Reclaim vs Motion: which AI calendar is right for you

Published by 3Gen Internet Corporation, maker of OpenAssistant, Skej and AGNT. Comparisons use public documentation, without hands-on testing.

Neither product in this comparison is ours. Neither one emails your guests to find a time, though. If that is the job you need done, an assistant such as OpenAssistant does it.

The short answer

Pick Reclaim if meetings eat your week. Pick Motion if tasks do. Both put AI in charge of your calendar, but they start from different places.

• Reclaim starts from your calendar. It protects focus time, places recurring habits, moves flexible meetings, and gives you booking links. It has a free plan and costs less.
• Motion starts from your task list. It is a work suite (projects, tasks, docs, notes) that schedules your tasks onto your calendar and reshuffles the plan when things change. It has no free plan and costs more.

If your problem is “meetings eat my week,” Reclaim is the closer fit. If your problem is “I have more tasks than hours and no plan for them,” Motion is the closer fit. If you need iCloud Calendar, only Motion lists it.

Side by side

Pricing in detail

Reclaim

All prices are per seat per month, from Reclaim’s pricing page.

What the tiers change, per the same page:

• Lite can schedule 1 week ahead (Scheduling Links excluded), with 1 scheduling link and 1 calendar sync. Starter goes to 8 weeks and 3 links. Business and Enterprise go to 12 weeks with unlimited links.
• Delegated access for assistants and admins starts at Business. SSO and SCIM are Enterprise only.
• Smart Meetings with 3 or more people can require paid “Attendee User” packs for attendees who don’t have a paid seat. Two-person meetings don’t need them.

The page also carried short-term promotions. We left them out because they change often.

Motion

From Motion’s pricing page with each tab and billing toggle selected.

Two things to know before you compare these numbers with Reclaim’s:

• Motion’s plans include AI credits: 7,500 per seat a month on Pro AI and 15,000 on Business AI. On annual billing that works out to about 25 cents and 19 cents per 100 credits. The pricing page doesn’t say what extra credits cost (Motion pricing).
• Motion says “Purchases are non-refundable,” though it may refund at its discretion (Motion cancellation help). The pricing page offers a free trial but doesn’t say how long it lasts.

For one person on annual billing, Reclaim Starter is $10 a month and Motion Pro AI on the Individuals tab is $29 a month. Reclaim’s free Lite plan has no Motion equivalent.

How each one schedules

Reclaim: defend the calendar you have

• Focus Time. You set a weekly goal and Reclaim defends it around your other events. It has a proactive mode and a reactive mode, the reactive one stepping in only when the week gets too full. It can also auto-decline meetings during focus time if you turn that on (Reclaim pricing).
• Habits. These are recurring events, such as lunch or a weekly review, that float inside a time window. A habit can move, shorten to a minimum, or skip when you’re busy (Reclaim 2.0 FAQ).
• Tasks. Reclaim pulls work from Jira, Asana, ClickUp, Todoist “and more” into calendar time. It plans around deadlines and splits big tasks into sessions (Reclaim tasks).
• Smart Meetings. These are built for meetings of up to 5 people. Reclaim’s current help docs say they “never reschedule automatically”. It alerts you and suggests new times instead (Reclaim 2.0 FAQ). The pricing page still uses older wording about resolving conflicts automatically. We went with the more specific help doc.
• Booking links. Each link has a priority. A higher-priority link can book over flexible time, and Reclaim then moves whatever it displaced (Reclaim 2.0 FAQ).

Motion: plan the work, then fit the meetings in

• Auto-scheduling. Motion says it “continuously plans your day by deciding what you should work on and when” (Motion help). Its calendar recalculates when plans change and flags when you’re over capacity (Motion AI calendar).
• Booking pages. These come with meeting templates, pre-meeting questions, reminders, and a daily meeting cap that makes you “unbookable” once you hit it (Motion AI Meeting Assistant). A booking can land on a task marked “free”, and Motion moves the task. Bookings can’t land on tasks marked “busy” or “fixed” (Motion booking links FAQ).
• Beyond the calendar. Every plan includes projects, docs, wiki, notes and an AI writer. Business AI adds capacity planning, Gantt charts and time tracking (Motion pricing). Motion also has an AI meeting notetaker (Motion home).

