If you and your partner both work, you probably do one of two things to plan your time off together: you share a Google Calendar that's buried under meetings, dentist appointments, and birthday reminders, or you maintain a spreadsheet that you have to rebuild from scratch every January.
Neither is great. The calendar is too cluttered to see anything clearly. The spreadsheet works, until it doesn't, and every year you spend time setting it up again from zero.
I used a spreadsheet with my wife for seven years. Two jobs, different employers, different public holiday rules (she's in Lisbon, I work for a Porto-based company), different PTO allowances, different company-given days off. Every January we would sit down, open the sheet, and spend a couple of hours trying to map out the year: when could we both take a week off together, which long weekends were worth extending, how many days did each of us still have left by October.
The spreadsheet did the job. But it was never easy to just look at and understand. It was cluttered with everything, which meant it was hard to focus on just the time off. Spotting a long weekend opportunity, or planning a trip around our wedding anniversary, required squinting at rows and columns and doing mental math. And whenever something changed at work and we needed to shuffle dates, the whole thing needed careful re-checking.
What I actually wanted was a calendar that only showed the things that matter when planning time off: public holidays, weekends, company days, and where each of us was taking PTO. Nothing else. Just the signal, no noise.
That's what I eventually built. But before getting to that, here are the best tools available in 2026 for couples trying to plan their year off together, and what each one is actually good for.
1. TimeOffCalendar: Best for Couples Who Want to Plan Their Year Together
Website: timeoffcalendar.com
Price: Free for 1 person | $5/month, $20/year, or $30 lifetime for couples
If you and your partner both work, TimeOffCalendar is the only tool built specifically for you.
Every other app on this list was built for companies: HR departments, team managers, payroll teams.TimeOffCalendar is the only one designed from the ground up for two people who want to plan their time off together.
Here's what makes it different:
- Year-at-a-glance view: see the entire year on one screen, no clicking through months
- Side-by-side schedules: both partners' time off visible at the same time
- Overlap highlighting: instantly see which days you're both free (this alone is worth it)
- 190+ countries' public holidays: per person, so if you and your partner work under different regional holiday rules, it handles that
- PTO allowance tracking: shows each person's used and remaining days in real time
- Custom company days: add your birthday off, your company's special days, anything that doesn't appear on a national calendar
- Shared calendar: only the calendar owner needs a paid plan; your partner joins for free
I built this myself after years of battling that Google Sheet. My wife and I use it every day. It's not trying to be everything. It does one thing well: helps couples see their year off together, without the chaos.
The free tier covers one person with no credit card needed. The lifetime deal at $30 is a founding supporter price that will increase as features are added, so if you like the concept, locking it in now makes sense.
Best for: Working couples, dual-income households, partners with different employers/holiday rules
Not ideal for: Large teams, companies needing approval workflows
2. Google Calendar: Best Free Option (With Caveats)
Price: Free
Google Calendar is what most people default to. It works, it's everywhere, and it syncs with everything.
The problem: it's not built for time-off planning. Your PTO days live alongside your meeting invites, birthday reminders, dentist appointments, and gym classes. There's no PTO allowance tracking. There's no year view. There's no overlap detection between two people's schedules.
It's a general-purpose calendar trying to do a specific job it wasn't designed for.
Best for: People who just need a quick personal calendar and already live in Google's ecosystem
Not ideal for: Anyone wanting to plan time off as a couple or track PTO allowances
3. Google Sheets: Best DIY Option
Price: Free
A well-built Google Sheet can do almost anything. My wife and I used one for years. You can color-code days, build formulas that count remaining PTO, share it with your partner in real time.
The catch: you have to build it. And maintain it. And fix it when something breaks. And explain it to your partner every year when they forget how it works. And manually add public holidays for both your regions. Every year.
It works. It's just not elegant, and it breaks in unpredictable ways.
Best for: People who love spreadsheets and want full control, or developers who enjoy building their own tools
Not ideal for: Anyone who wants something that just works without maintenance
4. Vacation Tracker: Best for Small Teams
Website: vacationtracker.io
Price: From $25/month per workspace
Vacation Tracker is a solid product, but it's built for small business teams, not couples. It integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams, has approval workflows, lets managers see who's out when, and tracks leave policies by team.
If you're a small startup or a remote team trying to coordinate time off, it's worth a look. If you're two people trying to plan your own vacation together, it's a lot of software for a simple problem, and the price reflects that.
Best for: Small remote teams (5–50 people), companies using Slack or Microsoft Teams
Not ideal for: Personal use, couples, anyone without a team context
5. BambooHR: Best for HR Teams
Website: bamboohr.com
Price: Custom pricing (enterprise)
BambooHR is the gold standard for HR software. PTO tracking, leave policies, approvals, reporting: it does it all at a company level.
It has no relevance for a couple planning their honeymoon or figuring out when they can both take a Friday off. The pricing is enterprise, the onboarding is complex, and the whole experience assumes you're a manager looking at a team of employees.
Best for: HR departments, companies with formal leave policies, anyone managing PTO at scale
Not ideal for: Personal use, couples, anyone without a corporate HR context
6. Timetastic: Best for Very Small Businesses
Website: timetastic.co.uk
Price: £1.50/user/month
Timetastic is a clean, well-designed leave tracker for small businesses. It's simple, affordable, and does what it says: lets teams log and approve time off with minimal friction.
Like the others, though, it's team-first. There's no concept of two personal schedules side by side. No overlap detection between partners. No year view designed for individual planning.
Best for: Small UK-based businesses, teams under 20 people who want a simple leave tracker
Not ideal for: Couples, personal time off planning
The Bottom Line
If you're a working couple trying to stop the annual spreadsheet chaos, TimeOffCalendar is the only tool on this list built for exactly that problem. Everything else was designed for companies.
The free plan is a good place to start: set up your own calendar, add your PTO allowance, and get a feel for the year view. When you're ready to share it with your partner, the upgrade is the cheapest thing you'll buy this year.
Every other option is either too general (Google Calendar, Sheets) or too corporate (BambooHR, Vacation Tracker, Timetastic). None of them know what it feels like to sit at a kitchen table in January, trying to figure out when you can actually take a holiday together.
TimeOffCalendar does.
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