The Short Answer

You already have a birthday calendar app, and the problem is usually one setting rather than the app. Google Calendar shows every birthday stored in Google Contacts and, by default, notifies you a week before and on the day. Apple Calendar has a Birthdays calendar fed from Contacts, with its own alert time you choose in Settings. Samsung Calendar can show contact birthdays too, but its birthday alert is a separate switch that is not on with your ordinary event alerts, which is why so many Galaxy users see the birthday on the grid and never get told. Fix the setting before you install anything. If you want more than a calendar entry, the dedicated apps add countdowns, widgets, cards and gift prompts, and the message-based options at the end arrive as a text rather than a badge, which is the only difference that matters if you are a person who swipes notifications away.

The Birthday Calendar You Already Have, and How to Make It Speak Up

All three of the big phone calendars work the same way: they do not store birthdays, your contacts do. The calendar is a view of the address book. That one fact explains most birthday-calendar complaints, including the biggest, which is a birthday that shows on the calendar but never produces a notification.

Google Calendar (Android, iPhone, web)

Birthdays from Google Contacts appear automatically on a Birthdays calendar, and Google's own help page says you get a reminder notification one week before and on the day. Two things to know:

  • You edit the birthday in Contacts, not the calendar. As How-To Geek's guide puts it, the birthdays you see in Google Calendar are your Google Contacts; to add or fix one, open the contact, click Show More and fill in the Birthday field. A missing birthday is a missing contact field.
  • The notification setting is shared by every birthday. On the web, hover over Birthdays in the left sidebar, open its menu and choose Notifications; whatever you set there applies to all of them, as this walkthrough of the setting describes. Per-person timing is not a thing the Birthdays calendar does; for that you open the single birthday event and add a notification to it.

Apple Calendar (iPhone, iPad, Mac)

Apple's Birthdays calendar is fed from Contacts and lives under Other in the calendar list, switched on by default. The part people never find is the alert time: step-by-step guides put it at Settings, then Calendar, then Default Alert Times, then Birthdays, where the choices are on the day of the event or one, two or seven days before. On a Mac the same control sits in Calendar's settings, where Apple's Calendar guide describes the Events, All Day Events and Birthdays pop-up menus for choosing an alert time.

The gotcha is a second switch. In Apple's own support forum, users report that birthdays stored in Contacts fall under the Calendar notification category called Upcoming Events, and that with Upcoming Events disabled you get no birthday notifications at all, whatever your alert time says. Worth two taps to check in Settings, Notifications, Calendar.

Samsung Calendar (Galaxy)

This is the one that catches people, and it is a real difference rather than badge fatigue. Samsung Calendar can show contact birthdays, but the birthday alert is controlled separately from your normal event alerts. Per the Samsung manual pages at TechBone, the path is Calendar, then the menu, Settings, Alert settings, then Contact's birthdays, where you pick how far ahead to be told, up to 99 weeks before. A reply in Samsung's own community forum gives the same route under default alert times for a contact's important dates; menu wording moves around between One UI versions, so look for the contact-dates entry if the labels differ.

One more Samsung quirk, reported by users rather than documented by Samsung: in this community thread, a user found the birthday alert applied only to contacts synced to their Samsung account, not to Google-synced ones, and copying the contacts across fixed it. If your contacts live in Google, using Google Calendar for birthdays is the simpler fix.

If one of these now works for you, stop here. You have a birthday calendar, it is free, and it is already installed. The rest of this page is for people who want more than a calendar entry, or who have learned to ignore one.

Dedicated Birthday Apps, Verified This Week

Everything below was re-checked on October 8, 2026 against each product's own store page or site. Where we could not confirm a price, we do not print one, because birthday apps change their tiers constantly and a stale number is worse than none.

Birday (Android, free and open source)

Birday is the best answer on Android if you want a real app rather than a calendar row. Its F-Droid listing describes it as free and ad-free, imports birthdays from your contacts or calendar with basic duplicate detection and lets you choose what to bring in, and backs up your events in its own format, CSV or JSON to a location you pick. Open source, listed as such on AlternativeTo, and also distributed through the IzzyOnDroid repository. The CSV export is the quiet reason to prefer it: a birthday list you can take with you is a birthday list you only build once.

Contacts' Birthdays (Android)

Contacts' Birthdays does what the name says, reading birthdays from your address book and sending its own notifications. Its Play listing shows 4.6 stars from roughly 11,300 ratings and a recent update adding a manual contact-sync request. We could not open the store page directly from our network this run, so treat the rating as what the listing reported in search rather than a figure we saw ourselves.

