Best WordPress Calendar Plugin for 2026

There is no single best WordPress calendar plugin — there is the right one for what you are building. This page compares the four that matter on the things that actually decide it: what the free tier includes, whether recurring events cost extra, what you pay, and how each one stores your events.

Disclosure: we make one of these four. Rather than pretend otherwise, we have named the cases where a competitor is the better buy — and there are several. Every competitor price and figure here was read off the vendor’s own site on August 20, 2026.

What Each Free Tier Actually Includes

This is where these four plugins differ most, and it is the part roundups usually get wrong. “Paid plan” means the feature is not in that plugin’s free version at all. A dash means the row does not apply, and “Yes” means the feature exists but the vendor does not document which tier it needs. The last three rows are features WebCalendar does not offer.

Feature	WebCalendar	The Events Calendar	Modern Events Cal.	Sugar Calendar
Month and list views	Free	Free	Free	Free
Week view	Free	Paid plan	Free	Paid plan
Day view	Free	Free	Free	Paid plan
Recurring events (RFC 5545)	Free	Paid plan	Paid plan	Paid plan
Edit one occurrence vs. the whole series	Free	Paid plan	Paid plan	Paid plan
Holiday library (100+ countries)	Free	Not available	Not available	Not available
iCal / .ics export and subscription feed	Free	Free	Free	Free
iCal / .ics import	Free	Paid plan	Free	Not available
CSV import and export	Free	Paid plan	Free	Not available
Event invitation and reminder emails	Free	Paid plan	Paid plan	Paid plan
Category filter toggle	Free	Paid plan	Free	Partial
Elementor widget	Free	Paid plan	Free	Not available
Social sharing	Free	Paid plan	Free	Not available
AI assistant access (MCP)	Free	Not available	Not available	Not available
One-step import from The Events Calendar	Free	—	Yes	Yes
Ongoing one-way sync from The Events Calendar	Free	—	Not available	Not available
Ticket sales	Not available	Paid plan	Paid plan	Paid plan
Google Calendar two-way sync	Not available	Paid plan	Paid plan	Not available
Appointment booking	Not available	Paid plan	Paid plan	Not available

The Four Plugins

1. WebCalendar for WordPress — best free tier

This is ours, so weigh it accordingly. The argument for it is the free tier: full RFC 5545 recurring events, a 100+ country holiday library, iCal import and export, CSV both ways, email invitations and reminders, tags, custom event fields, online-meeting links for virtual and hybrid events, a one-step importer for The Events Calendar, and a built-in MCP server are all in the WordPress.org build, with no time limit and no license key. Only six features are paid. Events are stored in dedicated indexed tables rather than as WordPress posts, so your wp_posts table does not grow with your calendar and no duplicate event URLs compete with your own pages.

Weaknesses, plainly: it is new — on WordPress.org since May 2026 — so there is no large third-party ecosystem and no decade of forum answers behind it. It does not sell tickets, has no public booking flow, and does not do bidirectional editing sync with Google — though it can display a Google Calendar on your site and publish a feed Google can subscribe to. If selling tickets or true bidirectional sync is central to what you are building, start with the other three. Full feature list · detailed comparison with The Events Calendar.

2. The Events Calendar — best ecosystem, highest price

The market leader, with 600,000+ active installs and a 4.2 out of 5 rating from 2,450 reviews. If you run large public events, sell tickets, or need a plugin every WordPress developer already knows, this is the safe institutional choice. It supports 35 languages and has by far the deepest add-on ecosystem of the four.

The catch is the price and the free tier. Recurring events — the single most commonly wanted calendar feature — are not in the free version, and the entry plan is $259 a year, with full functionality at $599. It also stores every event as a WordPress custom post type, which grows your posts table and publishes a URL per event whether you wanted one or not. See the full head-to-head →

3. Modern Events Calendar — best looking, with a caveat

MEC is the most visually polished of the four, with 50+ layout skins and strong Elementor and WPBakery integration, and its $99/yr entry price undercuts The Events Calendar substantially. Its free tier is also genuinely good — week view, iCal import, CSV and category filtering are all included.

