The best shared calendar apps for couples

Start with the question that decides it

Before the feature lists: are you both on the same kind of phone? If you are both on iPhone, the calendar you already own is free, excellent and already installed, and most of this article is optional. If one of you is on Android, Apple's shared lists and Reminders stop working across the two of you, and that single fact is why most couples end up installing something.

The second question is how much of your shared life is not dates. If it is only appointments, any calendar will do. If the actual mess is the shopping, the vet, the meals and who paid for the boiler service, a calendar will keep being the wrong shape no matter which one you choose.

The five, compared

Prices are the publishers' own list prices at the time of writing and vary by region. Check the store before committing.

Google Calendar: the one you should try first

It is free, it is not going to be discontinued, and a shared calendar between two Google accounts does exactly what it says. Create a calendar, share it with your partner at "make changes to events", and you are done in four minutes.

Where it runs out: it has no shared lists, tasks live in a separate product most people never open, and it has no idea anyone paid for anything. It is a calendar, and an excellent one, which is a compliment and a limitation in the same sentence.

Apple Calendar: free, but only if nobody defects

With iCloud Family Sharing you get a shared calendar and shared Reminders lists at no cost, already installed, with no third party holding your data. For two iPhone users this is genuinely hard to beat.

The catch is total. The day one of you switches to Android, the shared lists stop, the calendar sharing gets awkward, and you are back here reading comparison articles. If there is any chance of that, factor it in now rather than after you have a year of history in it.

TimeTree: the calendar that expects a conversation

TimeTree's distinguishing feature is a comment thread hanging off each event, which is a genuinely good idea for couples. "Shall I book it for 8?" belongs attached to the dinner, not fourteen messages up a chat. The free tier carries ads; Premium removes them and adds file attachments, at $4.49 a month or $44.99 a year (TimeTree's own Premium page).

It is a calendar with chat, not a household organiser. No meals, no shopping that flows from them, no money.

Cupla: two calendars, one view

Cupla is built specifically for couples and takes a different approach: rather than asking you to move into a new calendar, it pulls your existing Google, Apple and Outlook calendars together so you can see both schedules side by side, with to-dos and date planning on top.

That is the right design if the problem is purely visibility and you both already keep good calendars. It is the wrong one if the problem is that half your shared life was never in a calendar to begin with.

Cria Planner: when the calendar was never the whole problem

I built this one, so treat the next two paragraphs accordingly and go read the free tier yourself.

Cria Planner starts from a plan rather than a calendar: a thing you can hand to your partner that carries its own events, tasks, notes, shopping and costs. The house is a plan. Next week's food is a plan. The trip is a plan. Reminders fire on the other person's phone rather than only on the one that typed them, the shopping list builds itself out of the meals you planned, and shared costs settle up without anyone keeping a tally in their head. Free for two people with the whole calendar and no view cap, on iPhone, Android and the web.

If you only need dates, this is more app than you want, and Google Calendar is the honest recommendation. The tipping point is roughly when you notice you are running three apps and somebody has already stopped opening one of them.

Four things to test in the first week

1. Does a reminder reach the other person? Add a shared event, then check it nudges both phones. A shared calendar that only reminds its author is a diary with extra steps.
2. Does month view work on the phone? Sounds obvious. It is the single most common thing to sit behind a paywall.
3. Can you both edit? Some sharing is read-only by default and nobody notices until someone cannot move a dentist appointment.
4. Is there a way out? Check you can export. An app that is hard to leave is telling you something about its confidence.

The short answer

Both on iPhone and you only need dates: Apple Calendar. Mixed phones and you only need dates: Google Calendar. You want the conversation attached to the event: TimeTree. You both keep good calendars already and just cannot see each other's: Cupla. The dates were never the real problem: Cria Planner.

And if you arrived here because a family organiser you were already using moved something behind a paywall, the Cozi alternatives comparison covers that side of it in more detail.