The Events Calendar vs Calendar², honestly.
The Events Calendar is free on WordPress.org, with month, list and day views. Repeating events, more views and event filters come with its Pro plan, which Liquid Web lists at $399 a year (checked 25 October 2026).
Calendar² is an alternative that puts repeating events, shortcodes and venue pages in the free plugin, with Pro at $79 a year for one site. It also does less, and this page says where.
Calendar² is likely to suit you if
- you want repeating events, a calendar shortcode and venue and organiser pages without a paid plan;
- your calendar is big and busy, and page speed matters to you;
- you’d like to try a move and be able to undo it.
Stay on The Events Calendar if you need
- tickets or RSVPs today;
- week, photo, map or summary views;
- filters by day, time of day, price or tag;
- virtual or hybrid events, or Event Series;
- Events Calendar Pro’s repeating events on your current site. Our switch can’t move those yet, and it stops and tells you before it changes anything.
The core plugin is free on WordPress.org. Its listing says Pro adds “recurring events, additional calendar views, calendar shortcodes”. On Liquid Web’s plan page (checked 25 October 2026), the Pro plan is $399 a year and Elite $599 a year, and Pro lists “Recurring, virtual, and hybrid events”, “Seven calendar views and event filters” and “community submissions”. The page doesn’t say how many sites a plan covers. Older pages quote other prices, so check the current one if you’re comparing.
| The Events Calendar | Calendar² | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plugin | Yes: month, list and day views | Yes: the whole calendar, with no limits and no account |
| Paid plans | Pro $399 a year · Elite $599 a year | Pro: $79 1 site · $149 5 sites · $299 unlimited sites, a year |
| Renewal | “Renews annually, cancel any time” | Yearly. If a licence ends, Pro keeps working |
| Sites per plan | Not stated on the plan page | As above; staging and local copies are free |
Calendar² Pro adds two things: a public submission form with an approval queue, and feeds that keep importing events from other calendars. Prices are in US dollars, plus VAT or sales tax at checkout. The full list is on the Calendar² page.
“Pro plan” means The Events Calendar’s paid plan on Liquid Web’s page. Where a cell names Events Calendar Pro or an add-on, that’s from The Events Calendar’s own documentation. All checked 25 October 2026.
| Feature | The Events Calendar | Calendar² |
|---|---|---|
| Month, list and day views | Free plugin | Free |
| Week, photo, map and summary views | Pro plan (“seven calendar views”) | No. Old week and photo links go to the list |
| Calendar on any page (shortcode) | [tribe_events] needs Events Calendar Pro | Free: [calendar2] and [calendar2_upcoming] |
| Repeating events | Pro plan | Free: daily, weekly, monthly (“the third Saturday”) and yearly; skip single dates |
| Event Series (grouping events) | Events Calendar Pro (since 6.0) | No |
| Duplicate an event | Events Calendar Pro (since 6.0) | Free |
| Event filters | Filter Bar add-on; event filters listed in the Pro plan | Free: keyword, location and category, plus venue, organiser and featured links |
| Feature | The Events Calendar | Calendar² |
|---|---|---|
| Public event submissions | Pro plan (“community submissions”) | Calendar² Pro |
| Importing events from other calendars | Pro plan: event importing, up to 200 imports a day | Calendar² Pro: iCal, RSS, Calendar² and The Events Calendar sites |
| Tickets and RSVPs | Event Tickets (free) and the Pro plan | Not yet. Tickets² is in development |
| Virtual and hybrid events | Pro plan | No |
| Seating maps, email campaigns | Elite plan | No |
| Feature | The Events Calendar | Calendar² |
|---|---|---|
| Needs | WordPress 6.9+, PHP 7.4+ | WordPress 6.5+, PHP 8.1+ |
| Active installs | 600,000+ (WordPress.org) | First released October 2026 |
More on Calendar²’s shortcodes and repeating events.
The Events Calendar’s Filter Bar is an add-on. Its documentation (updated 21 October 2026) lists filters for category, cost, tags, venues, organisers, day, time, country, city, state, featured events, event status and date range, with Series and virtual-event filters when Events Calendar Pro is active. Liquid Web’s plan page lists “event filters” in the Pro plan.
Calendar²’s free plugin has a search bar on every calendar view with a keyword box, a location box and a category picker. Venue and organiser pages link to a list of just their events, and links can show featured events only. The filters work without JavaScript.
What we don’t have: filters by day of the week, time of day, price or tag, and the location box matches text rather than searching by distance. If you rely on those, Filter Bar does more.
- Tickets and RSVPs. The Events Calendar sells them through its Event Tickets plugin. Its documentation says the free version takes a 2% commission on Stripe and Square sales, on top of their own fees, waived with Event Tickets Plus; Liquid Web lists “No ticket commission fees” in the Pro plan. Calendar² doesn’t sell tickets. Our own, Tickets², is in development. If you switch, tickets sold with Event Tickets keep selling.
- More views. Week, photo, map and summary views, against Calendar²’s month, list and day.
- Event Series, for grouping different events under one page, and virtual and hybrid events. We found neither in Calendar².
- Seating maps and email campaigns, in the Elite plan.
- More filters, as above.
- Track record. The Events Calendar has 600,000+ active installs on WordPress.org. Calendar² was first released in October 2026.
- Older PHP. The Events Calendar runs on PHP 7.4 and up; Calendar² needs PHP 8.1 or later, so check your host.
- Translations. Calendar² ships in US English with a British English translation only.
We loaded the same 10,000 events into both plugins and timed every page. The busiest month took 90 ms in Calendar² and 197 ms in The Events Calendar 6.18.1, with a page of 22 KB against 553 KB gzipped. That’s our own test, on one machine, of a Calendar² build from 17 October, the day before 1.0.0. The method, the full results and the places where Calendar² was slower are on the performance page.
The switch is in the free plugin: a dry run, a private preview on your own site, the switch and a roll-back. Your events keep their IDs, images and addresses, and [tribe_events] shortcodes show the Calendar² calendar.
- to migrate 1,000 events
- 26 s
- to switch 10,000 events
- 13 s
- to roll 10,000 back
- 7 s
It can’t move Events Calendar Pro’s repeating events or Series yet: the dry run stops before anything changes. Event Aggregator schedules don’t come across either; add the feeds again in Calendar² Pro.
- The Events Calendar’s plans, prices and Pro features: Liquid Web’s plan page, modified 14 October 2026, checked 25 October 2026.
- Free features, what Pro adds, installs and requirements: The Events Calendar on WordPress.org, version 6.18.2, checked 25 October 2026.
[tribe_events]needing Events Calendar Pro: calendar embed shortcodes, updated 21 October 2026.- Filter Bar’s filters: configuring filters, updated 21 October 2026.
- Series and the duplicate tool: Events Calendar Pro 6.0.0 release notes, updated 6 July 2026.
- Event Tickets fees: Tickets Commerce documentation, updated 2 July 2026.
- Calendar²: version 1.1.0 and its readme, 25 October 2026. Speed and switch figures: our own tests, described on the performance page.
- The Events Calendar, Event Tickets and Event Aggregator are trademarks of their owners, and we’re not affiliated with them. Spotted something out of date? Email brandon@bsquared.software and we’ll correct it.
Try it on a copy of your site.
The free plugin includes the dry run, so you can see what would move before anything does. Questions about a big calendar? A person replies, usually within two UK working days.