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Stack comparison 8 min read Updated September 23, 2026

Calendly vs Acuity Scheduling for consult booking: which fits your intake process?

In short

Calendly's paid tiers focus on routing leads into a CRM, with Salesforce and HubSpot ties strongest on its Teams plan at $16 a seat a month. Acuity's paid tiers focus on running the appointment itself, with SMS reminders, packages, and memberships starting on its $27-a-month Standard plan.

Key facts

  • Calendly's Free plan allows 1 event type and 1 calendar connection for one-on-one meetings only; its Standard plan is $10 a seat a month (billed yearly), and its Teams plan is $16 a seat a month, per calendly.com.
  • Calendly's Teams plan documents round-robin scheduling, lead routing and qualification, and CRM record updates in Salesforce and HubSpot based on assignment rules, per calendly.com.
  • Acuity Scheduling's Starter plan is $16 a month billed yearly ($20 monthly) for one calendar; Standard is $27 a month billed yearly ($34 monthly) for up to 6 calendars and adds SMS reminders; Premium is $49 a month billed yearly ($61 monthly) for up to 36 calendars, per acuityscheduling.com.
  • Acuity's documented feature list includes memberships and packages, gift certificates, and a waitlist feature starting on its Standard plan, plus a HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) option on Premium, per acuityscheduling.com.
  • Both platforms document payment collection: Calendly integrates Stripe and PayPal from its Standard plan up; Acuity documents Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Venmo across all its paid tiers.

The job: getting a consult on the calendar, and reminding them to show up

A consultant, a clinic, or a home-services estimator all need the same basic thing: a link a prospect can click to book a time, with a reminder that cuts down on no-shows. Both tools do that on their free or entry tier. The paid tiers diverge based on what happens next: does the booking need to update your CRM, or does it need to trigger an SMS reminder and collect a deposit.

Documented features, side by side

Calendly's paid tiers build outward from the meeting itself into your sales process: Standard adds Stripe and PayPal payment collection, custom payment links, and meeting packages; Teams adds round-robin scheduling for distributing bookings across a team, lead routing and qualification, and record updates in Salesforce or HubSpot; Enterprise adds Microsoft Dynamics 365 routing and SSO. A Notetaker add-on for meeting recordings and transcripts is available from Standard up.

Acuity's paid tiers build outward from the appointment itself into how you run the business: Standard adds SMS reminders, a waitlist, memberships, packages, and gift certificates on top of Starter's single calendar and email reminders; Premium adds an AI booking assistant, a HIPAA BAA for regulated health-adjacent providers, and support for staff across multiple time zones. Acuity documents Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Venmo as payment options across its paid tiers, plus a custom API and CSS on Premium.

What each tier costs, as published

Calendly prices per seat: Standard at $10 a month per seat billed yearly, Teams at $16 a month per seat billed yearly, and Enterprise starting around $15,000 a year with a minimum of 50 seats, per calendly.com. Acuity prices per business, not per seat: Starter at $16 a month billed yearly, Standard at $27 a month billed yearly, and Premium at $49 a month billed yearly, per acuityscheduling.com, with unlimited services and appointments included on every tier.

That per-seat versus per-business structure matters at scale: a solo consultant pays roughly the same order of magnitude either way, but a clinic with several practitioners will find Calendly's cost climbs with headcount, while Acuity's cost climbs with calendar count instead.

Choose Calendly when, choose Acuity when

Choose Calendly when the booking needs to flow into a sales pipeline, with lead routing, qualification, and Salesforce or HubSpot updates mattering more than SMS reminders or package sales.

Choose Acuity when the appointment itself is the product, memberships, packages, gift certificates, SMS reminders, and (on Premium) a HIPAA BAA for a health-adjacent practice, and per-business pricing fits your team size better than Calendly's per-seat model.

Related questions

Sources

desk research from vendor documentation; no affiliate relationship; where we have implemented a tool for clients we say so.

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