We compared Google Calendar and Apple's built-in calendar app for the iPhone - and the winner is clear

Both Apple Calendar and Google Calendar offer the convenience factor, because they free come with other accounts and devices that you probably already use.

If you use Gmail, Google Drive, or any other G Suite services, you already have access to your Google Calendar through any web browser. For more mobile-minded folks, there is a free Google Calendar app for both Android and iOS devices.

Sadly, there isn't a Google Calendar app yet for Mac OS computers or Windows 10.

As expected, you won't find an Apple Calendar app for any Android or Windows devices.

More than anything — in my humble opinion — a calendar app needs to be easy to use.

The vast majority of the time when I open up my virtual calendar, I'm in the middle of making plans with friends or trying to find time for an important call, and the last thing I want is to take more than a few seconds to see my schedule or add a new event.

Google Calendar's colorful, spaced-out style makes looking at even a particularly packed schedule look tidy and organized across every page of the mobile app.

The "schedule view" makes this especially easy by displaying all my upcoming events in one long, visually appealing list that's organized by date.

Google Calendar also automatically decorates my events with these stock images based on their titles.

The designers were clearly opting for efficiency over style, which I can respect, except that the trade-off did not include the ease of use that so many Apple products are known for.

The calendar events shown above are much more sparse than my typical weekly schedule, but Apple's preference for small, faint text and minimal color make it feel very chaotic.

In the past, the blandness of this view has actually caused me to overlook things or double book myself because I simply missed an event that didn't catch my eye on the calendar.

Google Calendar works seamlessly alongside my other Google apps, like Gmail and Hangouts.

For example, when you get an email about a specific event or appointment such as a flight, concert, or dinner reservation, Google's tech can scan that information and automatically add it as an event on your calendar.

Google Calendar is also very commonly integrated with third party tools — particularly ones meant for use in the workplace, like Slack, Salesforce, and Trello.

For example, the iCloud calendar can also scan your iMessages and emails for appointments, but it does not put an event on your calendar automatically. Instead, it simply highlights a section of text that might be useful for a calendar event, and asks you what to do next.

And since Google apps are so frequently used in offices throughout the country, you'll find third-party integrations with the iCloud's calendar are less common.

Google Calendar is the leading solution for workplace calendar management, largely because of its sharing features.

You can invite coworkers, friends, or family to any event by simply attaching their email address in the "guests" bar highlighted above. If they also happen to use Google calendars, accepting the invite will cause your event populate their calendar as well.

The service also allows users to invite anyone (even those without a G Suite account) to view or edit entire calendars, as well as create shared calendars that multiple people can view and edit from their own devices.

For example, I have a shared calendar that my significant other and I can both view and add events to. This way, we can keep track of our plans together more efficiently. Similarly, Business Insider has an internal calendar that any employee can use to see when their coworkers will be out of the office, as well as add their own vacation time to the schedule. The same system works for both small groups and massive companies.

In the example above, I tried to invite my co-worker, Katie Canales, to a local happy hour this Friday.

Although Apple's Calendar app recognized her email address from my Inbox app, I still couldn't send her an invite because I hadn't manually added her email address to my contacts list.

Syncing your Gmail contacts to your iCloud contacts could solve this problem, but if you're like me and prefer to keep your work and personal lists separate, there isn't a great solution here.

Perhaps if you have no interest in sharing your schedule with friends or colleagues and prefer to keep your plans to yourself, this lack of connectivity won't be an issue for you. Personally, I've found that my online calendar is a great way to communicate and keep track of plans with others, so I rely on being able to share events with the other people involved.

Both Apple's and Google's services offer an array of choices for notifications that alert you when an event on your calendar is coming up, including the choice between a heads up in the form of an email, a push-notification, or none of the above.

For Google, this also includes allowing users to set default notifications that will apply to every event you put on a particular calendar. This way, if you want to receive a push notification 10 minutes before every meeting on your work calendar, you can change the default setting once, and all your future events will automatically send the correct notification.

Google Calendar makes it easy to set defaults for each of my different calendars, so I rarely have to worry about being reminded when events are coming up.

However, Apple's "Time to leave" alert is unique to Apple's service, and can be extremely helpful for those of us who are too busy to remember to think so far ahead.

The feature — which Google's service does not offer — will automatically let you know how heavy the traffic is on the route to your next event, and will advice you on how early you should leave.

However, the alert is practically useless for a person who takes the bus everywhere, like myself, whose travel time won't be affected by street traffic.

Google's platform lets users set preferences for nearly every feature of the software within the actual software itself. This includes being able to adjust the colors and density of the view, enable or disable certain features, and adjust settings like the timezone and privacy to uniquely fulfill the purposes of each calendar.

Because Apple's Calendar settings are managed through the Settings app on iOS, customizing the app can be confusing or taxing for those who are, shall we say, less than tech-savvy.

The drawback of Google's free service and seamless multi-app integrations is that the same tech Google uses to scan your emails for calendar events will undoubtedly collect and store your personal data.

It's similar to what Google does with Gmail. Google executives aren't snooping through your personal schedule for fun — it's more that Google's algorithms look for patterns in what you do and where you spend time, in order to feed those back into the search giant's overall picture of you and your habits.

The Ringer has a good deep dive into this.

Apple has always championed user privacy in its software and device design, and it says it does not gather any personal data from your calendar.

Their platform is more versatile, easier to use, and more customizable, making it the better option for both casual, non-tech-savvy users and the busiest organization-enthusiasts alike.