Self-Host Your Own Calendly in 5 Minutes with Cal.diy

Calendly charges $12/month for features you can run on your own machine for free. Cal.diy is the community fork of Cal.com with every enterprise paywall stripped out. 100% MIT-licensed. No license keys. No hosted version. You own the whole thing.

This guide gets you from zero to a working booking page inside Docker. By the end you'll have your own scheduling link, calendar sync, and your first test meeting booked.

Repo: github.com/calcom/cal.diy. 43k+ stars, MIT license, active community.

The problem nobody talks about

Cal.com is "open source" in the way that matters to investors, not developers. It uses an open-core model: the base is free, but teams, organizations, SSO, workflows, and insights all sit behind a proprietary Enterprise Edition that requires a license key. Self-hosting the official repo still phones home.

Cal.diy rips all of that out. What's left is a clean, single-user scheduling platform that runs entirely on your hardware. No telemetry unless you opt in. No features locked behind a key that might get revoked.

Why this changes everything

It's actually free.Not "free tier with limits." The entire codebase is MIT. Fork it, modify it, run it on a Raspberry Pi. Nobody can pull the rug.

Same UI quality as the paid product.This isn't some hobbyist rebuild. It's the same React + Next.js frontend Cal.com ships. Google Calendar sync, Zoom integration, custom event types, webhooks. All still there.

20+ integrations survive the fork. Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Zoom, Daily.co, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Basecamp. The enterprise stuff (SSO, SAML, org-level features) is gone. The individual-user integrations are untouched.

Docker Compose handles the whole stack. PostgreSQL, Redis, the web app, the API, and a database browser. One command.

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose installed (Docker Desktop or Rancher Desktop both work)
• A terminal. That's it.
• Optional: a Google or Microsoft account if you want calendar sync later

Step 1: clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/calcom/cal.diy.git
cd cal.diy

Step 2: create your environment file

cp .env.example .env

Now generate the two secrets you actually need:

# Cookie encryption key
openssl rand -base64 32

# AES256 encryption key (must be 32 bytes)
openssl rand -base64 24

Open .env and paste those values into NEXTAUTH_SECRET and CALENDSO_ENCRYPTION_KEY. The defaults are literally the word "secret" which is fine for local testing but you should swap them anyway.

The database credentials (POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, POSTGRES_DB) have working defaults in the compose file. Leave them unless you have a reason to change them.

Step 3: start everything

docker compose up -d

This spins up five containers:

First boot takes a minute. The container runs database migrations and seeds the app store automatically. Watch progress with:

docker compose logs -f calcom

Wait until you see the Next.js server confirm it's listening.

Step 4: create your account

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

The setup wizard launches on first visit. Fill in:

1. Your username (this becomes your booking page URL)
2. Full name
3. Timezone
4. Email and password

Skip the calendar connection for now. You can add it later from Settings > Integrations.

Step 5: create your first event type

Navigate to http://localhost:3000/event-typesand click "New Event Type."

Set:

• Title: whatever you want ("30 Min Chat", "Quick Call", "Discovery")
• Slug: auto-generated from the title
• Duration: 15, 30, or 60 minutes
• Description: one line explaining what the meeting is for

Under Availability, confirm your working hours look right. Save.

Step 6: book your first meeting

Your public booking page is live at:

http://localhost:3000/your-username

Open it in an incognito window (so you're not logged in) and book a slot on yourself. Pick a time, fill in the test booking form, confirm.

Back in your main window, check the Bookings tab. Your test meeting should be there. That's it. You have a working scheduling system.

Optional: connect Google Calendar

Go to Settings > Integrations > Google Calendar. You'll need OAuth credentials from the Google Cloud Console (a Client ID and Client Secret). The short version:

1. Create a project in Google Cloud Console
2. Enable the Google Calendar API
3. Create OAuth 2.0 credentials (redirect URI: http://localhost:3000/api/integrations/googlecalendar/callback)
4. Paste the Client ID and Secret into your .env as GOOGLE_API_CREDENTIALS

Once connected, cal.diy reads your existing calendar for conflicts and writes new bookings to it.

Optional: kill telemetry

Add this to your .env and restart:

CALCOM_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1

Honest limitations

This is not a production deployment.Running on localhost means nobody else can book you unless you expose port 3000 to the internet (reverse proxy, Cloudflare Tunnel, or similar). That's a separate guide.

No teams, no orgs. Cal.diy explicitly removes multi-user features. If you need team scheduling, use Cal.com proper or pay for Calendly.

Updates require manual pulls. There's no auto-update mechanism. You docker compose down, pull the new image, and bring it back up. Breaking changes between versions are possible.

The Docker image is large. Next.js + Prisma + all the integrations means a ~2GB image. First pull takes a while on slower connections.

Google Calendar setup is fiddly.The OAuth flow requires a GCP project with correct redirect URIs. It works, but it's not a one-click setup like Calendly offers.

No email notifications without SMTP config. Out of the box, booking confirmations don't send unless you configure EMAIL_SERVER_HOST and related vars in .env. For local testing this doesn't matter. For real use, hook up an SMTP relay (Resend, Postmark, or Gmail SMTP).

Quick reference

What's next

Once you've confirmed it works locally, the natural next steps are:

1. Expose it to the internet (Cloudflare Tunnel is the easiest path for a homelab)
2. Connect your real calendar
3. Point a custom domain at it
4. Set up SMTP so booking confirmations actually send

But for now, you have a fully functional Calendly replacement running on your machine. Zero monthly cost. Zero vendor lock-in.