Scheduler vs FireSync Shift Calendar
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Scheduler
Easily visualize and manage your rotating work shifts for up to six years in advance. Ideal for public service employees, it handles common and custom schedules, vacation time, and even overlays a partner's schedule for better family planning.
- Visualize schedule for six years
- Supports custom and common shift patterns
- Tracks vacation and sick time
- Records and formats shift trades
- Overlays partner's schedule
- Logs events with date, time, and location
- Countdown to retirement
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Visualize Your Shift Schedule From Jeff: Please don't put questions or suggestions in a review -- there's no way for me to reply directly to you. Instead. use the in-app email buttons (on the Help tab), or send to sched@buddy.com. If your schedule varies from week to week, keeping track of your working days can be a chore, and it’s often difficult to quickly figure out when you’ll be on-duty weeks or months in the future. Scheduler to the rescue! Designed for public-service employees such as police officers, firefighters and health-care workers — anyone who works an unusual but predictable schedule — Scheduler always shows your schedule for the next six years from “today.” Common shift schedules are built-in, such as the “Berkeley” (a.k.a. “California”), “48-96” and “Dupont,” but you can easily change them or create other repeating schedules covering any number of days. See the screenshots (here and on the web site) for some examples. And there’s even a “Doofus” mode for showing irregular schedules (e.g., health-care workers). If your spouse/partner works a shift schedule, too, you can have that entirely different rotation appear on the calendar with yours. This will help you organize family activities such as vacations and day-care. Features: • Displays your schedule for the next six years, including vacations and holidays. • Perfect for public-service workers such as police officers and firefighters. • Records trades (swaps). Tracks hours earned or owed on a person-by-person basis. • Formats emails for sending out trade offers and approval requests. • Maintains a record of your OT hours. • Tracks your vacation time: automatically computes hours earned and shows weekly balances. Also records and totals sick time. • Logs “events” with date, time and location — you can edit the title, text, and location details when you have time. • Overlays an entirely separate schedule for your spouse/partner to help you coordinate your lives. • Adjustable colors for shifts, vacations, Kelly days, holidays, etc. • Mark special days such as Kellys, paydays, “early” shifts, or training days. • Countdown to retirement. • Extensive Help pages for every feature and screen; indexed. • Includes UK Rota features for London train and bus drivers. Notes: 1. You *can* enter a custom schedule. 2. You *can* set the text that appears on each day. 3. You *can* enter very long rotations. 4. You *can* superimpose text to mark special days on the calendar. 5. You *can* set bi-weekly repeating events (e.g., for paydays) 6. Scheduler is complicated. Please don't give up and leave a bad review -- I can't help you that way. If you have questions or comments, the best way to contact me is by using the in-app email button on the Help screen (2nd best: sched@buddy.com). I reply to all emails immediately (or within a few hours if I'm sleeping or traveling, which isn't often). If you didn't hear from me promptly, it means there was failure in the "Tubes." Please try again to contact me. Attention FDNY (firemen): you'll find my other app, FDNY, more useful for FD New York.
FireSync Shift Calendar
This app is a comprehensive calendar designed for firefighters, offering robust shift tracking, event management, and cloud integration. It allows users to manage trades, overtime, and personal events, with features like CertTracker and Expenditure tracking. It also syncs with other calendars and devices for seamless organization.
- Firefighter shift schedule tracking
- Event management (trades, overtime, personal)
- Cloud integration with FireSync Enterprise™
- CertTracker and Expenditure tracking
- Customizable shift editor
- Year and month calendar views
- Report generation and emailing
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FireSync is not merely a Firefighter Shift Calendar, it's also a full-featured calendar app with powerful cloud-enabled features just for firefighters. Whether or not you want to keep track of your trades, overtimes, or just your kid's soccer practices, FireSync can do it all. It also includes many powerful features such as CertTracker, Expenditures, and is fully integrated with FireSync Enterprise™ and TheHouse™ cloud services. Before you buy another shift calendar app ask yourself: 1. Do you have to pay an annual subscription for the calendar? Not with us! We support firefighters by letting you keep more of your hard-earned money. Is there a better way? 2. Is it also a full-featured calendar app? FireSync isn’t just a firefighter shift calendar, it’s also a full-featured calendar app that fully integrates with your phone's calendars. FireSync events are saved to your calendar and can be seen on other phone's using the same calendar account (e.g. phones used by family members). FireSync is more than a good firefighter calendar. It’s a good calendar app period! 