What's the best app for making plans with friends?

The best app for making plans with friends depends on what actually makes planning difficult for your group.

If finding a time is the problem, a shared calendar or scheduling poll might be best. If you're organising a bigger party or more formal event, an event platform may make more sense. And if your friends already make plans easily in a group chat, you might not need another app at all.

Loopt is designed for something slightly different: everyday social plans. Put up what you're doing, add some people, and, where it makes sense, let them add people they know too.

So rather than looking for the planning app with the longest feature list, start with the problem you're actually trying to solve.

If finding a date is the hard part

Sometimes making the plan is easy. Finding a time when everyone is free isn't.

In that case, tools built around shared availability or scheduling polls are probably the most useful. Howbout is built around a shared social calendar, while Doodle lets a group vote on possible times.

You don't necessarily need a whole new way of making plans. You just need a better way to answer: when can everyone do it?

If you're organising a bigger event

A birthday party or bigger organised event can need something different again.

You might want a dedicated event page, more formal responses from people or other event-specific tools. Platforms such as Partiful are built much more around that kind of occasion.

That's different from deciding to go to the pub on Thursday and seeing who fancies coming.

If your group chat already works, keep using it

Not every friendship group needs a planning app.

If someone suggests dinner in WhatsApp, everyone replies, you pick Thursday and nobody loses track of what's happening, you've solved the problem.

Things get more frustrating when the plan is buried between hundreds of other messages, nobody knows who's actually in, or one person has to keep chasing everyone and repeating the details.

That's when moving the plan somewhere of its own can become useful.

If you make casual plans that can grow through people

This is the kind of planning Loopt is designed for.

You can put up an everyday plan, add the people you want to include and decide whether they can add other people too.

Say you're going for drinks after work.

You add three friends. One adds someone from their flat. Another adds a friend you met once before. Someone can't make it this time, but they can leave this plan and still be listed as one of your connections for the next time you're making plans.

The plan doesn't need to start with one perfectly defined group of people. It can grow through the people already involved.

That's one of the biggest differences between Loopt and tools that mainly help an existing group find a date.

So which planning app should you use?

Choose based on the bit you actually find difficult.

If it's finding a time, look for scheduling or shared-calendar tools.

If it's organising a bigger or more formal occasion, an event platform may suit you better.

If it's choosing what to do, there are apps specifically designed around suggestions and group voting.

If your group chat works perfectly well, keep it.

And if you want somewhere for everyday plans to live, with the option for plans to grow naturally through people you know, that's what Loopt is built for.

The goal isn't to add another app to your life for the sake of it. It's to make it easier to actually spend time together.