The best hospitality staff rota software for 2026

Hospitality is not a single rota 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 rota 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 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 rota fills from those claims. People choose. No algorithm assigns shifts, though you can assign someone directly and they accept or decline. Team members submit their actual start and end times; hoursheets export as CSV for payroll or client billing.

The pricing model is the differentiator. Zelos charges by task volume, not by team size, and never per seat. The free tier supports unlimited team members and unlimited admins, with a 25 concurrent active-task limit. Pro is £79/month billed annually, or £99/month billed monthly, flat regardless of how many people are on the rota. Enterprise starts from £799/month billed annually. That fits catering and event work, where you might keep 300 people on the books but only call on 30 of them for any given booking. Two hundred names on the rota costs nothing extra on members; you are still capped at 25 concurrent tasks on the free plan.

What it does not do: weekly rotating rotas, 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 rotas and variable demand.

7shifts

7shifts is built specifically for restaurants and has the integrations to show for it. Toast and other 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. Comp: one location, up to 15 employees. Essentials is from US$39.99 per location per month billed annually, up to 30 employees. Pro is from US$79.99, up to 60 employees, with labour-compliance tools. Premium is from US$134.99, with unlimited employees.

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 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 rota 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.

Deputy

Deputy is the UK-relevant pick for hotels and other 24-hour hospitality operations that need rotating coverage. Templates for weekly or monthly rotations, availability, time-off requests, and open shifts sit in one product, with UK customers billed in pounds.

Pricing is per user, GBP excl. tax. Lite is from £3.25 per user per month, Core £4.25, Pro £6.50. There is a £20 minimum spend per invoice on monthly Lite, Core, and Pro (from 1 September 2025). No permanent free plan; the trial is up to 31 days, no credit card required. Charity pricing is on request. HR is a £2 per user add-on; Messaging+ is £1.40 per user (included in Pro). All users including admins count; archived users are billed for the full month.

What it does well: rotating hotel and venue rotas, a real UK billing currency, and an established hospitality footprint. Xero and QuickBooks integrations matter if payroll already lives there.

What it does less well: per-user pricing scales with the full pool, including people you only need on Saturday. Working Time flagging is not a substitute for knowing the rules yourself. SMS is charged separately (UK 5p per 160 characters).

Best for: hotels and other 24-hour hospitality operations in the UK that need rotating coverage and want to be billed in pounds.

Planday

Planday sits at the forecasting 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 rotas around that forecast. Compliance warnings flag conflicts before publishing: overlapping shifts, missed breaks, contract hour breaches.

Planday has stronger market presence in the UK and Europe than in North America. Sage payroll and accounting integrations matter if your business is already in that ecosystem.

Pricing is per user, in pounds. Starter from £2.99 per user per month (minimum five users); Plus and Pro are quoted. There is a 30-day trial, no card.

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 rotas 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.

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 cover) 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 rota.

Pricing on MakeShift’s own page starts at $3.75 per employee per month for Core. Time and attendance is $2.00 per employee per month. Advanced and Elite are quote-only. MakeShift is Canadian; it does not publish a sterling price. The strongest named integration is ADP Workforce Now, which makes it a natural fit for hospitality businesses already using ADP for payroll.

What it does well: managing rotas 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. UK operators will be paying a non-GBP sticker price.

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, 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. 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 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.

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, billed in US dollars.
• 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: Deputy, billed in pounds, with a real UK trial.
• If you want POS-driven 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, Deputy, 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 rota can sit on Zelos’s free plan as members — you are still limited to 25 concurrent active tasks. The same 200 names on a per-user tool are 200 billable seats every month. For variable or seasonal hospitality teams, the pricing model often matters more than the headline rate.

Test the mobile app before committing. The best rota 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.