Calendar · head-to-head
Google Calendar vs LectServe
The Google Calendar API reads and writes events, calendars, free/busy data, and reminders for any Google account that's granted OAuth consent, with push-notification channels available so an app can watch a calendar for changes instead of polling it. It's the same REST API that powers Calendar add-ons and third-party scheduling tools like Calendly. Usage is free under Google's shared per-minute and per-project quotas (10,000 requests/minute/project as of the May 2026 quota update); there's no separate paid tier for the API itself, only future overage billing above a 1,000,000-requests-a-day threshold.
LectServe is a one-person hobby project publishing the daily and Sunday Revised Common/ACNA lectionary readings for Protestant and Anglican churches, with morning/evening prayer citations linked out to Bible Gateway. It answers in either shape depending on the path: /today and /date/YYYY-MM-DD return JSON, while a path like /html/daily/YYYY-MM-DD returns a full HTML page meant to be embedded or scraped — and there's no API key, rate limit, or pricing of any kind — it's maintained by its author, Michael Wayne Arnold, as a labor of love alongside his personal site.
| Google Calendar | LectServe | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON | JSON, HTML |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
LectServe needs no API key, while Google Calendar requires OAuth — pick LectServe to start without signup.