Two things you should know before choosing it. The free Lite version was permanently removed from WordPress.org in May 2022 for a guideline violation, so it is distributed only through the vendor’s own site and you will not get updates through the normal WordPress channel. And in July 2024 a critical arbitrary file upload vulnerability (CVE-2024-5441, CVSS 8.8) was disclosed, affecting an estimated 150,000 sites. Neither is disqualifying on its own, but both belong in the decision.

4. Sugar Calendar — best for simplicity

Sugar Calendar is deliberately the least complicated option, and that is its appeal: if you want a clean calendar and nothing else, the others will feel heavy. It is backed by Awesome Motive, stores events in custom tables rather than posts, includes free Stripe integration, and ships a one-click migration tool from The Events Calendar. Modern Events Calendar imports from it as well, and since version 1.2 so do we — with a side-by-side sync mode neither of them offers.

Weaknesses: the smallest community of the four at 10,000+ installs and 24 reviews, a thin free tier — week and day views are paid, and iCal and CSV import are not offered at all — recurring events behind a paid plan, and only three add-ons. Its $49.50/yr entry price is comparable to ours, so the real question between us is free-tier depth versus simplicity. See the full head-to-head →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free WordPress calendar plugin?

On free-tier depth, WebCalendar for WordPress — it is the only one of the four that includes RFC 5545 recurring events, a 100+ country holiday library, iCal import and export, CSV both directions, and email reminders without a paid plan. The Events Calendar has the best-supported free tier by community size, and Modern Events Calendar’s free build is feature-rich but is no longer distributed through WordPress.org.

Which WordPress calendar plugins support recurring events for free?

Of these four, only WebCalendar for WordPress. The Events Calendar, Modern Events Calendar and Sugar Calendar all place recurring events behind a paid plan, starting at $259/yr, $99/yr and $49.50/yr respectively as of August 20, 2026. Recurring events are the most common reason people end up paying for a calendar plugin.

What is the best WordPress calendar plugin for selling tickets?

The Events Calendar. It has the most mature ticketing product of the four, including seat maps and WooCommerce integration, on its paid plans. Modern Events Calendar and Sugar Calendar also sell ticketing add-ons. WebCalendar does not offer ticketing at any tier.

Is The Events Calendar free?

There is a free version on WordPress.org, and month, day and list views are included in it. Recurring events and week view are not — those require a paid plan, which starts at $259 per year for a single site as of August 20, 2026. Its add-ons were folded into three bundled plans in February 2026.

Why is Modern Events Calendar not on WordPress.org?

Its free Lite version was permanently removed from the WordPress.org plugin directory in May 2022 following a guideline violation. Webnus now distributes it through its own website, which means updates do not arrive through the normal WordPress update channel. Separately, a critical vulnerability (CVE-2024-5441, CVSS 8.8) affecting an estimated 150,000 sites was disclosed in July 2024.

Which WordPress calendar plugin is best for a large number of events?

Look at how each one stores events. The Events Calendar and Modern Events Calendar store every event as a WordPress custom post type, so events share the wp_posts table with your pages and posts. Sugar Calendar and WebCalendar for WordPress both use dedicated custom tables, which keeps calendar queries off your content tables as the calendar grows.

Can I switch calendar plugins later without losing my events?

Usually yes, through iCal. All four export events as standard .ics files, and any plugin that supports .ics import can read them. Moving off The Events Calendar specifically is easier than that: Sugar Calendar, Modern Events Calendar and WebCalendar for WordPress all read its events directly, and WebCalendar can also mirror a live Events Calendar on a schedule so you can evaluate before committing. What does not transfer is anything outside the iCal standard — ticketing records, add-on data, and custom fields.