The real difference: Reclaim leaves your task list where it already lives and pulls tasks onto the calendar. Motion wants to be the place your tasks live. If your team already runs on Jira or Asana, Reclaim asks for less change. If you have no system yet, Motion gives you one.

Where Reclaim is stronger

• It’s free to start, and cheaper after that. A useful free plan, and paid seats from $10 a month on annual billing.
• Focus time is the core feature. Proactive and reactive modes, plus optional auto-decline, all on the free plan (Reclaim pricing).
• Better booking links for teams. Round robin and team links. Business and Enterprise also get webhooks for bookings, reschedules and cancellations (Reclaim pricing).
• You keep your task tools. It integrates with Jira, Asana, ClickUp, Todoist, Linear and Google Tasks (Reclaim integrations). Most of these are on paid plans.

Where Motion is stronger

• iCloud Calendar. Motion lists it. Reclaim lists only Google and Outlook.
• One tool for tasks and calendar. Projects, docs and scheduling sit in one place, with mobile and desktop apps on every plan (Motion pricing).
• Task-first planning. If deadlines matter more to you than meetings, Motion’s model is built around them.

Things to check before you buy

• Reclaim and Outlook. Reclaim says Outlook support is “fully available,” but its help article lists limits. It has no Outlook Tasks, no Teams chat status, and free/busy for people outside Reclaim may be “slightly inaccurate” (Reclaim Outlook help). Two of Reclaim’s own pages disagree on whether delegated and shared Outlook calendars work, so ask Reclaim before you rely on it if an assistant manages your calendar.
• Motion and data location. Motion says its data is on Google Cloud in Iowa and that data “is not stored in the European Union” (Motion security). That matters for some EU buyers.
• Reclaim and AI processing. Reclaim’s AI disclosure says it uses privately hosted language models inside Dropbox’s environment. Its chat and MCP features use third-party AI services (Reclaim AI disclosure).

Which should you pick?

• You live in meetings and want your focus time back: Reclaim.
• You want to try before paying anything: Reclaim (Lite is free; Motion offers only a trial).
• Your team already uses Jira, Asana or Linear: Reclaim.
• You need iCloud Calendar: Motion.
• You want tasks, projects and calendar in one app: Motion.
• You’re an EU company with data residency rules: read both security pages. Motion says EU storage isn’t offered.
• You want an assistant that emails outside guests and negotiates a time: neither one does that. OpenAssistant (ours) works by cc, text and Slack, and has a free Starter plan.

Our lean, based on published features and price: Reclaim for people whose main problem is meetings, Motion for people whose main problem is task overload.

Related reading

• Clockwise alternatives: What to use now that Clockwise has shut down; Reclaim is the closest replacement.
• OpenAssistant vs Reclaim: OpenAssistant for scheduling done for you, Reclaim for defending your own week at a low price.
• Whether AI schedulers protect your focus time: Reclaim is the only product here that says it creates, defends and rebuilds focus time.
• How to delegate your calendar to an AI assistant: Write your rules first, grant the least access that works, roll out in stages and keep the calls only you should make.
• The best AI assistant for startup founders: Seven tools compared for founders, with price and a no-sales-call start weighed heavily; Claude costs less once you pay.

Frequently asked questions

Is Reclaim or Motion cheaper?

Reclaim. Its paid plans start at $10 per seat per month on annual billing, and it has a free Lite plan. Motion’s Pro AI starts at $19 per seat per month on annual team billing and has no free plan.

Which has better booking links?

Reclaim, for teams: it offers individual, team, round robin and one-off links. Motion’s booking page has templates and a daily meeting cap, but its customization is “limited at this time.”

Does Reclaim or Motion work with iCloud Calendar?

Only Motion lists iCloud, and it describes iCloud support as “more basic.” Reclaim lists Google and Outlook.

Does either one email guests to find a time?

No. Both protect and plan your own calendar. For an assistant that negotiates with outside guests by email, see OpenAssistant or the other assistants you cc.

Try OpenAssistant

If your real problem is the email back-and-forth, not your own calendar, try OpenAssistant. It starts free, and you can compare plans on the pricing page.