For a middle or high school building a master schedule (called a timetable outside the US), the best choice depends on one question: do you need a program that places individual students into sections, or one that arranges teachers, classes and rooms? Timely, QuickSchools Orchestra and the builder inside a student information system (SIS) such as Focus describe placing students from course requests; Tes Timetable, aSc Timetables and the free FET are timetable builders you can try on a demo or trial. Only one of these builders, Timely, calls its engine AI, and the source for that says it is not a language model.
What Is the Best Software for Building a High School Master Schedule?
There is no single best builder. Our view is that the answer follows the data you already hold: if your SIS has a schedule builder, try it first; if you want a solver that works from student course requests, ask for a trial of one dedicated product; if you have no budget, start with FET. Timing helps: Region 13's Texas checklist puts student choice sheets in January and the build in April (ESC13), so a fall trial leaves time to compare. Chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot belong after the build, to stress-test the result and write the explanation, not to produce it.
How This List Was Built
I searched the 138 tools in the AI Educator Tools directory on October 26, 2026 and found none that builds a master schedule, so the builders below link to vendor pages and carry no directory rating. Only the four general assistants have directory entries. Pricing and feature claims were read from each vendor's own page the same day; where a page lists no price, the table says "no public pricing". Nobody paid for placement.
| Tool | Best use | Strengths | Limitations | Price / free tier | Privacy considerations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timely | Middle and high schools placing students from course requests | Optimization engine; Frontline SIS partner | Quote-based; vendor-reported results | No public pricing | Student requests leave the SIS; needs a district agreement |
| Tes Timetable (Edval) | Weighing teacher preferences and student first choices | Free test drive; UK and Australia editions | No AI claim on pages read | No public pricing | Not stated on pages read |
| aSc Timetables | Trying a full build before paying | Trial does everything except Export | Printouts are watermarked in the trial | No public pricing found | Not stated on pages read |
| FET | Zero budget | Free, open source, many timetable modes | Individual student placement unverified | Free (donations asked) | Desktop program; you control the data |
| QuickSchools Orchestra | Cloud builder with course-request collection | Drag-and-drop edits, adjustable constraint tolerance | Trial length not stated | No public pricing | Not stated on page read |
| Focus and Rediker AdminPlus builders | Staying inside your SIS | Scheduler and builder share your records | Tied to that SIS | No public pricing | Falls under your existing SIS agreement |
Best for Placing Students From Course Requests: Timely
Timely is the best fit for a middle or high school that wants a solver to place students, because the Bellwether Center's January 2026 case study describes an optimization engine and says Timely measures the percentage of students fully scheduled and core requests met (Bellwether). The report says the engine uses constraint satisfaction and optimization rather than generative AI, which its authors say avoids hallucinations that could cause errors such as double-booking a student.
The results below are the vendor's, not independent research. Timely's CEO told The 74 that a schedule is sometimes built "in 30 minutes" and sometimes takes "a couple of hours", and that Lubbock ISD identified 37 vacant teaching positions it no longer needed to fill (The 74, February 18, 2026). Frontline calls Timely its "preferred nationwide partner for middle and high school scheduling" (Frontline).
Watch out for: The 74 interview also says few districts have their ERP, SIS and HR data connected, and that setup still takes time.
Pricing: no public pricing; the Timely site offers "a 30-minute conversation" (Timely), checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: Timely's pages I read give no student-data terms beyond a privacy policy link. Course requests can be education records under FERPA, so ask for the data agreement before any upload.
Best for Teacher Choice and First-Choice Subjects: Tes Timetable (Edval)
Tes Timetable, the product previously called Edval, is the best fit for a school that wants teacher welfare and student first-choice subjects weighed in the build, because that is the aim Tes states for it (Tes). That is a provider claim, not a finding. The page offers "a free test drive" and mentions Australia and UK editions plus an international option; it makes no AI claim.
Watch out for: the pages I read do not say how many students or sections it handles, or how it connects to a US SIS (unverified).
Pricing: no public pricing (Tes), checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: no product-specific privacy terms on the pages read; ask Tes for its data processing terms.
Best for Trying Before You Buy: aSc Timetables
aSc Timetables is the best fit for a school that wants to see its own data scheduled before it pays, because the trial is described as "unlimited" and "performs all the functions of the paid version apart from Export" (aSc).
Watch out for: printouts carry a watermark in the trial, so the build is a test, not a deliverable.
Pricing: the page I could read lists no prices, so treat the cost as no public pricing, checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: a desktop trial with your own data is a good moment to use a copy with student names removed.
Best for a Zero Budget: FET
FET is the best fit for a school with no software budget, because it is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License and its author lists complicated timetables at "maximum 5-20 minutes" to solve (FET). The version listed on the site on October 26, 2026 was 7.12.0, released October 14, 2026. It imports and exports CSV and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux (Wikipedia).
