Free tool · Runs in your browser
A shift schedule generator with no sign-up in front of it
A shift schedule generator builds a rota from a list of staff, a set of shifts and the number of people each shift needs. This one runs entirely in your browser: type your team in, pick how many days you want, and it rotates people through the shifts evenly, keeps their days off, and hands back a CSV.
Free · No email address · No account
How do I generate a shift schedule?
Type your staff in, set your shifts and how many people each needs, and press generate. It builds the rota below, in this tab.
8 people
Shifts
The number is how many people that shift needs each day.
The only rule this generator knows.
| Date | Day (07:00–19:00) | Night (19:00–07:00) |
|---|---|---|
| 07-17 Fri | ||
| 07-18 Sat | ||
| 07-19 Sun | ||
| 07-20 Mon | ||
| 07-21 Tue | ||
| 07-22 Wed | ||
| 07-23 Thu | ||
| 07-24 Fri | ||
| 07-25 Sat | ||
| 07-26 Sun | ||
| 07-27 Mon | ||
| 07-28 Tue | ||
| 07-29 Wed | ||
| 07-30 Thu |
Shifts per person
The fairness check, and the only one worth trusting: count it yourself.
- Ana Reyes 7
- Bola Adeyemi 7
- Cara Whitfield 7
- Dmitri Sokolov 7
- Elena Marsh 7
- Femi Okonkwo 7
- Grace Lindqvist 7
- Hana Sato 7
Every cell is editable, and the CSV exports what is on screen. Generated in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is kept when you close the tab.
At a glance
- A shift schedule generator turns a staff list and a set of shifts into a filled rota, rather than leaving you to place every name by hand.
- This one runs in the browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be sent: there is no account and no server call.
- It rotates staff evenly across shifts, honours a maximum consecutive-days setting, and gives everyone a comparable number of shifts.
- The result is editable in place and downloads as a CSV that opens in Excel or Sheets.
- It is a fair rotation, not a rules engine. It does not know your people's availability, competencies or credentials; it knows the names you typed.
Is there a free shift schedule maker that works without an account?
This one. It computes in your browser, so there is nothing to sign up for and nowhere for your staff list to go.
That is a design decision rather than a generous mood. Almost every free work schedule maker on the web is a lead form with a grid attached: it asks for an email before it shows you anything, or it shows you a schedule and then charges to let you take it away. Both are reasonable businesses and neither is what somebody typing 'free shift schedule maker' at nine on a Sunday evening is looking for.
So the arithmetic here happens on your machine. There is no request to us carrying your team's names, no account, and no export gate. If you close the tab it is gone, which is the honest trade for not asking you for anything. And if you want it kept, that is what the CSV is for.
How does it decide who works when?
It walks the roster in order, filling each shift with the next eligible people in rotation, skipping anyone who would break the consecutive-days limit or who is marked unavailable.
Deliberately, that is a simple algorithm, and the simplicity is the feature. A rotation you cannot predict is a rotation you cannot argue with, and the first thing anyone does with a generated rota is check whether it treated them fairly. This one starts each day where the last one left off, so over a fortnight everyone lands within a shift or so of everyone else, and you can verify that by counting, which is the only kind of fairness that survives contact with a break room.
What it does not do is optimise. There is no solver here weighing preferences against cost against seniority, because a solver whose reasoning you cannot follow produces a rota you have to defend in a meeting with the word 'algorithm', and that meeting goes badly. Generate a starting point, then edit it; the grid below is editable, and editing a good draft is a much smaller job than filling a blank one.
What it does not know about your team
Everything except the names you typed: not availability, not competencies, not credentials, not rest, not contracts.
It will happily put someone on a shift they cannot work, because you have not told it: there is no field for the fact that Priya cannot do Thursdays, that only two people are signed off on the unit, or that a certification expired on Friday. The consecutive-days limit is the only rule in it, and a real rota is mostly rules. Treat the output as a first draft with the arithmetic done, which is genuinely useful and is exactly as much as it claims.
The version of this that knows those things is the product: MedAligna runs thirteen rules on every assignment and refuses the ones that break. It refuses them in the browser as you drag, and again on the server before the write lands, because a browser can be lied to and a database cannot.
Questions people actually ask
- Can I make a work schedule online without signing up?
- Yes: here, and without an email address either. The generator runs in your browser; nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored. Download the CSV before you close the tab and it is yours.
- Is my staff list sent anywhere?
- No. There is no request to a server carrying it, because the arithmetic happens on your machine. That also means we cannot recover it for you if you close the tab.
- How many people can it handle?
- Enough for a unit or a small department: a few dozen names and a few weeks. Past that a browser grid stops being the right shape for the problem regardless of how fast it is, because you stop being able to read it.
- Can I edit the schedule it generates?
- Yes. Every cell in the result is editable, and the CSV exports whatever is on screen when you download it. The generator is meant to produce a draft you correct, not an answer you accept.
- Does it handle rotating patterns like Pitman or DuPont?
- No. That is a different tool, and it is linked at the foot of this page. This one fills shifts from a staff list; the rotating generator lays a named pattern onto real dates.
Related
When a draft is not enough
MedAligna checks credentials, rest, overtime and availability before an assignment can be saved. Fourteen days free, no card, nobody calls you.