Skylight vs Hearth vs Cozyla vs Cozi: The Real 3-Year Cost

Every comparison of these four calendars runs the same play: list the sticker price, maybe mention there’s a subscription somewhere, move on. A few sites do run that math, but they bury it inside sprawling tables covering everything from tablets to smart fridges. Nobody puts just these four side by side and stops there. That’s the number that matters, because three of these four charge you every year for as long as you own the product.

Affiliate disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The prices and specs below come from each company’s own site, checked directly, not supplied by them.

The quick answer

Configurations shown are each brand’s most-reviewed model. Sizes don’t line up evenly across brands: Skylight runs 10” to 27”, Cozyla 15.6” to 32”, Hearth only comes in one size. Full breakdown below.

Skylight Calendar

Price: $299.99 for the 15” model, the one most reviewers actually own. A 10” runs closer to $200, the 27” Max climbs to $600+.

Subscription: Skylight Plus, $79/year. The calendar syncs and displays without it, permanently. What sits behind Plus is Magic Import (forward a school email or photograph a paper flyer and it becomes a calendar event), meal planning, the photo screensaver, and chore rewards. Sourced from research: multiple 2026 reviews single out Magic Import as the feature that actually saves time, which means the subscription isn’t really optional if that’s why you bought it.

3-year total: $536.99.

What it’s actually good at: the lowest entry price of the three touchscreens, the widest calendar sync (two-way with Google, meaning an edit on your phone updates the display and vice versa; other calendar apps only flow one direction, into Skylight, not back out), and the biggest install base, over a million homes according to Skylight’s own numbers.

Where it falls short: the gap between what the marketing shows and what the base hardware does. You buy a $300 screen expecting the email-import trick, then hit a paywall for the one feature you saw in the ad.

Bottom line: the cheapest way into a family touchscreen calendar, as long as you go in already planning to pay the $79 a year.

Hearth Display

Price: $699 list, though $599 early-adopter pricing shows up periodically. One size only, 27”.

Subscription: Family Membership, required to set the device up at all past the trial. Monthly is $9 ($108/yr). The annual plan drops that to $86.40/yr, and multi-year plans go lower still. Sourced from research: one review of the free tier without membership found it limited to a bare calendar and family profiles, no chores, no task management.

3-year total: $958.20, using the annual plan. Stay on monthly and you’re closer to $1,023.

What it’s actually good at: Hearth is built around child development specifically, routines, star-based rewards, and independence-building for younger kids, not just a shared calendar with a nicer screen. If that’s the actual problem you’re solving, the design shows it.

Where it falls short: the price. You’re paying $250 to $400 more over three years than the other two touchscreens for a product that, once you strip the parenting philosophy out, does roughly the same core job.

Bottom line: worth the premium only if the child-habit-building angle is the reason you’re buying, not the calendar itself.

Cozyla Calendar+2

Price: $699.99 for the 24” model. A 15.6” runs $349.99, the 32” tops out near $899.99. Frequent seasonal discounts knock $70 to $135 off any of them.

Subscription: none, on the Calendar+2 line. Every feature the other two charge extra for, meal planning, chore charts, photo screensaver, event sync, ships in the box price. Cozyla also sells a cheaper “Calendar Neo” line where an optional $79.99/yr plan unlocks advanced extras, but the flagship Calendar+2 line, the one actually being compared here, stays subscription-free.

3-year total: $699.99. Flat, because there’s nothing recurring to add.

What it’s actually good at: more than just the price. It runs on an Android base, so you can install outside apps beyond the built-in suite, something neither Skylight nor Hearth allows. It also spans the widest size range of the three, 15.6 to 32 inches, and every core family feature, chores, rewards, habits, meal planning, photo screensaver, smart import, ships free. An optional Calendar Super plan, $69.99 a year, exists for an unlimited AI voice agent and a photo art-gallery mode, but nothing essential sits behind it, and it’s still the only one of the three where the number on the box is the number you pay for everything that matters.

Where it falls short: the highest upfront price of the three for a mid-size unit, and the smallest installed base, which means fewer third-party reviews and a thinner track record than Skylight.

Bottom line: costs more on day one, costs less by year two, and unlike the other two touchscreens, doesn’t gate its core features behind a paywall to get there.

Cozi

Price: $0. Cozi is an app, not a device. It runs on whatever phone, tablet, or browser your family already owns.

Subscription: the free tier works, but sourced from research: since May 2024, free accounts can only see 30 days of calendar forward, which makes planning anything past next month genuinely difficult. Cozi Gold removes that cap along with ads, for $39/year. A newer Cozi Max tier adds AI meal-planning and event-import features for $79.99/year.

3-year total: $117 on Gold, the tier you’d actually need to use this as your real calendar. $0 if you’re willing to live inside the 30-day window, which most families won’t be.

What it’s actually good at: by far the cheapest option here, and the only one that doesn’t ask you to buy new hardware. If you’ve already got a spare tablet mounted somewhere, this is the lowest-friction way to try a shared family calendar at all.

Bottom line: the right starting point if budget or hardware clutter is the actual objection, with the caveat that the useful version still costs something now.

Which one for who

A subscription is the actual dealbreaker. Cozyla. It’s the only one of the three devices where the price you see is the price you pay, indefinitely.

You already own a spare screen and don’t want another device on the wall. Cozi, budgeting for Gold. Skip the free tier, the 30-day cap makes it impractical for real planning.

Your kids are young and the goal is building routines and independence, not just displaying a calendar. Hearth. You’re paying for the parenting framework as much as the screen.

You want the lowest-cost way into dedicated touchscreen hardware and don’t mind paying yearly. Skylight. Cheapest device, biggest ecosystem, the subscription is the tradeoff.

One thing worth saying plainly: none of these four solve the problem that usually shows up six months after the purchase, which is that one person in the house is still the only one who checks it. A calendar on the wall answers “where do we put the information.” It doesn’t answer “why does only one of us look at it,” and that’s a different problem with a different fix. We wrote the actual protocol for that here.