Construction Employee Scheduling Software: 12 Compared
Construction employee scheduling software compared: 12 tools, monthly cost for a 5 and 15-worker crew, and crew shifts versus project scheduling.
If another owner asked me which scheduling app to buy for a construction crew, I would tell them to settle one question before comparing a single price: what exactly needs scheduling? This guide helps you answer it, covers twelve tools, and works out what each one with a published scheduling price really costs a five-worker and a fifteen-worker crew.
Three unrelated kinds of product are sold as construction scheduling software, and their prices sit in different leagues. A tool that tells your crew who is on the Miller job Tuesday, a tool that tells you the drywall cannot start until the inspection clears, and a tool that books a technician into a two-hour customer window are not variations on a theme. Buying the wrong one is the most common expensive mistake in this category.
The second mistake is subtler. Construction-specific workforce tools often add a fixed company fee to their per-user rates, $40 a month at two of the tools here, which is sensible at twenty-five people and punishing at four. A three-man crew can end up paying more per head for GPS time tracking than a fifteen-man crew pays. Almost no comparison page shows that, because almost no comparison page prices anything at a real crew size.
This guide does, with base fees counted at both crew sizes. It also covers the two federal rules that turn a scheduling decision into a payroll liability: what you owe for travel between sites, and what public work requires you to report every week.
Crews, projects, or appointments
Answer one question and two thirds of this page becomes irrelevant: do you need to schedule crews, projects, or appointments? Those are three different markets that share a vocabulary and nothing else.
| What you need | The question it answers | What to search for | Rough monthly cost at 15 workers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crew scheduling | Who is on which job on Tuesday, and did they show up | Crew or employee scheduling | $0 to $75 |
| Construction field workforce | Which job do these hours belong to, and were they on site | Construction time tracking with scheduling | $175 to $250 |
| Project scheduling | When can framing start, and what is holding it up | Construction project management | $221 to quote-only |
| Field service dispatch | Which technician goes to which address at 10am | Field service management | $299 upward |
| Manpower planning | Can we staff the job we are bidding in March | Resource or capacity planning | Usually a spreadsheet below three jobs |
Most small contractors reading this need row one but think they need row three, because that is what construction software marketing talks about. The test is simple: if your problem is a whiteboard in the office that nobody in the field can see, that is crew scheduling. If your problem is a sequence of trades slipping against a milestone date, that is project scheduling, and no shift app will help.
12 scheduling tools at a glance
The table groups all twelve tools by what each product is built around. Start with the last column, which shows what each tool actually schedules, then check the Free plan and No base fee columns: those two reorder the field once you price a real crew.
| Tool | Built for | Entry price | Free plan | No base fee | Publishes pricing | What it actually schedules |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecteam | Crew scheduling | Free to 10, then $29 a hub | Crew shifts and job hours | |||
| Sling by Toast | Crew scheduling | Free to 30 users | Crew shifts | |||
| Homebase | Crew scheduling | Free to 10, then $24 a site | Crew shifts and job hours | |||
| When I Work | Crew scheduling | From $2.50 a user | Crew shifts | |||
| Deputy | Crew scheduling | From $5 a user | Crew shifts and pay rules | |||
| Workyard | Construction field crews | From $6 a user, Pro unpriced | Crew shifts, hours, job costs | |||
| ClockShark | Construction field crews | $40 base plus $9 a user | Crew shifts and job hours | |||
| busybusy | Construction field crews | Free, then $9.99 a user plus $40 | Job hours, lighter scheduling | |||
| Contractor Foreman | Project management | From $49, scheduling $166 | Projects, plus crews to jobs | |||
| Buildertrend | Project management | Custom quote | Project schedule and clients | |||
| Procore | Enterprise construction | Quote on annual volume | Project schedule at scale | |||
| Jobber | Field service dispatch | $29 a month plus $29 a user | Client appointments |
How we evaluated these tools
We judged every tool from the point of view of one reference buyer: a small US contractor running one to three crews, where the owner or an office manager builds the schedule between other jobs and nobody is going to sit through a six-week implementation.
Crew shift scheduling
These five general-purpose workforce tools schedule people rather than tasks. None is construction-specific, which matters less than contractors expect: a schedule, a phone notification, and a clock-in are the same problem in a restaurant and on a jobsite.
The economics at contractor scale are the argument. Ten users free with nearly everything switched on covers a two-crew shop outright, and above that $29 flat for thirty users on annual billing works out near a dollar a head. The forms module quietly replaces the paper that usually rides around in a truck: daily reports, toolbox talks, incident forms.
Hub pricing is the catch. Scheduling and time tracking sit in Operations, chat in Communications, training in a third hub, so a contractor wanting scheduling and crew messaging pays twice and the flat-fee advantage narrows sharply. It is also not construction software: there is no job costing against a budget, no prevailing wage handling, and no equipment tracking, so a public-works contractor will outgrow it in a specific and predictable way.
Sling by Toast, formerly Sling, has one of the highest free ceilings in this comparison. Thirty users covers a contractor well past the point where most free plans have started charging, and for a shop whose actual pain is that the schedule lives on a whiteboard and gets communicated by text message at 9pm on Sunday, this solves the problem completely at zero cost.
It is scheduling rather than workforce management. Time tracking, job costing, and the accountability layer that construction buyers usually want sit outside the free tier or outside the product, so a contractor who needs to know which job the hours belong to will pair it with something else or move on. Support and depth also reflect the price, which is a reasonable trade at zero and less reasonable once you are paying.
