The European Deputy alternative that scales down as easily as up.

If you are comparing these two you have already decided you want the category. Both plan shifts, track hours, handle leave, connect to a till and show wages against sales as you build. What is left to work out is which one fits how you run, and where you run it.

That last part matters more than it looks. Deputy is a San Francisco company, and the US market is where its product decisions point. Shiftbase is European. You can see the difference in four things before you buy: what the entry plan actually lets you do, what your monthly bill contains, what happens when your team gets smaller, and which currency the invoice arrives in.

What the entry plan actually lets you do

Lite at $5 per user covers the basics on the pricing page: scheduling, timesheets, time clocking, shift swaps, leave and availability.

Core at $6.50 is where the money side begins: wage and labour budgets, labour optimisation, demand forecasting and AI scheduling. Location hierarchies and single sign-on are Pro at $9. With Shiftbase the rota, time tracking and absence are in every paid plan from €30 a month with six users included, and cost targets with till integration come with Premium.

What your monthly bill actually contains

The per-user rate is not the whole invoice on either side, so add up the lines that apply to you before you compare.

With Deputy, HR covering onboarding, documents and staff surveys is a $2 per user add-on. Payroll is $8 per user plus a $49 monthly base fee and runs through Paycor in the US only. SMS is billed per message, at 1 cent in the US, 5p in the UK and 7 cents elsewhere per 160 characters, and their pricing page notes many messages run longer than that. On the monthly plans there is also a minimum spend per invoice: £20 a month in the UK and $30 elsewhere.

With Shiftbase you are mostly reading one line. Support, updates and onboarding belong to the plan, schedule changes reach your team as app notifications at no charge, and there is no minimum spend. One thing does sit outside: open API access through App Center+ at €20 a month.

What happens when your team gets smaller

Headcount in hospitality and retail is not a straight line. You run forty people over summer and eighteen in February, and the bill should follow.

On a Deputy annual plan it follows in one direction. You pay for the year up front and can add users during the term, but you cannot lower the employee count or change plan, and cancelling early brings no refund. Archiving someone still bills the full month, and unarchiving them bills a full month again.

Shiftbase has no minimum term and no minimum spend. If you drop from forty people to eighteen in January, you pay for eighteen.

Which currency the invoice arrives in

Deputy bills in Australian dollars in Australia and New Zealand, pounds in the UK, and US dollars in the United States and every other country. Run a restaurant in Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid or Dublin and the invoice comes in dollars, with an exchange rate that moves between one month and the next.

The same pattern runs through the product. Their compliance work is built around US state law, including Fair Workweek rules, and payroll runs through a US provider. Shiftbase is European: it invoices in euros, and the rota, hours and absence come in one plan.

Which one to choose

Choose Deputy if you operate in the United States, or if biometric clock-in is the specific thing you are buying. That is the market and the feature set it is built for.

Choose Shiftbase if you run in Europe. Euro invoices, no minimum term when the team shrinks, a free plan for up to 15 employees, and the rota, hours and absence in one plan instead of a base plan plus add-ons.