Cozi keeps the family calendar in an app. Nido puts it on the wall.
Cozi has organised family life for years and does it well. The gap it leaves is the one on the kitchen wall — the screen everybody sees without opening anything.
Last checked September 2026.
The difference in one sentence
Cozi is something you open. Nido is something you walk past.
That sounds like a small distinction and it is not. A calendar somebody has to remember to check is a calendar the fifteen-year-old can plausibly claim nobody told him about. A board on the kitchen counter, showing today, at eye level, is not something anyone can argue with.
Nido has the phone apps too — iPhone and Android, with a parent view and a kid view. But the wall screen is the point, and everything else feeds it.
Side by side
| Cozi | Nido | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Phone, tablet and web app. | An always-on kitchen screen, plus phone and web. |
| Advertising | The free tier is ad-supported; Gold removes ads. | None, on any plan. |
| Price | Free with ads; Cozi Gold $39 a year. | Free to start; $4.99 / month for Premium. |
| Chores | Shared to-do and chore lists. | Repeating chores that carry over, pay eggs, build streaks, and buy privileges you stock. |
| Kid access | Family members share the account. | A kid-locked view showing only that child's chores and the calendar, with a PIN to leave it. |
| Meals | Meal planner and recipe box. | Recipes, meal plan, shopping list, and a cooking mode readable from the stove. |
| Calendars | Syncs with Google and other calendars. | Its own family calendar, plus Google Calendar merged in read-only and colour-coded. Google is optional. |
Cozi pricing checked September 2026 from their own site.
When to stay with Cozi
Cozi has been doing this for a long time and it shows: it syncs with more calendar services than Nido does, it has a mature shopping and recipe side, and if your extended family is already in it, moving everyone is a real cost for no obvious gain.
If what you want is a shared calendar in your pocket and nothing more, Cozi is a perfectly good answer and Nido is not obviously better at it.
When to switch
Switch when the problem is not that the family lacks a calendar, but that nobody looks at it. That is the problem a wall screen solves and an app cannot.
Switch, too, if you would rather your children's chore chart not sit next to an advert. Nido has no ads on any plan.
Questions people ask
- How is Nido different from Cozi?
- Cozi is an app you open. Nido is a board you walk past. Both do a shared family calendar and lists; Nido is built first for an always-on screen in the kitchen, with the phone app as the companion rather than the main event.
- Does Nido show ads?
- No. There are no ads on any plan, free or paid. Nido is paid for by the families who upgrade for unlimited kids and chores.
- What does Cozi cost?
- Checked in September 2026, Cozi is free with advertising, and Cozi Gold is $39 a year to remove the ads and add the month view, calendar search, a birthday tracker and shopping mode.
- Can I keep using my Google Calendar?
- Yes. Nido connects to Google Calendar per household and merges the calendars you pick, colour-coded. It reads only — it never writes to your calendars.
- Does Nido replace the family whiteboard?
- That is the intent. The kiosk shows the week's agenda and each kid's chores on a tablet you prop in the kitchen; it never logs out and it updates itself when someone ticks something off on their phone.
Try it on the tablet in your drawer.
Free for 2 kids and 10 chores, no credit card, nothing to deliver.
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