calcurse vs Davis

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeaturecalcurseDavis
CategoryCalendar & ContactsGroupware
LicenseBSD-2-ClauseMIT
LanguageCPHP
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM16 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinary, sourcedocker, bare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 1,301★ 727
First released20042020
ReplacesGoogle CalendarGoogle Calendar, iCloud

Why pick each one

Choose calcurse if…

  • Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C
calcurse details

Choose Davis if…

  • Cleaner UI than Baikal
  • Easy to deploy
Davis details

Frequently asked questions

Is calcurse or Davis better?

Neither is universally better. calcurse has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are calcurse and Davis free and open-source?

Yes. calcurse is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Davis under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run calcurse and Davis with Docker?

calcurse: check the project docs for container support. Davis: yes.

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