Watch out for: it was built to schedule teacher, class and room timetables; whether it places individual students in elective sections is unverified. It has no AI claim.
Pricing: free; the author asks for donations, checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: because it runs on your own computer, our view is that you decide what data it sees, so start with course codes and teacher initials instead of student names.
Best for a Cloud Builder With Course Requests: QuickSchools Orchestra
QuickSchools Orchestra is the best fit for a school that wants a cloud tool to collect course requests and edit the grid by hand, because its page lists importing prior-year data, setting constraints and drag-and-drop edits, with "lock in specific courses and automate the rest" (QuickSchools). The page never mentions AI.
Watch out for: the length of its free trial is not stated.
Pricing: no public pricing; a free trial is offered, checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: the page links a privacy policy but describes no student-data terms.
Best for Staying Inside Your SIS: Focus and Rediker AdminPlus
The Focus and Rediker AdminPlus builders are the best fit for schools that want one set of student records, because both run inside the SIS. Focus's documentation says the Builder "assigns periods to sections based on the rules you set up" and its Scheduler then seats students from their course requests (Focus). Rediker's builder, part of AdminPlus, "will test, match and generate the best combinations" from your constraints (Rediker). Neither page mentions AI.
Watch out for: Focus suggests teachers for empty sections from who taught the course in the past three years, which carries last year's habits forward.
Pricing: no public pricing on either page, checked October 26, 2026.
Safety: student records stay under the SIS contract you already hold, which is the main reason to try this route first.
Best for Checking and Explaining the Schedule: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot
The four general assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot) are the best fit for the questions around a schedule: weighing trade-offs, stress-testing assumptions and drafting the message to staff. Iowa's school administrators association describes ChatGPT as "not a magic button" for this and says the author does not ask it to "make my schedule" (SAI, December 19, 2025).
The research supports that caution. Two preprints, not yet peer reviewed, test language models on scheduling puzzles. R-ConstraintBench found performance "collapses when downtime, temporal windows, and disjunctive constraints interact" (arXiv, August 2025). SCHEDBench, which ran 13 models on 1,132 instances, reports that models are "not reliably invariant to semantically equivalent renderings" of the same problem, and that reordering the constraints changes the results (arXiv, August 2026). A master schedule has all three kinds of constraint at once.
The directory rates them Claude 4.57, Gemini 4.59, Copilot 4.67 and ChatGPT 4.35, on 21, 41, 12 and 23 reviews. MagicSchool, Khanmigo, Diffit and Quizlet are not schedule builders. For the assistant side of a principal's year, see AI Tools for Assistant Principals.
Watch out for: an assistant can state that a schedule has no conflicts when it has; run every claimed fix through the builder or a spreadsheet check.
Pricing: all four have free tiers or free school access, which differ by account type; check your own district's plan.
Safety: do not paste named student requests into a general account. A student's name or ID attached to a course list can be an education record under FERPA.
Which Parts of a Master Schedule Are Actually AI?
Of the builders above, one describes its engine as AI ("AI-powered master scheduling" on Frontline's page), and Bellwether says that engine is not generative AI. None of the other pages I read claims AI; they describe automation, constraints and timetable modes. Bellwether adds that Timely is exploring generative AI as a guide for users while keeping the optimizer for the schedule itself. Our view is that "AI scheduling" is mostly an optimization solver, and the language model's job is the conversation around it.
Four Questions That Pick the Tool
- Does your SIS already have a builder? If yes, run last year's data through it before you pay anyone.
- Are you placing students from requests, or arranging teachers and rooms? Requests point to Timely, Orchestra or your SIS. For Tes Timetable, aSc and FET, ask the vendor whether it places individual students; the pages I read do not say (unverified).
- Can you pay for a quote? If not, FET and the aSc trial cost nothing.
- Will student names leave your SIS? If so, you need a data agreement under FERPA's school official rules, which require a provider to be "under the direct control" of the school with respect to education records (U.S. Department of Education). The data check in AI Tools a School Can Approve lists what to ask.
Worked Example: Turning 118 Algebra II Requests Into Sections
This is a planning example, not a report of a real school. Region 13's Texas master scheduling checklist says to "divide total course requests by target class size caps to calculate required sections" (ESC13). Suppose a 900-student high school collects 118 requests for Algebra II and caps classes at 28. The division gives 4.2 sections.
The 0.2 is a staffing decision that a solver does not make for you. Four sections means classes averaging 29.5, over the cap; five means an average of 23.6 and a fifth teacher section. That choice belongs to the principal and is made before any tool runs. The same checklist asks leaders to adjust conflicting singletons, courses offered once, until the first student match rate is above 85%, and to confirm each full-time teacher has "450 planning minutes every two weeks" under Texas law, a check that applies to Texas schools and needs your own state's rule elsewhere. A builder then tests whether those four or five sections can meet without colliding with the other singletons. The related business-side decisions are in AI Tools for School Business Managers.
