See the whole team
Stop asking your team for status.
They check in, pick up work, and the picture builds itself. No standups to chase. No screenshots.
Free for up to 3 people. No card. We’ll set your team up within one business day.
Set up in under 10 minutes
- ◇ Not in yet
- ● Has room
- ▣ On a task
- ◆ At capacity
One person is past what the day holds. Friday is at risk.
Ana is at capacity. Dev has room.
- In
- 7/8
- Done today
- 11
Give someone a task and watch the balance move.
- No screenshots. Ever.
- Export your data any time
- Cancel any time
- 24/7 support, 24h to a fix
The problem
You find out too late.
Nobody is hiding anything
The work is getting done. You just can’t see the shape of it until something ships late.
Asking costs you something
Chasing status makes you the person who chases status. That’s a withdrawal from a relationship you need.
Load is never even
One person is on five things and one is waiting for work, and neither of them will tell you.
Four tools, half a picture
Time in one, tasks in another, standup in a third. None of them answer the question you actually have.
How it works
Three steps, and the third one is automatic.
- Step 1
Your team checks in
One click, from the browser or the taskbar. That’s the whole ritual — no timesheet, no form.
- Step 2
Work gets picked up
You assign it or they claim it. Everyone can see what’s on their plate and what’s on everyone else’s.
- Step 3
The picture builds itself
Utilisation, progress and load, from what already happened. Nothing extra for anyone to fill in.
A day in Roster
One click in. One click out.
That is the whole ritual. In between it sits in the taskbar and stays out of the way — and every number on this page comes from what your team already did, not from anything extra they were asked to fill in.
- WindowsWindows 10 and 11
- macOSApple silicon and Intel
Or use it in any browser — same features, nothing to install.
The board
The columns are the progress.
There is no status field to keep up to date, because where a card sits is its status. Anyone can take unclaimed work. Nobody is asked to report on any of it.
- Everyone
- All projects
- All departments
To do
19Q4 campaign brief
NorthwindUnclaimedTakeStartPayments API — retry logic
PlatformTakeStartKey art — round two
HaldenTakeStart
In progress
6Landing page copy — variant B
Northwind60%Auth migration — staging
PlatformOverdue · Fri 2140%Character rig — pass 2
Halden80%
Done
52Client reporting deck
NorthwindOnboarding email sequence
Internal
- Take work, or have it assigned — both are one click
- Progress comes from the work, not from a weekly update
- Late shows up amber, because a slipped date is a scheduling fact, not a fault
Features
Grouped by what you get, not by what it’s called.
See the whole team
Open one screen and know where everyone is. Not a report you request — the state of today.
- Who’s checked in, on what, since when
- Utilisation for a person, a team, or a month
- Task progress without asking for it
- Where the load is uneven, before it costs you
Get work moving
Assign it, claim it, finish it. The board is the plan, so there is no second place to keep it up to date.
- Assign work, or let people claim it
- A board where the columns are progress
- Check in and out in one click
- Breaks and leave, without a paper trail
Where your team already is
Roster posts into the channels people already read, so nobody has to open a dashboard to find out what happened.
- Discord and Slack, per team
- Webhooks for anything else
- Connect AI agents to read and write
- Standup that collects itself
On every desk
A tray app that stays out of the way, and the full thing in a browser when you want it.
- Windows and macOS companion
- Sits in the taskbar or menu bar
- Works in any browser, including phones
- Keeps working when the network drops
The business case
Utilisation is margin.
If you bill for your team’s time, the gap between what they worked and what you invoiced is the whole business. Most teams cannot see that gap until the month closes, by which point it is history rather than a decision.
The hours you did not bill
Work that happened, against work that reached an invoice. The difference is not theft — it is scope you absorbed without noticing.
The project eating more than it was quoted
Visible in week two rather than at delivery, while there is still a conversation to have about it.
The person carrying the quarter
One person at capacity while another waits is capacity you already paid for and did not use.
Roster costs $5 per person per month.
For a team that bills at any normal rate, that is less than one billable hour per person, per year. If it recovers a single afternoon of misplaced work in twelve months, it has paid for itself and the year after it.
Not surveillance
Your team can see everything you can see.
Most tools in this category are built to catch people. They take screenshots, log keystrokes, and rank your team against each other. That buys you a number and costs you a team. Roster records what someone chose to tell it — when they checked in, what they picked up, what they wrote in their own standup — and shows it back to them first.
What your team gets
- A button their colleagues can use to say they did well
- Nobody asks them for a status update again
- Their work stops being invisible — effort shows up, not just output
- A fair share of the load, and a way to say when it is too much
- Their own numbers, in full, before anyone else sees them
- Leave and breaks without asking permission in a group chat
- A day that ends — the EOD report opens once they check out
What it never does
- No screenshots. Not on any plan.
