Free · Guide

Golden Carers vs Activity Connection vs Not Just Bingo: prices, what you get, and when free is enough

Three subscription sites supply most of the activity calendars in American senior living. Here is what each one costs today, what you actually get for the money, where each is strongest, and an honest account of when a free printable library, including this one, does the job on its own.

Prices and features were read from each site's own pricing page on September 13, 2026. We sell printable packs, so read this knowing that; we have tried to make the case for each subscription as fairly as we would want ours made. If a price has changed, write to us and we will fix it the same day.

The short answer

Golden Carers is the cheapest full library at $74.95 a year with no auto-renewal, and the best value if you want thousands of ready activities and a calendar builder and you don't mind an international flavour. Activity Connection costs more than twice as much, $199.95 a year or $23.95 a month, and buys a US-built monthly program with bingo cards, slideshows, and continuing-education content that nearly 20,000 communities use. Not Just Bingo, $24 a month or $192 a year, sells activity ideas laid out as calendars, four to six per day, and not much else. If you run one building, need genuinely large print, or need US survey paperwork, a free library plus a one-time pack is usually enough. If you program for several buildings and need something new every week, buy a subscription, and Golden Carers is where to start.

Side by side

* From our reading of the free sample activities on each site in September 2026: the activities are written for the screen and printed from the browser, in ordinary body type. Neither site states a print size.

Golden Carers: $74.95 a year, no auto-renewal

Golden Carers is a library first. Membership opens thousands of activities, updated weekly, tagged by type and by need (crafts, reminiscing, dementia, group projects), with a calendar builder that pulls them onto a month, editable templates, tools for writing your own quizzes and crosswords, a This Day in History feed, and a member forum where activity professionals answer one another. Twenty activities are free to preview. The membership is twelve months, paid once, and it does not renew on its own; there is a 30-day guarantee and a group plan for multi-user licences.

Where it is strongest: breadth for the money. Nothing else in this list gives you as many ready activities per dollar, and the no-renewal billing is the most honest in the category. The forum is real and active, which is worth more to a new director than any single printable.

Where it falls short: it is written from outside the United States for a worldwide audience, so the monthly pages carry observances an American unit will never use next to the ones it will. The activities are designed for the screen; there is no large-print standard, and a resident with low vision gets the same body type as everyone else. Care-plan and checklist resources exist, but we found nothing written to the CMS F-tags a US survey runs on.

Buy it if: you need volume and variety across several buildings, or you want the calendar builder and the forum, and you will do your own large-print reformatting.

Activity Connection: $23.95 a month or $199.95 a year

Activity Connection sells a monthly program rather than a library: each month brings a package of materials built for US senior-living calendars, and the catalog behind it holds 214 digital downloads, 148 digital and 124 printed bingo-card sets, 36 slideshows, and 68 continuing-education items. Memberships run monthly, quarterly, six-monthly, or annually, with group pricing by request, and the company says nearly 20,000 communities use it. Thirteen items are free, including the printable bingo cards that most people find the site through.

Where it is strongest: it is American, current, and packaged. If your calendar is reviewed by a regional director who expects a recognisable program, this is the recognisable program. The bingo library alone is bigger than most facilities will ever use, and the continuing-education content is unusual in the category.

Where it falls short: price. The annual plan is $199.95, and paying monthly comes to $287.40 a year, roughly four Golden Carers memberships. It is built for facilities with a budget line, not for a family or a part-time director in a twelve-bed home. Large print is not a standard here either.

Buy it if: you run a program with an activities budget and want a US monthly curriculum delivered to you, especially if bingo carries your afternoons.

Not Just Bingo: $24 a month or $192 a year

Not Just Bingo is narrower. The product is ideas laid out as calendars: an assisted-living calendar with four activities a day, a men's calendar, a dementia calendar with six a day, and a weekly-themed calendar with ten ideas per theme. Monthly members see the current month and the next; annual members see three months ahead and get a daily bulletin. Billing runs through PayPal and renews until you cancel; the annual plan can be paid by invoice, which matters to anyone who has tried to put a subscription through a facility's accounts department.

Where it is strongest: the blank-calendar problem. If your Monday morning starts with thirty empty squares, this fills them, and the dementia calendar is the only one of the three products aimed squarely at memory care.

