Doodle vs when2meet

Both tools answer the same question, and they answer it in almost opposite ways. when2meet asks nobody for an email and hands you an hour grid. Doodle wants your email before you can share a poll, and hands you a scheduling platform with booking pages and video conferencing attached to it. Which one fits your group depends on whether you are arguing about the hour or about the day.

We walked both products in September 2026 without creating an account on either, and every claim below is what the live pages said on the day. Prices come from Doodle's own pricing page.

when2meet: no account, one hour grid

when2meet's create page is a single screen. You type an event name, drag across dates in a small calendar, set "No earlier than" and "No later than" hours, pick a time zone, and press Create Event. There is no email field, no password, no sign-up step. A dropdown labelled "Survey using" lets you switch from specific dates to days of the week.

Press Create Event and you land on a URL like when2meet.com/?38341840-yRxjR. Voters type a name and an optional password, then paint their availability by dragging. The page tells them "Name/Password are only for this event", so nothing follows anyone off the page.

The grid is the whole product, and it is finer than most groups need. Our three-day, 9am-to-5pm event rendered 96 cells, one every 15 minutes. That is exact when the question is "2:15 or 2:30", and it is a lot of dragging when the question is "which of these two weeks". Stretch the window to a fortnight and the cell count climbs with it.

when2meet pays for itself with donations and advertising. The site says so in plain text under the fold: "When2meet is a free service. We do not ask for contact or billing information. The below is a third-party advertisement." A PayPal donate widget sits beside it offering $5, $10 or $20. We rejected every non-essential cookie in the consent dialog, which asks to share data with 210 partners, and an ad banner still rendered on both the create page and the event page.

Doodle: an account first, a platform behind it

Doodle's create menu now lists four things: Group Poll, Sign-up Sheet, 1:1 and Booking Page. The Group Poll carries a badge reading "1 free trial". Open it and the first field on the form is "Your email", above a notice that reads "Already have a Doodle account? Log in — free plan includes 1 Group Poll". The footer bar says "Account required" and the submit button says "Sign up and share".

That footer bar carries the other limit. It counts "0 of 10 times selected" and offers an Upgrade link "to a Pro plan to select more". Ten options is the ceiling on a free poll, whether those options are half-hour slots or whole days.

The poll editor itself is the more capable of the two. Duration presets run 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes, plus All day and a custom duration. A Week tab shows a normal calendar with an all-day row; a Month tab shows a date picker. Pick Month, click a date, and Doodle files it under "Selected dates" with a duration of All Day. Day-level polling works in Doodle, and it works properly.

The create page also offers automatic reminders, a response deadline, hiding the participant list, your own logo and brand colours, emailing the invitation to up to 1,000 people, and a per-option participant cap. Doodle's pricing page files most of that under Pro, which it lists as "Advanced settings (deadlines, reminders, hide participants)". Pro costs USD 11 per seat per month billed annually and lifts the poll cap to unlimited. Team is USD 16 per seat per month for two seats or more. Enterprise starts at USD 15,000. "No ads" sits in the Pro column too, so the free plan carries advertising. Doodle's own cookie dialog names 137 partners.

Which one to pick

Both are good at the job they were built for, so pick by the question you are asking.

• Pick when2meet when the days are already agreed and the fight is over the hour. A study group choosing between 7pm and 8pm on Tuesday, or a team across three time zones hunting for a shared half hour, gets exactly the right tool: a heatmap, per-viewer time zones, and nobody signing up for anything.
• Pick Doodle when the poll is part of your working week. If you book clients, want Zoom or Microsoft Teams links attached automatically, need reminders chasing non-responders, or want more than one live poll at a time, that is what the Pro plan buys. The free trial poll is enough to try it, not enough to run on.
• Pick neither if you want a fast vote on whole days, from people who will not sign up for anything, with no 10-option ceiling.

A third option: voting on whole days

Best Day To Meet exists for that last case. You offer a range of dates or a short list of options, share one link, and Participants tap the days they can make. No account for the Host, none for the Participants, and no cap on how many dates you offer.

Each date is one tap rather than four cells per hour, the calendar knows which days are weekends and which are public holidays in the Host's country, and a voting deadline closes the poll for you. When a date wins, you set it as the final date and everyone can export it as an .ics calendar file.

Every Doodle fact in this table was checked against the live product in September 2026.

And the same exercise against when2meet, also checked live in September 2026.

Best Day To Meet does not do time slots at all. Voting is on days, and on multi-day windows when the Host sets an event length. Settle the date with the group, then agree the start time once the day is fixed.

Running a day poll in about thirty seconds

1. On the homepage, name your Event and choose how people pick: a calendar date range, or a short list of exact date options.
2. Skim the second step. Set the country for public holidays, filter to weekdays or weekends, add a voting deadline if you want the poll to end by itself. The defaults are fine.
3. Share the link you get (bestdaytomeet.com/p/yourcode) or read out the join code. Participants type a name and tap their days, and can edit their answer until voting closes.
4. When one date pulls ahead, set it as the final date and export the .ics file so it lands in everyone's calendar.

Frequently asked questions

Can you use Doodle without an account?

Not for creating a group poll. As of September 2026 the create form asks for your email first, the footer says "Account required", and the submit button reads "Sign up and share". Answering somebody else's Doodle poll is a different matter.

Is when2meet really free?

Yes, and it says so on the page: "We do not ask for contact or billing information." It runs on PayPal donations and third-party ads, which appear on the create page and on every event page.

Can Doodle poll on whole days rather than times?

Yes. Set the duration to All day in the week view, or switch to the month tab and pick dates, and each selected date is filed with a duration of All Day. The free plan still caps you at 10 selected options.

Which is better for a large date range?

Neither is comfortable. when2meet slices every chosen day into 15-minute cells, so a fortnight is hundreds of cells to drag through, and Doodle's free plan stops at 10 options. A day-level poll with no option cap is a better shape for that job.

Is Best Day To Meet free?

The core is free with no account and no card: unlimited Events, voting, sharing, public holidays, deadlines and .ics export. Date Options mode, multi-day Events, the comment feed and branding removal sit behind a paid tier, which costs $9 a month or $5 as a one-time unlock for a single Event.

Can Participants change their vote?

Yes. Each Participant keeps a private edit link in their browser and can update their availability until the deadline passes or the Host closes voting.

Comparing more options? See Best when2meet alternatives.