Best School Scheduler Software in 2026 (K-12 and Higher Ed)
Quick Answer
If you need software to build class timetables, these are the products still shipping in 2026:
- Single K-12 school, wants easy : aSc Timetables or Prime Timetable
- Large district or multi-school group : Untis
- Already on PowerSchool SIS : PowerScheduler
- Heavy daily cover and substitutions : Edval / Tes Timetable
- University or college : CELCAT or UniTime
- No budget at all : FET or UniTime, both free and open source
On pricing: almost none of these vendors publish a price list. Untis, CELCAT, Edval, Lantiv and PowerSchool all quote per institution, and aSc prices vary by country and license type. Any article that gives you a firm annual figure for these products is guessing. Get a quote and compare it against a free option before you sign.
Disclosure: SocialRails is a social media scheduling tool. We do not sell timetabling software, we are not resellers or affiliates of anything listed here, and none of these vendors paid for placement. This guide exists because schools that use us for parent and community posting kept asking which timetabler to buy.
Quick Comparison
What School Scheduling Software Does
School scheduling software solves a constraint problem. It assigns:
- Classes to time slots across the school week
- Teachers to classes, respecting qualifications and availability
- Rooms to classes, respecting capacity and equipment
- Students to sections without clashes
The part schools underestimate is what happens after the timetable is published. Absences, room closures and mid-year changes mean you touch the timetable constantly. Substitution and daily cover handling is worth weighting heavily in your evaluation, because it is the feature you will use every single morning.
Nine School Scheduling Tools Worth Shortlisting
1. Untis: Best for Large Districts
The long-standing European standard, from Gruber and Petters in Austria. Untis says more than 30,000 educational institutions across 45 or more countries use it, and it pairs the desktop scheduler with WebUntis for publishing, digital registers and parent communication.
Pricing: No published price. Untis offers a free trial and quotes per institution.
Best for: Large districts with complex constraints and someone whose actual job is the timetable.
2. aSc Timetables: Best for Single K-12 Schools
The usual first purchase for an individual school. The trial version is unlimited in time and does everything except export, watermarking printouts instead, so you can build a full working timetable before paying anything.
Pricing: aSc publishes prices on its own prices page, and they vary by country and license type. Check the vendor page rather than a third-party number.
Best for: K-12 schools that want a working timetable in weeks, not a term.
3. Lantiv Scheduling Studio: Best for Unusual Timetable Structures
Lantiv handles patterns that trip up simpler tools: rotating A/B days, block schedules, mixed period lengths. It is distributed through the Microsoft Store and sold as a subscription. The base license covers a small number of concurrent users, and you pay more to add schedulers.
Pricing: Subscription, priced by concurrent user count. Confirm current rates with the vendor.
Best for: Schools whose timetable does not fit a standard weekly grid.
4. PowerSchool PowerScheduler: Best for PowerSchool SIS Districts
The scheduling engine built into PowerSchool SIS. The correct product name is PowerScheduler, and it is not sold standalone. Its argument is not that it is the best solver, it is that your courses, teachers, rooms and student requests are already in the system.
Pricing: Part of the PowerSchool SIS contract.
Best for: Districts already committed to PowerSchool that want one system.
5. Edval and Tes Timetable: Best for Daily Cover
Edval, founded in Australia in 1998, was acquired by Tes Global in 2019, and the same engine is also sold as Tes Timetable. Strong on daily operations: cover, absences, real-time changes. Note that the strongest presence is Australia and the UK, so check local support before buying elsewhere.
Pricing: No published price. Quoted per school.
Best for: Secondary schools where the timetable changes every day.
6. Prime Timetable: Best Browser Based Option
Runs in a browser on any device rather than as installed Windows software, which matters if your school is on Macs or Chromebooks. Tiers are defined by teacher count rather than students, with a free evaluation tier, a plan for small and medium schools and one for larger campuses.
Pricing: Tiered by number of teachers, with multi-year discounts. Prices are shown on the vendor's own pricing calculator.
Best for: Small and medium schools that do not want to install anything.
7. FET: Best Free Desktop Option
FET is free software under the AGPL v3, actively maintained, with version 7.9.1 released in July 2026. It is not a toy. The solver is strong and will produce clash-free timetables for schools that many commercial tools charge four figures for.
Pricing: Free. Donations requested, not required.
Best for: Any school with a technically confident staff member and no budget. Worth trying before you accept a quote, if only to have a comparison.
8. UniTime: Best Free Option for Universities
An open source higher-ed system, a sponsored project of the Apereo Foundation since 2015. It covers course timetabling, exam timetabling, event and room management, and student sectioning, which is a genuinely wide scope for a free tool.
Pricing: Free under an open source license.
Best for: Universities with IT capacity that would rather spend on people than licenses.
9. CELCAT: Best for UK and International Universities
A UK timetabling specialist, part of Volaris Group, focused on universities and further education colleges. Standard scope covers interactive timetabling, publishing and room booking, with attendance monitoring, exam scheduling and staff pay claims as extensions.
Pricing: No published price. Quoted per institution.
Best for: Universities and colleges, particularly in the UK, that need room booking and attendance alongside timetabling.
How to Choose
What to Ask Before You Buy
Take these to every demo. The answers separate the tools faster than any feature list.
- What exactly does it cost for a school our size, in writing? Nothing on this list has a public price except the free tools. Get the number, including modules, before you fall in love with a demo.
- How does substitution and daily cover work? Make them show you a teacher calling in sick at 07:30, not a fresh timetable build.
- Can we import from, and export to, our SIS? Ask for the actual file format. CSV import and export covers most needs if there is no native integration.
- Who touches it when the timetabler leaves? Single-person dependency is the real risk with timetabling software, more than any feature gap.
- Can we build a full timetable in the trial? aSc and FET both let you get to a finished timetable before spending anything. Use that as your benchmark for what a paid quote must beat.
FAQ
Is free timetabling software good enough for a real school?
Often, yes. FET is free under the AGPL and its solver is strong enough for most K-12 timetables, and UniTime covers course, exam and student scheduling for universities. What you give up is a support contract, a polished interface and forgiving data entry. If you have a staff member who is comfortable with structured data, build a trial timetable in FET first, then judge any paid quote against it.
Why does nobody publish school timetabling prices?
Because these are quoted per institution, based on student or teacher numbers, modules and country. Untis, CELCAT, Edval, Lantiv and PowerSchool all quote rather than list, and aSc varies by market. Treat any specific annual figure you see in a comparison article as unverified unless it comes from the vendor's own pricing page.
Can these tools handle block and rotating day schedules?
Lantiv, Untis and aSc all support block scheduling and rotating A/B days. Support quality varies a lot by the specific pattern you use, so build your real structure during the trial rather than trusting a feature checkbox.
Should the timetabler integrate with our SIS?
It saves duplicate entry, which matters most at district scale. If you run PowerSchool SIS, PowerScheduler removes the import step entirely. Otherwise most tools exchange CSV, which is usually enough for an annual build.
Does SocialRails do school timetabling?
No. SocialRails schedules social media posts. It has nothing to do with class timetables, teacher allocation or room booking. Schools use it to plan parent and community announcements, which is a different job entirely.
Announcing the New Timetable
Publishing the timetable is a communications job, not a scheduling one. None of the tools above post to social platforms, so schools usually handle that separately with a content calendar and a school caption generator. If you are choosing a tool for the posting side rather than the timetabling side, our social media scheduler comparison and social media management workflow guides cover that, and content workflow software covers approvals if posts need sign-off before they go out.
Was this article helpful?
Let us know what you think!