Homebase Alternatives 2026: 8 Compared and What They Cost

Quick answer: The best Homebase alternatives are When I Work and Deputy for multi-location operators, Connecteam if you need team communication and training alongside scheduling, 7shifts for restaurants, and Sling or Jibble if you want a free plan that is not capped at 10 employees. Homebase bills per location, which is what usually forces the search.

Why Teams Outgrow Homebase

Homebase is one of the better values in this category for a specific shape of business, and understanding that shape tells you immediately whether an alternative will save you money or cost you more.

Homebase charges per location with unlimited employees. Essentials is $30 per location per month, Plus is $70, and All-in-One is $120, each discounted roughly 20% on annual billing. For one site with 40 staff, that is exceptional — a per-seat competitor at $5 per user would charge $200 for the same team.

The maths inverts as locations multiply. Five sites on Essentials is $150 a month, on Plus $350, on All-in-One $600 — regardless of whether those sites have eight employees or eighty. The crossover is easy to calculate. Against When I Work Essentials at $2.50 per user, Homebase Essentials at $30 per location breaks even at 12 employees per site. Below 12 people per location, per-user pricing is cheaper. Above it, Homebase wins. Against Plus at $70 versus When I Work Pro at $5, the crossover is 14.

The second constraint is the free plan. Homebase Basic is free forever but covers one location and a maximum of 10 employees. That is a tighter cap than several competitors offer, and hitting employee 11 moves you straight to $30 a month.

The third is scope. Homebase covers scheduling, time tracking, hiring and payroll well. It is not a communications or training platform, so businesses that want shift chat, policy acknowledgements and course delivery in the same app tend to look at Connecteam instead.

The Best Homebase Alternatives in 2026

When I Work — Best for Multi-Location Operators

When I Work charges per user with unlimited users and unlimited locations on every tier: Essentials at $2.50 per user per month, Pro at $5, and Premium at $8, with a 14-day trial and no free plan.

This is the direct answer to Homebase’s per-location bill. A ten-site operation with six employees per site pays $150 a month on Homebase Essentials and $150 on When I Work Essentials — but at four employees per site it is $150 against $100, and the gap widens as sites get smaller. It also means opening a new location costs nothing extra beyond the staff you hire into it.

Deputy — Best for Compliance and Labour Forecasting

Deputy runs $5 per user per month on Lite, $6.50 on Core and $9 on Pro, with a $30 minimum monthly spend. Core is where it separates from Homebase: demand forecasting, auto-scheduling, labour optimisation and budgeting, plus break compliance and predictive scheduling rules handled as core behaviour, not manual configuration.

If you operate in a jurisdiction with fair-workweek or predictive scheduling laws, this is the meaningful upgrade. Deputy Payroll is a separate add-on at $8 per user per month plus a $49 base, so compare that against Homebase’s payroll pricing instead of assuming parity.

Connecteam — Best If You Need Communication and Training Too

Connecteam sells three hubs — Operations, Communications, and HR & Skills — each priced separately from $29 per month on Basic, $49 on Advanced and $99 on Expert, covering the first 30 users when billed annually. A free Small Business plan covers up to 10 users across all hubs.

The reason to move here from Homebase is scope, not price. If you need shift chat, policy sign-offs, onboarding checklists and training courses reaching staff without company email, Connecteam does that and Homebase does not. Be clear-eyed about the cost: needing all three hubs means roughly $177 a month at Advanced, not one fee. Our Connecteam vs Homebase comparison covers the detail, and our Connecteam alternatives guide maps the wider field.

7shifts — Best for Restaurants

7shifts bills per location with no per-employee charge on paid tiers, and runs a free plan with no time limit. Like Homebase it is per-location, so it does not solve the multi-site cost problem — it solves a different one.

What you gain is restaurant-specific depth: tip pooling and distribution, POS-integrated sales-per-labour-hour forecasting, and compliance handling for tipped wages. Homebase serves restaurants well as a general tool; 7shifts is built for them exclusively. If tip management is currently a spreadsheet, that alone often justifies the move.

Sling — Best Free Plan

Sling’s free tier covers up to 30 users — three times Homebase’s 10-employee free cap — with shift scheduling, time-off requests, open shifts, long-term scheduling and messaging. Paid tiers are Premium at $2 per user per month and Business at $4, both around 15% cheaper annually.

The catch is that time tracking sits behind Premium and kiosk clock-in behind Business, so the free plan is scheduling only. For a 25-person team that needs a rota and nothing more, it is the cheapest credible option here.

ZoomShift — Best Lightweight Option

ZoomShift’s free Essentials tier covers up to 20 users but limits you to one location and two weeks of forward scheduling. Starter is $2 per active team member per month and Premium is $4, both with unlimited users and locations, and every tier includes a 14-day full-feature trial.

