What 7shifts actually costs now (August 2026)
Half the articles ranking for “7shifts pricing” still cite the old Comp, Entrée, The Works, and Gourmet plans. Those names died in the July 2025 replatform. As of August 2026, per third-party pricing trackers, the current lineup is billed per location per month:
- •Comp is free for one location with up to 15 employees.
- •Essentials costs $39.99 per location per month.
- •Pro costs $79.99 per location per month.
- •Premium costs $134.99 per location per month.
Add-ons come on top: Tip Management costs $49.99 per location per month, and payroll costs $39.99 per location plus $6 per employee per month. Since October 2025, a $10 per location per month infrastructure fee applies with the Par POS integration. A three-location group on Pro with Tip Management everywhere pays 3 × $79.99 plus 3 × $49.99, which is $389.94 a month before payroll.
And here is the part that stings: per a 7shifts support agent, payroll and tips — the two priciest add-ons — are the top drivers of support tickets. The parts you pay extra for are the parts people need the most help with.
All 7 alternatives at a glance
The columns below are the things that decide whether scheduling still eats your week. Every price and complaint is current as of August 2026 and traced to a public source.
| Tool | AI builds it from a sentence | Call-outs covered automatically | One price with everything | What users report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XShift AI | Yes — describe the week in a sentence, approve, done | Yes — rules can send coverage messages on their own | Yes — $29/mo + $1 per active user, every feature on | 21-day full trial; card required, not charged |
| 7shifts | No | Notifies; you still chase coverage | No — $39.99–$134.99/location, plus tips $49.99, payroll $39.99 + $6/employee, $10 POS fee; task management, tip pooling, and PTO accrual gated to higher tiers | Crashes and Android logouts (JustUseApp); a notification badge that never clears (App Store); documented Sep 2025 outage (IsDown) |
| Sling | No | Notifies everyone — even chats you are not in (Capterra) | No — time tracking, overtime alerts, and labor reports all paid | “Consistently crashing, bugging out, not loading” (App Store); unregistered clock-outs and schedule edits that don’t reach phones (Capterra) |
| Homebase | No | Notifies; you still chase coverage | No — $30–$120/location tiers | Trustpilot roughly 2.5–3.8; wrong W-2s, cancellation complaints, a new support rep every call |
| When I Work | No | Notifies; the manager chases | No — time tracking is a paid add-on, kiosk punch-in costs more on top; multi-location doubles per-user cost | 69% of GetApp reviewers report bugs or glitches; “very noisy by default” (Workyard) |
| Connecteam | No | Notifies; you still chase coverage | No — three separate hubs, $87–$297/mo before per-user overages | Steep learning curve (Capterra, G2); chat messages that disappear (Capterra) |
| Deputy | No — noted for scheduling unavailable staff (Workyard) | Notifies; the manager chases | No — $30/mo minimum per Deputy’s own help center; HR and Analytics cost extra on top | App crashing and signing out daily (Workyard); charges after cancellation reported (Trustpilot) |
| HotSchedules | No | Notifies; you still chase coverage | No — quote-only; third-party trackers disagree on the number, and per-user fees add up fast | “UI is outdated and cumbersome” (Capterra); key features buried under layers of clicks (SoftwareAdvice) |
Switch trigger one
Your bill jumped after the replatform
Review-sourced signal: a Capterra reviewer reports going “from a very reasonable price to $57/mo” after the 2025 changes.
This is the loudest complaint in post-2025 7shifts reviews. The July 2025 replatform renamed every plan and moved long-time customers onto new pricing, and some owners opened a bigger invoice without asking for anything new. Since October 2025 there is also a $10 per location per month infrastructure fee if you connect the Par POS. The math gets worse the more locations you run, because 7shifts bills per location: three locations on Pro cost 3 × $79.99, which is $239.97 a month before any add-ons.
The usual escape is a free plan, and the free plans are where the pain moves instead of ends. Sling is free right up until you want time tracking, overtime alerts, or labor reports — each one is paid as of August 2026 — and App Store reviewers describe the app as “consistently crashing, bugging out, not loading.” The free schedule you do get can lie to your crew: Capterra reviewers report that edits to repeating schedule templates fail to sync on the mobile app, and that schedule changes do not push to phones right away. Your team can be reading a week you already rewrote. The app also blasts everyone — a Capterra reviewer reports notifications for chats they were never part of, with no per-role controls to quiet them.
