The paid parish schedulers run from $60, $80 or $120 a year (The Church C.R.E.W.) to $50 a month (Parish Solutions Company, Ministry Scheduler), as listed on their own pages on 28 September 2026, and most need an account for the scheduler and often for every volunteer. The free tools either cap the list or need an account.
The tools, as their own pages describe them
| Tool | Price listed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Parish Solutions Company, Ministry Scheduler | $50 a month | Web based, for Catholic parishes. Fills every ministry spot between two dates, spaces ministers fairly, and never puts one person in two roles on one weekend. |
| Ministry Scheduler Pro | No price shown on the pricing page | A six month first subscription with a money back guarantee; optional text messages at $0.02 each. |
| The Church C.R.E.W. | $60, $80 or $120 a year | A one month free trial for 20 volunteers, then Basic ($60 a year, 100 volunteers), Plus ($80 a year, adds text messages) or Premium ($120 a year, 250 volunteers). An automatic schedule generator in every plan. |
| Planning Center Services | Free for 5 team members | Paid monthly tiers are priced by the number of team members, chosen on the pricing page. |
| RotaFish | Free, with upgrades of £1.50, £2.00 or £3.15 a rota | No account; free rotas hold 15 sign-ups, 15 occurrences and 10 roles. The upgrades to 50 are sold only to people in the United Kingdom. An auto-complete button assigns by availability. |
| RotaPlanner | Free | Needs an account. Built for staff shifts and contracted hours, with automatic scheduling and printable PDFs; hosted online. |
What to compare
- Who has to sign in. A tool priced by team members who log in grows in cost with the list; a tool with no accounts costs the same at five people or fifty.
- Caps. A free plan that stops at fifteen sign-ups or fifteen dates will not hold a parish with three Masses a weekend: the sample parish in PewRota needs 442 places over one quarter.
- Parish rules. Look for one role per Mass, not twice in one weekend, families together, and an experienced server at every Mass. Shift schedulers think in hours and contracts, not Masses and ministries.
- Where the names go. Online tools keep the list on their servers. That is convenient for volunteer self-service, and a question to ask when the list includes children.
- What prints. The sacristy wants the rota by Mass, families want it by person, and the bulletin wants one page.
A worked comparison: one quarter of a three Mass parish
The sample parish in PewRota has 56 volunteers and needs 34 places filled every weekend, 442 over a quarter. On a free plan that stops at fifteen sign-ups, the parish would need several separate rotas, and the rule that nobody serves twice on one weekend could not be checked across them. On a plan priced by the number of people who log in, every one of the 56 volunteers would count. On a paid parish scheduler the quarter is routine, and the question is only the monthly or yearly cost against what the parish would otherwise spend in the scheduler's time.
PewRota builds the same quarter in the browser with every place filled and no rule broken, turns between 6 and 9 per person, and the names kept on the parish computer.
Where PewRota fits
PewRota is for the parish volunteer who builds the rota alone and hands it out: no accounts, no sync, and the names kept on the parish computer. It fills a month, a quarter or a year against the parish's own rules, explains every open place, and prints the rota by service and by person, a bulletin grid and a fairness report. It does not let volunteers log in to swap or sign up, and it does not send text messages. If those matter most, one of the online tools above is the better fit.
Common mistakes when choosing
- Choosing on the monthly price alone, without counting the volunteers who must have accounts.
- Trying a free plan on a small test list, then hitting its cap at the first real quarter.
- Forgetting that a tool built for shift work has no idea what a Vigil Mass is.
Try PewRota with the sample parish in the rota builder, or read the fair rotation rules to see what it keeps.
Sources
Checked on 28 September 2026. PewRota applies your parish's own policy; it ships no liturgical rules. Where your diocese, your parish safeguarding policy or your clergy say something different, follow them.
- The vendors' own pricing and product pages (6 products). Read on 2026-09-28; each row of the comparison names its page.
- PewRota's rota builder. Every example on this page is built by the same solver the rota builder runs, at build time, and pinned by a test.