It is deliberately simpler than Homebase — no hiring, no payroll, no POS integrations. That is the point for teams that found Homebase’s breadth got in the way of just publishing a schedule.

Jibble — Best Free Time Tracking

Jibble tracks time free for unlimited users, with mobile and web clock-in, kiosk mode, basic timesheets and integrations including Slack, Microsoft Teams and QuickBooks. No user cap on a free tier is rare, and it is the obvious answer if your Homebase usage is really just the time clock.

It is attendance only, so it replaces part of Homebase, not all of it. Teams frequently pair it with a free scheduling tool and pay nothing for both.

Homebase Alternatives Compared on Price

Tool	Free plan	Entry paid price	Billing basis	Best for
Homebase	1 location, 10 employees	$30/location/mo	Per location	One site, many staff
When I Work	None	$2.50/user/mo	Per user	Multi-location
Deputy	None	$5/user/mo	Per user, $30 min	Compliance, forecasting
Connecteam	Up to 10 users	$29/mo per hub	Per hub, first 30 users	Comms and training
7shifts	Yes, no time limit	Per location	Per location	Restaurants
Sling	Up to 30 users	$2/user/mo	Per user	Free scheduling
ZoomShift	Up to 20 users	$2/user/mo	Per user	Simple rotas
Jibble	Unlimited users	Paid tiers available	Per user	Free time tracking

Pricing shown is approximate; check vendor websites for current rates.

Homebase and ADP Solve Different Problems

This comparison comes up often, and it is worth separating because the two products barely overlap.

Homebase starts from the schedule. Its core job is building rotas, tracking hours worked against them, and controlling labour cost at a location. Payroll is available as an add-on at $39 per month plus $6 per employee paid, and it exists so approved hours become paychecks without re-keying.

ADP starts from the paycheck. It is a payroll and HR provider first, built around tax filing across jurisdictions, benefits administration, compliance reporting and the obligations that come with growing headcount. Scheduling is a smaller part of the picture, and ADP does not publish standard rates — pricing is quoted per business.

For a 30-person restaurant group whose main problem is who works Saturday and whether overtime is creeping, Homebase is the better fit and materially cheaper. For a 300-person company with multi-state tax exposure, benefits enrolment and formal HR compliance obligations, ADP is doing work Homebase does not attempt. Many businesses run Homebase for scheduling and a dedicated payroll provider alongside it, which is a perfectly sensible arrangement.

What Homebase Does That Most Alternatives Do Not

Switching on price alone tends to go badly, because Homebase bundles several things that pure scheduling tools leave out. Check whether you rely on any of these before you move.

Hiring is built in. Homebase posts jobs, collects applicants and runs background checks at $30 each, with job post boosts from $79. For a high-turnover site that hires continuously, replacing this means adding a separate hiring tool, and that cost belongs in the comparison. Most scheduling-first alternatives have nothing equivalent.

POS integration reaches the free tier. Homebase connects to point-of-sale systems even on the free Basic plan, which is what makes sales-versus-labour reporting possible for a small shop paying nothing. Competitors typically gate that behind a paid tier or omit it.

Payroll is first-party, not a referral. At $39 per month plus $6 per employee paid, Homebase Payroll takes approved hours straight through to tax filing without an export step. Deputy offers something comparable at $8 per user plus a $49 base; When I Work, Sling and ZoomShift integrate with payroll providers instead of being one. If removing a manual pay-run step is why you bought Homebase, a scheduling-only replacement will reintroduce it.

Labour cost controls sit on the schedule itself. Homebase warns managers about approaching overtime and budget overruns as they build the rota, instead of reporting it a week later. That is the feature most likely to be missed a month after switching, because its value shows up as costs that quietly did not happen.

The practical test: list the Homebase features someone touched in the last month. If it is only the schedule and the time clock, almost everything here will serve you. If hiring, POS reporting or payroll appear on that list, price the replacements for those too.

How to Choose, by Situation

One location, more than 12 employees. Stay on Homebase. Per-location pricing with unlimited staff is the cheapest structure available to you.

Several locations with small teams at each. Move to per-user pricing. Below 12 employees per site, When I Work Essentials costs less than Homebase Essentials, and the gap grows with every additional site.

You need shift chat, onboarding and training. Connecteam, accepting the per-hub cost.

Fair-workweek or predictive scheduling laws apply to you. Deputy.

You run restaurants and manage tips. 7shifts.

You hit the 10-employee free cap and do not want to pay yet. Sling covers 30 users free for scheduling; Jibble covers unlimited users free for time tracking.

For the wider category, see our guides to the best employee scheduling software and workforce management platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions