Google Calendar
A free and widely used calendar app for scheduling auditions, classes, and rehearsals
Overview
Google Calendar is a free scheduling tool that actors can use to manage auditions, callbacks, classes, rehearsals, and personal commitments in one place. Its color-coding feature makes it easy to distinguish between different types of events at a glance.
The ability to set multiple reminders for each event ensures you never miss an audition time or forget to prepare a self-tape. You can also share specific calendars with your agent, acting partner, or family to keep everyone informed of your schedule.
How It Works
Google Calendar integrates seamlessly with Gmail and other Google services, so audition confirmations received by email can be added to your calendar with a single click. It also syncs across all your devices automatically.
Google Calendar is completely free with a Google account. There are no premium tiers or hidden costs for the features most actors will use.
Who Uses It
Even if you use other productivity tools, Google Calendar remains one of the simplest and most reliable ways to keep your schedule organized. Set it up with color-coded categories for auditions, classes, and personal time to stay on top of a busy actor's life. The ability to create multiple calendars within one account means you can maintain separate views for acting work, day job shifts, and personal commitments while seeing everything together when needed. Google Calendar's reliability and zero cost make it the default scheduling backbone for actors at every career stage.
Pricing & Plans
Google Calendar is completely free for anyone with a Google account, with no premium tiers, upgrade prompts, or feature limitations for individual users. Google Workspace plans starting at seven dollars per month per user add business features like custom domain email and enhanced admin controls, but these are irrelevant for individual actors. Compared to paid calendar alternatives like Fantastical at fifty-seven dollars per year or Calendly's paid scheduling tier at ten dollars per month, Google Calendar offers comparable core functionality at zero cost. The absence of any paywall means every feature, including shared calendars, event reminders, and integration with Google Meet, is available from day one. For actors watching their budgets, Google Calendar represents one of the best value propositions in productivity software.
Pros & Cons
What's Great
Google Calendar's most significant strength is its seamless integration with the broader Google ecosystem, meaning audition confirmations in Gmail can be automatically detected and added to your calendar. The color-coding system allows actors to visually distinguish between auditions, callbacks, classes, rehearsals, and personal events at a glance. Cross-platform syncing is instantaneous and reliable across Android, iOS, and web browsers, ensuring your schedule is always current on every device. The ability to set multiple reminders per event, including email and push notification options, provides a safety net against missed auditions. Sharing specific calendars with your agent, acting partner, or family is simple and does not require them to share their calendar in return, giving you control over what information others can see.
What Could Be Better
Google Calendar lacks built-in project management or note-taking features, so you cannot attach detailed audition preparation notes or scripts directly to calendar events beyond a simple text description. The interface can feel cluttered when you have many overlapping events, and the mobile app does not handle dense schedules as gracefully as dedicated scheduling apps like Fantastical. There is no native time-tracking feature, so actors who want to log hours spent on self-tapes, coaching sessions, or rehearsals need a separate tool. Google Calendar's recurring event options, while functional, can be rigid when your schedule varies week to week, which is common for actors juggling irregular work. The search function for past events is adequate but not powerful, making it difficult to look back and find a specific audition from months ago without scrolling manually.
Our Recommendation
Google Calendar is the right choice for any actor who needs a reliable, free scheduling tool that works on all devices without any setup friction. It is particularly well-suited to actors who already use Gmail, Google Drive, or other Google services, since the integration between these tools is seamless. Actors who need more advanced features like detailed note attachment, project tracking, or kanban-style visual planning should pair Google Calendar with a tool like Notion or Trello rather than trying to force it into a role it was not designed for. If you are a heavy Apple ecosystem user, Apple Calendar offers similar functionality with tighter integration into iOS and macOS. For the vast majority of actors, Google Calendar should be the scheduling foundation upon which other tools are layered.
Pro Tips
Create separate calendars for each major category of your acting life, such as Auditions, Classes, Rehearsals, Survival Job, and Personal, and assign each a distinct color so your week's priorities are visible at a glance. Use the event description field to include the casting director's name, the role you are reading for, and the address of the audition location so all critical information is accessible from the calendar entry itself. Set two reminders for every audition: one the evening before so you can prepare your materials, and another ninety minutes before so you have time to travel and arrive early. Enable the Goals feature or use recurring time blocks to schedule consistent practice sessions for monologues, cold reading, or dialect work, treating them as non-negotiable appointments. At the end of each month, review your calendar to see how you allocated your time and whether your schedule reflects your career priorities.