Calendinho vs Calendly: the Brazilian alternative that's actually free

Everything Calendly charges you US$ 12 to US$ 20 a month for — group events, round-robin, automated reminders, unlimited event types — Calendinho gives you free. That's the whole sentence. The rest of this article is just the proof.

If you're a solo professional in Brazil — doctor, psychologist, personal trainer, consultant — and you're evaluating Calendly, it's worth five minutes to understand what you actually pay, in reais, and what you get back. The math is less obvious than it looks.

The real cost of Calendly for a Brazilian professional

Calendly bills in US dollars. The Standard plan is US$ 12 per user/month on monthly billing (US$ 10 if you commit to a full year upfront), and Teams is US$ 20 per user/month (US$ 16 annually). But the number on your statement isn't a simple conversion of the day's exchange rate.

Every international credit-card purchase in Brazil carries a 3.5% IOF tax on the reais value of the transaction — a rate fixed by decree that, unlike the old plan to phase it out, will not come down in the coming years. Add the card issuer's FX spread (the rate the bank uses tends to be worse than the market rate) and the commercial dollar trading around R$ 5 in May 2026.

In practice, a US$ 12/month plan doesn't reach you as "about 60 reais". It reaches you as tourist-rate dollar + IOF + spread, recurring, every month, exposed to currency volatility — you never know exactly what you'll pay until the statement closes. Over a year, that's twelve foreign-currency charges for a scheduling tool.

Calendinho has none of that. No dollars, no IOF, no spread, no international statement. It's free, with no paid tier. You don't pay because there is no price to pay.

What Calendly's free plan actually delivers

The natural objection: "but Calendly also has a free plan." It does. It's worth looking at exactly what fits inside it.

Calendly Free includes one single active event type. One. If you offer "initial consult" and "follow-up", or "individual session" and "assessment", you've already blown the limit — you need the paid plan. Scheduled meetings are unlimited, syncing with one calendar works, and there are email confirmations. That's where it stops.

What is not in Calendly's free plan, per the plans page itself and 2026 market analyses:

• More than one event type
• Group events (one class, several attendees in the same slot)
• Collective events (several hosts, one meeting)
• Round-robin (automatic rotation across a team)
• Automated reminders and follow-ups
• Custom brand colors (the client sees Calendly's branding)

In other words: Calendly's free plan works for one person who offers exactly one type of appointment and never needs to remind anyone of anything. For any professional with a real operation, the free plan is a demo — the actual product starts at US$ 12.

What Calendinho's free plan delivers

Here's the inversion. In Calendinho, free means the whole product:

• Unlimited event types — as many appointment formats as you want
• Group events — a class, a workshop, a cohort, multiple registrants in the same slot
• Collective events — more than one professional on the same booking
• Round-robin — automatic time rotation across the team
• Automated email reminders and confirmations — to reduce no-shows
• Custom brand colors — the booking page is yours, not ours
• Native Portuguese interface and BRT as the default timezone
• Google Calendar sync and automatic Google Meet links

Every line above is a feature that, in Calendly, either doesn't exist on the free plan or requires the paid plan — in some cases (round-robin) the most expensive plan, Teams.

The comparison, side by side

Feature	Calendly Free (US$ 0)	Calendly Standard (US$ 12/mo)	Calendly Teams (US$ 20/mo)	Calendinho (Free)
Unlimited event types	Only 1	Yes	Yes	Yes
Group events	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Collective events	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Round-robin	No	No	Yes	Yes
Email reminders and follow-ups	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom brand colors	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Native Portuguese interface	No	No	No	Yes
BRT default timezone	No	No	No	Yes
Google Calendar sync	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Automatic Google Meet link	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Monthly cost	US$ 0	US$ 12/mo	US$ 20/mo	Free

Look at the four middle rows. Group events, collective events, automated reminders, and brand colors only appear in Calendly starting at US$ 12/month. Round-robin only on Teams, at US$ 20/month. In Calendinho, all of them sit in the free column.

The Brazilian reality Calendly doesn't solve

Price is half the story. The other half is that Calendly was built for the American professional, and that shows in details you feel every day:

The product speaks Portuguese. In Calendinho, the interface and the public booking page are native in Portuguese (and Spanish). The client who comes in to book doesn't stumble over "Schedule a meeting" — they read it in Portuguese, in Brasília time, with the Brazilian date format. That's one less point of friction, which means more conversion.

BRT as default timezone. Calendinho assumes Brasília time out of the box. No configuration gymnastics, no client booking 2pm and showing up at 11am because the system assumed another timezone.

No international-card friction. We covered this, but it's worth repeating from the day-to-day angle: a recurring international subscription means a credit card enabled for international purchases, limit committed in dollars, and the risk of the service dropping if the statement hits an FX problem. Free in reais — better yet, free with no statement at all — eliminates the entire category of problem.

Your clients live on WhatsApp. Brazilian scheduling, in practice, happens on WhatsApp. Calendinho already sends automated reminders and confirmations by email today, and the WhatsApp channel is coming — designed from the start for Brazilian client behavior, not retrofitted later.

Support in your timezone and your language. When something jams on a Tuesday afternoon, you don't want to open a ticket in English and wait for the answer to wake up on the other side of the planet.

"80% of the functionality, R$ 0" — conservatively

We're not going to invent a precision metric that doesn't exist. What the table above shows, verifiably, is simple: of the features a solo professional actually uses to run a schedule — unlimited event types, group, collective, round-robin, reminders, custom branding, sync, and Meet — Calendinho delivers all of them on the free plan, plus what Calendly doesn't offer on any plan (Portuguese interface, BRT timezone).

Saying "80% of the functionality for R$ 0" is, in fact, conservative: row by row of the comparison, free Calendinho covers what costs US$ 12–20/month at the competitor. Strictly speaking, for the Brazilian professional, it's more than 80% — it's the set that matters, without the dollar statement.

Migrating is simple

The final objection is usually inertia: "I'm already on Calendly." Migrating a scheduling tool isn't migrating a database. You recreate your event types (once), connect your Google Calendar, set your availability, and swap the link in your bio, your site, and your email signature. Future bookings that already exist in Calendly stay on your Google Calendar — sync takes care of that. In one afternoon you're running, with no lost history and no international statement next month.

Want to go deeper on cutting no-shows with automated reminders? See reminders, confirmations, and revenue. And to understand how Calendinho's AI books for you, read AI scheduling with Calendinho.

Sources

• Calendly plan pricing and limits (Free, Standard, Teams; monthly vs annual billing; free plan = 1 event type): calendly.com/pricing and Calendly Pricing 2026 — cal.com
• 3.5% IOF on international card purchases, rate fixed by decree: Como ficou o IOF dos cartões de crédito em 2026 — cartoesdecredito.me
• Commercial dollar quote (~R$ 5) in May 2026: Brazilian Real — Trading Economics