- No keystroke or mouse logging
- No reading files, browser tabs, or apps
- No location or webcam access
- No secret mode — nothing is hidden from the person it is about
Everyone sees their own data in full, and can export it. If your team would not be comfortable with a screen, it is not in the product.
Pricing
The published price is the real price.
No add-on tax, no seat minimum, no annual lock-in. Every plan includes task management, the integrations, the desktop apps, and 24/7 support.
What it costs at your headcount
Drag to your team size. Entry plans, annual billing, per year. These are not like-for-like: Roster’s number is the whole product, and the others’ are not.
- Roster$720/yr
- Hubstaff$719/yr
Task management, Insights and extra screenshots are paid add-ons.
- Time Doctor$960/yr
No free tier. SSO and user provisioning are about $200 a month each, flat.
- ActivTrak$1,440/yr
Annual billing only, 5-user minimum. Screenshots +$2, API access +$3.
- DeskTime$1,008/yr
The free plan is one user, so a team never sees it.
Competitor pricing as published on 26 August 2026, on each product’s entry plan at annual billing, with seat minimums applied. Roster is free to five people, so a team of five costs nothing. Roster’s figure includes task management, the integrations, the desktop apps and support. The others’ do not — see the note under each.
Free
For a team that fits around one table.
Start free$0
Up to 3 people
- Everything in Team, for up to 3 people
- Check in and out, tasks, and the board
- Stats and utilisation
- Discord, Slack and webhooks
- Windows and macOS companion
- 24/7 support with the 24-hour fix commitment
The only limit is history: Free keeps the last 30 days. Everything else is the full product.
Team
Most teamsFor a team that bills for its time.
Start free$5/user/mo
Per user, per month
- Unlimited people and unlimited history
- Full stats and utilisation reporting
- Unlimited tasks and projects
- Discord, Slack and webhooks
- Agent connections
- Windows and macOS companion
- 24/7 support with the 24-hour fix commitment
No seat minimum. Cancel any time, and take your data with you.
Growth
For when other people start asking who did what.
Start free$9/user/mo
Per user, per month
- Everything in Team
- SSO
- Advanced utilisation reporting
- Roles and permissions
- Audit log
- Priority onboarding
SSO is included, not a flat monthly fee bolted on top.
Enterprise
For procurement, and for people who need it on their own metal.
Start freeCustom
Talk to us
- Everything in Growth
- Self-hosting
- A signed SLA
- Procurement and security review
- Named contact
Support
Reachable any hour. Fixed inside a day.
Your team is answering to your clients. When something here gets in the way of that, it stops being your problem quickly — on every plan, including the free one.
- 24/7Reachable
Any hour, any day. Not a queue that opens at nine in a timezone you don’t live in.
- < 24hTo a fix
Not to a first reply. A reported bug is fixed or has a dated plan within a day.
- Every planIncluding free
Support is not a tier. Gating it would undercut the only reason the promise means anything.
- Emailhello@character.xyz
- DiscordA shared channel with your team
- In-appReport from any screen, with context attached
Questions
The things people ask before they roll it out.
Is this surveillance software?
No, and it is built so it cannot quietly become it. Roster has no screenshot capture, no keystroke logging, no app or browser monitoring, and no location tracking — not on any plan, not as an add-on. It records what someone chose to tell it: when they checked in, what they picked up, what they wrote in standup. Everyone sees their own data in full.
What if my team hates it?
That usually happens when a tool is introduced as a way to catch people. Roster gives your team the same view you get, including their own utilisation and their own progress, so it reads as a shared picture rather than a one-way mirror. Roll it out by telling them exactly what it records — the list is short enough to say out loud, which is the point.
How long does setup take?
Under ten minutes for a small team. Create the team, invite people by email, and they check in. There is nothing to configure before it is useful — no projects to model, no approval chains, no policy to write first.
Can I export my data?
Yes, on every plan including Free. Attendance, tasks and utilisation export as CSV, and individuals can export their own record. Leaving is not a support ticket.
What happens when we hit four people?
Free covers up to three. At four the team moves to Team pricing, which is $5 per person per month on annual billing — so a four-person team is $20 a month. Nothing is deleted and nothing stops working while you decide.
Do I need a card to start?
No. The free tier does not ask for one, and there is no trial that expires into a bill.
Does it work offline?
The desktop companion does. Check in, start and end breaks, and update tasks with no connection; it queues the changes and sends them when the network comes back. The browser version needs a connection.
Is there a contract?
Not on Free, Team or Growth — monthly or annual, cancel whenever, no notice period and no minimum seats. Enterprise involves a contract because procurement asks for one.
Does support really answer at 3am?
Support is reachable 24/7 on every plan, and the commitment is under 24 hours to a fix — not to a first reply. That applies on the free tier too. It is a differentiator and gating it by price would undercut the whole point of making the promise.
Find out where the week actually went.
Start freeFree for up to 3 people. No card. We’ll set your team up within one business day.