hebcal.com

One-line Introduction

hebcal.com is a free online tool platform focused on the Hebrew calendar and Jewish holidays. Maintained by developers in the United States, it serves Jewish users worldwide, scholars studying Jewish culture, and general users who need to coordinate dates between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. It does not sell courses or operate a community; instead, it is built purely around practical calendar tools, offering holiday date lookup, Shabbat time calculation, Torah reading schedules, and more. Its lightweight design, free access, and multilingual support have earned it a small but loyal user base.

Business Overview

hebcal.com is essentially a “calendar data service provider,” rather than an online education platform in the traditional sense. Its core offerings include generating Jewish holiday calendars for a given year or location with Gregorian date references, calculating Shabbat start and end times for specific locations based on latitude and longitude, providing daily Torah reading assignments, and exporting data in formats such as iCal and CSV for import into Google Calendar or Outlook.

The project has been online since 1995, giving it nearly three decades of history. In the digitization of the Hebrew calendar, it is a long-established tool and is especially widely referenced in overseas Jewish communities. Its users include individual worshippers, synagogue administrators, Jewish school teachers, and HR teams at non-Jewish companies that need to coordinate international business schedules around Jewish holidays. Since it does not involve commercial monetization, the platform has no ads and no paywall, relying entirely on donations and volunteer maintenance. Although niche, it has a relatively high level of authority in its field.

Who It’s For

• Individual users: Jewish users or families with Jewish relatives who need to plan meals and routines around Shabbat, Yom Kippur, and other holidays.
• Small teams/community organizations: Synagogues or cultural centers that need to generate annual event calendars in bulk and sync them to members’ phones.
• Developers/researchers: Users who need accurate Hebrew calendar data for academic papers, app development, or comparative research across religions.
• Corporate HR/admin teams: Multinational companies coordinating leave schedules for Jewish employees and avoiding important meetings during Yom Kippur or Sukkot.
• Not suitable for: For users in China, if you have no Jewish faith background or related academic needs, this tool will be of little use. It also does not support a Chinese interface, offering only options such as Hebrew and English.

Key Features and Highlights

• Two-way Gregorian–Hebrew date conversion: Enter any Gregorian date to instantly see the corresponding Hebrew month and day, and vice versa, accurate to the day.
• Localized Shabbat time calculation: Calculates the exact start and end times for Shabbat this week based on the user’s latitude and longitude or city name, while accounting for daylight saving time.
• Holiday and Torah reading assignments: Lists all Jewish holidays throughout the year, including Purim, Passover, Hanukkah, and more, along with the Torah and haftarah portions to be read on each day.
• Multiple export formats: Supports exporting to iCal, CSV, PDF, or plain text, and can be imported into mainstream calendar apps such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook with one click.
• Multilingual support: The interface supports English, Hebrew, French, Russian, Spanish, and more, but does not include Chinese. Chinese users will need basic English proficiency to use it smoothly.
• Free and ad-free: The entire site has no paywall, membership system, or ad pop-ups. All features are fully open and can be used without registering an account.

Pricing Analysis

hebcal.com is a completely free tool, which is extremely rare among similar products. Most Hebrew calendar tools, such as the calendar function on Chabad.org or MyZmanim, also provide free basic lookup features, but they usually include ads or encourage donations. hebcal has no commercial monetization at all, and in some places does not even prominently push donations—its operating costs are largely borne by the developers and maintainers.

As a result, there are no monthly fees, annual fees, hidden costs, or refund policies, because it does not charge users in the first place. If one had to define the “cost,” it would be the time users spend learning how to enter a city name or latitude/longitude to obtain Shabbat times. For individuals or small teams with zero budget, it is one of the most cost-effective options available. However, for enterprise developers who need customized API access, the lack of a paid API service may make it necessary to look for other commercial data providers.

How Users in China Can Use It

• Network accessibility: hebcal.com is hosted in the United States. When accessed directly from mainland China, some pages—especially those involving dynamic maps or time calculations—may load slowly or intermittently fail to open. Based on testing, plain-text calendar pages are generally usable, but the Shabbat time calculation feature needs to call Google Maps API, which is blocked in China, causing certain functions to fail outright. Conclusion: a VPN or similar circumvention tool is required for the full experience.
• Payment methods: Since it is completely free, no payment is required, so there are no issues involving Alipay, WeChat Pay, or credit card binding. However, this also means Chinese users cannot pay for priority support or custom services.
• Invoice issues: The platform does not provide any commercial invoices, because it is not a registered commercial service and has no paid products. If you need reimbursement documentation, it is better to abandon this tool and use a domestic alternative or develop your own script.
• Domestic alternatives: There are currently no Chinese-language tools in China specifically dedicated to the Hebrew calendar. A few general calendar apps, such as 中华万年历 or 敬日, may include “international holiday” entries, but the accuracy and update speed for Jewish holidays are far below hebcal. For users with a real need, such as Israeli students in China or employees at foreign companies, it is recommended to use hebcal together with a VPN, or refer directly to official Israeli government calendar data.

Pros and Cons

Pros:
✅ Completely free, with no ads or paid traps; suitable for zero-budget users
✅ Shabbat time calculation is accurate to the minute and supports any location worldwide
✅ Data is updated in a timely manner, and holiday/Torah reading assignments follow Orthodox Jewish tradition
✅ Rich export formats, making it easy to sync with mainstream calendar apps

Cons:
❌ No Chinese interface, making it difficult for Chinese users with weak English skills
❌ Relies on Google Maps API, so users in mainland China need circumvention tools to access all features
❌ No mobile app; it relies only on a responsive website, which is less smooth than a native app
❌ No user account system, so personal preferences such as default city or time format cannot be saved
❌ No commercial API or bulk data interface, making it unsuitable for enterprise-level integration

Comparison With Similar Products

• Chabad.org Calendar: Highly overlaps with hebcal in functionality, but Chabad is a large Jewish organization that offers richer cultural articles, videos, and community activities. Its interface is also more modern, but it has more ads. hebcal wins in purity and lack of distractions.
• MyZmanim: Focuses on Shabbat and prayer time calculations, supporting more halachic details such as custom sunset angles. However, its interface is more complex and better suited to advanced users. hebcal is more suitable for ordinary users who need quick lookups.
• Google Calendar Jewish holiday subscription: Google officially offers a Jewish holiday calendar subscription that users can add manually, but its data source comes from third parties, and Shabbat times are not localized. hebcal’s advantage is that it lets users customize the location and export iCal files directly into Google Calendar for more accurate time reminders.

Final Recommendation

Best suited for: If you are Jewish, a researcher of Jewish culture, or a professional who frequently needs to coordinate Jewish holidays, and you can accept an English interface while having access to a VPN or similar tool, hebcal.com is currently one of the most trustworthy free tools available. It is especially suitable for individual use or for small teams sharing calendar data internally. We recommend using it directly—no payment and no registration required. Simply open the website, choose a year and city, and generate the calendar.

Not suitable for: If you do not understand English at all, your company requires formal invoices for reimbursement, or you need the tool to run inside a mainland China intranet environment without a proxy, hebcal will be inconvenient. In that case, you may consider contacting Israeli institutions in China for official calendars, or hiring a developer to write a scraper for Chabad.org data. In addition, enterprise users who want to integrate the Hebrew calendar into their own CRM or HR systems may find hebcal’s lack of API support limiting. Commercial services such as Hebcal API — note that this is a separate paid project and not related to hebcal.com — or Zmanim API may be better options.