The alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Suits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| TidyCal | Best overall Acuity alternative | $29 |
| kiwilaunch | Best for taking cards in person | $39 |
| RadiusHQ - Service Operations Workspace | Best for salons and multi-step visits | $19 |
| Radius Booking | Best for WordPress sites | $69 |
| Yoya | Best for discovery calls | $49 |
Acuity Scheduling is a capable booking tool, but its monthly bill grows as you need more. Packages and text reminders start on Standard at $27 a month billed annually, and hiding the Acuity footer takes Premium at $55. The best Acuity Scheduling alternatives on AppSumo let you pay once instead, and TidyCal leads the list at $29.
Get TidyCal for $29 on AppSumo →
Below are five lifetime deals that cover the jobs people use Acuity for: client bookings, payments, packages, staff schedules and reminders. Each one suits a different kind of business. If you just want the top pick, see the TidyCal deal on AppSumo.
What is the best Acuity Scheduling alternative?
TidyCal is the best Acuity Scheduling alternative for most coaches, consultants and small service businesses. It costs $29 once and includes unlimited booking types, Stripe and PayPal payments, packages, subscriptions and coupon codes.
The other four picks win in specific situations. kiwilaunch is the pick if you take cards in person. RadiusHQ suits salons and clinics with multi-step visits. Radius Booking fits businesses that run on WordPress. Yoya is built for consultants who want a brief before every discovery call.
How much does Acuity Scheduling cost?
Acuity’s pricing page lists three plans: Starter at $16, Standard at $27 and Premium at $55 a month billed annually, or $20, $34 and $69 billed monthly. Every plan has a 7-day free trial with no credit card needed.
Here’s what each Acuity plan includes, according to its pricing page:
- Starter ($16/mo annually): one calendar, payments through Stripe, Square, PayPal and Venmo, email reminders, custom client forms and automatic time zone conversion.
- Standard ($27/mo annually): up to 6 calendars, plus text message reminders, a waitlist, appointment packages, memberships and gift certificates.
- Premium ($55/mo annually): up to 36 calendars, plus an AI booking assistant, multiple time zones for staff or locations, the option to hide the “Powered by Acuity Scheduling” footer, a signed HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, and custom API and CSS access.
Acuity uses calendars to mean separate schedules per employee or location. That’s a fair model for a growing studio, but the cost adds up over time.
Acuity Scheduling alternatives compared
This table puts Acuity’s annual cost next to the one-time price of each lifetime deal. AppSumo prices come from each listing, and Acuity’s from its pricing page.
| Tool | Price | Cost over 3 years | Payments | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TidyCal | $29 once ($79 for 4 seats) | $29 | Stripe, PayPal | Coaches, consultants, freelancers |
| kiwilaunch | $39 once | $39 | Your own Stripe, Tap to Pay on iPhone | Mobile service providers |
| RadiusHQ | $19 once | $19 | PayPal (Stripe coming soon) | Salons and multi-step visits |
| Radius Booking | From $69 once | $69 | PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce | WordPress service businesses |
| Yoya | From $49 once | $49 | Not listed | Discovery calls |
| Acuity Starter | $16/mo billed annually | $576 | Stripe, Square, PayPal, Venmo | Solo businesses on a subscription |
| Acuity Standard | $27/mo billed annually | $972 | Stripe, Square, PayPal, Venmo | Teams needing packages and SMS |
Even the most expensive deal here costs less than five months of Acuity Starter.
1. TidyCal: the best overall Acuity alternative
TidyCal is the closest one-time-payment match for what most people use Acuity for. For $29 once you get unlimited bookings, unlimited booking types, calendar sync, video links, payments and packages.
TidyCal is an AppSumo Original, built by the AppSumo team. The listing shows a 4.32 rating across 937 reviews, which is by far the largest track record of any pick here.
What it does well:
- One-on-one, group and recurring booking types, each with its own availability, buffers and booking limits.
- Up to 10 connected calendars across Google, Outlook/Office 365 and Apple (iCal).
- Automatic Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams links.
- Stripe and PayPal payments at booking, plus packages, subscriptions and coupon codes.
- Automatic review collection after each completed booking, shown on your booking page.
- Your own logo, colors, page style and confirmation and reminder emails.
