Fantastical Calendar vs Bear
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Fantastical Calendar
This powerful calendar and task management app offers intuitive natural language input for event creation, multiple calendar views, and robust task integration. It provides weather forecasts and advanced features like meeting polls and video conferencing integration for premium users.
- Natural language event and task creation
- Multiple calendar views (day, week, month, year)
- Integrated task management (Todoist, Google Tasks)
- Weather forecasts
- Meeting scheduling and polls
- Video conferencing integration
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Fantastical is the award-winning calendar app with powerful features including intuitive natural language text parsing, beautiful full calendar day, week, month, quarter and year views, tasks, time zone support, and much, much more. TRY FANTASTICAL FOR FREE • Beautiful, clean, and easy to use calendar app allowing you to manage basic events • The DayTicker and calendar makes your schedule look the nicest it ever has • Full screen day, week, month, quarter, and year views • Full task support including Todoist and Google Tasks • 3 day weather forecast (powered by AccuWeather) • 14 day free trial for Flexibits Premium UPGRADE TO FLEXIBITS PREMIUM FOR EVEN MORE (requires subscription) • Includes Fantastical on all devices: Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad • Openings: Schedule events based on your availability • Proposals: Create meeting polls • Add Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, and Microsoft Teams calls • Extended 10 day weather forecast with RealFeel and MinuteCast up-to-the-minute weather data (powered by AccuWeather) • Browse and instantly subscribe to interesting calendars, including sports, TV shows, holidays, and much more (powered by SchedJoules) • Calendar sets - quickly toggle multiple calendars on or off with a simple click or automatically when you leave or arrive, based on location • Event and task templates • Sync calendar sets and templates across devices • Apple Watch app with Up Next and Weather (and works over LTE) • Parser autocomplete recommendations for invitees, locations, and calendars/task lists • Propose multiple times to easily ask people when they can meet • Combine duplicate events across multiple calendars • Invitees and availability lookups • Respond to event invitations • Default alerts • Time zone override • Favorite time zones • Push updates for Google and Exchange • Set event travel time and receive time to leave notifications • Custom event colors • Custom home screen icons • Custom alert sounds • Hide events without deleting them • Add attachments to events on iCloud, Google, and Exchange • Priority email support ADDING NEW EVENTS OR TASKS IS FAST AND FUN • The easiest and fastest way to add new events or tasks • Type in your details or use dictation and watch your words magically turn into an actual event or task! • Powerful parser features, including: - Create tasks by starting your sentence with “task” ”reminder", "todo", or "remind me to" - Powerful and expressive repeating events such as third Thursday of every month, every weekend, last weekday of the month, and more - Create alerts with phrases like "remind me tomorrow at 3PM", "alert 1 hour before", or "alarm 3PM" THE BEST TASKS APP, TOO • See your events and dated tasks together in the main list • Add tasks directly from the Tasks list or new event screen - just flip the switch to toggle between events and tasks • Set dates, times, and geofences (when I arrive/when I leave) • Support for iCloud Reminders, Todoist, and Google Tasks WORKS THE WAY YOU DO • Connects to your favorite calendar services including iCloud, Google, Exchange, Office 365, Todoist, and more • Automatically add alarms to your new events • Fantastical is fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese • Start typing your event or task in any of these languages and Fantastical will automagically understand! EVEN MORE FANTASTICAL • Lots and lots of iOS and iPadOS widgets • Background app updating enables events, tasks, and alerts to be pushed to Fantastical even if you don't launch the app often • Birthdays and Anniversaries - see your contact’s details or send a quick birthday or anniverary greeting • Handoff support between Fantastical for Mac, iPhone, and iPad • Time zone support including floating time zone support • Dark and light themes • Stickers • Accessibility support • And much, much more!
Bear
A beautiful and simple Markdown app for capturing, writing, and organizing your thoughts and ideas. It offers a distraction-free writing environment, flexible formatting, and powerful organizational tools like tags and tasks. Ideal for anyone looking to streamline their note-taking and creative processes.
