5 Best Time Blocking Apps and Tools in 2024

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”   — Peter F. Drucker

When it comes to efficiently managing your time, “Time Blocking” is the best technique used worldwide by professionals, business owners, executives, and more.

While a great technique, time blocking can get quite exhausting when done manually. Fortunately, some apps and tools help you block time automatically, making the process less time-consuming, while you benefit from it.

Let’s list and compare the best time-blocking apps and tools.

The Best Time-Blocking Apps and Tools to Boost Productivity

1. OneCal

OneCal is a time-blocking app that helps you automatically block time in all your calendars, share scheduling links for others to book time with you, and more.

Features

• Time blocking across all your calendars: OneCal helps you block time across all your calendars, in real-time. If a meeting is created in one of your calendars, OneCal will automatically block that time in all your calendars, streamlining your availability and helping you avoid getting double booked.
  
• Time blocking with privacy in mind: While OneCal helps you time block across all calendars, it also allows you to choose the properties of the meetings to block across all calendars. You can choose to send over all meeting details, or just auto-block the time across all your calendars. This protects your privacy by just blocking your time across calendars and not sharing any private information.
• Let others book time with you or your team: OneCal makes it easy for others to book time with you or your team, using intuitive and easy-to-use scheduling links. You can create scheduling links for different meeting types, and fully customize them, adjusting the availability, buffer time, durations, and more.
  
• All your calendars in one view: In case you manage multiple calendars, OneCal makes it easy to merge all your calendars in one view. This eliminates the need to open multiple calendar clients. With OneCal Calendar View you can quickly see meeting details, join meetings, and more.
  
• Invite, manage, and pay for your team: It’s no fun being the only one benefiting from time blocking. OneCal makes it easy for you to enable your team members to benefit from the automatic time blocking.
  
• Great Customer Service: When using a digital product, there’s nothing better than being sure that the team behind it is fully committed to you and will do their best to keep you happy. The team behind OneCal deeply cares about the product, customers, and the value delivered.

Pricing

The OneCal pricing is fair and affordable, starting from $5 per month (or $4 when paid annually):

• Starter ($5/user/month): Connect and sync up to 2 calendars,
• Essential ($10/user/month): Connect and sync up to 5 Calendars
• Premium ($30/user/month): Connect and sync Unlimited Calendars
• Custom/Enterprise Plans

Please refer to the pricing page for more details.

2. Clockwise

Clockwise is a time management tool that helps you manage your calendars and optimize your time better.

Features

• Flexible Meetings: Clockwise allows you to create flexible meetings, which means that these meetings can be rescheduled when there is a meeting conflict, or when it better aligns with your preferences.
• Flexible holds: Clockwise makes sure you have blocks of time to use for uninterrupted time, focus time, or just time for you to get things done.
• Scheduling links: Same as OneCal, it allows you to share a link for other people to book you with.

Cons

• Not ideal if you need manual control: If you’re a control freak and need to manually enter each meeting and have full control over your Calendar, you might need another solution. Clockwise has a lot of smart features, that reschedule meetings based on multiple factors, free up blocks of time, and more. These features are useful if you trust the platform, but not as much if you have a very strict schedule.

Pricing

• Free
• Teams: $6.75/month per user paid annually
• Business: $11.50/month per user paid annually
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing

3. Reclaim AI

Reclaim is another smart scheduling app, that arranges meetings for you, helps you better manage your tasks, and more.

Features

• Calendar Sync: Although not as powerful as the OneCal Calendar Sync, Reclaim has a Calendar Sync feature that allows you to sync one calendar to another.
• Habits: You can provide your most common tasks to Reclaim, and Reclaim will automatically find the most suitable time for their execution.
• Smart 1-1: Reclaim offers a Smart 1:1 feature, that helps you automatically find the best time to meet with someone else.
• Manage your tasks: Blocking time means that you also have to block time, and this is where Reclaim can help you, by blocking time for your tasks.

Cons

• Only Google Calendar Support: Reclaim only supports Google Calendar, so if you’re an Outlook user, you’ll have to find an alternative.
• Limited Calendar Sync. The Calendar Sync offered by Reclaim is quite limited, as it only allows you to sync one calendar to another, compared to OneCal, which allows you to sync multiple calendars in one go.

Pricing

• Free: 2 Calendars, 1 sync, 3 weeks scheduling range
• Starter: $8 per user per month
• Business: $12 per user per month
• Enterprise: $18 per user per month

4. Google Calendar

We can’t leave out Google Calendar, as it’s the most popular calendar to date, powering millions of users to better block their time and stay more productive.

Features

• Built-in with Gmail: Google Calendar and Gmail are nicely integrated, making it easy for Google users to manage their emails and simultaneously block their time on Google Calendar.
• Quickly block time: Using Google Calendar you can easily block time for meetings or tasks in an instant. This is very valuable in the context of time-blocking as it enables you to stay organized while blocking time.
• Available on all major platforms: What’s impressive about Google Calendar is that it’s available on mobile, desktop, or web, enabling you to quickly block time regardless if you’re on your phone or laptop.
• Ability to share calendars: You can share your Google Calendar with family, and colleagues, or import it to Outlook.

Cons

• Calendars become public when sharing: Sharing Google Calendars is an easy and quite powerful time-blocking mechanism, but you should be aware that by sharing a Google Calendar, you’re making it public, meaning that it’s available to Google Search and anyone who has the link can view the event details. To avoid this drawback, you can use a Calendar Sync Tool, that allows you to share the calendar without security concerns.
• May lead to meeting conflicts: Most organizations and companies use the Find a Time feature to book internal meetings, but what’s little known is that using this feature Google Calendar only checks for conflicts in the primary calendars, not secondary calendars, leading to scheduling conflicts.

Pricing

• Free
• Paid plans start at $6/month

5. Calendly

Calendly is an appointment-scheduling platform that allows you to quickly get booked by sharing their scheduling links.

Features

• Block time for external meetings: With Calendly you can simply share a scheduling link, and others will book you through that link.
  
• Team Scheduling: Others can not only block your time but also book a whole team (if you’ve configured such a scheduling link).
• Check availability from multiple calendars: Calendly checks the availability from multiple calendars, making sure that people only book you when you’re free.
• Seamless integration with tens of tools and platforms: Calendly has been around for tens of years, adding new integrations each year and making it easy for users to connect with their preferred tool.
• Automatic Reminders: Time Blocking is one thing, and attending to get t things done is another. Calendly sends automated reminders to schedulers so everyone is on the same page and joins the meeting.

Cons

• Specialized in scheduling links: Using scheduling links for time blocking is a part of the solution, so Calendly might not be ideal if you need other features to block your time.

Pricing

• Basic: Free
• Essential: $8 per user per month
• Professional: $12 per user per month
• Availability Preferences: $16 per user per month

Which App Helps You The Most in Time Blocking?

All the time-blocking apps and tools listed in this article offer useful features that help you not only block your time but also defend it and distribute it across multiple calendars.

If you rely heavily on multiple calendars, OneCal is a must, as it allows you to send the blocked time across all your calendars, keeping everyone on the same page, and making you more organized.

If you need smart features, consider Clockwise or Reclaim.

Calendly is a great option if scheduling links is all you need.

Let OneCal Do The Time Blocking For You!

Manually managing multiple calendars is very time-consuming. OneCal automatically blocks time across all your calendars for you, giving you back the manual time you’d spend on it.

Furthermore, OneCal facilitates your scheduling, allowing you to quickly share scheduling links for others to book time with you or your team.

You can get started on OneCal for free, with no strings attached or credit card required. Sign Up to OneCal and automatically block the time across calendars.