Planday Alternatives for UK Hospitality: Prices, Features and Fit

Planday describes hospitality as "in our DNA", and a lot of UK bars, restaurants and hotels use it. It's a capable product. But its pricing has moving parts (per-user rates, minimum users, bundles of five, a monthly subscription fee on higher plans) and it doesn't cover the kitchen side of running a venue. If you're weighing up whether something else fits better, here's a straight comparison, with every fact checked on the companies' own sites as of October 2026.

ShiftComplete publishes this page. We've tried to be fair to everyone in it.

What Planday does well

From Planday's own pages:

• Scheduling and time tracking from the entry plan, with working time rules and compliance warnings.
• Clock-in by punch clock or phone.
• Team communication: messenger, newsfeed and SMS (SMS costs extra).
• Leave and absence management on Plus.
• Payroll and revenue integrations on Plus, including Xero, Sage 50 and QuickBooks for payroll, and Square, Lightspeed and Mews for revenue. Tipjar for tips.
• Auto-scheduling and custom planning metrics on Pro.
• Staff cost and revenue forecast reporting.
• Backed by Xero, which acquired Planday in 2021.

If you're on Xero, want time tracking feeding payroll, and like seeing labour against revenue, Planday is a natural choice.

Why operators look for a Planday alternative

1. The pricing has several parts. Starter is £2.99 per user with a 5-user minimum. Plus is £3.99 per user, a 10-user minimum and a £30 monthly subscription fee. Users are billed in bundles of five.
2. Everyone with a login is a user. Managers and occasional staff count.
3. Key features sit on higher plans. Leave and absence management and payroll integrations are on Plus; auto-scheduling is on Pro.
4. Kitchen records live elsewhere. We didn't find temperature logs, allergens or food-safety checklists on Planday's pages.

What it costs: worked examples

List prices as of October 2026, monthly, before any VAT. Planday rounds users up to the next bundle of five.

These aren't like-for-like: Planday Plus includes payroll and revenue integrations that ShiftComplete doesn't have, and ShiftComplete includes food-safety records that Planday doesn't list.

Planday vs ShiftComplete at a glance

The main Planday alternatives

ShiftComplete

Best for: pubs, restaurants, cafés, bars and hotels that want one simple price and their rota, clock-in and food-safety records in one place.

Staff set availability from their phones; you add events like a Friday match that needs two more on the bar, weight the people you want on, and get a fair draft rota in seconds. Drag, publish, and it's on every phone and in their inbox. Fixed weekly schedules cover people who always work the same shifts. Switch on time tracking for clock in and out on phones or the shared tablet, then download hours as a spreadsheet for payroll. Temperature logs, allergens, weekday checklists, incidents, maintenance and risk assessments are all included.

Trade-off: no payroll or till integrations and no auto-scheduling from sales data.

Price: £1.49 per staff member per month. 60 days free, no card.

Deputy

Best for: operators who want auto-scheduling, demand forecasting, geofenced clock-in and a long integration list.

Price (UK, excl. taxes): Lite £3.25, Core £4.25, Pro £6.50 per user per month, with a £20 per invoice minimum on monthly plans. Free trial up to 31 days. See Deputy alternatives.

RotaCloud

Best for: small UK businesses wanting a simple rota tool with free iOS and Android apps.

Based in York. Both plans include drag-and-drop rotas, labour costs, holidays and absence, shift swaps and availability; Pro adds labour forecasting and budget caps; clock-in is an add-on.

Price: banded by headcount, Standard from £10 a month for up to 5 employees (£40 for 11–20). 30-day free trial.

Bizimply

Best for: UK and Irish multi-site operators who want workforce management and operational checks such as HACCP and temperature logs from one supplier.

Price: on request.

Which is right for you?

• Stay with Planday if you're on Xero, use its payroll and revenue integrations, and your team likes the app.
• Look at ShiftComplete if your priorities are a fair rota, simple clock-in, and getting temperature logs, allergens and checklists off paper, at one flat price.
• Look at Deputy if you want more automation and forecasting.
• Look at RotaCloud if you want the simplest rota-only tool.
• Look at Bizimply if you want a larger workforce platform that also covers HACCP checks.

Questions to ask before you switch

Before moving away from any rota app, answer these honestly:

• Who actually uses the clock-in data? If your bookkeeper rekeys hours from a spreadsheet anyway, a direct payroll integration may be saving less than you think. If it feeds Xero automatically and nobody touches it, that's worth keeping.
• How many logins are you paying for? Count managers, casuals who work twice a year and leavers who were never removed. With bundles of five, a few stray logins can tip you into the next bundle.
• Where do your food-safety records live? If the answer is a clipboard in the kitchen, moving the rota and the records into one app is a bigger change than switching rota tools alone, and usually the more useful one.
• What will your team notice? Staff care about seeing their shifts quickly on their phone and requesting time off without chasing anyone. Test that first in any trial.

Switching from Planday

1. Export historic hours and absence records from Planday.
2. Start your ShiftComplete trial and add your venue, staff areas and team.
3. Ask staff to enter availability on their phones.
4. Run one rota in both systems, then switch.
5. Cancel Planday in line with your billing period (monthly or quarterly).

"The rota stopped being a Sunday-night argument the week we switched over. The chef stopped being the only person who knows what's in the kitchen. And the EHO turn up to a screen, not a box file."

Graeme Kirkham, Owner, The Lounge Oswestry & Knock & Snitch

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