Alfie vs TimeTree: a TimeTree alternative that keeps your own calendars
Choose TimeTree if everyone in the group will install one app and keep the shared plans inside it, and you want the chat, notes and photos that sit on each event. Choose Alfie if the adults already live in Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 or iCloud, nobody is moving, and you want those calendars — work calendars included — to make up the family week in both directions.
Alfie is our product. The TimeTree details here come from TimeTree's own website and its Google Play listing, checked on 13 September 2026; its help centre asks for a sign-in, so anything only documented there is left out rather than guessed at.
The shape of each one
TimeTree is built around shared calendars a group joins: you create a calendar, send an invite, and everyone in that group writes into it. A household can have as many as it needs — family, hobbies, school — and filters switch between them (TimeTree).
Alfie has no calendar to move into. Each person connects the account they already use — Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, iCloud through an app-specific password, or any CalDAV server — and the household week is drawn from those calendars. An event created in Alfie on a connected calendar is written back to it, so it shows up in that person's own calendar app too. Google reviewed and approved Alfie's access to Google Calendar in September 2026.
What happens to the calendar you already have
TimeTree can show it. Its listing describes the feature as "Sync with a device calendar such as Google Calendar", and the Android permission it asks for is optional and described as being used to display the device calendar in TimeTree (Google Play). So your existing appointments can appear next to the shared ones, on the device that holds them.
What that leaves open is the other direction: whether an event the group adds in TimeTree lands back in your Google or Outlook calendar, where your colleagues' invitations and your own reminders already are. TimeTree's answer to that lives in its help centre, behind a sign-in, so we do not restate it here — check it against your own account before you rely on it either way.
In Alfie both directions are the point. The calendars stay where they are; Alfie reads them and writes to them.
What the rest of the family sees
In TimeTree, a shared calendar is shared: the people in that group see what is on it. Splitting what is private from what is shared means putting things on different calendars.
Alfie sets that per calendar, once, for the whole household: Full details, Busy only, or Hidden. A calendar marked as a work calendar starts at busy only, so meetings appear as untitled blocks — the family knows you are unavailable from 2 to 4 without seeing whose review it is. The assistant obeys the same setting: asked whether you are free on Thursday, it can say you are busy and cannot say what the meeting is.
Children
TimeTree's calendars are joined by people with the app installed.
In Alfie a child is a profile: a name, their own calendar, managed by a parent, with no account, email address or password, and nothing to install. Activities are recorded with who is taking the child and who is bringing them home, and Alfie checks the next two weeks for clashes — two places at once, a child who needs a lift while both adults are at work, not enough time between two locations, or something past a bedtime the household set.
Price
TimeTree's free version carries ads. Premium removes them and adds file attachments, a vertical view, pinned events and dedicated support, at 4.49 USD a month or 44.99 USD a year, with prices varying by region (TimeTree).
Alfie is free to use, assistant included. The assistant will later come with a monthly free allowance, with a paid plan or usage packs beyond it, announced before anything changes. Alfie has no ads and does not sell data.
Which one suits you
TimeTree is likely the better fit if:
- everyone will install the same app, and shared plans belong in it,
- the chat, notes and photos attached to an event are what you want,
- you want a native phone app today: Alfie runs in the browser, and its iOS and Android apps are planned but not released.
Alfie is likely the better fit if:
- the adults are on different calendar services and none of them is switching,
- a work calendar should show the family when you are busy but not what the meeting is,
- children need a place in the week without an app or an account of their own.
To try it, create a household, connect one account each, and invite the rest with a link. It takes about ten minutes.