Free on-call rotation schedule generator

A fair weekly on-call schedule for small teams, shareable in seconds.

Create your on-call rotation

Please provide a task name.
Select a frequency.
Select a start date.
One person per line, in the order you want them to take turns. A name is enough; add a comma and an email address if you want that person to get reminders.
Add at least one person.

Free, and no login needed. You get a link to share with the team.

The next few turns

Updates as you type. Nothing is saved until you create the rotation.

  1. Mon, Oct 5 add names
  2. Mon, Oct 12 add names
  3. Mon, Oct 19 add names
  4. Mon, Oct 26 add names
  5. Mon, Nov 2 add names

After that it keeps going in the same order for a year.


How it works

①

Add the people

Type one name per line, in the order you want them to take turns. Emails are optional.

②

Check the dates

On-call, every week, starting October 5. Change any of it before you create the rotation.

③

Share the link

You get a year of turns and a link anyone can open. Sign in to claim it and turn on reminders.


Building an on-call rotation people can live with

Start with the length of a shift. Weekly is the common choice: long enough that the person on duty builds up context on what is going wrong, short enough that a rough week has a defined end. Daily handoffs suit teams of three or fewer, where a whole week each would mean being on call a third of the year. Whichever you pick, keep it the same for everyone, because a rotation where one person does weeks and another does days is the kind of thing people count.

Then pin down the handoff. Name the day and the time, write it in the same place as the schedule, and make the outgoing person say what is still open. Monday mornings are popular and they are also the worst time to discover you are on call, so a reminder the day before earns its keep here.

Swaps will happen, so make them cheap. Assigning a substitute for one shift leaves the rest of the order untouched, which is what you want: the point is to cover a week, not to reshuffle the year. Holidays need a bit of care, because RotaHog does not yet know about public holidays and will happily schedule someone through one. Cancel that turn, or hand it to a substitute, and the schedule stays honest.

One thing to be clear about: RotaHog decides and publishes who is on call. It does not receive alerts, does not route them, and will not wake anybody up. Keep your alerting tool for paging, point it at the person RotaHog says is on duty, and use the REST API or MCP server if you want that answer somewhere other than a web page.


Make it automatic

An on-call schedule nobody reads is not a schedule. Reminders are what make the handoff actually happen.

Claim the rotation with a Google sign-in and RotaHog emails whoever is up before their turn, for free. Everything below is on Team Toolkit, $19 a year for the whole team:

Slack reminders with buttons

The reminder posts in your channel with Mark as done and Find a substitute buttons, so the person on duty can answer without leaving Slack.

Completion tracking

Turns get marked done, missed or overdue, so the schedule shows what actually happened and not just what was planned. You can set how early and how late a turn may be completed.

Substitutes and skipping

Hand a single turn to someone else, name a backup ahead of time, or cancel a turn entirely when there is a holiday or an offsite. The rest of the order stays as it was.

Rebalancing

When somebody joins or leaves, redeal every future turn around the new list in one click instead of rebuilding the schedule by hand.

Also included: replying to the reminder email to mark your turn done, the REST API, and the MCP server for asking an AI assistant whose turn it is. Calendar sync, analytics and team branding are not built yet, and neither is skipping public holidays automatically.

See what's in each plan

Questions

What's a good on-call rotation for a small team?

For a team of four or more, weekly shifts that hand off on a fixed weekday are the usual starting point. They are long enough that the person on duty builds context and short enough that a bad week ends. With three people or fewer, weekly means being on call a third of the year, so daily or split shifts are kinder.

How do we handle swaps?

Assign a substitute on the turn that needs covering, which leaves the rest of the order untouched, or cancel the turn to skip it. Both are Team Toolkit features at $19 a year. Either way the schedule link updates for everyone, so the swap is written down rather than agreed in a thread and forgotten.

Does RotaHog send alerts or page people?

No. RotaHog schedules who is on call and reminds that person by email or Slack. It does not receive alerts, does not route them and will not wake anyone at 3am. Keep your alerting tool for paging and use RotaHog to decide and publish whose week it is.

Can I get the schedule into Slack or via API?

Yes, both are on Team Toolkit at $19 a year. Slack reminders post to an incoming webhook before each shift, and the REST API and MCP server let you read the current on-call person from a dashboard, a script or an AI assistant.

Is it free?

Yes to start. Creating and sharing an on-call schedule needs no account at all, and a free account covers two rotations of up to five people with email reminders. Slack, the API, swaps and skips are on Team Toolkit at $19 a year.


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