Homebase starts at $30 per location, but its Trustpilot scores hover between roughly 2.5 and 3.8, driven by payroll and support complaints, including reviewers reporting incorrect W-2 amounts and IRS penalties. Support has no memory: one Trustpilot reviewer warns “You will NEVER get the same person again,” and another reported a fraudulent payroll run that Homebase could not cancel in time. The time clock has its own trap — per Timeero, the app blocks clock-ins completely when GPS is weak, and you only get three preset geofence sizes to work around it. One Reddit user called leaving it “an absolute scam to try and cancel.” Read the XShift vs. Homebase comparison.
The clean exit
XShift makes the bill low, flat, and finished. One plan with everything costs $29 a month plus $1 per active user, and it never multiplies by location. That same 60-person, three-location group pays $89 instead of $239.97, because you pay for people, not doors. There are no add-ons and no infrastructure fees, because nothing is held back. See XShift pricing.
Switch trigger two
The app breaks more than it used to
Review-sourced signal: “the app tends to crash or log users out on its own” (JustUseApp, 2025).
A scheduling app that crashes on a Friday afternoon costs you the exact minutes you bought it to save. Your closer cannot see her shift, and you are back to answering texts one by one. The reviews are blunt about it: one App Store reviewer reports the “app not opening 90% of the time” after an update, and others report employees missing chat messages even with notifications turned on. A message that silently never arrives is a no-show you find out about at 5 PM.
The small breaks grind too. Android users on JustUseApp report the app logging them out when they never asked it to, which means a cook standing at the time clock re-entering a password. And App Store reviewers describe a notification badge that will not clear no matter what they read, leaving staff “unsure if they’ve seen all work messages or schedule changes.” A badge that always says something is unread teaches your team to ignore it — and the day they ignore it is the day the schedule actually changed.
The tempting move is a smaller, simpler app. But When I Work — the usual “stable and boring” pick — has 69% of its GetApp reviewers reporting bugs or glitches, has no free plan, and sells time tracking as a paid add-on. Workyard reviewers add that “the interface seems cramped” and that the app is “very noisy by default,” pinging staff so often they start tuning it out. The price sheet has quiet corners too: punching in from a shared kiosk costs extra on top of the time-tracking add-on you already bought, and per softwarefinder, reporting and role permissions are sold as unlisted “customizable options” — you learn the price when sales tells you. Read the XShift vs. When I Work comparison.
The clean exit
XShift lets you test stability instead of trusting it. The 21-day trial is the full product on your real roster, running right beside 7shifts — the card you enter is not charged, and if it does not hold up, you close the tab and have lost nothing. There is also simply less app to fight: you describe the week in a sentence, the AI builds the schedule, and you approve it.
Switch trigger three
You are tired of paying for add-ons
As of August 2026: Tip Management costs $49.99 per location per month, payroll costs $39.99 per location plus $6 per employee per month, and a $10 per location per month infrastructure fee applies with the Par POS integration.
The plan price is only the opening bid. Put Tip Management on three locations and that is 3 × $49.99, or $149.97 a month on top of your plan. Run payroll for one location with 20 employees and that is $39.99 plus 20 × $6, or $159.99 a month more. An operator who signed up at $39.99 can look up and find a bill several times that size, one add-on at a time. And per a 7shifts support agent, payroll and tips are the top drivers of support tickets — the add-ons that cost the most are the ones people need the most help with.
The tier ladder works the same way. Task management, tip pooling, PTO accrual, and compliance features all sit behind upgrades or add-ons, so the plan you bought keeps meeting features it does not include. Pricing reviews on posusa and turnozo both flag that “the jump from Essentials to Pro is significant” — the day you need one gated feature, your per-location price doubles from $39.99 to $79.99. On three locations, that one gate costs $120 more a month.
The usual escape is an “all-in-one” tool, and the biggest one rebuilds the same problem. Connecteam splits its product into three separately priced hubs, so running all three costs $87 to $297 a month before per-user overages, and Capterra and G2 reviewers report a steep learning curve on top of the stacked bill. What you get for the weight is shaky where it matters: Capterra reviewers call the chat “laggy or buggy, with messages disappearing,” a buddypunch review notes the “admin dashboard on desktop can feel a bit clunky,” and clockify sums the whole platform up as “more than necessary for smaller teams.” You would be paying three bills for a tool built for someone bigger than you. Read the XShift vs. Connecteam comparison.
The clean exit
XShift takes the opposite approach: one plan, one price, every feature turned on. There is nothing to add on because nothing is held back — the AI schedule builder, the rule engine, the call-off coverage, all included in $29 a month plus $1 per active user. And XShift stays out of the payroll-fee business on purpose: it exports clean, ready-to-run hours to the payroll provider you already pay — instead of charging you $39.99 per location plus $6 per employee to do the same job inside the app.
