Shared Family Calendar App: How to Choose One in 2026

Quick answer: a family calendar app is one calendar every person in the house can write to from their own phone, with a colour attached to a person rather than to a calendar. Six are worth your time, and their free tiers stop in different places: Cozi's free version stops at the next 30 days — its own FAQ says free users enter events from the Agenda view for the next 30 days, and unlimited future calendar access is Gold, at $39 a year. TimeTree is free for up to 500 people on a calendar but cannot take an outside schedule feed at all. Google Calendar is free with no paid tier and reads feed URLs. Apple Calendar is not on Google Play, so one Android in the house rules it out. Homsy is free for 2 members and $19.99 a year past that. And three apps that 2026 roundups still recommend — Maple, Picniic and OurHome — no longer exist; the OurHome you can install today is an unrelated app from a different developer that has taken the name. All figures read off the vendors' own pages on 23 August 2026, with every store listing and Cozi's plan pages re-read on 27 August 2026.

Everybody sees the same events, on their own phone, the moment they are added. That one change kills the "I didn't know about that" argument and most double-bookings with it.

The catch is that not every calendar handles a household well, and the free tiers are not thin in the same place. One rations how far ahead you can look. One rations who can be on it. One will not accept a school or league feed. Below: what a household calendar has to do, where each app stops, and how to set one up that survives the first month.

Start Here: Three Apps the Lists Still Recommend Are Gone

Before the comparison, the housekeeping — because the family-calendar category has thinned out badly and most published shortlists have not noticed.

Maple was acquired by Wander and is shutting down. Its own site now carries the notice: the service sunsets on 31 December 2026, accounts close after that, data is deleted, and annual subscriptions have stopped renewing. It is absent from both app stores already.

Picniic is delisted from the App Store and Google Play, and picniic.com no longer resolves — checked again on 27 August 2026. There is no shutdown announcement to link to; the product simply stopped.

OurHome is the one that keeps turning up in chore-and-calendar roundups, and it needs the most care, because the name is live and the product is not. Its website is still online, over plain HTTP only, still linking to an App Store page and a Google Play page that both return nothing — checked again on 27 August 2026. What you can install under that name is a different app from a different developer, Elusios: version 1.8.0, updated 15 July 2026, a shopping list and task list for roommates. It has taken the name, not the product, so its rating, its screenshots and its feature list are nothing to do with the app the old roundups describe.

If a shortlist you are reading names any of the three, it was not checked this year.

What a Family Calendar App Has to Do

A colour per person, not per calendar. This is the one that decides whether the week is readable. When Tuesday is a wall of blue for Dad, green for Mum and orange for Sophie, you see the shape of the day without reading a word. Cozi, FamilyWall and Homsy attach a colour to a household member. Google Calendar attaches it to a calendar, which means per-member colour is something you build and maintain: one calendar per person, shared with everyone, forever.

Everyone can write, not just read. A calendar one person writes to is a to-do list they are keeping on behalf of the household. This is where shared-permission models quietly fail — if adding an event requires the calendar's owner, the other adults stop bothering within a fortnight.

Both platforms. Mixed-phone households are the normal case, and this is where Apple Calendar rules itself out. Apple publishes exactly seven apps on Google Play — Music, Music Classical, two TV apps, Beats, Move to iOS and Tracker Detect. Calendar is not among them and never has been. One Android in the house and Apple's shared calendars are off the table.

Outside schedules arriving on their own. Schools, leagues and music programmes publish their terms as feed URLs. Pasting one in beats typing forty dates, and it keeps working when the league moves Tuesday's practice for rain. Google Calendar and Cozi take feed URLs. FamilyWall does too, but only on Premium. TimeTree does not, at any price.

Enough future. Nobody thinks to check this and it is the sharpest edge on any free tier in this category. See below.

Where Each Free Tier Stops

Checked against each vendor's own pages and store listings on 23 August 2026. "Not published" means the vendor does not state it anywhere we could reach.

