Best for
Best for Canadian small and mid-sized businesses that schedule shift staff and send hours to a Canadian payroll system.
- Small and mid-sized
Shift Scheduling Comparison
At a glance
Best for
Best for Canadian small and mid-sized businesses that schedule shift staff and send hours to a Canadian payroll system.
Best for
Best for businesses rostering hourly staff across sites, where the hours have to reach payroll rather than an invoice.
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
| Criterion | Agendrix | Deputy |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From 3.50 dollars / user / month Essential plan billed monthly, or 3.15 dollars a month billed yearly. The pricing page shows the amounts with a dollar sign and does not name the currency. Time and Attendance is an add-on at 2.35 dollars per user per month. | From $5 / user / month The $5 Lite plan covers basic scheduling, timesheets and time clocking. Core is $6.50 and Pro $9 per user per month. Deputy Payroll adds $8 per user per month plus a $49 monthly base fee, HR $2, Messaging+ $1.95 and Analytics+ $1.50 per user per month. |
| Free trial | Up to 21 days of free trial, no credit card required | Free trial, no credit card required |
| Team size | Not stated | Priced per user, per month |
| Users | Small and mid-sized businesses with shift staff; the vendor names retail, restaurants, clinics and health, pharmacies, retirement homes, hospitality and leisure | Shift-based teams across more than 15 industries, among them hospitality, healthcare, retail, manufacturing and logistics, construction and engineering, education, security and cleaning |
| API | Yes, a documented API with OAuth access through a developer portal | Yes, a developer API alongside prebuilt payroll, point-of-sale, HR and accounting connectors |
| Hosting | Cloud on AWS in the ca-central-1 region, with iOS and Android apps | Cloud (SaaS), with iOS and Android apps and a shared-device time clock |
| Made in | Canada | Not stated |
| Shift planning and templates | Drag-and-drop schedule editing, copying from the latest schedule, mass editing, rotating shifts, reusable shift and work week templates, day, week and month views, multilocation management, training shifts, tasks within shifts, and automatic shift assignment that accounts for availability and leave | Basic scheduling on Lite with shift templates for weeks, months or custom periods; Core adds advanced scheduling, micro-scheduling and auto-scheduling |
| Shift swaps and open shifts | Shift transfers and swaps as employee requests, and open shifts that qualified employees can offer to take, assigned by the manager or first come first served, with an option to offer open shifts by seniority | Open shifts, open shifts with approval, swapping and offering shifts, and find a replacement, from the Lite plan |
| Availability and time off | Availability and preferred work hours, absence, vacation and paid or unpaid leave requests, and vacation and overtime banks per employee | Leave and availability management from the Lite plan |
| Time clock and attendance | Time and Attendance add-on: clocking in and out on a computer, a tablet with or without photo verification, a phone with GPS, an RFID card or a barcode, automated timesheets checked against the schedule with discrepancies highlighted, and rounding and approval rules | Time clocking from the iOS and Android apps or a shared device, with biometric time clocking from the Core plan, timesheets with auto-approval from Core and advanced timesheets on Pro, plus shift swaps, find-a-replacement, leave and availability management and labour-law compliance rules |
| Labour cost and forecasting | A labour cost calculator that works out labour costs and scheduled hours automatically, plus a daily weather forecast on the schedule | Wages shown against scheduled hours; Core adds demand forecasting, labour optimisation and wage and labour budgets, with forecast-to-actual variance in sales and wage metrics |
| Breaks, overtime and labour rules | Paid and unpaid break management, an overtime tracker, automatic conflict detection when shifts overlap, availability is not respected or approved leave is forgotten, and in the add-on automatic overtime and break calculations | Labour-law compliance on Lite and advanced labour-law compliance on Core, with paid and unpaid breaks scheduled by time and duration |
| Payroll export and integration | Timesheets exported to payroll through integrations with EmployerD, Nethris, Sage 50, Acomba, QuickBooks, Ceridian Powerpay, ADP Workforce Now, Payworks and Easypay; approved expenses can be exported with hours and premiums | Payroll and HR integrations from the Lite plan; the Deputy Payroll add-on, enabled by Paycor and offered in the US on annual Core and Pro plans, sends approved timesheets, pay rates and leave to Paycor |
| Team messaging and notifications | One-on-one and group chat, an internal news feed for announcements and documents with read receipts, push notifications when a schedule is published or changed, and a confirmation that an employee has seen an assigned shift | Messaging and a news feed from the Lite plan, with the Messaging+ add-on for a more integrated messaging experience, included in Pro |
| Platforms and mobile app | Web app, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and kiosk apps for iOS and Android that turn a tablet or PC into a punch clock | Clock-in apps on web, mobile, tablet and watch, with iOS and Android apps and a shared-device time clock |
| Integrations and API | API access with developer support listed in the plan comparison, OAuth access managed in the developer portal, and integrations with Lightspeed, BeLocum, Hopem and Azur besides the payroll systems | A developer API plus prebuilt connectors for payroll (ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Paycor, Paylocity, OnPay, Wagepoint, Xero), point of sale (Square, Clover, Lightspeed, Revel, Epos Now), HR (BambooHR, HiBob, Rippling, TriNet, Okta) and accounting (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero), with Zapier for anything else |
| AI features | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS) | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | more entries Chat, Phone, Email helpdesk | Chat, 24/7 |
| Onboarding | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Video tutorials, Guided onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base, Guided onboarding |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized | more entries Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | EmployerD, Nethris, Sage 50, Acomba, QuickBooks, Ceridian Powerpay, ADP Workforce Now, Payworks, Easypay, Lightspeed, BeLocum, Hopem, Azur | more entries ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Paycom, Paycor, Paylocity, OnPay, Wagepoint, Talenox, Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Square, Clover, Lightspeed, Revel, Epos Now, BambooHR, HiBob, Rippling, TriNet, Okta, JobAdder, Box, Dropbox, ServiceM8, Tapcheck, Wagestream, TipHaus, Zapier |
Adds a column to the table, from the tools in this category.
Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Agendrix
Strengths
Limitations
Deputy
Strengths
Limitations
Plans
Agendrix
Deputy
What users say
Agendrix
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
Deputy
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Where this comes from
Agendrix https://www.agendrix.com/ · checked against the official source on 2026-11-07
Deputy https://www.deputy.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-12
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.