3. Will you find yourself staring at the app for 15 minutes just figuring out how to use it? FireSync has a sleek modern design that is intuitive to use. 4. Does it include powerful cloud-enabled features? If your fire department uses FireSync Enterprise™ or TheHouse™ you can view all of the additional data and applets shared by your department or station from within FireSync. !!! SHIFT SUPPORT !!! FireSync supports any 24-hour shift schedule that repeats on a predictable cycle. FIRESYNC COMES PRELOADED WITH THE SHIFT CYCLES FOR OVER 1,400 FIRE DEPARTMENTS! If you do not see your fire department no problem. Our intuitive shift editor allows you to easily create your shift schedule. You can also share it with us so that others in your firehouse or department can quickly be up and running. Although FireSync does not fully support 12-hour shifts, we have countless users using FireSync to display their 12-hour shifts. If you want to display YOUR SHIFT (not all shifts) you can create 12-hour shifts. Kelly and Debit Days. Does your fire department use Kelly and Debit days? No problem. FireSync allows you to show both Kelly and Debit days. You can define them by rule or by specifying specific dates. FLSA: FireSync allows users to add FLSA periods to their calendar. Other Features: 1. Ability to add and track ordinary events, trades, overtime, comp time, benefit days, incidents and training. Since FireSync is also a full-featured cal you can also see these events on other calendars and other devices sharing the same calendar account (e.g. spouse). FireSync is your all-in-one calendar app. 2. Sleek reports that give you the info you need at a mere glance. View your shift trades, overtimes, comp time, benefits accrued or used, training and fire incidents with ease. You can also email your reports. 3. The ability to view your calendar in a year view, month view, month-list view, or day view. With FireSync you aren't just looking at your shift cycle. You can see all of your fire and non-fire events. 4. CertTracker to keep track of your training certificates. 5. Expenditure tracking. FireSync Shift Calendar is the shift calendar firefighters deserve. Get the word out to your brothers and sisters in your firehouse and IAFF local. *FireSync is the exclusive property of ForceReadiness.com. It solely developed FireSync and is responsible for its functionality. Firefighters First Credit Union has agreed to sponsor the app in order to provide it to all firefighters at no cost.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: FireSync Shift Calendar at Free against Scheduler's $7.99. FireSync Shift Calendar also leads on rating (4.8 vs 3.8) and ratings volume (9.1K vs 74). Scheduler's advantage is update cadence (every 9 days vs every 2 months) and review sentiment (79% vs 69%). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support 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
FireSync Shift Calendar is free to download; Scheduler costs $7.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
FireSync Shift Calendar holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: FireSync Shift Calendar has 9.1K ratings behind it against 74, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 79% of Scheduler's written reviews are positive against 69% of FireSync Shift Calendar's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Scheduler ships an update every 9 days, FireSync Shift Calendar every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 30, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Scheduler | FireSync Shift Calendar |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $7.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 3.8 (74 ratings) | 4.8 (9.1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 78.9% of reviews — better | 69.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 74 | 9.1K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 176 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | The Buddy System, LLC | ForceReadiness.com |
Customer experience
Scheduler
FireSync Shift Calendar
User reviews
Scheduler
From 74 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Outstanding app for shift workers
- 👍 Highly customizable and flexible
- 📆 Excellent for planning schedules years in advance
- 💰 Worth every penny
- 🤝 Great customer support
Room to improve
- 🕰️ Steep learning curve
- 🔀 Issues with repeating events and schedules
- 🔄 Problems with updates causing data loss
- 💤 Outdated UI and appearance
FireSync Shift Calendar
From 9.1K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Share capable
- 👍 Perfect setup
- 👍 User friendly and simple
- 👍 Easy to use
- 👍 Convenient
Room to improve
- 🐛 Randomly deletes events
- 🔒 Trouble with calendar access
- 🐛 Holiday icon disappeared
- 🐛 Erased all info
- 🐛 Verification not working
Bugs and requests
Scheduler
Reported bugs
2 issues- Events and schedules disappearing after updates
- Vacation and overtime tracking not working correctly
Requested features
4 requests- Drag and drop support for shift swapping
- List view option for events
- Ability to use emojis in event titles
- Removal of unnecessary time zone settings
FireSync Shift Calendar
Reported bugs
11 issues- Randomly deletes events
- Trouble with calendar access
- Holiday icon disappeared
- Erased all info
- Verification not working
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- No longer syncs
- Schedule won't publish
- Crashes on iOS 13.2 update
- App keeps crashing
- Bug with editing events
- Major bug with category/location fields
Requested features
11 requests- Color customization for days
- Shift designation by number
- Custom FLSA start/end dates
- Customizable pay days
- Shift trade feature
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- Debit day scheduling
- Ability to share calendar with others
- Dark mode
- Shift color customization
- Shift swap/back-to-back trade option
- Ability to see which shift you're on
In-app purchases
Scheduler
No in-app purchases
FireSync Shift Calendar
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Scheduler free?
Is FireSync Shift Calendar free?
Which has better reviews, Scheduler or FireSync Shift Calendar?
Do Scheduler or FireSync Shift Calendar have ads?
Which is updated more often, Scheduler or FireSync Shift Calendar?
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