The 30-day wall is the one to know about. Cozi's own FAQ page states it, under "How do I enter appointments in Cozi?": on the free version you enter events from the Agenda view for the next 30 days, and unlimited future calendar access is listed as a Gold feature. Its comparison page does not mention the cap at all — read on 27 August 2026, that page describes Free only as a shared calendar, lists and recipes — so the FAQ is the page to check if you want it from Cozi in writing. A family calendar is mostly a machine for holding things that have not happened yet — the school year, the season, the holiday in April — so a 30-day horizon is a real limit rather than a nag. If you go with free Cozi, know that you are buying a month.

And TimeTree's limit is the other direction. Five hundred people on one calendar is more than any household will ever need, and it costs nothing. What TimeTree will not do is exchange data with anything: its own support pages say events cannot be sent out of TimeTree and cannot be reflected automatically in an outside calendar — you copy them one at a time. For a household that plans out loud and types its own dates, that is fine. For a household with two kids and four published season schedules, it is a lot of typing.

The Six, One by One

Once you are down to two or three, our family calendar app comparison puts them side by side row by row.

Homsy

Homsy takes a household-first approach: everyone joins one household space, and the calendar sits beside the chores and the lists rather than in its own app. Each member gets a colour, and the week view puts overlapping events side by side on one time axis, so two things at 4pm on Tuesday are visible as two things at 4pm on Tuesday. There is no conflict alert — the clash is something you see rather than something you are told.

On feeds, the honest position: Homsy does not take iCal feeds. It imports events from one Google calendar per member, which needs Homsy Pro, so a school or league feed reaches the household by being subscribed to in Google Calendar first. One Google calendar per member means that feed shares the member's own slot.

Free for 2 members, no ads, no expiry, with volume caps rather than feature stubs — 10 active tasks, 3 repeating chores, 2 shopping lists, 3 notes, 5 recipes. Pro is $19.99 a year, $3.99 a month or $34.99 once. It holds a 4.5 rating on Google Play from 896 ratings. Since version 1.0.21 a child with no phone can still be a named, coloured member of the household, which matters if half the family you are scheduling for does not own a device.

Best for: households whose real argument is about who does what, not only about when things happen.

Cozi

The category veteran, and still the strongest dedicated family calendar. Colour per member, a weekly agenda email, shopping and to-do lists, a recipe box and a meal planner, all free. It is ad-supported, one account covers up to twelve people, and it takes calendar feeds by URL. Cozi also publishes read-only per-person feeds so its events can be seen elsewhere.

Gold is $39 a year and removes the ads, unlocks month view on a phone, calendar search, more than one reminder per event and unlimited future events. A third tier, Max, arrived in November 2025 and adds automation and AI features that Cozi says run only in the mobile app, not on the website. Cozi prints two prices for it: $79 a year on the comparison page and $79.99 on the Max page itself, both read on 27 August 2026. In the App Store the tiers appear as a spread of prices rather than one; budget for $79.99 and treat $79 as the rounder number.

Best for: a bigger family that wants a mature calendar and lists for nothing and will live with advertising — as long as somebody knows about the 30-day horizon.

Google Calendar

Free, on everything, no ads, no member cap, and no paid calendar tier at all. It reads feed URLs, it imports and exports .ics files, and its event handling is better than anything else here. Two household-shaped weaknesses: colour belongs to a calendar rather than to a person, so per-member colour is a structure you maintain; and there is no chore management, no household lists and no meal planning, so you will run a second app for those. Also worth knowing before you plan a workflow around it: the file export runs on a computer only, not in the phone app.

Best for: households that need scheduling and nothing else, and already live in Google.

TimeTree

Built around the group rather than the permission: everyone writes to the same calendar and events carry comments, so plans get discussed where they live. Free for up to 500 members on a calendar and 20 calendars per account, ad-supported, with Premium at $4.49 a month or $44.99 a year for an ad-free calendar, a vertical time view and attachments. No shared lists, no tasks and no feed subscriptions. TimeTree vs Google Calendar compares the two directly.

Best for: couples and small households who plan out loud and do not mind typing their own dates.

