How to add travel time between appointments in Calendly

The short answer: can Calendly add travel time?

Calendly has no setting called travel time. What it has is buffers: time held before or after a booking so nobody else can book it. Calendly's buffer guide lists them as available on all plans, and a post from Calendly's community team suggests using them for travel between in-person meetings.

A buffer is the same number of minutes every time. In that community post, from June 2025, a Calendly community manager wrote that there isn't any way right now to automatically determine the length of travel buffer needed between two addresses. So the answer is yes, you can add travel time, and you choose how much.

Calendly can still collect the address. Its location guide describes an Ask invitee option, which adds a location question to the booking page. The answer appears in the confirmation and the calendar event. It is there for you to read. The guide does not say it changes the times on offer.

• Calendly's buffer guide
• Calendly's community post on buffers for travel time

Step by step: set a travel buffer in Calendly

These steps follow Calendly's help pages. Do them for each event type that happens at a customer's address.

Calendly's guide explains three things that catch people out. A before buffer and an after buffer stack between two bookings, so 15 and 15 hold 30 minutes. Buffers on bookings already made don't update when you change the event type. And a buffer doesn't stop a booking at the edge of your working hours: a visit can still be booked to end at closing time, with the buffer running past it.

• Go to the Scheduling page and find the event type. Open its menu and choose Edit.
• Choose More options, then open Limits and buffers.
• Choose Set buffer time. Add minutes before the meeting, after it, or both. For travel, most people use one side only, so the gap is easy to reason about.
• Save changes.
• In the Location section of the same event type, choose Ask invitee, so the customer types their address when they book.
• In the availability settings, set a minimum scheduling notice. A visit booked for an hour's time gives you no chance to check the drive.
• Open your booking link in a private window and book a test visit. Check the gap that appears in your calendar.

• Calendly's steps for setting buffer time
• Calendly's location options, including Ask invitee
• Calendly's minimum scheduling notice

What a fixed buffer can't know

Here is an example with made-up distances and drive times. You do 45-minute visits and set a 20-minute buffer after each one. Three different customers book the slot after a visit.

The buffer is right for one journey out of three. On a day of short hops like the first row, four gaps leave 64 minutes unused. On a day with one journey like the third row, you are 18 minutes late, and the customer after that feels it too.

You can make the buffer bigger to cover the long drive. Then every short hop wastes more. You can make it smaller to tighten the day. Then the long drive hurts more. A fixed number has to be wrong for somebody.

• Choose a buffer using your own journey records
• More worked examples of travel time between appointments

When a fixed buffer is enough

Plenty of mobile businesses run well on a buffer. If the list below sounds like you, set the buffer, check it once a month, and spend your time on something else.

A simple test: write down your drive times for one week. If the longest is within about ten minutes of the shortest, one number can cover them all without much waste.

• Your customers live in one compact area, so most drives are a similar length.
• You take a few bookings a day, and a spare quarter of an hour doesn't cost you a job.
• You work different areas on different days, and each area has its own event type and buffer. This is the tip Calendly's community post gives.
• You read each new booking's address anyway and don't mind moving the odd one.
• Most of your Calendly bookings are calls, and home visits are the exception.

• Free calculator: what a longer journey costs you

When to use address-aware booking instead

The buffer stops being enough when your drives vary a lot, when you take many bookings a day, or when you find yourself checking a map for every booking. At that point the address needs to shape the times, not sit in a note.

CalMov is built that way. The customer enters their address first, and CalMov only offers times you can reach, allowing for the journey before and after each visit. On Pro, drive times come from the roads, with expected traffic. You can also set a service area by distance or drive time, so people outside it can't book.

Be clear about the plans. On the free Lite plan, CalMov uses a fixed travel gap that you set, which is the same idea as a Calendly buffer. The road-based drive times are on Pro, at £22 a month at the founder price and £29 as standard ($29 and $39 in the US), with a 14-day free trial and no card.

CalMov is not a replacement for everything Calendly does. It has no team routing, and Lite and Pro are for one person. Many people keep Calendly for calls and use CalMov for visits.

• See how CalMov checks travel around appointments
• Calendly and CalMov compared for mobile businesses
• Read why Nova Fades moved from Calendly

What happens when a booking moves

Moving a booking is where fixed buffers get forgotten. The buffer travels with the booking, but the drive changes, because the neighbours are now different customers at different addresses.

In Calendly, check both sides by hand whenever a visit is rescheduled. Look at the address before it and the address after it. Remember that a booking made before you changed your buffer still carries the old one. Calendly's guide says you can show buffers on the Meetings page and edit them there.

In CalMov, you drag the booking to a new time on the calendar, and it checks that the new time fits, including the drive. The calendar also shows the drive time between visits and the drive back to base, so a tight gap is visible before it becomes a late arrival.

Checklist to set it up either way

Whichever tool you use, the groundwork is the same: know your real journeys, protect the edges of the day, and test as a customer.

• Record a week of real gaps: packing up, driving, parking and walking in.
• In Calendly: set one buffer per event type from those records, not from your quickest trip.
• In Calendly: turn on Ask invitee for the location, and set a minimum scheduling notice.
• In Calendly: block the drive home in your calendar if you must be back by a set time, because the buffer can run past your working hours.
• In Calendly: after any change to buffers, check the bookings you already have.
• In CalMov: set your service area, minimum notice and booking window. On Lite, set your travel gap. On Pro, drive times are worked out for you.
• In either: book a test visit from a near address and a far one, on a phone, before you share the link.
• In either: look again in a month. Count late arrivals and wasted gaps, then adjust.

• CalMov for home-visit businesses