- Distraction-free writing environment
- Flexible Markdown formatting
- Tag-based organization
- Task management
- Note linking (WikiLinks)
- Web clipping extension
- Apple Pencil sketching
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Bear is a beautiful, powerfully simple Markdown app to capture, write, and organize your life. Take notes, plan your day, journal thoughts, organize tables, create lists and tasks, sketch ideas, link notes together, write a book, and much more. Bear is used by writers, lawyers, chefs, CEOs, teachers, doctors, engineers, students, parents.. you get the picture. Getting started couldn’t be faster—no signup and no account. Just open a note and write naturally. "My journaling app of choice is Bear" - Kit Eaton, New York Times * 2017 Apple Design Award * 2016 App Store App of the Year * Editors' choice for 7 consecutive years * Most of our parents love it ## BEAUTIFUL. SIMPLE. POWERFUL. PRIVATE - Tools stay out of your way so you can just write - Sketch ideas on iPad with an extendable canvas and Apple Pencil (and other styli) - Clip web pages and other content with Bear’s app extension - The redesigned Info Panel now with Table of Contents and Backlinks - Use Apple Watch to dictate and append to recent notes - Support for all the scripts including RTL languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian - Easily create notes with Siri and Shortcuts - Your notes, not ours - Bear is private at its core: We cannot see your notes, tags, or anything else ## FLEXIBLE MARKDOWN - Work in plain text - easy to move between apps - Still use formatting like bold, italics, strikethrough, links, tables, and more with Markdown - Combine text styles like bold and underline, even in headings - Markdown hides for a clean reading experience - Use WikiLinks to connect notes and build a personal wiki or knowledge management tool ## GET ORGANIZED with #tags, tasks, and more - Add #tags, #multi-word tags# and even #multiple/nested/tags anywhere in a note for quick organization - Pin important tags to the top of the Sidebar - Make important tags stand out in the Sidebar with TagCons - Add tasks to notes and easily view all notes that include tasks - Fold sections to get them out of the way ## SHARING MADE EASY - Export notes to plain text, Markdown, TextBundle, Bear note, and rich text - Export notes to HTML, DocX, PDF, JPG, and ePub (Bear Pro required) - Easily share your notes to any third-party app with the Share Sheet ## SEARCH FAR AND WIDE - Use Spotlight to search your notes from anywhere - Search for text inside photos and PDFs (Bear Pro required) - Focus on specific types of notes with powerful Special Searches like @todo, @images, and @yesterday ## CREATE YOUR COZY SPACE * Pick from nearly 30 themes for the perfect writing space in both Light and Dark Mode (Bear Pro required) * Choose an app icon that speaks to your personality (Bear Pro required) * Set your own fonts for plain text, headings, and code * Set line height and width, paragraph spacing, and more ## GET MORE WITH BEAR PRO One subscription enables a variety of features on all your devices and keeps the Bear hugs coming. - Sync notes between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac via iCloud - Encrypt individual notes with a password that is entirely private to you - Lock Bear with Face/Touch ID - Export to more formats including HTML, DocX, PDF, JPG, and ePub - Search for text inside images and PDFs in Bear notes - Over 30 beautiful app themes & app icons $2.99 monthly $29.99 yearly 14-day free trial ----- Price may vary by location. Subscriptions will be charged to your credit card through your App Store account. Your subscription will automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You will not be able to cancel the subscription once activated. After purchase, manage your subscriptions in App Store Account Settings. Any unused portion of a free trial period will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription. ----- bear@shinyfrog.net Twitter: BearNotesApp Reddit: reddit.com/r/BearApp Facebook: BearNotes Instagram: BearNotesApp Privacy Policy: http://www.bear.app/privacy/ Terms of Service: http://www.bear.app/terms/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Bear at 4.7 against Fantastical Calendar's 4.2. Bear also leads on review sentiment (77% vs 47%) and update cadence (every 9 days vs every 3 weeks). Fantastical Calendar's advantage is chart position (#160 vs unranked) and ratings volume (24K vs 6.9K). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
Both are free to download. Fantastical Calendar sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month and Bear sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Bear holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 24K and 6.9K respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 47% of Fantastical Calendar's written reviews are positive against 77% of Bear's.
Fantastical Calendar ships an update every 3 weeks, Bear every 9 days. Both last shipped on September 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Fantastical Calendar | Bear |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (24K ratings) | 4.7 (6.9K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 46.7% of reviews | 76.9% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 24K — better | 6.9K |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 9 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Best chart rank | #160 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Vision Pro | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 184 MB | 230 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Flexibits Inc. | Shiny Frog Ltd. |
Customer experience
Fantastical Calendar
Bear
User reviews
Fantastical Calendar
From 24K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Intuitive and easy to use
- 👍 Excellent natural language input
- 💡 Helpful calendar integration features
- 🚀 Smooth syncing across devices
- 👍 Beautiful and clean UI design
Room to improve
- 🐛 Inconsistent behavior with reminders and event management
- 💰 Expensive subscription model
- 🤖 Overly aggressive upselling of premium features
- 🤔 Concerns about forced account creation
- 🐛 Sync issues between iOS and Mac versions
Bear
From 6.9K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Elegant and minimalist design
- 🚀 Smooth and fast performance
- 💡 Flexible tagging system for organization
- 🔒 Secure and private notes
- 🎨 Customizable themes and fonts
Room to improve
- 🔒 Subscription required for syncing and advanced features
- 🔍 Limited search functionality within notes on iOS
- 🖼️ Issues with image handling and resizing
- 🐛 Occasional bugs and crashes reported
- 💻 Lack of web/Windows app for cross-platform access
Bugs and requests
Fantastical Calendar
Reported bugs
3 issues- Apple Watch sync problems
- Events disappearing or changing unexpectedly
- Freezing and crashing on certain user actions
Requested features
4 requests- Option to disable predictive input features
- Improved calendar set management
- Enhanced integration with third-party apps and services
- Ability to customize app icons and themes
Bear
Reported bugs
3 issues- Sync issues causing note conflicts and data loss
- Cursor jumping and input issues on iPad
- Inconsistent behavior when importing/exporting content
Requested features
5 requests- Add password protection for individual notes
- Improve search capabilities to find text within notes
- Implement table support for more robust note-taking
- Develop a web-based version for broader accessibility
- Allow manual sorting and organization of notes
In-app purchases
Fantastical Calendar
- Premium (2020 Upgrade)$6.991 Month
- Flexibits Premium14 Days trial$6.991 Month
- Premium (2020 Upgrade)3 Months trial$6.991 Month
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- Premium for Families14 Days trial$10.491 Month
- Premium Family (2020 Upgrade)$10.491 Month
- Premium (2020 Upgrade)$56.991 Year
- Flexibits Premium14 Days trial$56.991 Year
- Premium (2020 Upgrade)3 Months trial$56.991 Year
- Premium for Families14 Days trial$89.991 Year
- Premium Family (2020 Upgrade)$89.991 Year
Bear
- Monthly Pro subscription7 Days trial$2.991 Month
- Yearly Pro subscription7 Days trial$29.991 Year









