Sling vs. Tanda

At a glance

Best for

Best for restaurants, shops and other hourly teams that schedule by shift and want labour costs in view while they plan.

Small and mid-sized

Tanda

Best for

Best for Australian employers with hourly staff under Modern Awards who want rosters, time and attendance, award-interpreted pay and payroll in one system.

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion	Sling	Tanda
Starting price	Free up to 30 users; from $1.70 / user / month Premium is $1.70 per user per month billed annually or $2.00 billed monthly; Business is $3.40 annually or $4.00 monthly. Paid plans charge only for active users and prorate anyone deactivated.	From 12.80 dollars + GST / user / month Price for the bundle of HR, Payroll and Workforce Management. The pricing page shows a dollar sign plus GST and does not name the currency. Prices for the individual modules are given on request.
Free trial	Free plan with core shift scheduling for up to 30 users; 15-day free trial of the paid plans	Free trial set up by the vendor on request
Users	Hourly teams in restaurants, retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, call centres, caregiving, entertainment, emergency services and non-profits	Australian employers with hourly staff; the vendor names hospitality, retail, healthcare, professional services, early learning, pharmacy, clubs, franchises, quick service restaurants, restaurants and grocery
API	Yes, a REST API documented at api.getsling.com	Yes, a REST API with OAuth authorisation and webhooks
Hosting	Cloud, on the web and in iOS and Android apps	Cloud, in the browser, with a mobile app and a tablet time clock app
Made in	Not stated	Australia
Shift planning and templates	Shift scheduling, shift templates and long-term scheduling on the free plan; Premium adds reusable weekly schedule templates and day parts, and Business assigns shifts automatically	Rosters built from templates for a typical week or specific events, or generated from staff's regular hours; shifts are copied, pasted or dragged and named by title or team, a heads-up view shows who works, for how long and at what cost, and rosters can be planned weeks ahead. Published rosters go to staff in the app, where they accept shifts or flag a problem
Shift swaps and open shifts	Available shifts and shift offers on the free plan; Premium adds shift swaps and slots on available shifts, and Business adds shift acceptance	Staff request replacements or offer to cover shifts in the app with manager approval, and vacant shifts are offered to staff by push notification. Suggested replacements are filtered by availability, by qualifications such as an RSA or blue card and by a minimum number of hours between shifts, with award-interpreted cost differences shown for each candidate
Availability and time off	Time-off requests on the free plan; Premium adds unavailability so schedules follow staff availability, and Business adds PTO management	Staff apply for leave and unavailability in the app and see their leave balances; managers approve requests on the go in a leave planner calendar, split requests above the balance into paid and unpaid leave, add custom events to discourage or block leave in peak periods, and manage time off in lieu
Time clock and attendance	A mobile time clock on Premium and a kiosk clock on a shared device on Business, with timesheets, timesheet approvals and edit history, geofencing, early clock-in prevention, auto clock-out, break attestation, and tracking of no-shows, sick call-outs and late arrivals	Time Clock app that turns an Android or Apple tablet into a time clock for shift starts, finishes and breaks, plus GPS clock-ins from the mobile app that flag clock-ins away from an approved location. Timesheets are built from clock-ins, and shifts that match the roster can be auto-approved
Labour cost and forecasting	Labour cost management against sales and budgeting while scheduling from Premium; Business imports projected sales data to compare with actual sales and adds labour reports	Roster costs shown while the roster is built, and Live Insights with sales, wage cost and wages as a percentage of revenue through the day against expected numbers, by location. Staffing levels can be planned from historical sales, foot traffic and weather data, with sales streamed from over a dozen supported point-of-sale integrations
Breaks, overtime and labour rules	From Premium: mandatory meal and rest breaks applied to shifts, break attestation, overtime tracking, premium pay for missed breaks and clopening rules for mandated rest between shifts; Business adds holiday pay	Over 30 vendor-maintained Modern Award templates and custom rules for enterprise agreements, breaks added to rosters and timesheets according to the award, minimum break durations enforced at clock-in, and roster validations that warn about overtime, qualification risks, maximum hours and days, staff rostered on leave or shifts in different locations; the vendor states that pay rates are updated after Fair Work wage rulings
Payroll export and integration	Payroll reports on the Business plan that aggregate and sync hours for payroll processing, including sync to Toast Payroll	Tanda Payroll runs pay inside the same system, including STP filing and superannuation contributions; award-interpreted timesheets and leave also export to ADP, Xero, Ascender, Attache, iPayroll, iChris, Ready Pay, WageEasy, Aurion and TriniTEQ
Team messaging and notifications	Private messaging, announcements, news sharing and shift alarms that remind staff of upcoming shifts on the free plan; Premium adds group messaging and SMS shift alarms, and Business BCC messages and newsfeed restrictions	Push notifications for shifts that need filling and for pending requests, shift reminders with multiple alerts, announcements with acknowledgement requests and attached documents, and manager notifications when staff are late, work past their finish time, go into unexpected overtime or miss a required break
Platforms and mobile app	Web, iOS and Android, with mobile time tracking from Premium and a kiosk clock on a shared device on Business	Web app at my.tanda.co, the Tanda mobile app for staff and managers, and a separate Time Clock app for Android and Apple tablets from Google Play and the App Store
Integrations and API	Point-of-sale and payroll integrations with Toast, Square, Harbortouch, Restaurant Manager and POSiTouch, calendar synchronisation, and a REST API documented at api.getsling.com	REST API (v2) with OAuth authorisation code or personal access tokens, covering rosters, schedules, shifts, timesheets, leave, availability, clock-ins, payroll and users, with webhooks and code samples on GitHub; integrations with payroll, point-of-sale and HR systems such as ADP, Xero, Square, Lightspeed, SwiftPOS, Redcat and ELMO
Deployment	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based
Support	Email helpdesk	Not stated
Onboarding	more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Video tutorials	Documentation and knowledge base
Company size	Small and mid-sized	Not stated
Integrations	Toast, Square, Harbortouch, Restaurant Manager, POSiTouch	more entries ADP, Xero, Ascender, Attache, iPayroll, iChris, Ready Pay, WageEasy, Aurion, TriniTEQ, Beam, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, SwiftPOS, Redcat, Impos, Doshii, Tenzo, Peiso, Tip Sheet, vSure, WorkJam, ELMO, ROLLER, Kidsoft, Allara Global, etrainu, Paytime

