fee applies to Stripe payments on every plan except Pro ^[2], and the limits on the lifetime plans depend on the date you bought them. Put in three-year terms, the cheapest paid route is $29 once, the next is $79 once, and the only subscription costs $99 a year. Even three years of Pro add up to $297, less than the $360 that one Calendly Standard seat costs over three years.

The split matters more than it looks. AppSumo owns TidyCal, and the lifetime plans are sold only there, while Pro is a subscription sold by TidyCal through Stripe. Two stores means two sets of rules for activation, invoices and refunds, which the sections below walk through.

Free: $0 with no time limit, and a fee for your clients

Free is a $0 plan, not a trial, and no card is needed to start. It includes unlimited bookings and booking types, paid bookings, recurring and package bookings, a booking page and translation, and it connects one calendar. The list of features that stay free on every plan is long: discount codes, subscriptions with Stripe billing, package bookings, ratings and reviews, guest invites, directory listing, the storefront, date polls and one-click translation. Most of the product lives here. For a solo host with one calendar, Free is a working business tool, not a teaser.

Free is not quite free for your clients, though. Stripe payments on Free carry a 1% TidyCal fee on top of Stripe's processing fees, and on Free the client always pays it at checkout. Full TidyCal branding also stays on the page. PayPal avoids the fee. On $1,000 of Stripe bookings in a month, clients on a Free page pay $10 in TidyCal platform fees on top of the session prices, money the host never receives. Read our guide to whether TidyCal is free for the full list of limits.

The two lifetime plans: $29 and $79 once

Individual Lifetime: $29

Individual Lifetime is a one-time $29 payment with no renewal, shown on the pricing page against a struck $144. It adds automatic video links, group bookings, custom emails, booking limits, AI features, analytics, API access, reduced branding and 10 calendar connections. Every paid plan also unlocks CC addresses, CSV export, redirects, multiple locations, manual approvals and cancellation fees. It has no team seats and no SMS. Since the April 2026 Pro launch, new buyers get no custom domain. Check that first. Spread over three years, the $29 works out to under a dollar a month, about 81 cents by our arithmetic.

Agency Lifetime: $79, and the September 2026 limits

Agency Lifetime is a one-time $79 payment, shown against a struck $240. It adds round robin, collective meetings, a team booking page and SMS reminders. The limits shrank for new buyers. A license bought on or after September 1, 2026 is capped at 4 team members including the owner, 10 calendar connections and 10 SMS segments a month, with no custom domain ^[3]. Pending invitations count toward the 4 seats. That means the owner plus three. A studio owner with four instructors needs five seats, so the studio either leaves one instructor off the team page or adds Pro at $99 a year to remove the seat limit.

Licenses bought earlier keep more

Agency Lifetime bought before September 1, 2026 keeps unlimited team members, 25 calendar connections, 20 SMS segments a month and a custom domain. Individual Lifetime bought before the April 2026 Pro launch keeps its custom domain too. Early buyers kept more. New buyers get less. The direction of travel is worth noting before you pay: the lifetime deal promises all future Lifetime Plan updates, yet new Agency licenses lost seats, calendars, SMS and the custom domain in September 2026. In October the team said complete branding removal is no longer supported on lifetime plans. Expect further change.

Pro: $12 a month or $99 a year

Pro is a recurring subscription sold by TidyCal through Stripe, not through AppSumo, and it is managed in the Stripe customer portal. It costs $12 a month or $99 a year, which the page shows as $8.25 a month billed annually. Twelve monthly payments of $12 come to $144, so annual billing saves $45, or 31.25% by our arithmetic; the pricing page rounds that to 31%. Yearly wins clearly. Over three years the difference grows to $135, because monthly billing costs $432 against $297 on yearly billing. That gap would pay for an Agency Lifetime license and still leave $56, by our arithmetic.

Pro includes every Agency Lifetime feature plus a custom domain, no TidyCal branding, priority support, unlimited SMS reminders, unlimited calendar connections and unlimited team members. It also removes the 1% platform fee. For a team of four that already owns a new Agency Lifetime license, adding Pro buys back what the 2026 changes removed from new licenses: the custom domain, unlimited seats and calendars, and complete branding removal.

