Rotahr vs When I Work
Rotahr and When I Work both handle staff scheduling, but they solve different problems: Rotahr is one flat-priced app that also covers bookings, food safety records, stock and payroll for a single venue, while When I Work is a dedicated workforce platform priced per user and bolted to other tools for the rest.
Per-user employee scheduling, time tracking and team messaging app, aimed at small and multi-site hourly workforces.
Below is a straight comparison, including the cases where When I Work is the better choice. If that's you, we'd rather you knew now than found out after paying us.
Short version
A clean, affordable scheduling and time-tracking tool at low headcount, with payroll handed off to a partner rather than built in. It stops at staff operations — reservations and food safety stay elsewhere.
What each one costs
Rotahr
€49/mo
Flat monthly, VAT included. Up to 15 staff; €89 up to 30. Hiring doesn't change the bill.
When I Work
per user
Published per user, per month: $2.50/user/month for a single location or schedule, $5/user/month for multiple locations or schedules. Enterprise pricing is quote-based.
Rough cost at 12 staff: $2.50 × 12 staff = $30/month on the single-location plan, rising to $60/month on the multi-location plan.
When I Work pricing taken from their own pricing page, checked 2026-11-18. Vendors change prices — verify before you buy. We don't quote third-party aggregators because they're often years out of date.
Where When I Work is better
No point pretending otherwise.
- ✓Per-user pricing is genuinely cheap at low headcount — a small team pays very little on the single-location plan.
- ✓Every plan carries the full feature set — scheduling, time tracking with GPS clock-in, and messaging — with no feature gating between tiers, only a location/user-count split.
- ✓A current partner offer bundles six months of free Rippling payroll and HR for new customers.
- ✓Large scale and long track record — over 200,000 workplaces and a million-plus users across 50+ countries, per their own figures.
Pick When I Work if…
You want the cheapest possible per-user entry price for scheduling and time tracking alone, you're happy adopting Rippling for payroll, and you don't need reservations or food safety in the same product.
Where When I Work leaves gaps for a small venue
- ✕Per-user pricing works against you as you add staff — a 25-person venue pays $62.50–$125/month for scheduling alone, before anything else.
- ✕Nothing for front of house — no table bookings, floor plan or customer list.
- ✕No food safety / HACCP module, no bookkeeping or receipt scanning, no recipe costing.
- ✕Payroll isn't native — it's a free six-month bridge into Rippling, a separate third-party product, not a feature built into When I Work itself.
- ✕Not built around Irish or UK statutory break entitlements, VAT or Form 46G.
The real difference
Most tools here do the rota well. The question is what happens to everything else — the temperature checks, the delivery notes, the bookings, the bag of receipts. Rotahr was built by a chef who was doing all of it by hand.
| Included as standard | Rotahr | When I Work |
|---|---|---|
| Staff rota & shift swaps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Clock in / out with break tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| HACCP food safety records | ✓ | ✕ |
| Table bookings & floor plan | ✓ | ✕ |
| Receipt scanning & bookkeeping | ✓ | ✕ |
| Stock & recipe costing | ✓ | ✕ |
| Customer list & offers | ✓ | ✕ |
Based on each vendor's publicly marketed feature set as of 2026-11-18. When I Work may offer some of these through integrations or partners rather than natively.
Common questions
Is Rotahr cheaper than When I Work?
It depends on headcount. At $2.50/user/month, a very small team can be cheaper on When I Work's single-location plan than Rotahr's €49 Starter. Past roughly 20 staff, or on the $5/user multi-location plan, the per-user model overtakes Rotahr's flat €49–€89/month — and that's before adding bookings, HACCP or bookkeeping, which Rotahr includes and When I Work doesn't have at all.
Does When I Work include payroll?
Not natively. They currently offer six months of free Rippling payroll and HR to new customers as a partner bridge, but payroll itself runs in Rippling, a separate product, rather than inside When I Work. Rotahr prepares payroll inside the same app from the Starter plan.
What does Rotahr do that When I Work does not?
Table bookings and a floor plan, a customer list, HACCP food safety records, receipt scanning and bookkeeping, and recipe costing — When I Work is a scheduling, time-tracking and messaging tool, so those stay in other systems.