Nylas vs Cronofy: the best Cronofy alternative for calendar APIs in 2026

Cronofy is a calendar and scheduling API that connects to Apple, Google, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft 365, and Outlook.com calendars through a single API. Like Nylas, a single API saves businesses time and money on the initial build and on ongoing maintenance.

Both connect your app to Google, Microsoft, Exchange, and iCloud calendars through one API. Cronofy focuses on calendar and scheduling. Nylas also covers email and contacts, lets you authenticate users through your own Google and Microsoft projects, applies rate limits per connected account for calendar, contacts, and message calls, and includes email, calendar, and Notetaker in every plan.

It depends on scope. If you need calendar sync and scheduling and nothing else, Cronofy does that well and has since 2014. If your product also touches email or contacts, or you’re building agents that need their own inbox, Nylas covers all of it through one integration instead of two vendors. Nylas combines the Calendar, Email, and Contacts APIs, Scheduler, and Notetaker on one platform, with your own OAuth project, per-account rate limits, and full event lifecycle webhooks.

Nylas has a free plan with 5 connected accounts. Paid plans start at $15 a month with Essentials, and Pro starts at $49 a month. Every plan includes email, calendar, and Notetaker. Cronofy’s smallest paid plan, Emerging, is $819 a month billed annually and covers up to 500 Synced Accounts, with overage fees for extra Synced Accounts, Smart Invites, and Application Calendars. Its Growth plan is $2,399 a month for up to 3,000 Synced Accounts. Below a few hundred accounts the difference is large, because Cronofy has no smaller paid tier. Cronofy pricing is as of October 2026.

A connected account is an email address with an email, calendar, or contacts account that has been connected to the Nylas platform.

Google, Microsoft 365, Exchange, Apple iCloud, and any IMAP or SMTP provider — for calendar, email, and contacts through one integration. Cronofy covers the same calendar providers.

Yes. Nylas Virtual Calendars are Nylas-hosted calendars and the equivalent of the Cronofy Application Calendar. Use them to schedule rooms, equipment, or people without linking a personal calendar.

Yes. Their Scheduler distributes events automatically across people in a Selection Rule. In the raw Availability API, participants are preferred in the order you list them, so even distribution means shuffling the order or tracking booking counts yourself. Nylas handles this with an availability_method parameter set to max-fairness.

Nylas applies rate limits per connected account, up to 200 requests per second for calendar, contacts, and message calls on each account, so capacity grows with your user base. Cronofy’s default limit is 50 requests per second and 500 requests per minute per application, and you email Cronofy support to request an increase.

Both platforms hold SOC 2 Type II reports and ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certifications, and both support GDPR and HIPAA. Cronofy also holds ISO 27018 and offers a choice of six regional data centers on every plan; Nylas offers two regions, the US and Europe. Nylas also supports CCPA and the GLBA Privacy Rule and offers a Data Processing Addendum on request. Nylas offers a pre-signed BAA on all paid plans, on request, with custom BAA terms and a contractual uptime SLA on Enterprise. Cronofy includes a 99.99% uptime guarantee on all plans and supplies a BAA on request.

Yes, and the object model maps closely — Synced Accounts become grants, Application Calendars become Virtual Calendars, availability queries carry over. The part that isn’t automatic is authentication: OAuth tokens can’t transfer between providers, so every connected account has to re-authorize. The Nylas Professional Services team can help you plan and run the migration.