The short version: If you’re a teacher moonlighting as a tutor, you don’t need a fancy scheduling app — you need one that lets parents book and pay you without seventeen text message exchanges. Calendly is the easy, cheap, “just show me a calendar link” option; Acuity is the pricier tool that actually wants to help you run a business, packages and payments included. Which one wins depends on whether you’re doing a few sessions a month or trying to build something that pays for summer.
Let’s get into why.
Two different tools, two different jobs
Acuity Scheduling started life as its own product and got folded into Squarespace back in 2019 (Source), and it’s built for people who run appointment-based businesses — a third-party comparison site describes it as serving consultants, salons, therapists, tutors, and coaches (Source). Calendly, on the other hand, came out of Atlanta in 2013 (Source) as a way to stop the “what time works for you” email chain. That origin story matters more than it sounds like it should, because it shapes what each tool assumes you need.
Zapier’s independent comparison puts it plainly: Calendly is best for professionals focused on virtual meetings, while Acuity is best for service-based businesses that take payments, with built-in payment processing and client tracking that’s “perfect for spas, salons, healthcare providers, and other businesses” (Source). The same piece draws a category line worth remembering: Calendly is a meeting scheduler, Acuity is an appointment booking app, and appointment booking apps “almost always include payment” (Source). If you’re tutoring for actual money, that distinction is basically the whole ballgame.
What each one costs
Calendly’s free “Basic” plan lets you book unlimited meetings, but only for one event type — so one kind of session, like a 30-minute one-on-one (Source). That’s fine if you only ever offer one type of tutoring session. It gets limiting fast if you want, say, a 30-minute homework-help slot and a 60-minute test-prep slot as separate bookable options — the free tier also skips customization tools and most integrations (Source).
Paid Calendly starts at a Standard plan around $10/month per user, with a Teams plan around $16/month per user, and an Enterprise tier that starts at $15K/year (clearly not built with a tutoring side gig in mind) (Source). Worth flagging: another pricing tracker lists the Teams tier starting at $20 per user per month billed annually (Source), so those two sources don’t quite agree — check Calendly’s live pricing page before you commit to a number in your head. Either way, Calendly bills per user, so costs scale up if you ever bring on a second tutor under one account (Source).
Acuity doesn’t have a permanent free plan — just a 7-day trial — and its Starter tier runs $20/month billed monthly or $16/month if you pay annually, climbing to roughly $34/month for Standard and $61/month for Premium, with annual billing saving about 20% at every level (Source). That Starter plan is pretty bare-bones for a tutor, though: it gives you one staff calendar, email reminders only, and no SMS, no packages, no group classes (Source). The features most tutors actually want — SMS reminders, packages and memberships, gift certificates, group classes, and basic API access — don’t unlock until the $34/month Standard tier (Source).
One nice thing: Acuity charges per account rather than per seat, which helps if you ever bring on a co-tutor (Source). And Acuity itself doesn’t tack on per-booking fees — every plan includes unlimited appointments — but your payment processor (Stripe, Square, or PayPal) will still take its cut, typically 2.9% + $0.30 per paid booking (Source). That processor fee is worth factoring into your per-session rate before you get excited about “unlimited appointments.”
The tutoring-specific stuff
This is really where the two tools diverge. Acuity has an actual quick-start guide aimed at tutors, pitching prepaid lesson bundles and recurring memberships as a way to “encourage student commitment and steady income,” and framing them as “perfect for tutoring packages, semester-long classes, or ongoing coaching programs” (Source). It also has a mobile app so you can check appointments and reschedule lessons from your phone (Source), and a class-scheduling feature built for one-time or recurring group classes with a customizable booking link (Source). If you picture yourself running small-group SAT prep sessions with a punch-card-style package, this is the tool that’s actually thought about that.
Calendly’s education page talks more generally about helping “professors, advisors, tutors and admissions officers simplify scheduling with students,” and mentions the ability to assign students to tutors round robin or set up group study sessions (Source). That’s a real feature, but it reads more like a campus-office-hours use case than a “charge parents for lessons” use case — which tracks with Zapier’s framing of Calendly as a meeting tool first.
There’s a good real-world example of that office-hours use, too. A Stanford professor quoted in a university teaching-resources case study says Calendly makes it “as easy as possible for students to schedule a time with us” during office hours (Source). That same resource notes some practical limits worth knowing if you go this route: the free plan connects to just one calendar account, scaling up to six with upgrades, and there’s a “Minimum Scheduling Notice” setting to stop last-minute bookings plus an “Event Buffers” option so you’re not sprinting from one Zoom call into the next (Source).
Getting paid, actually
If your tutoring is unpaid favors for the neighbor’s kid, skip this section. If you’re charging, it matters a lot.
A roundup of free scheduling tools for tutors makes a point that applies squarely to Calendly’s free tier: the primary limitation of free tools generally is the absence of payment processing and multi-tutor coordination — accepting deposits or managing multiple staff schedules tends to be locked behind paid plans (Source). So if you’re on Calendly’s free plan hoping to collect payment at booking, that’s likely a paid-plan feature, not a free one.
Acuity leans into payments as a core feature rather than an add-on. Its own signup page lists selling memberships and packages, and offering bundled or recurring pricing, as features you get access to (Source) — though remember, those live behind the Standard tier and up (Source). Acuity’s homepage also claims that 75% of Acuity businesses have reduced no-shows using deposits, reminders, and cancellation policies, and that over 250,000 businesses use the platform — though that’s Acuity’s own marketing claim, not independently verified data (Source).
About that “is it FERPA-compliant” question
You’re going to want to ask this, so let’s be straight about it: neither vendor’s own materials make a FERPA-specific claim. Calendly’s education marketing says it “meets privacy standards like SOC, GDPR, and CCPA,” according to Calendly (Source), but that page doesn’t mention FERPA. Acuity’s signup page mentions the ability to sign a BAA to enable HIPAA compliance, according to Acuity (Source) — but HIPAA covers health information, not student education records, so that’s not really relevant to tutoring a middle schooler in algebra.
Bottom line: don’t take either vendor’s general privacy-standard language as a green light for handling student data a certain way. If you’re using this for a private tutoring business (not school-sanctioned work), that’s a separate conversation with your district and your own judgment, not something either company’s marketing page settles for you.
So which one should you actually use?
If you’re testing the waters — a handful of sessions a month, one type of lesson, no payment collection through the platform yet — Calendly’s free plan will probably cover you, with the caveat that you’re stuck with one event type (Source). It’s also the more sensible pick if what you’re really doing is easier office-hours-style scheduling rather than running a paid business, per that Stanford use case (Source).
If you’re actually running a tutoring business — multiple session types, package deals, deposits, maybe eventually a second tutor — Acuity’s Standard plan at roughly $34/month is doing a lot more of the business-running work for you, from packages to group classes to built-in payment collection (Source). Yes, it costs more than Calendly’s free tier. But as a general framing, Calendly emphasizes ease of use and quick setup, while Acuity highlights the more advanced stuff — customization, payments, client management — that a real side business eventually needs (Source).
Either way, do the math on your actual session volume and rate before picking a plan. A $34/month tool that saves you three no-shows a month has already paid for itself; a free tool that can’t take a deposit might be costing you more in flaky bookings than you’d save on the subscription.
Related reading: If you’re tutoring alongside a TPT store, a scheduling tool is just one line item — see our full breakdown of what a TPT seller’s SaaS stack actually costs for the bigger picture.
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