These three come up together on almost every shortlist, and they are not really competing for the same job. Choosing well means working out which job you are hiring for.
Disclosure: this is the Manage Roster blog. Manage Roster wins one of the three scenarios below and loses the other two, which is an accurate reflection of where it fits. Deputy and When I Work pricing was verified against their own pricing pages on 5 September 2026.
| You are… | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ people, need payroll and compliance | Deputy | Most mature platform, deepest integrations, award interpretation |
| At one site, phone-first workforce | When I Work | Best mobile app in the category, integrated time clock |
| 4–15 people running continuous 24/7 coverage | Manage Roster | Only one with a native 24-hour day, live OT events, per-agent holidays |
If you need a time clock or payroll, stop reading and pick Deputy or When I Work. Manage Roster has neither, by design, and no amount of other strengths compensates for that if it is a requirement.
| Deputy | When I Work | Manage Roster | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ❌ Trial only | ❌ 14-day trial | ✅ Beta, 5 agents |
| Entry price | $5/user/mo | $2.50/user/mo | $0 (beta) |
| Mid tier | $6.50/user/mo (Core) | $5/user/mo (multi-location) | — |
| Top tier | $9/user/mo (Pro) | ~$8/user/mo | — |
| Add-ons | HR +$2, Analytics+ +$1.50 | — | — |
| Minimum spend | $30/mo | — | — |
| 20 people/year | $1,560 (Core) | $600 (single site) | $0 (but capped at 5) |
Sources: Deputy pricing, When I Work pricing.
Two things worth noticing. Deputy’s $30/month minimum spend means a 5-person team pays $30, not $25 — the per-user price is misleading at the bottom end. And When I Work’s jump from single-location to multi-location doubles the per-user rate, which catches out teams that add a second schedule without expecting a pricing-tier change.
Deputy has been in this market since 2008 and it shows in the places that are expensive to build: auto-scheduling driven by demand forecasting, Australian award interpretation, and a payroll and POS integration surface no one else here approaches. If your scheduling tool has to hand clean data to a payroll system every fortnight, Deputy is the safe answer and the others are not.
It is also the most expensive, and its model — a shift at a location — comes from hospitality and retail. That inheritance is fine for a café and awkward for a distributed support team.
The apps are the best in the category. Shift swaps and open-shift claiming work without a manager arbitrating every trade, notifications land reliably, and the time clock with GPS is solid. For a workforce that interacts with the schedule entirely through a phone, often at unsociable hours, this matters more than a feature comparison suggests — a tool people actually check is worth more than a tool with better reports that nobody opens.
Its weakness is structural: it assumes one location and a conventional business day.
Three specific things, all of which exist because it was built for a support team running nights across two countries:
Its weaknesses are equally specific: 5-agent beta cap, no time clock, no payroll, and almost no integrations.
| Deputy | When I Work | Manage Roster | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24-hour day view | ⚠️ Workaround | ❌ | ✅ Native |
| Live NOW indicator | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Overtime handling | ⚠️ Timesheet review | ⚠️ Reports | ✅ Live event + approval |
| Coverage gap alerts | ⚠️ Basic | ❌ | ✅ |
| Per-person holiday calendars | ⚠️ Per location | ❌ | ✅ |
| Demand forecasting | ✅ Core+ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Time clock | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Payroll integration | ✅ Extensive | ✅ | ❌ |
| Mobile app | ✅ | ✅ Best in class | ✅ |
| Shift swaps | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Award/compliance | ✅ AU awards | ⚠️ | ❌ |
| Integrations | ✅ Extensive | ✅ Good | ❌ Slack only |
| Team size ceiling | Unlimited | Unlimited | 5 (beta) |
Choosing Deputy, you give up cost — $1,560/year at 20 people on Core, roughly triple When I Work — and you accept a location-shaped model that fights a distributed roster.
Choosing When I Work, you give up multi-site and multi-region capability. There is no 24-hour view and no per-person holiday handling, so a team spanning countries manages holidays manually in a side document, which is the spreadsheet you were trying to escape.
Choosing Manage Roster, you give up the time clock, payroll, integrations and — most significantly — headcount. Above 5 agents the beta does not accommodate you today, and future pricing is unpublished, which is a real risk rather than a footnote.
Is Deputy worth triple the price of When I Work? If you need payroll integration, award compliance or demand forecasting, yes — those are expensive problems to solve any other way. If you need a schedule your team can read on a phone, no, and you are paying for capability you will not use.
Can When I Work handle overnight shifts? Technically yes — you can create a 22:00–06:00 shift. But the day view does not render it as one block, so confirming overnight coverage means reading two columns and doing the arithmetic. Workable for occasional nights, consistently irritating for a genuine 24/7 roster. The alternatives are covered in the best When I Work alternatives for remote support teams.
What happens to Manage Roster’s price after the beta?
Unpublished. Beta access is free for one year with the code BETA2026. If a pricing surprise in twelve months would be a problem for you, treat that as a genuine reason to choose differently — it is the honest risk of adopting a product this early.
Which handles multiple time zones best? Manage Roster, because holiday groups and the 24-hour view are built around distributed teams. Deputy manages it through locations, which works if your time zones map onto physical sites and not if your team is remote. When I Work is weakest here. More detail in managing 24/7 support coverage across time zones.
Can I migrate between these later? Yes, and it is less painful than people fear — all three export schedule data as CSV. The real cost of switching is not data, it is retraining the team and rebuilding rotation rules. Budget a fortnight of overlap where both systems run.
Deputy if payroll and compliance drive the decision. When I Work if the phone experience does, and you are at one site. Manage Roster if you run genuine round-the-clock coverage with a small distributed team and the 24-hour view, live overtime and per-agent holidays are the things breaking today — free during beta with code BETA2026, capped at 5 agents.
For the wider field, including Findmyshift’s per-team pricing which beats all three above about 25 people, see the 6 best roster management software tools in 2026. For zero-cost options specifically, the best free staff roster apps.
Pricing verified 5 September 2026 against Deputy and When I Work. Confirm current pricing before purchasing.