Pyas vs. Aurinko: Unified Email and Calendar API vs. Calendar API

The core difference

Aurinko is a unified API for most of what lives in a work account. Its docs cover email, calendar, contacts and tasks, and the product line adds CRM APIs, a CRM sync product called BrightSync, add-ons for Outlook, Teams, Chrome and Google Workspace, a Storage API and email tracking. Calendar is one API among several. On top of it, Aurinko offers scheduling: booking profiles and a booking page it can host.

Pyas is a calendar API. It covers Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, adds Zoom for meeting links, and does nothing else. Within that scope it handles the parts that slow a calendar integration down: sign-in that Google, Microsoft and Zoom have already verified, meeting links on Meet, Teams and Zoom from one field, and a sandbox with sample calendars to build against.

So the decision is mostly about scope. If your product needs a user's inbox, contacts or CRM records next to their calendar, Aurinko covers all of it through one connection, and Pyas cannot. If calendar is the feature, Pyas does less in total, does more on calendars, and costs less once you pass about 45 connected accounts.

When Aurinko is the right choice

You need more than the calendar. An email client, a sales tool that logs messages to a CRM, or an assistant that reads the inbox all need data beyond the calendar. Aurinko's full platform is $2 per account a month for any of its APIs, IMAP included, with unlimited traffic.

Your users are on iCloud or Exchange. Aurinko lists iCloud calendar and Exchange through EWS with a server URL.

You want a booking page without building one. Aurinko's booking profiles, Booking API and Group Booking API come with a page Aurinko hosts or one you embed in an iframe.

You are small and staying small. At $1 per calendar account, Aurinko costs less than Pyas from 4 accounts up to about 45. Pyas is free for the first 3. At 20 accounts, Aurinko is $20 and Pyas is $27.50.

When Pyas is the right choice

Calendar is the feature, and you want it live without Google's review. With Pyas Auth, users approve sign-in on Google's, Microsoft's and Zoom's own consent screens, and Google, Microsoft and Zoom have already verified it. That is included on every plan, the free one too.

You need Zoom links. One conferencing field gives Google Meet on Google, Teams on Microsoft 365 work accounts and Zoom on any calendar, and Pyas creates the Zoom meeting. See meeting links on Meet, Teams and Zoom.

You want to build before you have users. Every Pyas app has a sandbox of simulated Google, Outlook and Zoom accounts with sample people and real-looking calendars.

You are building for AI agents. Pyas runs a hosted MCP server at mcp.pyas.io, and the same server ships as @pyas/mcp to run locally with a read-only mode.

You expect volume. At 200 accounts Pyas is $75 against Aurinko's $200. At 1,000 it is $275 against $1,000. The price table above has the rest.

Who handles Google's review

Any app that reads or writes Google calendars asks for sensitive scopes, and before the public can use it, Google reviews the app: your domain, privacy policy and a demo video of how the app uses calendar data. Google quotes days. Developers often report weeks. The Google OAuth verification guide covers what the review asks for.

Aurinko leaves that review with you. Its FAQ is direct: "Aurinko chooses not to provide a shared verified Google Cloud OAuth application at this time." (source). Its default app registrations come "with limited permissions" and are for development. In production, users approve your Google app, and your Google project is the one under review. On Microsoft, you register your own app in Azure AD.

With Pyas Auth, users approve sign-in on Google's, Microsoft's and Zoom's consent screens, and Google, Microsoft and Zoom have already verified it, so you skip Google's review. If you would rather show your own name on those screens, Native Auth lets you use your own Google or Microsoft app instead, per provider. Then the review is yours again, as it is with Aurinko.

What Aurinko does well

Breadth is the obvious strength. One connection gives you a user's mail, calendar, contacts and tasks, and the same company sells CRM APIs, CRM sync and add-ons that run inside Outlook, Teams, Chrome and Google Workspace. A product that needs several of those avoids stitching vendors together.

Aurinko's docs list "Google, Office 365, Outlook.com, MS Exchange," and its Calendar API adds iCloud.

Aurinko has free/busy and a meeting time endpoint that will "Suggest meeting times for a collection of users, or resources," and its scheduling page describes searching "for availability across multiple users and their calendar providers." On top of that it offers booking profiles, group booking and a hosted booking page.

Pricing is simple and low at small sizes. One price per active account, a free 14-day trial, and an option to mirror your own app's trial so that "newly connected accounts are not billed" (billing docs).

Aurinko also says it does not store message, event, contact or task contents, and passes data through.

Where Pyas is different

Sign-in. Pyas Auth is the main difference, covered above. Your users connect through Google's, Microsoft's and Zoom's consent screens and you skip Google's review.

Connecting accounts. Aurinko sends users to the provider's sign-in form. Pyas has PyasConnect, a dialog in your own page for React, Vue, Angular or plain HTML, and with the SDK the session endpoint behind it is one line.

Events. Create, read, update and delete work across Google and Outlook in one shape. Every event carries UTC plus local time and its IANA time zone. Recurring series and single occurrences are both handled, every write takes an idempotency key, and an If-Match version check refuses an update that would overwrite someone else's change.

Meeting links. Aurinko's onlineMeeting field assumes the calendar's default provider, hangoutsMeet or teamsForBusiness. Zoom for events is not documented in its docs. Pyas creates Zoom meetings through the host's connected Zoom account, on Google or Outlook calendars. Teams works on Microsoft 365 work accounts and is refused with a clear error on Outlook.com personal accounts.

