Free staff rota planner with no per-head price
Most rota tools charge per member of staff. That is a logical model for the supplier and an illogical one for you: the cost grows exactly when you need more hands, and you pay most in your busiest month. Here is what actually decides whether a free alternative is enough.
Why per-head pricing is normal
Because it mirrors the supplier’s own cost. Every member of staff is an account, a login, notifications, an app install and a row in a database that has to be run and secured. That is an honest model as long as the tool genuinely needs all of it. The question is whether it does. For a place with eight staff who need to see when they are working, an account each is infrastructure that exists for the supplier’s sake, not yours. That is what Rota does differently: the rota is shared as a link that carries the week. There is no per-person account to charge for, because there is no account.
The five things that decide whether free is enough
Can staff see the rota without an account? This is what usually separates free from paid, and it also decides whether the rota actually gets read. Does it remember availability? A tool that does not know which days people cannot work lets you make the mistake it was supposed to prevent. Does it count the hours correctly? Breaks and shifts that cross midnight are where the arithmetic fails. Does it handle holiday and absence? Otherwise you still have a spreadsheet alongside, and two places that can disagree. Can you get your data out? That decides how easy the next move is. A free plan that answers all five is worth trying. One that does not is a migration cost you take later.
Read a free plan as an offer
When a paid tool has a free plan, there is always a limit in it, and the limit is chosen so that a growing place meets it. Check three things before you build on it: what the limit is (staff, weeks ahead, features), what happens when you reach it, and whether you can download your rotas without upgrading first. There is a difference between a tool that is free and one that is free for now. Either can be the right choice — it is worth knowing which you have.
What Rota is
Rota is free, and not a free plan with a limit further in. The whole tool: the week, shift templates, availability, swaps, holiday and absence, and the timesheet as CSV. 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 the share link carries the week rather than pointing at anything of ours. There is no per-person running cost to recover, so there is nothing to bill for. No account, no app, no per-head price.
Frequently asked questions
What is the catch?
That the week lives in your browser. Good for privacy, bad if you clear your browser data — then it is gone. The share link is also your own copy, so keep it if the week matters.
How many staff can I have?
As many as you like. There is no per-head price to count, so there is no reason for a limit. Very large teams make a long share link, and Rota warns you if it gets long enough that messaging apps might cut it.
Do staff need to install anything?
No. They open a link in a browser and see the week. No account, no app.
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