There is one ceiling. Plans without a platform fee can process up to $10,000 of sales a month ^[4], and above that custom pricing may apply, which TidyCal does not publish. The cap is high for a single host. A coach charging $150 a session would need about 67 paid sessions a month to reach it, by our arithmetic, so it mainly concerns studios and teams running many hosts through one Pro account. Get the answer in writing before you grow past it.

Buying, activating and combining licenses

AppSumo licenses are matched to a TidyCal account by email address, and activation is instant. There is no field in TidyCal for typing a code, and the license must be activated within 60 days of purchase. A buyer who signed up for TidyCal with a work address and bought on AppSumo with a personal one will see the account still showing Free until the two addresses match. Use the same email on both sites.

Codes do not stack. TidyCal applies one lifetime plan per account, the AppSumo terms say there are no codes and no stacking, and the deal is only for users without an existing paid account. Buying twice does not double limits. To move from Individual to Agency, AppSumo buyers upgrade the license on AppSumo, at a price AppSumo sets and does not publish. Legacy direct buyers see an upgrade button for $50.

A lifetime plan and Pro can live side by side. A lifetime owner can subscribe to Pro and keep the lifetime plan, and Pro features apply while Pro is active. Activating a lifetime code does not cancel Pro. When Pro ends, the account reverts to its lifetime plan with data preserved. Nothing is lost.

The 1% platform fee, line by line

What it applies to, and who pays

TidyCal adds a 1% platform fee to Stripe payments on Free, Individual Lifetime and Agency Lifetime ^[2]. Pro pays none. The fee covers one-off paid bookings, recurring and package sessions, subscription charges and storefront sales. No fee is added to cancellation or no-show fees, and none applies in countries where Stripe does not allow platform fees. A coach who sells a $300 package, a $50 workbook in the storefront and a $100 monthly subscription pays the 1% on all three, which comes to $4.50 that month by our arithmetic.

By default the client pays the 1% as a separate checkout line, not the host. That raises the price your client sees, so a $100 session becomes $101 before Stripe's own charges. Clients notice odd totals. On a lifetime plan the host can choose to cover the fee from the payout instead, a setting in Settings, Bookings that applies account-wide. Free users cannot absorb it. Absorbing keeps prices round: a $120 session costs the client exactly $120, and the host receives $118.80 before Stripe's processing fee.

PayPal, discounts and Stripe's own fees

PayPal payments carry no TidyCal platform fee on any plan, and PayPal offers Venmo to eligible US buyers. But PayPal cannot run subscriptions, recurring charges, cancellation fees or storefront sales. It suits single sessions only. The fee is calculated on the discounted price, so when a coupon brings a $100 booking down to $50, the fee becomes $0.50, and refunds return the fee automatically. Stripe's own processing fees are separate and come on top. TidyCal does not set them, and Pro removes only TidyCal's share. Budget for both.

When the fee outweighs Pro

If a lifetime owner absorbs the fee, Pro pays for itself once yearly Stripe sales pass $9,900, which is $825 a month by our arithmetic. Below that, the fee costs less than Pro. Above it, Pro is cheaper. A host who collects $500 a month through Stripe pays $60 a year in fees when absorbing them, which is less than Pro. A host collecting $2,000 a month pays $240 a year and saves $141 by switching. Remember that clients pay the fee by default, so this math only bites if you choose to absorb it.

What changes from plan to plan

The features that separate the plans are calendars, seats, texts, branding, the domain and support. The table sets them side by side for licenses bought today.

Calendar count can decide first. Anyone who keeps separate work, personal and family calendars needs three checked for conflicts, so the jump from one readable calendar on Free to ten on Individual Lifetime settles the plan before any other feature. Texts reach only US and Canadian numbers, with no per-message charge and allowances that reset monthly. A new Agency license's 10 segments cover about ten single-text reminders a month, while a practice sending two texts per appointment to 30 clients a month would need 60 segments, which only Pro covers. Email support is on every plan with a typical 8-hour response, and no plan has phone support.

