Free staff scheduling software
For a place with three employees, a spreadsheet is free, quick, and perfectly good enough. It's only when it stops being good enough that it gets expensive — and that often happens without anyone noticing. Here's where the line actually is.
What a spreadsheet is good for
A spreadsheet is a perfectly legitimate solution, and there's no shame in using one. It's free, anyone can read it, it works without the internet, and it's yours. For a café with two or three staff and fixed shifts, it will last a long time. Make one sheet per week, one row per person, one column per day, and enter the times. If that's where you are, don't make this harder than it is.
Where the spreadsheet stops helping
Four things go wrong when the staff grows past a handful: The sheet doesn't know who can work. It doesn't tell you when you put a shift on a day someone has said they can never work. Swaps become invisible. The change happens in a message, not in the sheet, and the sheet is still what you use when you run payroll. The hours have to be added up by hand. Especially with breaks and shifts that run past midnight, and that's where the errors come in. Suddenly there are three versions. One on your computer, a printout on the wall, and a screenshot in the chat, and nobody knows which one is current. Each of these costs you time every single week, and the one that costs money is totaling the hours.
Free versions of scheduling tools
Many tools have a free plan. Read it as an offer, not as a product, and check three things before you build your operation on it: What's the limit? Number of employees, number of weeks ahead, or number of features — there's always one, and it's chosen so that a growing place will hit it. What happens when you hit it? Do you move to a paid plan with a price per employee, and what does that make the monthly price for your place in peak season? Can you get out again? Can you download the schedules and timesheets as a file, without upgrading first? A free plan that answers all three reasonably is worth trying. One that doesn't is a switching cost you take later.
What's worth paying for
Short list. A scheduling tool is worth paying for when it does three things a spreadsheet can’t: Remembers availability, so you stop scheduling people on days they can’t work. Calculates the hours correctly, with breaks and overnight shifts, every time. Gives everyone one version of the truth, including the swaps. Everything else—statistics, forecasting, integrations with ten other systems—is for bigger operations than yours. Don’t pay per employee for that.
What Rota costs
Nothing. Rota is free — not a free plan with a limit you hit later, but the whole tool. The reason is boring: it costs us nothing beyond being on our server. The planner runs in your browser, the week is stored there, and it is sent nowhere. There is no per-user cost to recover, so there is nothing to bill for. Add your staff, fill the week from your shift templates, and download the timesheet as CSV. No account, no lock-in, no per-employee price — and no more expensive tier underneath this that we hope you upgrade to.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a completely free scheduling app?
Yes—a spreadsheet, or the free tiers from several providers. The real question isn’t whether they exist, but where the limits kick in and what happens when you hit them.
Is Rota really free?
Yes, the whole tool. There is no paid version underneath this and no features held back. If you would like to give us something anyway it goes towards keeping these tools free — but it is voluntary, and free is the normal choice.
Can I use the scheduler without paying?
Yes. The scheduler on this page gives you the full planning and export features—no account, no payment. It stores the week in your browser, so it won’t sync to another device—that’s what the subscription will solve.
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