Switch trigger four
You keep googling “is 7shifts down”
Documented signal: the 7shifts shifts page had an outage on September 7, 2025, per the status tracker IsDown.
When the schedule lives in one app and that app will not load, your whole crew is flying blind at once. Johnny does not know if he opens tomorrow, and you cannot publish the week you just finished. The quiet version is worse: App Store reviewers report employees missing chat notifications even with notifications enabled, which means the “did you see my message” problem you bought software to kill is back.
The usual escape is a “serious operations” platform, and the receipts on the big one deserve a look first. Deputy’s own help center confirms a $30 per month minimum, Workyard notes it “allows scheduling of staff who are marked as unavailable,” a reviewer cited by Workyard reports the app crashing and signing out daily, and you cannot assign staff across locations in one pass — a manager with four spots switches location, schedules, switches, and schedules again. The gaps keep going. Per Workyard, the roster “will only sort employees by first name,” which one reviewer called “a total fail,” and nothing warns you when you hand a shift to someone whose leave request is still sitting in the queue. The offline mode is thin enough that staff cannot clock in without internet, so a dead-zone stockroom becomes a missed punch. The bill stacks like everyone else’s — HR and Analytics are paid add-ons piled on the per-user fee — and fitsmallbusiness flags inconsistent customer support as a recurring complaint. Even the exit has a catch: one Trustpilot reviewer reports an invoice showing charges for future months after cancellation. Read the XShift vs. Deputy comparison.
The clean exit
XShift removes you as the backup server for your own schedule. When Samantha calls off, a rule can send coverage messages on its own — you are not refreshing a status page while the dinner rush starts. Your house rules keep enforcing themselves on assignments, PTO requests, and call-offs whether or not you are looking at the app, and the 21-day side-by-side trial lets you watch it happen on your real roster before you pay a dollar.
Switch trigger five
7shifts is too much restaurant — or not enough
Review-sourced signal: some leavers pay for restaurant depth they never open; others outgrow the platform entirely.
7shifts is restaurant software to its bones, and that cuts both ways. If you run a café with 12 staff and no POS integration, you are paying for forecasting screens you never touch. If you run 40 locations with corporate reporting needs, you may be stretching it past its comfort zone. Either way, the suit does not fit.
Going smaller usually means When I Work, and the trade is covered above: no free plan, time tracking sold separately, and a multi-location setup that doubles the per-user cost the day you open a second spot. Going bigger usually means HotSchedules, where pricing is quote-only — so opaque that third-party price trackers disagree with each other — and Capterra reviewers say the “cost is prohibitive, especially for small businesses” while the “UI is outdated and cumbersome.” The daily experience matches the UI: a SoftwareAdvice reviewer found that reaching key features “required clicking through multiple layers,” Capterra and GetApp reviews describe slow support responses and follow-up that never comes, and the per-user fees climb with every name you add to the roster. Read the XShift vs. HotSchedules comparison.
The clean exit
XShift fits both ends because the plan does not change shape. The 12-person café pays $41 a month with everything on and nothing to configure. The 40-location group pays per person, not per door, on one flat plan across all locations, with the same plain-English rules enforcing the same policies everywhere. You never grow into a bigger tier, because there is no bigger tier.
The trigger nobody names
Your house rules live in your head
Here is the switch trigger no review site tracks: every rule that keeps your restaurant sane exists only in your memory. Nobody works more than six days straight. Johnny and Ava never close together, because last time it ended in a screaming match by the walk-in. PTO needs two weeks’ notice. You enforce all of it by eye, every week, and the week you are tired is the week one slips through.
XShift ends that with one move: you type the rule once, in plain English, and it enforces itself forever. “Don’t schedule anyone more than 6 days in a row.” “Never put Johnny and Ava on the same shift.” “Reject PTO requests with less than 14 days’ notice.” Each sentence becomes a live rule that fires on shift assignments, PTO requests, and call-offs — automatically, every week, without you re-reading a single draft.
The rules cover the policies restaurants actually run on: max weekly hours, max consecutive days, minimum rest between shifts, keep-apart and keep-together pairings, PTO notice windows, labor-cost thresholds, and would-cause-overtime checks. Actions range from a hard REJECT to WARN_WITH_OVERRIDE to sending coverage messages on their own. You can keep up to 5 rules enabled per organization at a time, so you pick the five policies that matter most.
That replaces the hour or two you spend every week re-reading the draft schedule for the seventh straight day, the bad pairing, the late PTO request — and the overtime premium that hits payroll the week you miss one. Samantha requests PTO for Saturday with three days’ notice, and the rule answers before your coffee is poured.
