7 Cozi alternatives, compared

Why families are leaving Cozi

Cozi's own FAQ is specific about the free plan's limit: you can only enter events from the Agenda view for the next 30 days, so a family can't glance a season ahead without paying. The free app is also ad-supported, and reminders are capped at one per attendee per event. Cozi Gold removes the ads and the calendar limit for $39/year; Cozi Max, a newer $79.99/year tier, adds three AI features, but only inside Cozi's mobile app, not the website. On every tier, Cozi's Google, Outlook and Apple Calendar connections are read-only: events come in on a schedule, roughly hourly, instead of syncing instantly in both directions. Cozi has been a stable, cheap family calendar for two decades, and that track record counts. But a family that outgrows the free tier has to work out which of Cozi's tiers fixes their complaint before paying for one. For the full breakdown of what changes at each Cozi tier, see Plannie vs Cozi. Below are seven alternatives, and Plannie is only one of them.

FamCal: the cheapest complete organiser

Free with ads · Premium $39.99/year (or $3.99/week)

FamCal is the cheapest complete family organiser on this list: a colour-coded calendar, lists with visibility settings, a recipe box and meals added straight onto the calendar, all under one shared login the whole family uses with the same password. Free is ad-supported; Premium at $39.99/year (or $3.99/week) removes the ads and adds a text month view, shared contacts, birthday trackers and schedule export. Compared with Cozi, FamCal syncs two-way with whatever calendar is already on your phone (Google, Outlook or iCloud) rather than the read-only feeds Cozi offers, and it runs on more Apple hardware, including Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision. Nobody gets their own login, though: every member shares one password. There's also no kiosk mode for a kitchen wall display.

Best for: families who want the cheapest complete organiser and don't mind one shared login. Full breakdown: Plannie vs FamCal.

FamilyWall: the widest bundle

Free (Standard) · Premium $44.99/year

FamilyWall packs the widest bundle into one family price: a shared calendar, shopping and to-do lists, chore checklists, a drag-and-drop meal planner, a budget tracker, shared documents, a family messenger and real-time location with safe zones. The free Standard tier is ad-free and covers the calendar, lists, messenger and contact book; everything else, including calendar sync itself, needs Premium at $44.99/year ($4.99/month on the web, $7.99/month via the App Store), with a 30-day trial. Compared with Cozi, that's roughly the same price as Cozi Gold for a lot more included, and no ads on the free tier either. FamilyWall has no AI, though. None of its own pages mention reading a school email or a photographed flyer, so paperwork still gets typed in by hand. Its answer to kiosk mode, the Home Hub tablet, is still a waitlist with no price.

Best for: families who want the most features bundled into one price and are happy to type events in themselves. Full breakdown: Plannie vs FamilyWall.

Google Calendar: the free baseline

Free

Google Calendar is the free baseline every other app on this list connects to. For two adults sharing work and life events it's often enough on its own: Google's own family-group feature creates one shared calendar for up to six people, at no cost. It wasn't built for the rest of running a household, though: Google's own help pages describe no chores, no reward system and no meal planning anywhere in Calendar, and members of a shared family calendar aren't even notified when someone else edits it. Compared with Cozi, it's free forever rather than capped and ad-supported, but it was never meant to be a family app. The family layer (member colours, chores, meals, a wall display) is what a household ends up adding from other apps, and those apps are what the rest of this page covers. See Plannie vs Google Calendar for the full breakdown of adding that layer on top.

Best for: adults-only households, or anyone who wants to keep using Google underneath while adding the family layer on top.

Plannie: the complete household hub

Free plan · Premium $99/year for the whole household · no hardware

Plannie is built as a household hub: a colour for every member across every view, chores that pay out tickets for rewards, a weekly meal grid, kiosk mode that turns any tablet into a wall display, and an assistant that reads forwarded email, photos and PDFs into events. Two-way sync with Google and Outlook is included from the free plan up, while chores, kiosk mode and the assistant are part of Premium. Compared with Cozi, there’s no 30-day limit on the free calendar, no ads on any plan, and one $99/year price for the whole household instead of two paid tiers to choose between. Plannie doesn’t come with a screen in a box, so a wall display means using a tablet you already own. There’s no SMS channel either: the assistant lives in the app, the inbox and Siri.

Best for: families who want the whole layer (calendar, chores, meals, capture, wall display) at one price, without buying a screen. Full breakdown: Plannie vs Cozi.