That package and subscription support is the big one. On Acuity, appointment packages start on Standard at $27 a month billed annually. On TidyCal they’re part of the $29 lifetime tier.
The $79 Agency tier adds three team members (four seats including you), a team booking page, round-robin and collective meetings, a custom reply-to and 10 SMS reminders a month in the US and Canada.
Who should pick something else: lifetime plans keep a “Powered by TidyCal” bar, and a custom domain needs Pro at $8.25 a month billed yearly. Paid bookings carry a 1% platform fee on lifetime plans. If you need SMS reminders outside North America or more than four team members, look at another tool.
Read the full TidyCal review, or see how it stacks up in TidyCal vs Calendly. Ready to switch? See the deal on AppSumo.
Get TidyCal for $29 on AppSumo →
2. kiwilaunch: best for taking cards in person
kiwilaunch is the pick for service providers who get paid on the spot. At $39 once, it adds Tap to Pay on iPhone, so you can take a physical card or Apple Pay on your phone with no separate terminal.
You connect your own Stripe account, so payments go straight to you. Paste one script and the booking widget lives on your own service page, and a catalog component lists everything you sell with live prices and real availability. No website yet? The listing says your kiwi booking page becomes your website. You can also describe your business in a few sentences and AI drafts the catalog.
It has the strongest rating among the smaller picks, with a 4.62 average across 48 AppSumo reviews. Listed integrations include Google Calendar, Google Meet, Stripe, WordPress and Zapier.
Who should pick something else: the native app is iOS, and the vendor says Android is still under construction. There’s no agency white-label. Compare it head to head in kiwilaunch vs TidyCal.
Get kiwilaunch for $39 on AppSumo →
3. RadiusHQ: best for salons and multi-step visits
RadiusHQ is built for appointments that aren’t a single slot, such as a consult, a procedure and a follow-up. At $19 once, it’s the lowest price on this list.
Clients can book several services in one checkout and pick a pro or take the first available. Segmented services let a visit include required or optional parts. Overlap bookings let a pro take other work during processing time, such as while hair color sets. Each service can be video, phone or in person, with a map picker.
The $19 tier includes unlimited bookings, five team members with owner, admin and member roles, one workspace, PayPal at booking, refund rules, a payments table, a consumer CRM with booking history, and email reminders 24 hours and 1 hour before. You can export bookings, clients and payments to CSV at any time.
Who should pick something else: PayPal is the only payment option today, with Stripe and UPI listed as coming soon. It’s a young product with one AppSumo review. See how it compares in RadiusHQ vs TidyCal.
Get RadiusHQ - Service Operations Workspace for $19 on AppSumo →
Get Radius Booking for $69 on AppSumo →
4. Radius Booking: best for WordPress sites
Radius Booking is a WordPress plugin, so your booking form lives on your own site instead of a hosted link. Tiers start at $69 once.
It covers the studio side of Acuity well. You get unlimited staff with individual hours, breaks and days off, per-staff pricing, and a dashboard for each staff member. Payments run through PayPal, Stripe and WooCommerce, with deposits or full payment and offline options. Coupons and dynamic pricing by time, day or season are included, and tax rates and PDF invoices are emailed automatically.
It also handles event registration with sessions, ticket tiers, capacity and waitlists. Calendar sync covers Google and Apple. An AI booking assistant lets customers type requests like “haircut with Emily on Friday,” and it runs on your own OpenAI or Gemini key. Elementor widgets, Gutenberg blocks and shortcodes make it easy to place.
Who should pick something else: if you don’t run WordPress, there’s no hosted booking page. The AI assistant’s running cost depends on your own API key. The listing has no AppSumo reviews yet.
Get Radius Booking for $69 on AppSumo →
5. Yoya: best for discovery calls
Yoya replaces the booking form with a conversation. Guests explain what they need by text or voice, pick a time and confirm, and you get a brief with their purpose, background and questions before the call. Tiers start at $49 once.
It suits consultants, coaches and sales managers who run discovery calls. Guests don’t need an account. Yoya checks Google Calendar for conflicts, creates Google Meet or Zoom links, and shows times in the guest’s time zone. It also supports MCP, so AI assistants such as Claude Code or Cursor can book through your public page.
