HotSchedules vs Fourth
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
HotSchedules
This app simplifies employee scheduling and team communication. It allows for easy shift management, time-off requests, and calendar syncing. Managers benefit from faster schedule creation and performance monitoring, while teams stay connected through messaging.
- Shift swapping and pickup
- Time off requests
- Automatic calendar sync
- Manager schedule building
- Sales and labor monitoring
- Team messaging
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HotSchedules is the industry's leading employee scheduling app because it’s the fastest and easiest way to manage your schedule and communicate with your team. Team members love it because they can swap, pick-up or release shifts with one click. Work-life balance is easily managed with automatic shift pick ups when you want more hours, and time off requests for when you don’t. Calendar sync and notifications keep your Schedules and the roster automatically updated to your phone with any manager-approved changes. Managers appreciate the 75% time savings when building schedules and one-click approvals for shift changes. The ability to monitor business performance with sales and labor snapshots from anywhere, keeps them out of the back office. And most importantly, staying connected with broadcast and one-to-one messaging makes for a happy and productive team culture. NOTE: The HotSchedules application REQUIRES a valid HotSchedules user account through your employer. Need help? Contact Customer Care 24x7x365
Fourth
This app streamlines hospitality operations by centralizing workforce management, purchasing, and inventory. It enhances team collaboration, simplifies scheduling, and improves inventory accuracy for efficient business management.
- Workforce management
- Purchase-to-pay
- Inventory management
- Shift scheduling
- Holiday requests
- Stock counting
- Order management
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Fourth is the world's leading provider of innovative software services to the hospitality industry and the Fourth App is the mobile gateway to access all of Fourth's and our partner's capabilities. Using our purpose built platform, where team collaboration is at the center of everything we provide, the Fourth App brings to life the processes required to run an efficient and effective hospitality business that customers love. Evolving the employee experience while at and away from work, Fourth has a variety of mobile apps, which help run your business with our Workforce Management, and Purchase-to-Pay and Inventory solutions. Allowing employees to collaborate with each other, apply for holidays, view and manage their scheduled shifts, count stock, order and receive deliveries, and much, much more. Fourth’s Workforce Management solution: Makes the lives of your managers and employees easier. Managers save hours every week by quickly building accurate schedules, and approving shift changes at the touch of a button. They can also publish open shifts, keep connected and stay on top of business performance on the go. Employees get more exact schedules, and can quickly and easily requests swaps, suggest unavailability, volunteer for open shifts, request time off and view payroll information, while staying connected with the business, their managers and their colleagues. Managers get out of the back office so they spend more time with their teams and customers, and employees feel happier and more engaged with the business, improving productivity, company culture and employee retention. Fourth’s Purchase-to-Pay and Inventory Management solution: Keeps operators on top of inventory by ensuring regular valuations are quickly and easily captured. Placing orders, completing inventory counts and goods receiving are completed on mobile devices, saving hours of time and eliminating errors caused by re-keying data. Actual Cost of Sales (COS) is easily calculated, and the gap between actual and theoretical is effectively highlighted and can be driven down as actual COS factors in all transactional data, daily sales and other account transfers and inventory movement. The result is better inventory management, ensuring you have sufficient products to meet demand while reducing waste and removing unnecessary administration. Getting started with the Fourth App: The Fourth App requires a Fourth Account to login, your employer needs to have given you access through an activation email and if you have any problems with access you should contact your line manager.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Fourth at Free against HotSchedules's $2.99. Fourth also leads on iOS requirement (12.0 vs 17.1). HotSchedules's advantage is rating (4.6 vs 1.3) and ratings volume (67K vs 134). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Fourth is free to download; HotSchedules costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
HotSchedules holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 1.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HotSchedules has 67K ratings behind it against 134, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 21% of HotSchedules's written reviews are positive against 4% of Fourth's.
HotSchedules ships an update every 2 weeks, Fourth every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | HotSchedules | Fourth |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.6 (67K ratings) — better | 1.3 (134 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 20.7% of reviews — better | 3.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 67K — better | 134 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #1 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.1 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 59 MB | 74 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | HotSchedules | Fourth Limited |
Customer experience
HotSchedules
Fourth
User reviews
HotSchedules
From 67K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Easy to use
- 👍 Convenient for checking schedules
- 💡 Ability to pick up and swap shifts
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and glitches
- ⏱️ Slow loading times
- 🔍 Difficult to navigate and find information
- 🔄 Constant need to update app
- 💰 Paid app for employees
Fourth
From 134 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Fast app icon
- 👍 Works without issue
Room to improve
- 🐛 Constantly crashes
- 🔒 Authentication issues
- 👎 Unreliable
- 👎 Difficult to use
- 🔍 Lacks functionality
Bugs and requests
HotSchedules
Reported bugs
4 issues- Login issues after updates
- Calendar sync problems
- Disappearing messages and data loss
- Incompatibility with dark mode
Requested features
5 requests- Show shift end times
- Categorize and filter inbox messages
- Ability to view full team schedules
- Automatic shift rotation algorithm
- Integrated payroll and earnings tracking
Fourth
Reported bugs
4 issues- Blank screens
- Login failures
- Scheduling issues
- Payslip access problems
Requested features
3 requests- Dark mode option
- Improved calendar integration
- Better employee communication tools
In-app purchases
HotSchedules
No in-app purchases
Fourth
No in-app purchases









