Everything a Skylight does, on the tablet in your drawer
The Skylight Calendar is a good product with one assumption baked into it: that your family needs to buy another screen. Nido makes the same board, and skips that part.
Last checked September 2026.
What you are actually comparing
A Skylight Calendar is a touchscreen you hang on the wall. It shows a merged family calendar, a chore chart with star rewards, meal plans and a photo screensaver. It is genuinely nice hardware, and for a family that wants one box delivered and mounted, that is a real argument.
Nido is the same board without the box. It is a web page, so it opens on the iPad the kids outgrew, the Android tablet in the drawer, the laptop nobody uses, or the browser built into your TV. It also runs on everyone's phone as a native app, which the wall display cannot do.
So the question is not really which board is better. It is whether the board should cost three hundred dollars of hardware before it shows you anything.
Side by side
| Skylight Calendar | Nido | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | A dedicated touchscreen you buy. Sizes from roughly 10 to 27 inches; the popular 15-inch model lists around $300. | None. Any screen with a browser. |
| Subscription | Skylight Plus, $79 a year. | Free to start; $4.99 / month for Premium. |
| Chore rewards | Star rewards are part of the paid Plus plan. | Eggs, streaks and a rewards shelf you stock yourself. Included free. |
| Meal planning | Part of the paid Plus plan. | Recipes, a weekly meal plan, a shopping list, and a cooking mode readable from the stove. Included free. |
| Calendars | Syncs with Google, iCloud, Outlook, Cozi and Yahoo. | Its own family calendar, plus Google Calendar merged in read-only and colour-coded per calendar. Google is optional. |
| Phone app | Companion app for parents. | iPhone and Android, with a separate kid view. |
| If it breaks | You have a broken display to replace. | You open the page on a different screen. |
| Second screen | A second display costs what the first one did. | Open the same link on as many screens as you like. |
Skylight prices checked September 2026 from Skylight's own support pages and retail listings; hardware prices in particular vary by model and retailer, so check theirs before deciding.
Where Skylight is the better buy
If nobody in your house has a spare tablet, and you want something that arrives in a box, mounts flush and never needs a second thought — buy the Skylight. A purpose-built display with its own wall mount will always look tidier than an old iPad on a stand, and it is genuinely a nicer object.
It also syncs with more calendar services than Nido does today. If your household lives in iCloud or Outlook rather than Google, Skylight will fit better right now.
Where Nido wins
You already own the screen. Almost every family has a tablet that has been retired for being too slow for games and is still perfectly capable of showing a calendar. Nido's whole design starts there — it even keeps a stripped-down build for tablets too old to run modern web apps, so an iPad stuck on iOS 12 still works.
Nothing is behind a second paywall. The chore rewards and the meal planning — the two features families most often buy a display for — are in the free plan. Premium lifts the limits on how many kids and chores you can have; it does not unlock the features.
And you are not committed to a piece of hardware. Try it tonight on whatever screen is nearest. If your family does not use it, you have lost an evening rather than three hundred dollars.
Questions people ask
- Is Nido a Skylight Calendar alternative?
- Yes — it does the same job. Nido shows a merged family calendar and a per-kid chore board on an always-on wall screen. The difference is that Skylight sells you the screen and Nido uses one you already own.
- Do I need to buy anything to use Nido?
- No. Nido runs in a browser, so any old iPad, Android tablet, spare laptop or TV browser works. If it loads a web page, it runs the board.
- Can I still use my Skylight if I switch?
- The Skylight runs its own software, so Nido cannot be installed on it. What you can do is run Nido on any other screen in the house and keep the Skylight for photos.
- Does Nido sync with Google Calendar?
- Yes. Connect Google Calendar per household, pick which calendars to show, and give each one a colour. It is read-only — Nido never writes to your calendars.
- What does Nido cost?
- Free for 2 kids and 10 active chores. Nido Premium is $4.99 / month for unlimited kids and chores.
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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