Apple Calendar

If every phone in the house is an iPhone, Family Sharing makes this effortless and free, and it subscribes to feed URLs with a refresh interval you choose. Its App Store listing carries a 4.9 rating from about 1.5 million ratings, which is the largest sample in this category by an order of magnitude. The problem is the one named above: it is not on Google Play, so an Android family member is locked out entirely.

Best for: all-Apple households, and nobody else.

FamilyWall

The broad one: calendar plus location sharing, family messaging, photo albums and a budget. Premium is $7.99 a month or $44.99 a year according to the App Store listing — FamilyWall publishes no pricing page on its own site, so treat any figure you see quoted elsewhere with suspicion. Most features are free; what Premium gates is worth reading carefully if calendars are why you came, because subscribing to a calendar by URL is a Premium feature, and on the free tier a one-off ICS file import stops after the first 30 events.

Best for: households that also want location and messaging in the same app.

And if the calendar is meant to hang on a wall

Two hardware-first options exist and both charge like hardware. Skylight sells a touchscreen calendar for the kitchen; the display works without a subscription and syncs outside calendars, while Skylight Plus for the Calendar product is $79 a year — note that Skylight sells five separate Plus subscriptions at different prices and they are not interchangeable. Hearth sells a display listed at $699 with a membership at $9 a month or $86.40 a year, and its companion app carries a 3.9 rating from 218 ratings, the weakest in this comparison. A digital family whiteboard app covers the software route to the same kitchen screen.

How to Set Up Your Family Calendar

1. Choose one app. Don't split between platforms. One source of truth.
2. Create a colour per person, plus one "family" colour for anything that affects everybody.
3. Load the year you already know. Term dates, holidays, the season, recurring work commitments. A calendar that answers questions gets opened; an empty one does not.
4. Paste the feeds while you are signing up, if your app takes them. The day you register for a league is the day its schedule is easiest to find.
5. Set notification defaults. An hour before for ordinary events, a day before for anything needing preparation.
6. Make it the rule. If it is not on the shared calendar, it does not exist. Both adults commit to entering their own events.

Shared Calendar Best Practices

Enter events immediately. Don't wait until Sunday planning. When you schedule something, it goes on the calendar right then.

Include details. "Dr. appointment" isn't enough. Include the address, which kid, what time to leave, and who's taking them.

Use recurring events wisely. Weekly soccer practice, monthly haircuts and regular date nights should populate themselves.

Review together weekly. A family meeting that starts with "let's look at this week's calendar" catches conflicts before they become crises.

Include non-events. Deadlines (permission slip due Friday), reminders (buy birthday gift by Thursday) and prep tasks (pack lunches Sunday night) all belong on the calendar.

Read the week as a list, not a grid. A month grid is for planning; a family calendar agenda view is for the morning, when the only question is what happens today and in what order.

Calendar vs. Organizer: Do You Need Both?

A calendar tells you what's happening. A family organizer tells you what's happening AND who is responsible for what needs to happen. For most families, a digital family organizer that includes a calendar beats a standalone calendar app.

The integration matters because tasks and events are connected. "Soccer game Saturday at 10 AM" is a calendar event. "Wash soccer uniform" and "pack snacks for the team" are tasks that have to happen before that event. When calendar and tasks live in the same app, nothing falls through the cracks.

It is also where the published research points. In the Pew Research Center's March 2026 survey of 2,242 US working parents, 52% said the mother does more of the day-to-day parenting tasks against 10% who said the father does, and on household chores 43% said the mother does more against 17% who said the father does. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2025 time-use figures, released in June 2026, put the same gap in hours: 87% of women and 75% of men did household activities on an average day, spending 2.8 and 2.1 hours respectively. A calendar shows the appointments. It shows none of that work, which is exactly why the household running only a calendar keeps having the same argument.

The same argument applies to the two other lists every household keeps running: a shared grocery list app for the shopping, and a household task app for the jobs nobody claims. One app that carries all three beats three apps that each carry one. If the jobs are what keep getting dropped rather than the events, a shared family to-do list app is the narrower version of the same fix.