Free time. Free/busy covers up to 20 accounts, and meeting times return the first slots everyone is free inside working hours, with buffers, minimum notice, optional attendees and rooms, across Google and Outlook in one call.

Webhooks. Both products send IDs and let your app read the record. Aurinko's payload items are {id, changeType}, shared across messages, contacts and events (webhooks). Pyas webhooks are signed, retried up to 8 attempts and replayable, each names the exact event or calendar that changed, and Pyas keeps Google push channels and Microsoft Graph subscriptions renewed. More in the webhooks guide. Like Aurinko, Pyas does not store copies of users' events.

Account health. Each connected account reports its status, why it broke and the fix. A connection.broken webhook tells you when it happens, and the user reconnects inside your app with PyasConnect, keeping the same accountId.

Testing. Aurinko documents no sandbox or sample data, so you connect a real test account. Pyas test keys reach a sandbox that never touches a real calendar, and the CLI streams sandbox webhooks to your laptop.

Tooling. Aurinko documents a Bubble.io plugin, and SDKs and an MCP server are not documented in its docs. Pyas ships a TypeScript SDK for Node.js, a CLI, starter templates, the MCP server and @pyas/ai-tools for the Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, OpenAI and Anthropic tool use. Python, PHP, Ruby and Go SDKs are planned. Pyas runs no AI models itself.

Free plan. Pyas's Developer plan is free for 3 connected accounts, in production, with no credit card. Aurinko's trial lasts 14 days.

Can you use both?

For the same users, rarely. Each product needs its own sign-in to the user's Google or Microsoft account, so a user would approve two apps for overlapping access, and you would maintain two integrations against the same calendars. Few products are worth that.

There are two cases where it can make sense. If you use Aurinko only for CRM data, the CRM is a separate connection from the user's calendar, so Pyas for calendars and Aurinko for CRM do not overlap. And if a small group of your users are on iCloud or Exchange, you could serve them through Aurinko and everyone else through Pyas, at the cost of two code paths. Weigh that against running everything on Aurinko.

Questions to ask before you choose

• Do you need email, contacts, tasks or CRM data? If yes, Aurinko has them.
• Are any of your users on iCloud or Exchange? Aurinko supports both.
• Do you want to go through Google's review yourself? With Aurinko in production you will. With Pyas Auth you will not, unless you choose Native Auth to show your own name.
• Do you need Zoom links on events? Pyas creates them. Zoom for events is not documented in Aurinko's docs.
• Do you want a hosted booking page? Aurinko has one. With Pyas you build it on free/busy and meeting times.
• How many accounts will you have in a year? From 4 to about 45, Aurinko's calendar price is lower. Up to 3, Pyas is free. Above that, Pyas is, and the gap grows: $275 against $1,000 at 1,000 accounts.
• Is your stack TypeScript, or are you building agents? Pyas has a TypeScript SDK and an MCP server. Neither is documented for Aurinko.

Moving from Aurinko to Pyas

The events themselves do not move. They live in your users' Google and Outlook calendars, and Aurinko passes data through rather than keeping it, so there is nothing to export.

1. Build against the sandbox first. Point your calendar code at Pyas with test keys and run it against the sandbox's simulated accounts until your flows work.
2. Map your webhook handling. Where you handle Aurinko's {id, changeType} items for events, handle Pyas's webhooks instead. Each names the event or calendar by its IDs, and your app reads it.
3. Have users reconnect once. Add PyasConnect to your settings page. Each user signs in through it one time, and from then on your app reads and writes their calendars through Pyas.
4. Retire your Aurinko calendar code once every user has reconnected.

iCloud and Exchange users cannot move to Pyas. Plan for them before you start.

Looking for an Aurinko alternative?

Start with what you actually use Aurinko for. The calendar, the inbox and the booking page each point to a different answer.

If you only use Aurinko for calendars

Pyas fits. You get events, free/busy, meeting times and webhooks across Google and Outlook, Zoom links, and no Google review with Pyas Auth. Above about 45 accounts it also costs less. See pricing and the Google Calendar API and Outlook Calendar API pages.

If Google's review is what is holding you up

Pyas Auth is included on every plan, so you can launch a Google calendar feature without waiting on your own verification. Microsoft admins may still need to approve calendar access in work tenants.

If you need email or CRM data too

Pyas will not cover that. Stay with Aurinko, or compare it with other unified APIs that include email.

If you are building an AI agent that books meetings

Pyas's MCP server and @pyas/ai-tools give an agent calendar reads, free time and event writes. The hosted server works in your app's sandbox, or on real calendars when you allow it, with each change confirmed by you; with a live key, @pyas/mcp works on real calendars too. The agents guide shows the setup, and use cases has more examples.

Other options

• Pyas vs. Nylas
• Pyas vs. Cronofy
• Pyas vs. Apiroc
• Pyas vs. Unipile
• Building it yourself on the official Google Calendar API and Microsoft Graph. You own the OAuth apps, Google's review, push channel renewal and the differences between the two providers.

The bottom line

Aurinko reaches a user's mail, contacts, tasks and CRM records as well as the calendar, connects iCloud and Exchange, and has a hosted booking page. Pyas is built for calendars on Google Calendar, Outlook and Zoom. You skip Google's review with Pyas Auth, get Zoom links, a sandbox, a TypeScript SDK and an MCP server, and pay $275 for 1,000 accounts where Aurinko's calendar API costs $1,000. Start in the sandbox to try it.