Best Shift Scheduling Apps in 2026
Take a thirty-person team and price it two ways. Connecteam covers the first thirty users for $29 a month, flat. Deputy charges $5 per user, which is $150. Same rota, same staff, five times the bill, and the difference has almost nothing to do with features.
This is the thing nobody tells you when you search for a scheduling app: the products are broadly similar and the billing units are not. Per user, per location, or a flat rate for a band of headcount. Pick the wrong shape and you pay a multiple for the same functionality, which is a much bigger decision than whether the drag-and-drop calendar feels nice.
I pulled the current pricing on these in August 2026. Below is what each one actually charges, and which shape of business it suits.
Quick comparison
| App | Entry price | Billing unit | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| When I Work | ~$2.50/user/mo | Per user | No |
| Connecteam | $29/mo | Flat, first 30 users | Yes, up to 10 users |
| Deputy | $5/user/mo | Per user, $30/mo minimum | No |
| Homebase | Free tier | Per location | Yes, one location |
Read that middle column before the price column. A ten-person team and a hundred-person team should not shortlist the same tools, and the reason is entirely here.
Connecteam: cheapest by a distance at scale
Connecteam is free up to 10 users, then $29 a month covering the first 30 users. That is not $29 per user. For a team of thirty, it works out at under a dollar a head.
That pricing shape makes it the obvious answer for any business with a lot of hourly staff and a thin admin budget: hospitality, retail, cleaning, security, field services. The gap widens as you grow, because per-user tools scale linearly and this does not.
The product is broader than scheduling. It bundles a time clock, task management, internal chat, forms and training modules, aiming to be the operations app for a deskless workforce rather than a rota tool.
The breadth is also the drawback. There is more here than a small team needs, the setup takes longer than the simpler tools, and features are split across plans in ways that need reading before you commit.
When I Work: the cheapest per head
When I Work starts from about $2.50 per user per month, the lowest per-user rate in this comparison, and the time clock is a paid add-on rather than part of the base.
That add-on is the thing to check first. Scheduling without time tracking is half a workflow for most hourly teams, because the point of the rota is eventually the payroll. Price the combination, not the headline, or the comparison is meaningless.
What you get is a focused, fast scheduler: build the rota, publish it, staff get notified, shift swaps get requested and approved from a phone. The mobile app is genuinely good, which matters more than any desktop feature when your team does not sit at desks.
For a small team it can be the cheapest option overall. For a large one, the per-user model eventually loses to Connecteam's flat band.
Deputy: the polished operator
Deputy runs from $5 per user per month with a $30 monthly minimum. The minimum is the detail that catches small teams: at four staff you are paying the same $30 as at six.
You pay for maturity. Deputy handles awards, breaks and compliance rules better than the cheaper tools, syncs cleanly with major payroll systems, and its auto-scheduling actually helps rather than producing a rota you rebuild by hand. If you operate somewhere with strict labour rules, this is where that intelligence lives.
At thirty staff it is $150 a month against Connecteam's $29, so the compliance and payroll depth needs to be worth roughly $120 a month to you. In regulated hospitality or healthcare it very often is. In a small shop it is not.
Homebase: free for a single location
Homebase has a free plan covering one location with unlimited employees, with paid plans priced per location per month.
That combination is unusual and very well suited to independent single-site businesses: a café, a salon, one restaurant. Unlimited employees at zero cost is a genuine offer rather than a trial, and it includes scheduling, a time clock and basic team messaging.
The per-location model then scales in the opposite direction to per-user pricing. Twenty staff in one site is cheap. Five staff across four sites is not.
Check current pricing on the paid tiers directly, because the per-location rates and what sits in each tier move more often than the headline free plan does.
How to choose
Count two numbers before you look at any feature list: how many people and how many sites.
One location, any number of staff: Homebase, and start on the free plan. Nothing else here gives you unlimited employees at zero.
A growing team on one or a few sites: Connecteam, free to 10 users and $29 a month to 30. The flat band is the cheapest structure in this category and it gets cheaper per head as you hire.
A small team wanting the lowest per-head rate: When I Work at about $2.50 a user, as long as you price the time clock add-on into the comparison rather than after it.
Regulated or payroll-heavy operations: Deputy at $5 a user, where the compliance handling and payroll integrations justify the premium. Mind the $30 minimum if you are under six staff.
The most common mistake is comparing the headline prices without normalising the units. Write down what each one costs for your exact headcount and site count. That single calculation changes the ranking for most businesses, and it takes five minutes.
For the wider stack, our guide to AI tools for HR covers hiring and people operations above the rota layer, and the Dupple reviews directory has individual write-ups with current pricing.
FAQ
What is the cheapest shift scheduling app?
It depends on your headcount, which is the whole point. Connecteam is free up to 10 users and $29 a month for up to 30, which is the cheapest structure for a medium team. When I Work has the lowest per-user rate at about $2.50. Homebase is free entirely for a single location with unlimited employees, so for one site it is cheapest of all.
Is there a free shift scheduling app?
Yes, two of these. Homebase's free plan covers one location with unlimited employees, and Connecteam is free up to 10 users. Both are real plans rather than time-limited trials. Deputy and When I Work do not offer a free tier.
Do these apps include time tracking?
Mostly, but not always in the base price. When I Work sells its time clock as a paid add-on, so the scheduling price you compare is not the whole cost if you need both. Homebase, Connecteam and Deputy include a clock in their standard offering. If the rota feeds payroll, treat time tracking as mandatory and price accordingly.
Per user or per location: which pricing is better?
Per location wins when you have many staff in few sites, which is the typical single-restaurant or single-shop situation. Per user wins when you have few staff across many sites. A flat band like Connecteam's sits between the two and is usually cheapest once you pass roughly ten employees in one place.
Can shift scheduling apps handle labour compliance?
To varying degrees, and this is where the price difference stops being arbitrary. Deputy is the strongest here on breaks, awards and overtime rules, which is why it costs more per user. The cheaper tools will schedule whatever you tell them to, leaving compliance to the manager. If you are in a regulated sector, that difference is worth paying for.