Three-year cost for one, four and ten people

For a solo coach, three years cost $0 on Free, $29 once on Individual Lifetime, $297 on Pro billed yearly or $432 on Pro billed monthly. Calendly Standard over the same period costs $360 billed annually. Lifetime is hard to beat. Pro still undercuts Calendly. Even at the monthly rate, three years of Pro at $432 cost less than three years of Acuity Starter billed annually at $576.

For a team of four, a new Agency Lifetime license covers exactly four members including the owner, and Pro has no seat fees. Calendly Teams costs $16 a seat a month billed annually. Totals are our arithmetic.

For a team of ten, Agency Lifetime stops at 4 members, so the team needs Pro, which still costs $99 a year with unlimited seats. Ten Calendly Teams seats billed annually cost $1,920 a year by our arithmetic. Over three years the gap reaches $5,463, because those seats cost $5,760 while TidyCal Pro costs $297. Seats drive rival pricing, and the gap widens with size.

Refunds, cancellation and the missing trial

Pro has no free trial and is billed immediately, and it can be refunded in full only within 7 days of purchase. After that, subscription payments are non-refundable. Those seven days are the trial, so test everything that week. Lifetime plans are friendlier: AppSumo handles their refunds and shows both as refundable up to 60 days, though there is no refund button inside TidyCal. A refunded license returns the account to Free. Older lifetime plans bought directly on tidycal.com have a 60-day self-service refund, and legacy buyers can downgrade from Agency to Individual for a $50 partial refund within 60 days.

Pro can be canceled from the billing settings and stays active until the end of the period, then falls back to Free or to any lifetime plan owned. Downgrades take effect immediately, a custom domain stops serving when Pro ends, and data is preserved. On paperwork, AppSumo issues invoices for lifetime plans while Stripe emails receipts for Pro, and the Pro billing portal has no field for a tax ID or VAT number. European buyers should note it. Accounts with the original Individual Lifetime deal that have not used a trial can get a free Agency Plan trial, but most new users get no trial at all.

How TidyCal's price compares

Calendly Standard costs $12 a seat a month or $10 billed annually, and Teams $20 or $16, while TidyCal Pro costs $99 a year for unlimited seats. For one person, Pro yearly costs less than Calendly Standard yearly; for teams, the gap is large. Acuity Scheduling has no free plan, and Starter costs $20 a month or $16 billed annually, with Standard at $34 or $27. Acuity is priced per account, not per seat, while TidyCal's Free plan already takes payments. Our TidyCal vs Calendly comparison covers the features behind those prices.

For Cal.com, TidyCal's own comparison says Teams costs $12 per user a month billed yearly and has no lifetime plan, as of September 2026. Cal.com's pricing page did not show its prices in the text we captured, so confirm on Cal.com directly; self-hosting changes the math anyway. TidyCal also says SavvyCal has no free plan and that Zoho Bookings puts online payments on Premium, but we could not confirm those figures on their own pages. Check before comparing.

Which plan to buy

Start on Free if one calendar and a branded page are enough ^[1]. Buy Individual Lifetime for $29 once a second calendar, automatic video links or group sessions matter. Buy Agency Lifetime for a team of up to 4, counting pending invites. Choose Pro for branding, a custom domain, a bigger team, or when the platform fee becomes the real cost. Before paying anything, settle four questions. Will your clients accept the 1% line at checkout? Do you need a custom domain, which new lifetime plans lack? How many people are on the team? And how does your monthly Stripe volume compare with the $10,000 cap? Then decide.

The bottom line

TidyCal keeps paid bookings cheap. Free already handles payments, packages and subscriptions, $29 once unlocks most of the paid features, and Pro at $99 a year removes the fee, the branding and the seat limit. Pay yearly if you choose Pro, and use the 7-day refund window as your trial. Buy lifetime with open eyes, because new licenses carry fewer seats, calendars and texts than older ones, and the terms changed more than once in 2026. For the full product verdict, read our TidyCal review.