---
title: "Online appointment booking for free: What's available at no cost and what to watch out for"
description: "Free online appointment booking under review: typical limits of free plans, fair criteria for making your choice, and when Pay per Use is the better option."
type: "wissen"
product: "calendar"
slug: "online-terminbuchung-kostenlos"
source_language: "de"
target_languages: ["de", "en", "es", "pl", "tr"]
published: "2026-06-10"
status: "publish"
faq_json: [{"q":"Is online appointment booking really available for free?","a":"Yes, many providers have free plans. Common limits include a single appointment type, a single user, third-party branding on the booking page, or missing team functions. That can be enough to get started – growing requirements usually lead to a paid plan."}, {"q":"What should I watch out for with free offers?","a":"Four things: Where is the data located (GDPR)? What happens when you exceed the free limits? Do you own the customer contact, or does the provider? And how much effort is a later migration, including booking links?"}, {"q":"What does online appointment booking cost with webRichtung?","a":"The webRichtung account and all your company's user accounts cost 0 euros – there is no per-app license fee. Payment follows the Pay per Use principle, only for actual usage via a Credit balance; 1 Credit equals 1 euro net."}, {"q":"Is free the right choice in the long run?","a":"That depends on the appointment volume. Anyone who only assigns appointments occasionally does well with free or usage-based models. Anyone building their business on appointments should look at reliability, data location, and team functions rather than price."}]
language: "en"
source_id: "wissen/online-terminbuchung-kostenlos"
source_hash: "63ca38eb5f26a2e511a1f9179eb8db6fd063d0424f1b7c71f0e6c178d23bdbdf"
---

Free online appointment booking does exist – the honest question is where the limits lie. Free plans often cover the simplest case: one person, one appointment type, third-party branding on the booking page. That can be enough to get started; what matters is that you know the rules of the game before your appointment calendar depends on it.

## What free plans typically can do – and what they can't

The patterns are similar across industries. What's usually included for free is a simple booking page with a calendar. Often limited or chargeable are:

- **multiple appointment types** (initial consultation, follow-up appointment, viewing …)
- **team functions** – multiple users, shared calendars
- **your own branding** instead of the provider's logo on the booking page
- **integrations** with calendar, CRM, or email
- **reminders and workflows** around the appointment

That's not a criticism – free plans are entry-level offers. It only becomes problematic if you don't realize until months later that your day-to-day work can't be mapped within the free framework and that switching costs effort.

## Four criteria that matter more than price

1. **Data location and GDPR:** Booking data is customer data – name, contact, request. Check where the provider processes it and whether a data processing agreement is available.
2. **What happens at the limit:** Are bookings stopped once the free quota is exhausted? A booking link that suddenly no longer works costs trust.
3. **Who owns the contact:** Some free models finance themselves by showing your customers other providers' offers on the booking page. Your appointment process should lead your customers to you – and no further.
4. **Switching costs:** Booking links are in signatures, on business cards, on the website. Switching providers means changing all of that. Choose in a way that lets you stay for a while.

## The alternative: a free account, payment based on usage

Between "free with limits" and "subscription from day one" there is a third way: Pay per Use. With [webRichtung calendar](https://www.webrichtung.de/module/calendar/), the account costs 0 euros – as do all additional user accounts for your company. There is no per-app license fee and no subscription obligation; you only pay for actual usage via a Credit balance (1 Credit = 1 euro net).

The difference from the classic free plan: calendar isn't a stripped-down standalone tool but part of a platform. You set up booking pages with public and personalized links, availabilities, and appointment types in the calendar settings – and your calendar lives where contacts, tasks, and your AI assistant are at home, too. You'll find details on setup in the [documentation](https://docs.webrichtung.de/calendar/).

## How to decide

- **Do you only assign appointments occasionally?** Then almost any solid tool will do – pay attention above all to GDPR and to whether the link works reliably.
- **Are appointments your business?** Then reliability, team capability, and the question of whether the tool grows with you are what count. A forced switch in the middle of operations is more expensive than any monthly fee.
- **Do you want to stay flexible?** Usage-based models avoid both: the limits of the free plan and the fixed costs of a subscription.

You can read how to approach the rollout step by step in the overview article [Introducing online appointment booking](/de/wissen/online-terminbuchung.html).