Where it falls short: it is ideas, not materials. You still have to find or make the trivia, the cards, the bingo sheets, and the crossword for every idea it suggests, and at $192 a year it costs almost exactly what Activity Connection charges for a program that includes them.

Buy it if: you already own the materials and only need the plan, and you would rather pay by invoice than by card.

The free alternative: what a printable library covers, and what it doesn't

A free library like this one covers the materials: fifty large-print trivia questions and three decade rounds, forty-eight conversation cards, ten bingo cards, five crosswords, six coloring pages, a memory-care calendar template with a filled-in sample week, a plan for every month of the year, aphasia worksheets, and an F679 self-audit checklist. Every page is set in 15 to 17 point type, because the people using them are in their eighties. Everything is US-specific, and the survey material is written to the F-tags. The paid packs are the same things at full length, $3.99 to $12.99 each or $24.99 for all of them, paid once.

It does not cover what a subscription is really for. There is no calendar builder, no forum, nothing new every week, and the catalog is dozens of pages, not thousands. If you burn through material faster than a monthly letter can supply it, the free library is your large-print layer on top of a subscription, not a replacement for one. If you run one building, or you are a family filling Thursday afternoons, it is usually the whole answer.

What a year actually costs

Three years of Activity Connection paid monthly costs more than thirty of our complete bundles. That is not an argument against subscribing; it is the question to ask before renewing. What did the program use last year that it could not have printed?

Which one, for which program

• A family caregiver, or a volunteer running one group a week: none of the three. They are priced and written for facilities. Use the free library and buy the one pack that matches what your person enjoys.
• A part-time director in a small assisted-living home: the free calendar template and month pages, plus the Activity Calendar System for $12.99 if you want the year done. Add Golden Carers when you want the forum and the volume.
• A full-time director in a nursing home or memory-care unit: Golden Carers for the library, this site for large print and the survey paperwork. Activity Connection if the program has a budget line and a regional director who expects it.
• A regional or multi-site program: Activity Connection, with group pricing, or Golden Carers group plans. Standardise the large-print layer with the bundle, which one licence covers per building.
• Anyone with a Monday-morning blank calendar and the materials already on the shelf: Not Just Bingo, or the free month plans here, which are the same idea at $0.

How we checked

Prices, terms, and the counts above were read from these pages on September 13, 2026: Golden Carers membership page, Activity Connection memberships, Not Just Bingo membership page. Feature descriptions come from the same pages and from browsing each site's free samples. We have no commercial relationship with any of the three.

Questions people ask

Is Golden Carers free?

Partly. Twenty sample activities are free to browse. Full access is a 12-month membership at $74.95 USD, with no auto-renewal and a 30-day guarantee (checked September 13, 2026).

How much does Activity Connection cost?

$23.95 a month, $65.50 a quarter, $119.95 for six months, or $199.95 a year, with group discounts on request. Activity Connection says more than 80% of members choose the annual plan (checked September 13, 2026).

How much is a Not Just Bingo membership?

$24 a month, cancel anytime, or $192 a year, which works out to $16 a month. Both renew until cancelled; the annual plan can be paid by invoice and includes a daily bulletin newsletter (checked September 13, 2026).

Golden Carers or Activity Connection: which is better?

For one building on a small budget, Golden Carers: it costs less than half as much, has the larger library, and includes a calendar builder. For a US program that wants a packaged monthly curriculum with bingo cards, slideshows, and continuing-education content, Activity Connection, and you pay for that. Neither is written in large print, so residents with low vision get the same small type either way.

Is there a free alternative to Golden Carers?

For the printables, yes. Free libraries, including this one, cover trivia, conversation cards, bingo, crosswords, coloring pages, month-by-month calendar plans, and a survey checklist. What a free library does not replace is the calendar builder, the member forum, and something new every week. If those are why you subscribe, keep subscribing.

Which is best for memory care?

None of the three is built specifically for memory care. Not Just Bingo has a dementia calendar with six ideas a day; Golden Carers tags activities for dementia; Activity Connection has a small Alzheimer's and dementia section. The memory-care calendar template here is free and coded by ability level, and every printable is large print, which matters more in memory care than anywhere else.