Round-up
The 7 Best Rota Apps for Small UK Teams in 2026
Most rota software is built for operations far bigger than yours. Seven options for small teams, compared honestly, catches included.
The rota software market has an awkward secret: most of it is built for operations far bigger than the teams actually searching for it. If you run a pub, cafe or shop with fifteen staff or fewer, you need the grid, the hours, the wage bill and a way for staff to see their shifts. Here are seven credible options, judged on price, speed to a first rota, and how they treat a small team. Prices are correct at the time of writing.
1. Rota Hub: best if you want a rota this evening
Rota Hub is a free rota planner that runs entirely in the browser. There is no account, no trial and no per-user maths: open the site, bulk-add your team, tap in shifts, and hours, overtime and a budget-tracked wage bill calculate themselves. The week prints cleanly for the noticeboard and shares as a read-only link staff open on their phones, with no app to install. The catches, stated plainly: there is no clock-in terminal, and your rota lives in your browser (with file backup) rather than a cloud account, though sign-in features are arriving. For pure planning speed, nothing here touches it.
2. RotaCloud: best paid all-rounder for UK small business
Built in York and priced from £10 a month for up to five staff, RotaCloud is the most natural paid upgrade for UK teams. Leave requests, open shifts and a polished staff app are included; time and attendance is a £4.50 monthly add-on. It asks for a proper setup and a monthly invoice, and repays both in businesses where attendance disputes cost money.
3. Deputy: best for clock-ins and compliance
Deputy runs about £4.25 to £4.50 per user per month, or roughly £42.50 monthly for a team of ten. Its strength is everything around the rota: GPS-stamped clock-ins, timesheets that flow to payroll, fatigue and break rules. For a five-person cafe it is a lot of machinery; for a multi-site operator with compliance anxiety it is the safe pick.
4. Planday: best for bigger, multi-department teams
From around £2.50 per user per month, Planday suits operations with departments, punch clocks and payroll integrations, and it scales well past the point where this article's audience stops. Below about twenty staff its setup effort outweighs its advantages.
5. Findmyshift: best free tier for very small fixed teams
A UK veteran, genuinely free for up to five staff. The limits matter, though: the free plan schedules only one week ahead and keeps one week of history, which rules out planning a fortnight or checking last month. Fine for a tiny, stable roster; frustrating the day you grow.
6. Connecteam: best free comms bundle
Free for up to ten users, Connecteam wraps scheduling inside a larger employee app with chat, forms, checklists and training. If you want one app for team operations generally, it is generous. If you just want the rota, the bundle is the point, and also the overhead.
7. Sling: best free option for larger headcounts
Sling's free tier stretches to thirty employees, the most generous cap here. It covers building and sharing schedules; time tracking sits behind the paid tier at about $2 per user per month, and the product has a distinctly US accent. As free scheduling for a big casual roster, it works.
The verdict
If money is already committed and clock-ins matter, RotaCloud or Deputy will not disappoint. If you want an all-in-one staff app, Connecteam is the free bundle to beat. But if what you actually need is this week's rota, planned, costed and in your team's pockets tonight, start at rotahub.co.uk. It is free, it takes minutes, and it commits you to nothing.