Sense: the widest capture funnel

Free Forever (10 AI actions/month) · Premium $59.99/year

Sense is built around the same idea as Cozi Max's AI Event Import, just wider and available from day one: forward an email, snap a flyer, share a WhatsApp message or a voice note, and it turns into calendar events in each child's colour. The Free Forever tier allows 10 AI actions a month with no card required; Premium at $59.99/year (or $6.99/month) unlocks unlimited AI actions, connected calendars, chores, meals and the Sense Hub tablet mode for the whole family. Compared with Cozi, that's cheaper than Cozi Max for a wider capture funnel (WhatsApp and voice notes are channels Cozi doesn't have at all), but Sense is early-stage: its terms name a Delaware company, no hosting region is stated, and there's no public API or MCP server for anyone wanting to build on top.

Best for: capture-first households who mainly want the school-email problem solved for less than Cozi Max costs. Full breakdown: Plannie vs Sense.

Skylight: if you want a screen

$149.99+ display · Calendar Plus $79/year

Skylight is the pick if leaving Cozi means wanting an actual screen on the wall instead of software on a device you already own. Displays run from $149.99 for the 10-inch to $569.99 for the 27-inch Calendar Max, with the best-selling 15-inch Calendar 2 at $299.99, and Calendar Plus at $79/year adds star rewards, meal planning and the Sidekick AI assistant on top. The basic chore checklist works without a subscription, but assigning stars or creating Rewards needs Plus, per Skylight's own help centre. Compared with Cozi, Skylight's two-way sync is stronger with Google and Apple iCloud, but Outlook, Yahoo and Cozi calendars themselves only sync one-way into it. A family of four with two kids' Buddy devices can run past $770 over three years, against roughly $537 for that display alone: the trade-off for a purpose-built appliance that arrives ready to hang.

Best for: families set on a dedicated appliance who'd rather buy a screen than repurpose one. See Plannie vs Skylight and the no-hardware comparison.

TimeTree: the free social calendar

Free with ads · Premium $4.49/month or $44.99/year, per account

TimeTree is a free, cross-platform group calendar built around a social layer Cozi doesn't have: comments on events, photo albums, a shared memo per calendar, and a flyer scanner (Event Scan) that reads a photographed poster into events, all in the free app. Premium is $4.49/month or $44.99/year, but per account: TimeTree's own site says there's no family sharing plan, so an ad-free household of four pays for four separate subscriptions. Compared with Cozi, TimeTree's free tier is more generous (no 30-day window), but sync only runs one way: TimeTree's own help says you can't export events out, and the web version can't display external calendars at all. Colour per member is also a naming convention on a fixed label palette, not something the app tracks itself.

Best for: a group calendar with a social layer, for a household that's fine with ads or paying per person to remove them. Full breakdown: Plannie vs TimeTree.

Switching from Cozi without losing your calendar

Most of what's on your Cozi calendar already lives in Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar too, if you connected one of those as a read-only source. Reconnect that same account to your new app and the events reappear on their own. For anything that only lives inside Cozi, get it out first: open Settings → Shared Cozi Calendars in Cozi, toggle the calendar you want to share, then use VIEW OR SEND COZI URL → COPY COZI URL to get a read-only iCal link, per Cozi's own instructions. Paste that link into Plannie's Calendar feed (ICS) setting (the same way any subscribed calendar comes in), and Cozi's events show up as a view-only layer that keeps itself current while you rebuild chores, lists and meals in the new app. What doesn't move automatically is the chores-rewards-recipes layer; budget an evening to recreate it, and there's no need to cancel Cozi first, so the two can run side by side during the switch.

The bottom line

Which Cozi alternative is best depends on what bothers you about Cozi. If it's the 30-day free-calendar limit and the ads, FamCal or Google Calendar go furthest for free. If it's the lack of AI import, Sense and Plannie both read email and photos into the calendar, and Plannie adds chores with rewards, a meal grid and kiosk mode on top, all for $99/year. If you want a screen in a box, Skylight is the strongest hardware pick, and you pay for the hardware. FamilyWall bundles the most features for the least money if you don't mind typing events in by hand, and TimeTree is the one to pick for its social layer, if per-account pricing doesn't put you off. Every software option here has a free tier, so you can try your shortlist for a week each before you commit to a paid plan. For the wider field beyond Cozi specifically, see Best family calendar apps compared.