Deputy Pricing 2026: Lite, Core, Pro and Add-On Costs

Deputy costs $5 per user a month on Lite, $6.50 on Core and $9 on Pro when billed annually, per its pricing page read on 17 October 2026. Monthly billing raises those rates to $5.50, $7.25 and $10, and monthly plans carry a $30 minimum per invoice. Payroll, HR, Messaging+ and Analytics+ are paid add-ons.

The per-user rate is the easy part, and it is where most pricing roundups stop. What a shift-based team actually pays depends on which billing cycle it picks, how many managers count as users, and whether it bolts payroll onto the plan. This guide works through each of those with Deputy's own figures. For whether the product earns that money, read our Deputy review.

What does each Deputy plan cost?

Deputy sells three self-serve plans priced per user per month, plus a quote-only option for charities and businesses that want weekly billing. The pricing page defaults to the annual view, so the headline rates are the discounted ones. The monthly rates below come from the structured pricing data Deputy publishes on the same page.

Every rate is quoted before tax. The gap between annual and monthly billing is the 10% saving Deputy advertises, and it is the only discount the page publishes. Deputy AI is marked "introductory free" on all three plans, with a note that price and availability may change, so treat it as a feature that could become a line item later.

The jump that matters most is Lite to Core. Lite covers a manager who builds the rota by hand and wants staff to clock in from a phone. Core is where the scheduling engine lives: auto-scheduling, demand forecasting and labor budgets are all Core features, so a restaurant or retail group that bought Deputy for forecasting is a Core buyer at the Core rate, not a Lite buyer.

How does the $30 monthly minimum work?

The minimum is the figure most pricing roundups miss. Since 1 September 2025, Deputy charges a minimum of $30 per invoice per month on its monthly Lite, Core and Pro plans. Deputy says the minimum covers set-up, support and technology costs. It does not apply to annual plans.

For a small team on monthly billing, the minimum rewrites the per-user math. Five people on Lite would cost $27.50 at the monthly rate, so the invoice rounds up to $30, which is $6 a head. Four people on Core come to $29, again rounded up to the minimum. The break-even point is six users on Lite, five on Core and three on Pro. Below those headcounts the per-user rate on the page is not what you pay.

Headcount also counts differently from what most buyers expect. Deputy states that all users, administrators and supervisors count toward the user total. A cafe with eight staff, an owner and an assistant manager is a ten-user account, not an eight-user one.

What does Deputy cost for your team size?

The table below multiplies Deputy's list rates by common shift-team sizes. Every total is our arithmetic on the published rates, not a Deputy quote, and the monthly-billing column already applies the minimum where it bites.

A 25-person team on Core pays $1,950 a year on the annual plan against $2,175 on monthly billing, so the annual contract saves $225. The catch is flexibility. Deputy's billing FAQ says an annual customer can add users at any time but cannot change plan or reduce the user count during the term, and there are no refunds on early cancellation. A seasonal business whose roster halves in January pays for the January it planned for in June.

Monthly billing has its own trap. Deputy charges the full monthly per-user price for any user added during a month, even five days before the month ends, and the full month for a user archived after ten days. A high-turnover team that churns 20% of its staff a month is paying for ghosts on both ends of the month. Archiving on the last day of the month, and onboarding on the first, is the cheapest habit a Deputy admin can form.

What do the add-ons cost?

The plan price buys scheduling, time and attendance. Everything else on the page is an add-on with its own per-user rate, and each one is listed at its monthly-billing price with a 10% annual saving available.

Payroll is the add-on that changes the budget. A 25-person team on annual Core pays $162.50 a month for the plan and another $249 a month for payroll ($49 plus $8 times 25), so payroll is 60% of a $411.50 monthly bill. Deputy also notes that the base and per-employee fee "varies by business size", which means the $49 and $8 are the published starting point rather than a guaranteed rate, and that a monthly-billing customer cannot buy it at all. Compare that total with our guide to how much payroll costs for a small business before deciding whether Deputy should run payroll or only feed hours to a payroll provider.

Messaging+ and Analytics+ create a quiet upgrade path. Core plus both add-ons costs $9.95 per user, which is more than Pro's $9, and Pro includes both. A Core team that wants richer messaging and custom reports should move to Pro rather than stack add-ons, and gets single sign-on and 24/7 chat for less money. Deputy HR at $2 is the one add-on with no Pro equivalent, so a 50-person employer running onboarding through Deputy budgets an extra $100 a month on any plan.

What else can show up on the invoice?

