Meetingpad vs Fantastical

The short answer

Think of Fantastical as a calendar app with scheduling, and Meetingpad as a scheduling layer across your accounts with a combined calendar. Choose around the problem you need to solve.

Meetingpad and Fantastical at a glance

Openings hiding a slot on a booking page is different from writing a busy block onto another calendar. The Fantastical description here covers its documented scheduling features; it is not a claim that it cannot protect availability.

One person, three accounts

Suppose you consult for two clients and keep a personal calendar. A personal appointment should count when either client books a call, while each client gets the booking link for the account you use with them.

In Meetingpad, connect the three Google or Microsoft accounts and create links under the appropriate account. Each link checks your availability across the connected accounts. With calendar blocking switched on, a busy meeting on one account also creates a private event titled Blocked on the others, without copying the original meeting title.

Blocking runs on Meetingpad’s server while your computer sleeps. It checks about every five minutes; all-day events and events marked free or declined do not create blocks. See how calendar blocking works.

What is free, and what needs a paid plan?

Meetingpad Free includes unlimited Google and Microsoft accounts, cross-calendar blocking, the combined calendar and 2 booking links per account. Pro is $5 a month or $50 a year, adding unlimited booking links, proposed meeting times and group polls.

Fantastical’s free tier is a calendar app. Openings and Proposals are part of Flexibits Premium. See Flexibits’ current plans for its prices; no Fantastical price estimate is used in this comparison.

What you give up by switching

Meetingpad is not a full replacement for Fantastical’s calendar and task workflow. It has no iCloud or other CalDAV connections, no tasks or natural-language event entry, and no team plan, multi-host booking or SSO. It has no iPhone, iPad or Android app. Windows is in beta.

If you rely on those features, keep Fantastical. A combined-calendar subscription can show Meetingpad’s connected calendars in Apple Calendar on iPhone, but it does not turn an iCloud account into a connected Meetingpad account.

Try the scheduling workflow

1. Download Meetingpad and sign in with Google or Microsoft.
2. Add the accounts whose busy times should count.
3. Enable Settings → Accounts → Calendar blocking if you want busy blocks on the other accounts.
4. Create a booking link for the account you want the meeting booked into. Check a known busy time before sharing it.

You can keep using Fantastical to view your calendars. If another tool already writes busy blocks, check its settings before enabling a second blocking workflow.

Frequently asked questions