Tier 1 at $49 includes 5 booking links, 100 bookings a month and 60 voice minutes. Tier 2 at $129 raises that to 10 links, 500 bookings and 180 voice minutes, and removes Yoya branding. Tier 3 at $249 is unlimited links and bookings.
Who should pick something else: Google Calendar is the only calendar named, and the product has one AppSumo review. If you need a fast, plain booking link with payments, TidyCal is the better fit.
How do you choose an Acuity alternative?
Start with how you get paid and how your appointments are shaped. Those are the two questions that separate the Acuity Scheduling alternatives on this list, and they narrow it to one or two tools fast.
- You sell sessions or packages online: TidyCal.
- You take cards face to face: kiwilaunch.
- Your visits combine several services: RadiusHQ.
- Your business runs on WordPress: Radius Booking.
- You want context before every call: Yoya.
Then check the practical details. Which calendars do you use? Do you need SMS reminders, and in which countries? How many staff need their own schedules? Most of these tools have a free plan, a free version or a refund window, so put a real booking through your own calendar and payment setup before you commit.
Why TidyCal tops these Acuity Scheduling alternatives
Among these Acuity Scheduling alternatives, TidyCal is the safest all-round choice. It has the largest review base by a wide margin, it’s built and maintained by the AppSumo team, and it covers packages and subscriptions that Acuity puts on its $27 Standard plan.
The math is hard to argue with. Three years of Acuity Standard billed annually costs $972. TidyCal costs $29 once, or $79 for four seats. You can try it on the free plan first, and AppSumo gives you 60 days to request a refund.
If you’re comparing beyond Acuity, see our Calendly alternatives guide and our scheduling lifetime deals roundup. You can also browse every tool AppSumo builds in our AppSumo Originals guide.
Whichever of these Acuity Scheduling alternatives fits your business, you’ll stop paying a monthly scheduling bill. See the TidyCal deal on AppSumo to start with the top pick.
Why each one made the list
- TidyCal: $29 once gets unlimited bookings and booking types, Stripe and PayPal payments, packages, subscriptions and coupons, built by the AppSumo team and rated 4.32 across 937 reviews.
- kiwilaunch: $39 once adds Tap to Pay on iPhone, your own Stripe account and a booking widget you embed with one script, with a 4.62 average across 48 AppSumo reviews.
- RadiusHQ - Service Operations Workspace: $19 once covers multi-service carts, segmented visits and overlap bookings for five team members, with PayPal at booking and CSV export.
- Radius Booking: From $69 once, a WordPress booking plugin with unlimited staff, deposits, Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce checkout, coupons and PDF invoices.
- Yoya: From $49 once, guests book through an AI chat by text or voice, and you get a pre-call brief built from what they shared.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Acuity Scheduling?
For most solo coaches, consultants and small service businesses, TidyCal is the best value. It costs $29 once on AppSumo and covers unlimited booking types, Stripe and PayPal payments, packages and automatic video links.
How much does Acuity Scheduling cost?
Acuity's pricing page lists Starter at $16, Standard at $27 and Premium at $55 a month billed annually, or $20, $34 and $69 billed monthly, with a 7-day free trial.
Is there a free alternative to Acuity Scheduling?
TidyCal has a free plan you can try at tidycal.com. Its lifetime deal on AppSumo is $29 once, with a 60-day refund window.
Which Acuity alternative sells packages?
TidyCal lets you sell packages and subscriptions and create coupon codes on its $29 lifetime tier. On Acuity, appointment packages start on the Standard plan.
Which Acuity alternative is best for salons?
RadiusHQ is built for multi-step visits, with multi-service carts, segmented services and overlap bookings for five team members at $19 once. It takes PayPal today, with Stripe listed as coming soon.
Can I use an Acuity alternative on WordPress?
Yes. Radius Booking is a WordPress plugin with Elementor widgets, Gutenberg blocks and shortcodes. TidyCal and kiwilaunch can also be embedded on any site with a script.
Do these lifetime deals have monthly fees?
No subscription is required. TidyCal charges a 1% platform fee on paid bookings on lifetime plans on top of Stripe or PayPal fees, and its optional Pro plan is $8.25 a month billed yearly.