The shopping half is also the cheapest thing on this page to fix, and it does not need a decision about the calendar first — how to create a shared shopping list is four routes with the steps for each, and the fastest of them takes two minutes and costs nothing.

Three practical questions come up at this point and each has its own answer. If one of you is on iPhone and the other on Android, the choice narrows fast — a family planner app that works on iPhone and Android covers what actually syncs across both. If you have already tried the obvious thing and it did not hold, why Google Calendar doesn't work for families explains the specific ways it breaks.

None of that matters if the calendar is abandoned by March, which is the usual ending. A shared family calendar that actually works is about the habit rather than the app.

FAQ

What is the best free family calendar app?

Google Calendar, if a schedule is all you need: nothing is held back, there is no member cap, no advertising and no paid tier, and it runs on every device. Read the free tiers of the family-specific apps before you commit to one, because they stop in awkward places — Cozi's free version stops at the next 30 days of future events by its own FAQ, and FamilyWall puts calendar-by-URL subscriptions behind Premium. If you want chores and shared lists in the same free app, Homsy covers a 2-member household free, with no ads and no time limit. For a larger family that will not pay, Cozi keeps the calendar, the lists and the meal planner free and charges you in advertising instead.

What is the best family calendar app for a household?

The one every member can write to from their own phone, with a colour attached to a person rather than to a calendar. Homsy is our pick because it carries chores and lists on the same screen as the schedule, though it does not take iCal feeds — school and league dates reach it through a Google calendar you connect, or get typed in. Cozi is the strongest dedicated family calendar, Google Calendar the strongest calendar engine, and Apple Calendar the easiest if nobody in the house owns an Android. Our family calendar app comparison sets them out row by row.

How much does a family calendar app cost in 2026?

Between nothing and about $80 a year, and the spread is wide. Checked on 23 August 2026, with Cozi re-read on 27 August: Google Calendar and Apple Calendar are free with no paid tier at all; Homsy Pro is $19.99 a year, $3.99 a month or $34.99 as a one-time purchase; Cozi Gold is $39 a year with a Max tier Cozi prices at $79 on its comparison page and $79.99 on the Max page; TimeTree Premium is $4.49 a month or $44.99 a year; FamilyWall Premium is $7.99 a month or $44.99 a year by its App Store listing, since it publishes no price on its own site. The kitchen-screen products cost more again — Skylight's Calendar Plus is $79 a year and Hearth's membership $9 a month on top of a display listed at $699.

How do I share one calendar with the whole family?

Pick one app and make it the only calendar. Create a colour per person plus one "family" colour for anything that affects everybody, then invite each household member so they can add events themselves. A calendar only one person writes to is a to-do list, not a shared calendar.

Can family calendar apps work with both iPhone and Android?

Yes — Homsy, Cozi, Google Calendar, TimeTree and FamilyWall all work on both. Apple Calendar is the exception, and it is a hard one: Apple publishes only seven apps on Google Play and Calendar is not one of them, so a single Android in the household rules it out entirely.

Which family calendar apps can take a school or league schedule automatically?

Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Cozi accept a published feed URL and keep it up to date on their own. FamilyWall does it on Premium only, and its free ICS file import stops at the first 30 events. TimeTree does not do it at all — its own support pages say events cannot be sent out of TimeTree and will not appear automatically in an outside calendar. Homsy does not take iCal feeds either; it imports events from a Google calendar you connect, so the route is to subscribe to the feed in Google Calendar first, which needs Homsy Pro.

How do I get my partner to use a shared family calendar?

Start by entering events they care about — their appointments, their activities. When the calendar becomes useful to them rather than a thing they update for you, adoption follows. Then make it the one source of truth: if it is not on the calendar, it does not get accommodated.

Should I use a family calendar app or Google Calendar?

If you only need scheduling, Google Calendar works fine and costs nothing. If you need task management, chore tracking, grocery lists or household coordination alongside the schedule, a purpose-built family app handles the full picture in one place. The published numbers say that second half is the bigger problem: Pew's 2026 survey of working parents found 52% saying the mother does more of the day-to-day parenting and 43% saying she does more of the chores, and a calendar makes none of that visible.