Compare more tools

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

Key Differences

Starting price Sling Free up to 30 users; from $1.70 / user / month Tanda From 12.80 dollars + GST / user / month
Free trial Sling Free plan with core shift scheduling for up to 30 users; 15-day free trial of the paid plans Tanda Free trial set up by the vendor on request
Hosting Sling Cloud, on the web and in iOS and Android apps Tanda Cloud, in the browser, with a mobile app and a tablet time clock app
Users Sling Hourly teams in restaurants, retail, hospitality, healthcare, education, call centres, caregiving, entertainment, emergency services and non-profits Tanda Australian employers with hourly staff; the vendor names hospitality, retail, healthcare, professional services, early learning, pharmacy, clubs, franchises, quick service restaurants, restaurants and grocery
API Sling Yes, a REST API documented at api.getsling.com Tanda Yes, a REST API with OAuth authorisation and webhooks

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Sling

Strengths

Shift scheduling is free for up to 30 users
Labour costs shown against sales while the schedule is being built
Point-of-sale integrations sync employees, timesheets and sales data
Only active users are billed, with proration when someone leaves

Limitations

Time tracking needs a paid plan; the free plan covers scheduling and communication
Kiosk time clock and reports are limited to the Business plan
No client invoicing or project-based time tracking

Tanda

Strengths

Rostering, timesheets, payroll and HR bundled from 12.80 dollars plus GST per user per month
Over 30 Modern Award templates maintained by the vendor's compliance team
Replacement suggestions filtered by availability, qualifications and rest time between shifts, with cost differences shown
Documented REST API with OAuth and webhooks

Limitations

Prices for the individual modules are only given on request
The pricing page does not name the currency of its dollar price
No self-serve trial; a free trial is arranged through the vendor
Award templates and payroll are built around Australian Fair Work rules

Plans

Pricing

Sling

Free $0 Up to 30 users. Shift scheduling, time-off requests, available shifts, long-term scheduling, news sharing and private messaging.
Premium $1.70 / user / month Billed annually, or $2.00 billed monthly. Adds mobile time tracking, labour cost management, overtime tracking, group messaging and calendar synchronisation.
Business $3.40 / user / month Billed annually, or $4.00 billed monthly. Adds kiosk time tracking, reports on hours and wages, no-show and sick call-out tracking and PTO management.

Visit site

Tanda

HR + Payroll + Workforce Management 12.80 dollars + GST / user / month All three modules in one discounted subscription.
Workforce Management Not stated Rosters, time and attendance and leave. Price on request.
Payroll Not stated Pay runs from timesheets, entitlements and STP filing. Price on request.
HR Not stated Hiring, onboarding and staff records. Price on request.

Visit site

What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Sling

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

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.

Tanda

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

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.

How we check reviews

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.

Read the full version on our methodology page

Where this comes from

Sling https://www.getsling.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-27

Tanda https://www.tanda.co · checked against the official source on 2026-11-07

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.