AI tool comparison
Cal.diy vs Stet
Which one should you ship with? Here is the side-by-side panel verdict, pricing read, reviewer split, and community vote comparison.
Productivity
Cal.diy
Cal.com, forked — all enterprise code removed, MIT licensed
50%
Panel ship
—
Community
Paid
Entry
Cal.diy is a community-maintained fork of Cal.com with all enterprise and commercial code stripped out — no Teams, no Organizations, no Insights, no SSO/SAML, and crucially, no license key required. Everything works out of the box under a pure MIT license. The goal is a truly self-hostable, zero-commercial-strings scheduling platform for individuals and small teams who don't need enterprise features but do need full data ownership. The technical stack is unchanged from Cal.com: Next.js, React, tRPC, Prisma ORM, and Tailwind CSS, with support for Google Calendar, Outlook, Daily.co video, email notifications, and standard event type booking flows. The project effectively resolves the "open core trap" by maintaining a clean split: if you want enterprise features, pay Cal.com. If you want a completely free, auditable, no-vendor-lock scheduling system, Cal.diy is the answer. With 41.5k stars (inherited from the Cal.com fork lineage), it has massive visibility. The maintainers are explicit that this is best suited for advanced self-hosters with server admin experience, not a one-click deploy for non-technical users. But for developers who want scheduling infrastructure without SaaS dependencies, it's arguably the cleanest option available.
Productivity
Stet
Open-source macOS dictation that sounds like you, not a corporate AI
75%
Panel ship
—
Community
Free
Entry
Stet is a minimalist, open-source macOS voice input app that transcribes speech and cleans it up without stripping away your natural voice. Named for the editorial term "let it stand," it's built on the principle that AI transcription should preserve your phrasing — not homogenize it into corporate-speak. The app listens locally, then optionally passes transcripts through an AI cleanup layer (OpenAI or Groq) to fix filler words and false starts. You can bring your own API key for completely free usage, or pay $6.99/month for the hosted cloud version. A Supabase backend enforces zero data retention, so nothing is stored after processing. Stet is the work of a single indie developer who noticed that every dictation tool on the market either sounds robotic or aggressively rewrites your words. At 66 Product Hunt upvotes on launch day (April 22, 2026), it's a quiet success that fills a real gap for writers, developers, and anyone who types a lot and is tired of Dragon-era dictation software.
Reviewer scorecard
“The open core model has always been a tension with Cal.com — features gated behind enterprise licensing in a supposedly open-source project. Cal.diy resolves that cleanly. The stack is familiar, the MIT license is genuine, and for anyone building a product that needs scheduling infrastructure, this is the right starting point.”
“Open-source, BYOK, and local-first listening? This is how voice input should work. The Groq integration makes transcription near-instant. I've been using it for commit messages and code comments — genuinely faster than typing for longer explanations.”
“This is a maintenance burden in disguise. You're now responsible for keeping a large, complex Next.js codebase patched, secure, and up-to-date with upstream Cal.com changes — changes that may or may not land in the DIY fork on any predictable schedule. For most teams, Cal.com's free tier or Calendly is simply less operational overhead.”
“Apple's built-in dictation has gotten surprisingly good, and it's free with no BYOK setup. The 'preserves your voice' pitch is compelling but subjective — I'd want a side-by-side blind test. Solo indie developer + $7/mo hosted tier raises long-term sustainability questions.”
“Scheduling is increasingly the integration surface AI agents use to take real-world actions — booking meetings, blocking time, managing availability across workflows. Having a fully controllable, self-hosted scheduling layer that AI agents can write to without SaaS rate limits or webhook restrictions is a genuine infrastructure advantage for agentic systems.”
“We're entering an era where voice is the primary interface for AI-assisted work. Tools that get the human-voice preservation problem right now will have a head start when voice input becomes default. Stet's philosophy is the right one.”
“For content creators or solopreneurs who just need a Calendly replacement, self-hosting a full Next.js stack is overkill. The UX of the base Cal.com is fine but not exceptional, and the enterprise features you're losing (like organization-level insights) are actually useful for managing content calendar coordination across a team.”
“As a writer, dictation tools that rewrite me drive me insane. Stet is the first one that feels like a scribe rather than an editor. The zero-retention policy means I can dictate client-sensitive notes without anxiety. This is the one.”
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