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. Prices checked August 2026 and shown in the currency each vendor publishes. Zelos bills Canadian customers in US dollars.

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 from those claims. People choose. Software doesn’t assign. Timestamped hours export as CSV for payroll or client billing.

The pricing model is the differentiator. Zelos never charges per seat. The free tier supports unlimited team members and unlimited admins, with a 25 concurrent active-task limit. Pro is US$99/month billed annually, or US$119/month billed monthly, flat regardless of how many people are on the schedule. Enterprise starts from US$999/month billed annually. Canadian customers are billed in US dollars; the card charge depends on the bank’s exchange rate. That fits catering and event work, where you might keep 300 people on your roster but only call on 30 of them for any given booking. Two hundred names costs nothing extra on members; you are still capped at 25 concurrent tasks on the free plan.

What it does not do: weekly rotating schedules, labour-cost forecasting tied to POS sales, compliance-heavy time tracking, kiosk check-in, or shift swapping. 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, team chat, and time clocking work together inside one product.

Pricing is per location, not per user, and 7shifts publishes in US dollars. The free Comp tier covers a single location with up to 15 employees, which is enough for many independent restaurants to start without paying anything. Essentials is from US$39.99 per month per location billed annually (US$44.99 monthly), up to 30 employees. Pro is from US$79.99 per month per location billed annually (US$89.99 monthly), with unlimited employees. Premium is from US$134.99 per month per location billed annually (US$149.99 monthly). Labour-compliance tools sit on Pro; unlimited headcount does too.

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, TouchBistro, or another major POS.

When I Work

When I Work has the strongest tools for self-scheduling in this lineup. Open shifts and shift bidding 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, published in US dollars. There is no permanent free plan. A 14-day trial covers the product. Essentials starts from US$2.50 per user per month. Pro is US$5. Premium is US$8. Costs scale with headcount; a large housekeeping roster pays for every name, every month.

What it does well: clean mobile experience, fast onboarding, and consistent staff adoption. The 14-day trial of all features, no credit card required, is one of the easiest in this list to evaluate.

What it does less well: costs scale up with headcount. 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 is per user, published in Canadian dollars. Essential starts at CA$3.25 per user per month billed monthly (CA$2.93 billed annually). Time and Attendance is an add-on at CA$2.25 per user per month (CA$2.03 annually). Plus is CA$5.25 per user per month (CA$4.73 annually) and adds HR tools. Up to 21 days of free trial; no credit card required. No permanent free plan.

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, including Quebec operations where a French interface is not optional.

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, which is the point of this pick.

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

Pricing is per user, published in pounds on the UK page. Starter is from £2.99. There is a 30-day trial, no card, with a minimum of five users on Starter. Plus adds time tracking and absence management; Plus and Pro sticker rates were not readable as a single figure this check, and Pro is custom-quoted for larger operations. Do not treat an unlabelled dollar figure as a Canadian price.

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. Canadian 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 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 $3.75 per employee per month for Core. Time & Attendance is an add-on at $2.00 per employee per month. Advanced and Elite are on request. The vendor page does not label USD vs CAD; MakeShift is a Canadian company. Do not convert the figure. Free trials are advertised; no permanent free plan on the pricing page. 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-specialized 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 hospitality rules the platform is tuned for (tip pooling, break enforcement, multi-department coverage). Fair Workweek and US predictive-scheduling ordinances are US city and state rules, not Canadian law — do not treat them as a provincial employment-standards duty. Hours of work, overtime, and public holidays sit in provincial employment standards (Ontario’s ESA is one example) or, for a short list of industries, the Canada Labour Code. The Fourth suite around HotSchedules 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 optimization 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. People choose; software doesn’t assign.
• 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 Sage ecosystem. Pricing on the vendor’s UK page is in GBP.
• 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-specialized 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 costs nothing extra in member seats on Zelos’s free plan, with a 25 concurrent-task cap, while a per-user tool bills every name. 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.