QRoll

QRoll is a web-based attendance service for university courses, aimed at professors who want QR check-ins with roster and reporting tools. It works for both campus and online teaching, but its invite-only access and verification caveats make it better for controlled, lower-stakes use than as an institution-wide attendance authority.

Overview

Professors can run attendance sessions, track absences, and review course records from a browser. Students can check their own attendance with a course and student ID, without creating an account or signing in. That self-service lookup is practical for routine questions, while instructors retain control of the underlying course data.

QRoll was built by Mayank Chadha, Ph.D. in 2026 while teaching at UC San Diego. Access is by invitation, and requesting entry does not ensure acceptance. The service can also restrict how many professors, institutions, classes, users, sessions, or attendance records it supports. Departments needing guaranteed onboarding or predictable expansion should therefore look elsewhere.

Key features

QR check-ins and location controls

Each session can use a QR code that changes every 30 seconds. Professors can also define an allowed location radius for a course, adding a geographic condition to in-person attendance. These measures can discourage casual code sharing, but QRoll does not promise that location checks or anti-sharing protections will always function correctly. They are useful controls, not proof of physical presence.

Classroom and remote sessions

The same workflow supports classroom teaching and online meetings. Remote students scan a code displayed on a shared screen, which gives an online class a familiar check-in method without requiring a separate attendance process. Instructors should still account for the service's stated verification limitations when attendance has disciplinary or grading consequences.

Roster, sections, and reporting

Professors can upload rosters from CSV and export attendance as Excel or CSV. Teaching assistants can be added, and course sections can be grouped for combined views and exports. Those functions fit courses with multiple instructors or parallel sections and reduce manual consolidation work.

Alerts and student access

Automatic flags identify students below 75% or 50% attendance, giving instructors an early way to spot persistent absence. Students can independently look up their records using course and student ID, with no login required. That convenience should be balanced against the need to protect those identifiers within the course.

Pricing

Free: free

The free plan includes QR-code attendance capture, absence tracking, and automated alerts. It is limited to approved users, with access granted at QRoll's discretion. There is no paid tier described for buying higher capacity or guaranteed availability, so a department cannot use a subscription upgrade to remove the service's access and scale constraints.

Platforms

QRoll runs on the web. A mobile app is not provided, so students and staff use a browser on their existing devices rather than a dedicated iOS or Android application.

Who it's for

QRoll suits university professors and teaching teams that can obtain approval and need a no-cost way to record attendance across in-person and remote classes. Its CSV roster handling, assistant permissions, section grouping, threshold alerts, and spreadsheet exports are particularly relevant to courses with recurring administrative work.

It is a poor fit for institutions that require guaranteed capacity, assured access, or attendance verification that can be relied on without qualification. The service's security is not guaranteed, and its location and anti-sharing checks may fail, so high-stakes compliance records need an additional control or a different platform.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Rotating 30-second QR codes and per-course location radii provide more control than a static sign-in code.
• Pros: Classroom and shared-screen remote scanning cover two teaching formats in one workflow.
• Pros: CSV imports, Excel/CSV exports, assistants, and grouped sections support multi-instructor administration.
• Pros: 75% and 50% attendance alerts help identify absence problems early, while students can review their own records without logging in.
• Cons: Invite-only access and discretionary approval can prevent a willing professor or department from starting.
• Cons: Capacity may be restricted across users, classes, sessions, and records, making long-term scale unpredictable.
• Cons: Security, location verification, and anti-sharing behavior are not guaranteed, limiting suitability for consequential decisions.
• Cons: Web-only access means there is no dedicated mobile application.

Alternatives

For a broader comparison, see Student Attendance Software.

Choose QRaten instead if you want freemium access across Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, web, and Windows, with a free plan, trial, personal history, and QR/code attendance.

UnivTrack is the stronger option when free-forever academic terms and support for up to five morning and five afternoon course slots per weekday matter.

Pick AttenQR if you prefer Android, iOS, or web access and want a free account with an optional one-time $9.99 payment to remove ads.

Bulsee offers a free starting plan across Android, iOS, and web.

iAttended is an alternative for users seeking a free App Store application.

Choose AttendUni when a web service with a defined free tier of one classroom and up to 30 students, plus paid expansion, fits your course.

Rollcallz is an alternative for organizations with 500 or more users seeking custom enterprise pricing.

GEGI is another paid attendance option.

Verdict

QRoll is a sensible choice for an approved university teaching team that wants free QR attendance, useful roster administration, and exports for classroom or online sessions. The main reason to choose it is the combination of rotating codes, course-level location settings, alerts, and section-aware reporting at no charge. Look elsewhere if access must be guaranteed, capacity must scale predictably, or attendance verification must carry institutional or disciplinary weight.