Yes, completely, with no licence cost, no trial limit and no upsell. It is released under the GNU GPL. That is a real and underrated option for a school with no software budget, and we would rather a school used FET than went back to a spreadsheet.

What does FET not do for an Australian primary school?

It has no concept of Australian planning-time entitlements, no state vocabulary, no yard duty or wet day supervision, no daily cover, and no support channel. Everything about your local context has to be expressed by you as generic constraints, and any mistake in that translation produces a timetable that looks valid and is not.

How long does FET take to set up compared with Bell Path?

Bell Path is built for a school leader to complete setup in roughly an evening. FET is realistically a multi-day exercise for someone learning it, because you are describing the school in a general constraint language rather than answering questions about a primary school. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whose hours are scarcer at your school.

Can we start with FET and move later?

You can, and some schools do. The work that transfers is the thinking: knowing your real constraints, your entitlements and your specialist rotation. The configuration itself will not transfer, because the two products describe a school in different terms.

Comparison

Bell Path vs FET

FET is free, open source, genuinely capable, and permanently available. If budget is the binding constraint, it deserves a serious look. This page is about what the zero price tag does and does not cover for an Australian primary school.

FET is community-developed and released under the GNU GPL. Capability is assessed from its public documentation. There is no vendor to confirm details with, which is itself part of the comparison.

Sources checked · July 25, 2026

See a sample timetable Request a 20-minute walkthrough

Two honest answers

Which product fits which school.

Choose Bell Path if

You want a workflow built for Australian primary schools.

The scarce resource is leadership hours, not licence budget
You need Australian planning-time entitlements enforced rather than modelled by hand
You want daily cover, yard duty, wet day plans and events as well as generation
You need someone to answer when it will not solve and you cannot work out why

Choose FET if

FET is a better contextual fit.

Your school genuinely cannot fund software this year. FET is free forever and that matters more than any feature list
You have a staff member who enjoys this kind of problem and will own it properly
You want full control over the constraint model, including constraints no commercial product exposes
You are comfortable with a desktop application, manual data entry and no support channel

Side-by-side

What the decision usually comes down to.

Price

Published annual pricing by school size, with founding-school rates

Free, permanently, under an open-source licence

Real cost

Setup designed to be completed by a school leader in about an evening

Setup measured in days, plus the ongoing cost of one person being the only one who understands it

Australian context

State planning-time entitlements, state vocabulary, yard duty, wet day and relief arrangements

None. You model every Australian rule yourself as generic constraints

When it will not solve

Names the teacher, the constraint and the fix, and will not publish a timetable that fails the check

Reports infeasibility. Diagnosing why is your job, with help from community forums

After the timetable

Daily cover, yard duty fairness ledger, wet day plans, event timetables, operations calendar, staff portal

Nothing. FET generates timetables and stops there

Support

Direct email support and walkthrough requests

Community forums and documentation. No vendor obligation

FAQ

Questions schools ask when comparing Bell Path and FET.

Is FET really free?
Yes, completely, with no licence cost, no trial limit and no upsell. It is released under the GNU GPL. That is a real and underrated option for a school with no software budget, and we would rather a school used FET than went back to a spreadsheet.
What does FET not do for an Australian primary school?
It has no concept of Australian planning-time entitlements, no state vocabulary, no yard duty or wet day supervision, no daily cover, and no support channel. Everything about your local context has to be expressed by you as generic constraints, and any mistake in that translation produces a timetable that looks valid and is not.
How long does FET take to set up compared with Bell Path?
Bell Path is built for a school leader to complete setup in roughly an evening. FET is realistically a multi-day exercise for someone learning it, because you are describing the school in a general constraint language rather than answering questions about a primary school. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whose hours are scarcer at your school.
Can we start with FET and move later?
You can, and some schools do. The work that transfers is the thinking: knowing your real constraints, your entitlements and your specialist rotation. The configuration itself will not transfer, because the two products describe a school in different terms.

More Bell Path pages

Keep comparing from the primary-school point of view.

Still comparing?

See the timetable before you decide.

Walk through a realistic primary-school example, then request a short guided review if you want to test the workflow against your own constraints.