The best hospitality staff scheduling software for 2026

Hospitality is not a single scheduling problem. A restaurant runs on weekly rotations with sharp Friday peaks and POS-tied labour forecasting. A hotel needs round-the-clock front desk coverage with consistent staff. A catering company has weeks of quiet broken up by a 200-person Saturday wedding. A housekeeping team has lots of part-time staff who want to claim their own shifts. Each pattern needs different software.

This guide compares seven staff scheduling tools that each fit a different corner of hospitality, with current 2026 pricing and an honest assessment of where each one actually works.

Zelos Team Management

Zelos Team Management is built for on-demand staffing. This is the pattern that dominates catering, event venues, and food truck operations: long stretches of quiet broken up by a Saturday that needs forty people at three different locations at once.

The core mechanic is open shift signup. Managers post shifts, qualified team members claim what works for them on a mobile app, and the schedule fills itself. Timestamped data exports cleanly to payroll or to client billing.

The pricing model is the differentiator. Zelos charges by task volume, not by team size. The free tier supports unlimited team members and unlimited admins, with a 25-active-task limit. The Pro tier is a flat €119 per month regardless of how many people are on the roster. That fits the realities of catering and event work, where you might keep 300 people on your roster but only call on 30 of them for any given booking.

What it does not do: weekly rotating schedules, labour cost forecasting tied to POS sales, or compliance-heavy time tracking. If your business runs on those, look elsewhere.

Best for: catering, event venues, food trucks, and any operation with large rosters and variable demand.

7shifts

7shifts is built specifically for restaurants and has the integrations to show for it. Toast, TouchBistro, SpotOn, and most major POS systems pull sales data into the scheduler for labour forecasting. Drag-and-drop scheduling, shift swaps, team chat, and time clocking work together inside one product.

Pricing is per location, not per user. The free Comp tier covers a single location with up to 30 employees, which is enough for many independent restaurants to start without paying anything. Essentials runs $39.99 per month per location, Pro $79.99, and Premium $134.99. The jump from Essentials to Pro is significant: labour compliance tools and unlimited employees only appear at Pro.

What it does well: restaurant-specific workflows, tip pooling, labour-vs-sales forecasting, and a mobile app that staff actually use.

What it does less well: anything outside restaurants. The product is unapologetically restaurant-focused and works less smoothly for hotels, catering, or housekeeping teams.

Best for: restaurants of any size, especially those already running Toast or another major POS.

When I Work

When I Work has the strongest tools for self-scheduling in this lineup. Open shifts, shift bidding, and shift swapping are core features rather than add-ons, which makes it a natural fit for housekeeping teams and any hospitality operation with many part-time staff who want to claim their own hours.

Pricing is per user. The single-location plan is $2.50 per user per month; multi-location runs $5. Time and attendance tracking is an additional tier, bringing the total to roughly $4 per user for single-location or $6.50 per user for multi-location once time tracking is added.

What it does well: clean mobile experience, fast onboarding, and consistent staff adoption. The platform is also one of the easiest to evaluate (a real 14-day free trial of all features, no credit card required).

What it does less well: costs scale up with headcount once time tracking is included. For teams over 50 people, the monthly total is often higher than equivalent per-location or flat-fee tools. Reporting is also lighter than what dedicated hospitality platforms provide.

Best for: housekeeping teams and other part-time-heavy hospitality operations where self-scheduling is the main workflow.

Agendrix

Agendrix handles rotating shift patterns well, which makes it a natural fit for hotels that need round-the-clock front desk coverage. Templates for weekly or monthly rotations are easy to set up, and the platform handles availability, time-off requests, and shift swaps cleanly.

Pricing starts at CA$3.25 per user per month for the Essential scheduling plan (roughly $2.40 USD at recent exchange rates). Time and attendance is an add-on; including it brings the effective per-user cost to about CA$5.50. HR management and field service modules are available at higher tiers.

What it does well: bilingual English-French support, Canadian payroll integration, and a consistently well-reviewed mobile app. Particularly strong for hotels operating in Canada or with bilingual teams.

What it does less well: smaller integrations catalogue than the larger players, and a smaller user community for peer-to-peer learning. The platform leans Canadian; US-based hotels can use it but may find some workflow assumptions unfamiliar.

Best for: hotels and other 24-hour hospitality operations, especially in Canada or with bilingual staff.

Planday

Planday sits at the AI-forward end of mid-market hospitality scheduling. The platform pulls sales data from POS systems and uses it to forecast labour needs week by week, then builds schedules around that forecast. Compliance warnings flag conflicts before publishing: overlapping shifts, missed breaks, contract hour breaches.

Planday is owned by Sage, which means it integrates cleanly with Sage payroll and accounting if your business is already in that ecosystem. The platform has stronger market presence in the UK and Europe than in North America, though it is available everywhere.

Pricing is per user. The Starter plan starts around $3 per user per month for basic scheduling, Plus adds time tracking and absence management at around $4-5 per user per month plus a small platform fee, and the Pro tier is custom-quoted for larger operations.

