BusyCal vs XCeleration
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
BusyCal
This app offers a comprehensive calendar and task management solution, allowing users to view and organize events and to-dos side-by-side. It supports natural language input for event creation and syncs across multiple accounts and devices.
- Day, Week, Month, Year, and List views
- Natural language event creation
- Integrated task management
- Syncs with multiple calendar accounts
- Customizable views and appearance
- Travel time and mapping integration
- Home Screen and Watch widgets
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BusyCal is a calendar and task planner built for busy schedules. It connects to every account you already use, shows your events and tasks side by side, and bends to the way you work: pinch to see more days or weeks, type events the way you would say them, and keep everything in sync with BusyCal for Mac. One-time purchase. No subscription. YOUR CALENDAR, YOUR WAY • Day, Week, Month, Year and List views, plus a dedicated Task list • Pinch to zoom: 2 to 14 days per week and 2 to 8 weeks per month, with separate portrait and landscape layouts • Customize colors, text size, weekend shading, week numbers and working hours, or show a Chinese, Hebrew, Islamic or Japanese calendar alongside • Year view as a wall planner or heat map, with Highlights that reveal your busiest months, top calendars and meeting stats TYPE IT THE WAY YOU WOULD SAY IT • Type "Lunch with Sam next Tuesday at noon" or "Standup every weekday at 9:30" and BusyCal fills in the date, time and repeat as you type • Understands alarms, time zones, calendars (/work) and links, in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese TASKS IN YOUR CALENDAR • Dated, timed and undated tasks appear right in your calendar and carry forward until done • Priorities, repeats, and a Task list you can sort by due date, priority, calendar, tag or by hand • Works with Apple Reminders, iCloud, Google Tasks, Todoist and Fastmail EVERY ACCOUNT, ONE APP • iCloud, Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Exchange, Yahoo, Fastmail, Fruux and any CalDAV server, plus WebDAV subscriptions for holidays and sports • Push updates where your server supports them, and accounts you add once are offered to your other devices • Syncs with BusyCal for Mac, Apple Calendar and any other app on the same accounts MEETINGS AND INVITES • Invite attendees, and accept, decline or reply Maybe straight from the Inbox • Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex and GoTo links become one-tap join buttons, and you can create Zoom and Teams meetings from inside the app • Block time on a second calendar in a couple of taps, with or without the details WIDGETS, WATCH, SIRI AND SHORTCUTS • Home Screen widgets for what is next, your agenda, the week, two weeks, three weeks, and tasks you can complete from the widget • Lock Screen widgets and Control Center buttons for new events and tasks • Apple Watch app with calendar, today, up next and tasks views, plus complications for your watch face • Siri: "Add lunch with Sam tomorrow at noon", "What's coming up", "When am I free" • Shortcuts actions to find, create, move, defer and complete items, and a Focus filter that switches calendar sets TRAVEL TIME, MAPS AND TIME ZONES • Add travel time to an event and get a leave-now alert based on real driving or walking time • Maps inside event details, with directions in Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze, Citymapper or TomTom GO • Favorite time zones, and events that start and end in different zones TAGS, CALENDAR SETS AND PRIVACY • Color-coded tags to track projects, people and priorities across calendars • Calendar sets: named groups of calendars, each with its own default calendars and preferred view, synced across your devices • Lock the app, or just certain calendar sets, with Face ID or Touch ID AND MORE • Weather and moon phases on your calendar • Birthdays and anniversaries from Contacts, with age and years • Search titles, locations, notes and tags across past and future BusyCal has been trusted by Mac users for more than a decade. The iPhone and iPad app is its full-featured companion, made by the same team. Questions? Visit busymac.com/docs or write to us from within the app.
XCeleration
This app provides a mobile solution for managing cross-country and track events. It offers precision timing and efficient results management for coaches and race directors.
- Race timing
- Results management
- Event management
- Mobile solution
- Precision timing
- Efficient management
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XCeleration is the ultimate companion for coaches, race directors, and assistants managing cross-country and track events. Our race timing and management solution brings cutting edge technology to your mobile device, allowing you to run events with precision and efficiency.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: XCeleration at Free against BusyCal's $9.99. XCeleration also leads on update cadence (daily vs weekly) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). BusyCal's advantage is ratings volume (4.5K vs 1) and chart position (#28 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
XCeleration is free to download; BusyCal costs $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
XCeleration holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BusyCal has 4.5K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
BusyCal ships an update weekly, XCeleration daily. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | BusyCal | XCeleration |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.7 (4.5K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 4.5K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #28 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 134 MB | 80 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Busy Apps FZE | Owen Donnelley |
Customer experience
BusyCal
XCeleration
Bugs and requests
BusyCal
Reported bugs
4 issues- Badge icon not working correctly
- Syncing issues with Exchange and Office 365 calendars
- Crashes and freezes on certain iOS versions
- Reminders not syncing properly after Apple updates
Requested features
9 requests- Add support for custom repeating events
- Add ability to change font size
- Add support for widgets
- Add Apple Watch app
- Improve natural language event creation
Show 4 moreShow fewer
- Add ability to show event times in month view
- Add ability to tap/hold on screen to create events
- Add support for custom task prioritization and sorting
- Improve integration with third-party apps like Todoist
XCeleration
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
BusyCal
No in-app purchases
XCeleration
No in-app purchases









