Google Calendar is great. It's just not a family hub.

For two adults sharing work and life events, often yes, and it's free. Google's family group tops out at six people (one manager plus five members) and creates one shared 'Family' calendar, but Google's help pages describe no chores, rewards or meal planning anywhere in Calendar. The family group is free to create, so it costs nothing to try it first and see whether it is enough. Plannie adds that layer, and because it syncs two-way with Google Calendar you keep using Google wherever you already do.

It works with it. Connect your Google account and sync runs two-way, so events added in either place show up in both, within moments, on every Plannie plan including free. On Google's shared family calendar, members aren't notified when someone else edits an event, per Google's help page, so a change can go unnoticed until someone happens to look. Adults keep their work calendars in Google; the household gets one shared, colour-coded view in Plannie with chores, meals and lists in one place.

Only partially. Google's support pages describe its Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max integration as showing daily and weekly views only, with voice commands unable to delete, cancel or edit an event, and several calendar types, including imported or read-only calendars, unsupported on the display at all. A Nest Hub is also a separate purchase from a regular tablet, so a household that wants a wall display is choosing between two kinds of hardware as well as two apps. Plannie's kiosk mode turns any tablet into a full, always-on family display that shows every member's day, colour-coded, and lets you edit events on the screen itself.

Google Tasks lives inside Google Calendar and covers personal to-do lists with due dates and recurrence, but Google's help page states that recurring tasks can't carry subtasks, and describes no way to assign a task to another family member and no points, stars or reward mechanic. No first-party Google page describes a meal-planning feature at all, so a family tracking dinners in Google ends up doing it as generic all-day events or a separate note. The Tasks help page doesn't mention any per-child view either, so a parent checking on a kid's to-dos has to open the same shared list everyone else uses. Plannie has both built in: chores that pay out tickets for rewards, and a weekly meal grid with a shared grocery list.

It depends on the app. Google's help pages describe a full two-way sync when the other app supports signing in with Google, and a read-only, one-way feed through a private iCal link when it doesn't. Google warns that this link should never be shared, since it grants private calendar access to anyone who has it. The two-way Outlook sync tool Google offers, Google Workspace Sync for Microsoft Outlook, is a business or school feature, not part of a free personal account. The help pages don't document a way to turn that read-only iCal link into a two-way connection later, so the choice of sync method matters from the start. Plannie syncs two-way with both Google and Outlook on every plan.

A colour for every family member across every view, chores that pay out tickets kids spend on rewards, a weekly meal grid with a shared grocery list, and kiosk mode that turns any tablet into an always-on family display, none of which any Google Calendar help page describes. Family Inbox and Magic Import turn forwarded email, photos and PDFs into events automatically, and Plannie's open API and MCP server let your own AI tools read and write the calendar too.

Plannie has a free plan too (shared calendar, two-way Google and Outlook sync, lists and starter meal planning), so trying the family layer costs nothing. Because both plans include two-way sync, a household can try Plannie's free tier for weeks before deciding whether Premium's extras are worth $99 a year. Plannie Premium, with the assistant, chores and rewards, Family Inbox and unlimited members, is $99 a year for the whole household.