What it does well: demand-based scheduling tied to POS sales data, with forecasting and reporting depth that lighter tools lack. Strong fit for hospitality businesses that want to move beyond intuition-based scheduling without committing to enterprise software.

What it does less well: there is a real learning curve compared to lighter tools, and setting up forecasting properly takes some weeks of historical data. North American operations may find the support hours and integration catalogue less developed than the European ones.

Best for: mid-sized restaurants and hospitality businesses that want POS-driven demand forecasting at a per-user price, especially in the UK and Europe or already in the Sage ecosystem.

MakeShift

MakeShift is built on a different premise from Planday: real-time visibility matters more than perfect forecasting. The platform assumes you will be making changes all week (call-outs, walk-in surges, last-minute swaps) and gives every team member instant visibility into open shifts and availability as they happen.

The AI ScheduleEye feature predicts staffing needs based on historical patterns and guest flow, but the platform’s real differentiator is operational responsiveness rather than prediction. Notifications are instant, the mobile app surfaces changes immediately, and managers can adjust on the fly without re-publishing the entire schedule.

Pricing starts at around $2.75 per user per month, with higher tiers adding advanced features. MakeShift is Canadian; the strongest integration is with ADP Workforce Now, which makes it a natural fit for hospitality businesses already using ADP for payroll.

What it does well: managing schedules that change frequently. If your week looks more like firefighting than long-term planning, with multiple call-outs per shift or frequent walk-in surges, MakeShift’s real-time approach fits how you actually work.

What it does less well: forecasting depth is lighter than Planday or HotSchedules. The platform is built around responsiveness rather than prediction, which is a different philosophy. Reporting is also basic compared to enterprise hospitality tools.

Best for: hospitality operations where shifts change frequently and real-time visibility matters more than long-range forecasting, especially those already using ADP for payroll.

HotSchedules (Fourth)

HotSchedules (now part of Fourth) is the most hospitality-specialised tool in this lineup. Built originally for restaurant operations and expanded to cover hotels and integrated food and beverage operations, it has been the established leader in hospitality workforce management for over a decade.

The core strength is demand forecasting tied to the signals hospitality operators actually use: forecasted covers for restaurants, occupancy for hotels. That feeds into labour cost tracking by department and compliance rules tuned to hospitality (tip pooling, Fair Workweek, predictive scheduling, break enforcement). The Fourth suite around it adds HR, payroll, and inventory, which appeals to operations that want the whole workforce and back-office stack in one place.

Pricing is custom and enterprise-oriented. Fourth does not publish rates publicly; expect a demo and a custom quote based on operation size and the modules you select. Costs typically run higher than the SMB-focused tools on this list, with annual contracts standard. Tier names include Advanced (POS-integrated scheduling with forecasting), Advanced IQ (AI-based forecasting and compliance alerts), and Expert (labour optimisation with consultation).

What it does well: hospitality DNA. Every feature decision has been made with restaurants, hotels, or both in mind, which shows up in how naturally the platform handles things like tip pooling, multi-department coverage, and POS integration with the major hospitality systems.

What it does less well: the sales process and enterprise pricing put it out of reach for smaller properties. A 20-room independent hotel or a small independent restaurant will find the demo cycle and contract complexity excessive. The platform is built for multi-unit operators and mid-sized hospitality groups.

Best for: multi-unit hospitality groups with restaurant and hotel operations under one umbrella, especially those with significant F&B and hospitality-specific compliance needs.

How to choose

The honest answer is that the right tool depends on how your scheduling actually works.

• If you run on-demand staffing for events or catering: Zelos. The flat-fee model fits variable team sizes that per-user pricing punishes.
• If you run a restaurant: 7shifts. The POS integration and restaurant-specific features are worth the per-location pricing.
• If you run part-time-heavy operations with lots of self-scheduling (housekeeping, retail-style hospitality): When I Work. The self-scheduling features are the strongest in this lineup.
• If you run a hotel with rotating coverage: Agendrix, especially if you have Canadian or bilingual operations.
• If you want POS-driven AI demand forecasting at a per-user price: Planday, especially in the UK and Europe or in the Sage ecosystem.
• If your week is mostly real-time changes and last-minute coverage: MakeShift, especially if you already use ADP for payroll.
• If you run a multi-unit hospitality group with restaurant and hotel operations under one umbrella: HotSchedules/Fourth, the most hospitality-specialised platform in this list.

Two general notes on top of the picks themselves.

Pricing models matter as much as the per-unit price. Per-user pricing (When I Work, Agendrix, Planday, MakeShift) scales with team size. Per-location pricing (7shifts) scales with property count. Flat-fee pricing (Zelos) scales with neither. Custom enterprise pricing (HotSchedules/Fourth) varies with operation size and modules selected. A 200-person catering roster pays nothing on Zelos’s free tier but would run over $400 per month on a per-user tool at the base plan rate, before any add-ons. For variable or seasonal hospitality teams, the pricing model often matters more than the headline rate.

Test the mobile app before committing. The best scheduling software is the one your staff actually opens. A simpler tool that everyone adopts beats a feature-rich platform that half the team ignores. All seven of these vendors offer free trials or free tiers. Use them with a small group of staff for two weeks before signing an annual contract.