restaurant scheduling software
7shifts vs Homebase
7shifts and Homebase both give an independent operator scheduling, time-clocking, and payroll with a free tier to start, so on the surface they look interchangeable. The difference is who they were built for. 7shifts is restaurant-only, used by 55,000 restaurants and 1.5 million workers, with tip management and sales forecasting wired to the register baked in. Homebase is a workforce app for hourly, shift-based teams of every kind (restaurants, cafes, retail, and other small businesses), with a polished time clock and hiring tools rather than restaurant-specific depth.
For a restaurant, that vertical-versus-horizontal split is the whole decision. Labor is the largest controllable cost you carry, a median 36.5% of sales for full-service, and the gap between a profitable and an unprofitable room is mostly a staffing-to-demand gap (34.2% versus 42.9%). A restaurant-tuned forecast and native tip pooling matter if your problem is specifically a kitchen and a floor; a broader, very well-built hourly-team app matters if your problem is simply scheduling people and stopping time theft, and both are honest answers for different operators.
| 7shifts | Homebase | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus: restaurant vs hourly-team | 7shiftsBuilt only for restaurants, and it shows: tip management, restaurant-native scheduling, and forecasting tuned to how a kitchen and floor actually sell, across 55,000 restaurants. The trade-off is that it does one industry, so there is no reason to look at it for a non-restaurant location. | HomebaseBuilt for hourly, shift-based teams of every kind, not restaurants specifically. That breadth means less restaurant-specific depth, but a very polished core for any operator whose main job is scheduling hourly staff and tracking their hours, cafes and mixed-format businesses included. |
| Free tier and pricing | 7shiftsA free tier plus published per-location paid plans (monthly, or roughly 10% off billed annually). Transparent and easy to model as you add locations. | HomebaseA free Basic tier aimed at a single location, then paid plans (Essentials, Plus, All-in-One) from roughly $24 to $96 per month per location billed annually, with payroll a separate add-on. Also transparent, though confirm current pricing with the vendor. |
| Forecasting and AI | 7shiftsAn AI auto-scheduler and auto-rescheduler with sales and demand forecasting marketed as 95% accurate when integrated with your POS. Because the product is restaurant-specific, the forecast is tuned to restaurant sales patterns. | HomebaseAI-assisted scheduling that auto-builds shifts from staff availability and labor budgets, plus AI-assisted hiring. Much of the rest (GPS and photo time clock, PIN codes, overtime alerts, shift reminders) is straightforward automation, and none of it is restaurant-tuned the way 7shifts's forecasting is. |
| Time clock and stopping time theft | 7shiftsTime-clocking is built in alongside scheduling and tips and covers the restaurant essentials, though the anti-theft tooling is less of a headline than Homebase's. | HomebaseA genuine strength. A mobile and kiosk time clock with GPS, photo capture, and PIN codes is built to stop buddy punching and padded hours, exactly the quiet leak a thin-margin operator wants closed. |
| The distinctive extra | 7shiftsTips. 7shifts handles tip pooling and distribution natively, a restaurant-specific job Homebase does not center on. | HomebaseHiring. Homebase includes job-posting and applicant tools, so it doubles as a light hiring system, which matters in a sector running a 4.1% quits rate and which 7shifts does not emphasize. |
| Where both stop | 7shifts7shifts is a labor tool. It schedules staff, tracks hours and tips, and watches labor as a share of sales, and it does not touch the guest-facing side of the business. | HomebaseSame for Homebase. It runs scheduling, the time clock, payroll, and hiring, and leaves your website, ordering, reservations, reviews, and marketing to other systems entirely. |
The verdict
Which one, and the catch either way.
Bottom line
Questions
What buyers ask.
Is 7shifts or Homebase better for a small restaurant?
Do 7shifts and Homebase both have a free plan?
Do 7shifts or Homebase handle my website, ordering, and marketing?
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References
Every figure on this page drills down.
4 sourced statistics cited here across 3 publications. Each number links to the research hub, and each entry there links out to its primary source.
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