iOS and Mac calendar app Fantastical is moving to a subscription model

Calendar app Fantastical is getting a big update simultaneously across all Apple platforms that adds a bunch of new features, but also moves its signature software to a subscription model on iOS and Mac. Flexibits’ Fantastical has had a long history as one of the premier calendar apps for Apple devices. It started out as a nice-looking menubar app for Mac before slowly coming to other Apple platforms over time. The last major update to the software, Fantastical 2, rolled out slowly over time, coming to the iPhone in 2013, iPad in 2014, on Mac as a full-fledged app in 2015 and then later that year on the Apple Watch.

But today marks perhaps the biggest shift in Fantastical’s history. Let’s talk about that new subscription model first. In the past, Fantastical apps were (relatively) expensive one-time purchases. The iPhone app used to cost $4.

99, the iPad app used to cost $9. 99, and the Mac app used to cost $49. 99. Starting today, though, you’ll be able to use the updated and fully-loaded Fantastical apps on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch with the new Fantastical Premium subscription, which will cost $4.

99 a month or $39. 99 a year. That might seem like a good deal — but it depends on how much you use Fantastical, and on what platform. You’ll get a whole year of Fantastical on Mac for $10 less than the previous one-time price, which isn’t bad.

But if you used Fantastical on iPad, you’ll now have to pay four times more than the previous one-time purchase price, per year. If you used Fantastical on iPhone, you’ll have to pay eight times more than the previous one-time purchase price, per year. That said, if you’ve been turned off by Fantastical because of the $64. 97 total to own the app across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, this new per-month price isn’t that much to spend to test the waters and try out Fantastical for the first time.

And it might be worth it, as it’s become difficult to find a really great third-party calendar app these days, especially with some classic calendar apps like Sunrise having been shut down years ago. The updated apps been completely rewritten, and the Mac, iPad, and iPhone apps all now have feature parity, Flexibits CEO Michael Simmons tells The Verge. (Prior to this change, each version of Fantastical had different features.