Two Mondays from now, the schedule can go out unproofread — no scanning for the six-day streak or the bad pairing, because the rules caught both before the grid ever reached you. Go back to the old way and you are back to being the only thing standing between a tired Sunday night and a broken week. If your restaurant runs on unwritten rules, see how it fits on the XShift restaurants page.
What leaving actually takes
Most operators stay on a tool they complain about for one reason: switching sounds like a project. Here is what the move to XShift actually takes:
- 1.Import your roster in minutes. Upload a CSV, or snap a photo of the roster: one photo, one preview, one confirm, and your people are in.
- 2.Run both tools side by side. Keep 7shifts running while the 21-day trial proves XShift on your real schedule, and cancel 7shifts only when your whole team is already checking the new app.
- 3.Skip the implementation project. Setup happens in a chat with the AI copilot in under 10 minutes. There is no IT ticket, no training sessions, and no onboarding call to schedule. Canceling, if you ever want to, takes one click.
That is the whole move. The worst case of trying is 21 days of a second opinion on your schedule for free.
Questions people ask before switching
How much does 7shifts cost in 2026?
As of August 2026, 7shifts has four plans, billed per location per month: Comp (free for 1 location with up to 15 employees), Essentials at $39.99, Pro at $79.99, and Premium at $134.99. Tip Management is a separate add-on at $49.99 per location per month, payroll costs $39.99 per location plus $6 per employee per month, and since October 2025 a $10 per location per month infrastructure fee applies with the Par POS integration. The plans were renamed from Comp, Entrée, The Works, and Gourmet during the July 2025 replatform, so many older articles list plan names and prices that no longer exist.
Does 7shifts have a free plan?
Yes, but it is capped: the Comp plan covers one location with up to 15 employees, and crossing either cap puts you on Essentials at $39.99 per location per month. Free tiers across this category are capped and gated the same way — Sling charges separately for time tracking, overtime alerts, and labor reports, and Homebase’s free tier stops at 10 employees at one location. XShift skips the free-plan game: $29 a month plus $1 per active user with every feature on, plus a 21-day full trial where the card you enter is not charged.
What is cheaper than 7shifts?
XShift. It costs $29 a month plus $1 per active user, and the price never multiplies by location. A 30-person single restaurant pays $59 a month against $79.99 for 7shifts Pro at one location. A 60-person, three-location group pays $89 a month against $239.97 for Pro across three locations — before 7shifts add-ons like Tip Management at $49.99 per location per month. Per-location billing is what makes 7shifts expensive as you grow; a flat per-person price is what makes the math stop hurting.
Is 7shifts worth it for a single location?
Run the math on your actual bill. One location on Pro is $79.99 a month, and the add-ons stack fast: Tip Management brings it to $129.98, and payroll for 20 employees adds another $159.99 on top. Reviewers also report the price moving on its own — one Capterra reviewer describes going “from a very reasonable price to $57/mo” after the 2025 changes. If you mostly build schedules, approve swaps, and message the team, you are paying restaurant-suite prices for jobs XShift covers at $49 a month for a 20-person roster.
Can I switch scheduling software mid-month?
Yes. Most scheduling tools, including XShift, bill month to month with no long contract, so you can start a new tool while your 7shifts subscription runs out. The safest way to switch is to run both side by side for one or two schedule cycles: import your roster into XShift from a CSV or a photo, publish the next week from XShift, and cancel 7shifts once your whole team is checking the new schedule. One warning from the review pattern: check that the old tool truly stops billing. A Deputy customer on Trustpilot reports being invoiced for months that came after the cancellation, so save your cancellation confirmation and watch the next statement. XShift’s 21-day trial covers that whole test window, and canceling XShift itself takes one click.
Which 7shifts alternative uses AI to enforce scheduling rules?
XShift. You type a policy in plain English, like "Don’t schedule anyone more than 6 days in a row," and its Autopilot turns the sentence into a structured rule that blocks or flags violations on shift assignments, PTO requests, and call-offs. You can keep up to 5 rules enabled per organization at a time.
Do the math on your own roster
XShift costs $29 a month plus $1 per active user, with every feature included. For a 30-person restaurant that is $59 a month, and one blocked overtime shift covers it. The 21-day trial runs the real product against your real roster — the card you enter at signup stays uncharged unless you choose to stay, and canceling takes one click. Every week you wait is another week of enforcing your own rules by eye.
Plan details reflect what third-party pricing trackers and public review sites reported in August 2026. Pricing moves fast in this category — treat every number here as a starting point and get the final quote from the vendor. Complaints cited are summarized from public reviews, not measured statistics.