Fantastical Calendar vs WidgetCal
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!
WidgetCal
Perform calculations directly from your home screen with advanced functions. Customize your experience with multiple themes. Unlock premium features through a subscription.
- Home screen widget calculator
- Trigonometric and calculus functions
- Over 10 beautiful themes
- No ads
- Monthly/annual subscription for Pro features
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WidgetCal - Widget calculator allows you to calculate on your home screen - Supports trigonometric functions, logarithms, square root, square, reciprocal, π, and calculus tools for derivative at x and definite integral over [a, b] - Home Screen Widget Calculator (iOS 17 Interactive Widgets) - Over 10+ beautiful themes - No Ads ----- WidgetCal Pro is available with a monthly or annual subscription. You can subscribe and pay through your Apple account. Your subscription will automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Auto-renew may be turned off after purchase. Terms of Use: https://www.zhihuke.com/widgetcal/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://www.zhihuke.com/widgetcal/privacy.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: WidgetCal at 5.0 against Fantastical Calendar's 4.2. Fantastical Calendar's advantage is update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 32 months) and ratings volume (25K vs 1). 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 WidgetCal sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
WidgetCal holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Fantastical Calendar has 25K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Fantastical Calendar ships an update every 3 weeks, WidgetCal every 32 months. The most recent releases landed on November 14, 2026 and November 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Fantastical Calendar | WidgetCal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (25K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 47.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 25K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 32 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Best chart rank | #154 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Vision Pro — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 186 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Flexibits Inc. | 杏娣 吴 |
Customer experience
Fantastical Calendar
WidgetCal
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
WidgetCal
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
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
WidgetCal
- WidgetCal Pro$0.991 Month
- WidgetCal Pro7 Days trial$3.991 Year
Questions
Is Fantastical Calendar free?
Is WidgetCal free?
Which has better reviews, Fantastical Calendar or WidgetCal?
Do Fantastical Calendar or WidgetCal have ads?
Which is updated more often, Fantastical Calendar or WidgetCal?
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