StackMatch

Employee Scheduling Software: 7shifts vs. Deputy (2026 Buyer's Guide)

Deputy added a $30/mo minimum spend per invoice in late 2025. For a small crew, that quietly turns a '$5/user' plan into a flat $30 floor.

By The StackMatch Research Team

7shifts and Deputy price on different axes — and Deputy's minimum spend changes the bottom of the market

$49-1357shifts' typical all-in monthly cost across food-service businesses we track
$5-9/userDeputy's per-user pricing tiers
$30/moDeputy's minimum spend per invoice — added Sept 2025

7shifts figures are real all-in monthly costs from the restaurant and hospitality businesses in our curated catalog; Deputy's per-user pricing and minimum spend are from Deputy's own published 2026 pricing.

Deputy and 7shifts look like they're competing on the same axis — per-employee scheduling — until you notice Deputy added a $30/mo minimum spend per invoice in late 2025. For a very small crew, that floor quietly turns a "$5/user" plan into a flat $30/mo minimum, which changes the actual cheapest option at the bottom of the market.

Compliance-heavy scheduling — labor-law alerts, credential tracking — is what Deputy's higher tiers are actually built to sell.

7shifts: $49-135/mo, built around restaurant-specific problems

Across the food-service and hospitality businesses we track, 7shifts runs $49-135/mo all-in, scaling with headcount and location count rather than a flat per-seat fee. It wins specifically for restaurants and bars because of POS integration (Toast, Square, Clover) and tip-pooling logic built into the scheduling — a generic scheduling tool can build a shift calendar, but it can't reconcile that calendar against real sales and labor-cost percentage the way 7shifts does. The failure mode: businesses that buy 7shifts for the scheduling grid and never connect the POS integration are paying restaurant-specific pricing for a generic shift calendar.

Deputy: $5-9/user/mo, plus a floor that matters for small teams

Deputy's per-user pricing — Lite $5, Core $6.50, Pro $9 — looks cheaper than 7shifts for a small crew, until the $30/mo minimum spend, added in September 2025, kicks in. A 4-person team on Deputy Lite prices at $20/mo by the per-user math, but is actually billed $30/mo once the floor applies. That's not a dealbreaker, but it's the kind of quote-page fine print that makes a 'cheaper' plan not actually cheaper for a very small team.

Run your actual headcount against Deputy's $30/mo minimum before assuming the per-user price is what you'll be billed — for teams under 5, the floor is the real price.

What Deputy's higher tiers are actually buying: compliance, not scheduling

The jump from Deputy Core to Pro isn't more scheduling features — it's labor-law alerts (overtime thresholds, required break windows) and multi-state rule enforcement. That's worth paying for if you run a unionized or multi-state hourly workforce, where a missed break or an unnoticed overtime threshold is a real compliance exposure. It's not worth the upgrade for a single-location team where a manager already knows the local rules by heart.

Cost and fit

Platform7shiftsDeputy CoreDeputy Pro
Pricing modelFlat monthly, by business size$6.50/user + $30/mo floor$9/user + $30/mo floor
POS integration
Tip pooling
Labor-law / overtime alerts
Multi-state compliance rules

Monthly cost, 10-person team

Questions to ask before picking a scheduling platform

  • Is your business running a POS system for food service? If yes, 7shifts' native integration is worth more than Deputy's per-user savings.
  • What's your headcount times Deputy's per-user rate — does it clear the $30/mo minimum, or are you paying the floor regardless of seat count?
  • Do you operate in multiple states or under a union contract? That's the case Deputy Pro's compliance layer is actually built for.
  • Are you comparing an old Deputy quote against the current $30/mo minimum spend? Reconfirm pricing before budgeting.

For single-location food service, 7shifts' restaurant-specific integrations usually beat Deputy on real value, not just price. For multi-state or unionized hourly teams, Deputy's compliance layer — not the scheduling grid — is what you're actually buying.

Run the free audit to see which scheduling platform fits your headcount, location count, and compliance exposure.

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