Birthday Reminder & Countdown (iPhone)

Birthday Reminder & Countdown by New Marketing Lab imports from Contacts and is the best "see what is coming" app on iPhone: countdowns with photos and ages, and six widgets including a lock-screen one, per AppGrooves' breakdown of its listing. The US App Store listing shows about 10,000 ratings averaging 4.7, iOS 15.6 or later, free to download with a paid Pro tier. Prices differ sharply by country and the snapshots we could read disagreed with each other, so check the figure on your own store page before subscribing.

hip (iPhone)

hip pulls birthdays from contacts, calendars and Facebook, reminds you on iPhone and Apple Watch, and sells greeting cards and gift suggestions inside the app. Free to download with in-app purchases; hip PLUS covers unlimited reminders and removes ads. The listings we could read put the published PLUS prices anywhere from under a dollar to absurd, which means they were captured at different times in different currencies, so we are not quoting one. There is no Google Play listing, so treat it as iPhone only. Choose it if the card and the gift are the part you forget, not the date.

birthdays.app (any phone, by message)

birthdays.app is the honest competitor to the idea below, and worth your attention: no app at all, just a text on the day. Its site lists two plans, $3 a year for text reminders for up to 10 friends and $9 a year for unlimited friends plus early reminders and an import from Google Calendar, with a free trial of seven reminders and no card required; the same pricing is described in an interview with its founder. You add people by texting a name and a date. One detail matters if you are outside the United States: in the creator's own Show HN post he says US users get SMS, because it is cheaper to send there, and other countries get WhatsApp reminders instead.

NagMeLater (WhatsApp)

Ours, so weigh it accordingly. There is no birthday feature and no import from contacts; a birthday is simply a yearly reminder, and the gift is a second one a few days earlier. That is the honest shape of it: it suits the twenty birthdays you actually act on, not the four hundred in your address book.

Two reasons this works for some people and not others. It arrives as a WhatsApp message rather than a notification, so it survives the swipe, and the gift reminder is a separate line at a different time, which is usually the thing that actually got forgotten. But it is manual entry, once per person, and there is no countdown screen to browse. If you want a list of everyone's birthdays to look at, use one of the apps above and keep this for the handful that need a call and a present.

Which One, Then

  • Birthdays show on your calendar but you are never told: fix the alert setting. Samsung Calendar's contact-birthday alert is separate and up to 99 weeks adjustable; Apple needs Upcoming Events left on; Google defaults to a week before and the day itself.
  • A birthday is missing: it is missing from the contact. Add the date in Google Contacts or the Contacts app and the calendar fills in.
  • You want a real birthday app on Android: Birday, free, ad-free, open source, with CSV export.
  • You want countdowns, ages and widgets on iPhone: Birthday Reminder & Countdown.
  • You forget the card and the gift, not the date: hip.
  • You swipe notifications away but read messages: birthdays.app for your whole list by text, or a yearly NagMeLater reminder for the birthdays that need a gift and a call.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a birthday calendar app already on my phone?

Yes, on all three major platforms. Google Calendar shows birthdays from Google Contacts and notifies you a week before and on the day. Apple Calendar has a Birthdays calendar fed from Contacts, with its alert time set in Settings under Calendar, Default Alert Times, Birthdays. Samsung Calendar can show contact birthdays, but its birthday alert is a separate setting under Alert settings, Contact's birthdays. None of them store the birthday itself: that lives on the contact.

Why does Google Calendar show a birthday but not notify me?

Check the Birthdays calendar's own notification setting, which is shared by every birthday on it: hover over Birthdays in the sidebar on the web, open its menu and choose Notifications. Google's default is one week before plus the day of the birthday. For one specific person, open that birthday event and add a notification to it, since the Birthdays calendar has no per-person timing.

How do I get birthday reminders on a Samsung phone?

Open Samsung Calendar, then the menu, Settings, Alert settings, and Contact's birthdays, and choose how far ahead you want to be told; the Samsung manual pages say this can be set up to 99 weeks before. It is separate from your normal event alerts, which is why birthdays can appear on the calendar with no notification. Some users report it only covering contacts synced to the Samsung account rather than Google-synced ones.

How do I add a missing birthday to my calendar?

Edit the contact, not the calendar. In Google Contacts, open the person, click Show More and fill in the Birthday field, and it appears on the Birthdays calendar. On an iPhone, add the birthday field in the Contacts app. A birthday that is missing from the calendar is almost always missing from the contact card.

What is the best free birthday app for Android?

Birday, if you want a dedicated app: its F-Droid listing describes it as free and ad-free, it imports birthdays from contacts or calendar with duplicate detection, and it backs up to CSV or JSON so your list is portable. Otherwise Google Calendar is free, already installed, and covers the core job once its Birthdays notification is set.

Is there a birthday reminder that works by text message?

Two. birthdays.app sends a message on the day, priced at $3 a year for up to 10 friends and $9 a year for unlimited friends with early reminders; its creator says US users receive SMS while other countries receive WhatsApp. NagMeLater sends a WhatsApp message from a yearly reminder you write yourself, for example "Remind me every year on March 4 at 9am to wish Priya a happy birthday", with a second reminder a few days earlier for the gift.

Can I import birthdays from my contacts into NagMeLater?

No. You set each one by hand, once, and it repeats every year. That suits the birthdays you act on rather than your whole address book, so the sensible split is to leave the full list on your phone's calendar and keep NagMeLater for the ones that need a gift, a card or a call.