Two smaller items sit in Deputy's billing FAQ, and both grow with the size of the roster. SMS notifications cost 1 cent per 160 characters in the US, and Deputy warns that many of its messages exceed 160 characters, so a team that pushes every shift change by text pays a few cents per message, which is noise at ten staff and a real line at a few hundred. Taxes are added on top of every rate on the page, which matters in states that tax software subscriptions.

The current promotion is worth knowing before you sign. Deputy's site banner offers six months free on Pro and Payroll to new customers who add both before 30 November 2026. For a 25-person team that is roughly six months of the $225 Pro bill waived, but it ties the offer to the most expensive plan and to an annual payroll commitment, so model the full year, not the free half.

Which Deputy plan fits your budget?

Lite is the right buy for one site with a hand-built rota, a phone time clock and fewer than a dozen staff, at $5 a head on annual billing. Pick Core when forecasting or labor budgets are the reason you are buying, because none of that is on Lite and the step up is $1.50 per user. Pro earns its $2.50 premium over Core for multi-site operators who need location hierarchies, pay centers and single sign-on, or for any Core team that would otherwise buy Messaging+ and Analytics+ separately.

Skip the monthly plan unless your headcount swings by more than 10% across the year. Our shift scheduling ranking and the best payroll software guide are the places to compare the alternatives at the same headcount. The annual discount is worth a month and a bit of fees, and the monthly minimum punishes the smallest teams. If you are below six users, Homebase's per-location pricing or the free tiers in our free employee scheduling apps guide will beat Deputy on cost, which is the trade our Homebase vs Deputy comparison walks through.

How does Deputy compare on cost?

Deputy sits in the middle of the per-user scheduling market rather than at the floor. Rivals such as Connecteam price by hub for a block of users, Homebase prices per location with unlimited staff, and When I Work and Sling list per-user rates below Deputy's Lite. Each of those is priced on its own page: the Connecteam review and the best shift scheduling software ranking carry the rival rates with their own check dates, and the best time clock software guide covers the clock-in side.

Toolradar data: the time tracking ranking on Toolradar, the software directory we run, evaluated 107 time tracking tools as of 16 October 2026, and lists Deputy outside its top 10. Toolradar's Deputy profile compares it with 74 payroll tools as of October 2026 and ranks it joint 10th of 74 on that leaderboard. A rank says how the tool stacks up on breadth and reputation, not whether its Core rate is cheap for your roster.

How we priced this

We read Deputy's pricing page on 17 October 2026, including the plan cards, the add-on cards, the plan comparison table, the billing FAQ and the structured pricing data embedded in the page, which lists the monthly and annual rate for each plan. Every price on this page comes from that page. Totals are our arithmetic on Deputy's list rates before tax; the monthly minimum is applied where the published rule says it applies. Rival prices appear only through links to our other guides, each dated on its own page. HRpresso runs no test lab and holds no Deputy contract, so no figure here is a negotiated quote.

FAQ

How much does Deputy cost per month?

Deputy costs $5 per user a month on Lite, $6.50 on Core and $9 on Pro with annual billing, according to its pricing page read on 17 October 2026. On monthly billing the rates are $5.50, $7.25 and $10, and each invoice has a $30 minimum. The charity and weekly-billing plan has no published price.

Does Deputy have a free plan?

No. Deputy offers a free trial of each self-serve plan but no permanent free tier, and its pricing FAQ does not state the trial length. The add-ons HR, Messaging+ and Analytics+ each carry a 30-day free trial. For a scheduling tool that stays free, the best free employee scheduling apps guide lists tools with published free tiers and their limits.

What is the Deputy minimum monthly spend?

Deputy charges a minimum of $30 per invoice per month on its monthly Lite, Core and Pro plans, a rule it introduced on 1 September 2025. It means a team of fewer than six users on Lite, five on Core or three on Pro pays more per head than the listed rate. Annual plans are exempt.

How much does Deputy Payroll cost?

Deputy Payroll, enabled by Paycor, lists at $49 a month plus $8 per user a month, and is available only to US customers on annual Core or Pro plans. Deputy says the base and per-employee fee vary by business size, so confirm the rate in writing. For 10 employees that is $129 a month on top of the plan.

Is Deputy cheaper on an annual plan?

Yes, by 10%. Annual billing drops Lite, Core and Pro to $5, $6.50 and $9 per user from $5.50, $7.25 and $10, and removes the monthly minimum. The trade-off is that an annual customer cannot downgrade the plan or cut the user count mid-term and gets no refund on early cancellation.

Does Deputy charge for managers and admins?

Yes. Deputy counts every user, administrator and supervisor toward the user total, so managers who never clock a shift still cost the per-user rate. Budget for the whole login list, not the headcount on the rota.

Cite this: HRpresso, "Deputy Pricing 2026: Lite, Core, Pro and Add-On Costs", October 2026.

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