Head to head · Calendar read · October 2026 research run

Aurinko Calendar API vs Cal.com API v2 + MCP

Cal.com API v2 + MCP scores 57.2 (C) on agent readiness against Aurinko Calendar API's 45.6 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Aurinko Calendar API leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do calendar read.

Which one, for what

Aurinko Calendar API E

Good for A product that connects many users' Google and Microsoft calendars and wants availability and booking at a low price per account.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 56 against 50
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Watch for

No status page, incident history or SLA found, and the terms supply the service as is

Cal.com API v2 + MCP C

Good for An agent that books, reschedules and cancels meetings into a Cal.com user's event types, or routes leads with routing forms.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 40
  • Schema & documentation, 76 against 66
  • Security & auth, 56 against 41
  • Maintenance & community, 50 against 20
  • Transparency & trust, 78 against 44

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

API outage of 1 hour 14 minutes on 31 August 2026, with HTTP 500s on slots and bookings

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAurinko Calendar APICal.com API v2 + MCPEdge
Reliability16%204060Cal.com API v2 + MCP +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26676Cal.com API v2 + MCP +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.25650Aurinko Calendar API +6
Security & auth14%17.54156Cal.com API v2 + MCP +15
Payments & pricing10%12.54030Aurinko Calendar API +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82050Cal.com API v2 + MCP +30
Transparency & trust7%8.84478Cal.com API v2 + MCP +34
Negative events≤1500
Total45.6 · E57.2 · C

Facts side by side

FactAurinko Calendar APICal.com API v2 + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorYoxel, Inc.Cal.com
Hosted endpointhttps://api.aurinko.iohttps://api.cal.com/v2
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Yoxel's Terms of Services AgreementProprietary (hosted product since April 2026). The @calcom/cal-mcp package and repository carry no licence
Tools exposednone63
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last releasenone2026-09-15
Terms last updated2022-08-11no date given
Privacy policy last updated2022-08-112026-10-01
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularitynone30 stars, 786 npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (2)

Verdicts

Aurinko Calendar API

A public OpenAPI 3.0 spec covers 154 operations, with free/busy, meeting-time suggestion and booking profiles alongside calendar reads and writes, and prices start at $1 an active account a month. No status page, SLA, changelog or official SDK was found, and the application's client secret reaches every connected account.

Cal.com API v2 + MCP

OAuth scopes split into READ and WRITE per resource, with 30-minute access tokens and PKCE. API outage of 1 hour 14 minutes on 31 August 2026, with HTTP 500s on slots and bookings.

Before you call either

Aurinko Calendar API

  1. Use https://api.aurinko.io/v1. Several cURL examples in the docs print https:/api.aurinko.io with one slash
  2. Send If-Match with the event's etag on PATCH /v1/calendars/{calendarId}/events/{eventId}. A stale value returns 412
  3. Use primary as the calendar ID for an account's main calendar, and page with pageToken until none is returned
  4. Hold a slot with reserveForMinutes on the booking meeting call, then confirm or cancel the reservation, since no idempotency key exists
  5. Retry 429, 408 and 5xx with exponential backoff. Do not retry 404. A 429 can come from Google or Microsoft limits behind the API

Cal.com API v2 + MCP

  1. Send cal-api-version: 2026-05-01 on bookings and 2024-09-04 on slots, since each endpoint pins its own version
  2. Append ?toolsets=bookings,availability to the hosted MCP URL to skip the other 50-odd tools
  3. Page bookings with pagination.nextCursor, not offsets
  4. Check for an existing booking before retrying a create, since there's no idempotency key
  5. Use cal_ test keys while building so bookings don't reach real calendars

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Aurinko Calendar API or Cal.com API v2 + MCP?

Cal.com API v2 + MCP scores 57.2 (C) on agent readiness against Aurinko Calendar API's 45.6 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Aurinko Calendar API leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

Do Aurinko Calendar API and Cal.com API v2 + MCP need an API key?

Aurinko Calendar API uses an OAuth sign-in. Cal.com API v2 + MCP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Aurinko Calendar API and Cal.com API v2 + MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Aurinko Calendar API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.aurinko.io and Cal.com API v2 + MCP at https://api.cal.com/v2.

Other comparisons with Aurinko Calendar API or Cal.com API v2 + MCP

Machine-readable

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