Per-location billing inverts the arithmetic that governs the per-user tools here. Five workers and thirty workers cost the same as long as they attach to one location, which for a contractor hiring through a busy season is the most forgiving model available. The free tier is a permanent plan rather than a trial, for a single location with up to ten employees.
The model assumes a location, which is where construction strains it. A contractor whose crews work at customer sites rather than at a fixed premises has to decide what counts as a location, and if you end up modeling jobsites as locations the pricing turns against you immediately. The product itself is built around retail and hospitality shift patterns, so job-level costing and multi-site crew logic are weaker than the construction-specific tools below.
As a scheduling product it is cheap and it is good. Coverage alerts, availability, and swap handling behave the way a foreman expects, adoption is rarely the problem, and $2.50 a user is among the lowest published seat rates on this page. For a contractor whose bottleneck is genuinely the calendar rather than the accountability, it is hard to overspend here.
One thing distorts the headline price. Time and attendance is a paid toggle on the plan cards, so a fifteen-worker crew lands at $60 a month with it rather than $38 without it. The FAQ on the same pricing page says every plan includes it, so confirm the quote before you buy. There is no permanent free plan despite older sources claiming a generous one, and nothing here is construction-aware.
Qualification matching is the feature that earns its place in construction. When a shift requires a specific license or certification, a scheduler that knows who holds what stops the failure where an unqualified person is assigned and nobody notices until they arrive. Break and overtime rule handling is also the most rigorous here, which matters wherever state daily overtime rules apply.
For a straightforward crew it is more product than the problem needs. Fifteen workers on Lite is $75 a month against $29 flat on a rival covering thirty, and the gap only repays itself if the rules genuinely bind. There is no free plan at any tier. On monthly billing the $30 floor means a four-man crew pays $30 rather than $22, and useful extras including HR and analytics are separately priced.
Built for construction field crews
These three tools are designed for people who work at jobsites rather than at a single premises. ClockShark and busybusy add a fixed $40 company fee to their seat rates, and Workyard listed a $50 one until its pricing page was redesigned in mid-2026. That fee is what you are paying for construction awareness, and it makes more sense the larger the crew and poor sense below roughly five workers.
Job attribution is what separates this from a shift app, and for a contractor bidding on labor it is the difference between guessing and knowing. Hours land against a job and a cost code rather than just against a person, which makes labor cost per job a report rather than a reconstruction. GPS accuracy is the other pitch, and it is meaningfully better than the general-purpose tools where crews are spread across sites.
Pricing is the honest caution. The Workyard pricing page now publishes only the $6 Starter rate, and Starter has no scheduling, so the plan a crew scheduler actually needs has no published price. Earlier in 2026 the same page put Pro at $13 a user plus a $50 monthly company fee, so ask whether that fee still applies. Workyard also does not run payroll, so the export still has to land somewhere.
Crew-level clock-in is the practical detail that matters on a jobsite. A foreman clocking in six people at once from one device reflects how work actually starts in the morning, and it removes the failure where three of six forget. Task-level tracking underneath the job gives a level of granularity that general shift tools do not attempt, which is what makes the hours useful for estimating the next bid.
The pricing shape is the fixed-fee trap described above. Five workers on Standard is $85 a month, of which $40 is fixed, and the Pro tier lifts both numbers. A fifteen-worker crew on Standard reaches $175 a month, which is real money against a $29 flat-rate alternative, and the justification has to be job-level hours rather than scheduling itself, because the scheduling is not better.
A free tier from a construction-native vendor is genuinely unusual and worth knowing about. If your immediate problem is that hours arrive on paper and nobody knows which job they belong to, this addresses exactly that at no cost, and the free plan adds job costing and equipment tracking on top.
Scheduling is the weaker half of the product. It starts on the paid Pro plan and is not the reason anyone buys this, so a contractor whose primary problem is publishing the week will find the general shift tools better at that specific job. The paid tiers also land among the pricier options here once the admin license is added, so the free tier is the compelling part rather than the ladder above it.
Project and dispatch tools
These four tools are built around projects or customer appointments rather than crew shifts, even though they are marketed with the same words. They are here so you can recognize them quickly, because buying one to solve a crew scheduling problem is the most expensive mistake available in this category.
Contractor Foreman carries the lowest published price for real construction project management on this page, but the useful entry point is Plus at $166 a month, because the $49 Basic plan leaves out scheduling, daily logs, and change orders. Plus puts estimates, daily logs, punch lists, and change orders in one place, which removes several spreadsheets, and that breadth at this price is why it appears in every budget-conscious roundup.
It is built around projects rather than shifts. Plus does add a crew schedule that assigns crews to jobs, with time cards tied to the job and cost code, and for a simple crew that answers who is on the Miller job Tuesday. A contractor juggling availability, time off, and shift coverage will still be better served by a dedicated shift tool. Breadth at a low price also means depth in no single area.
Client communication is what this actually sells, and for a remodeler it is often the real bottleneck. Selections, approvals, change orders, and a homeowner portal turn the endless text-message thread with a client into a record, which is worth more to a residential builder than any scheduling feature. Project scheduling sits inside that rather than being the point.
Moving to volume-based quoting removed the ability to compare it on paper, which is a real loss for a small builder trying to budget. The vendor stating plainly that contractors under $500,000 a year should start with a lighter tool is unusually honest and should be taken at face value. It is not a crew scheduling tool, and a contractor buying it for that will be paying builder-platform prices for the wrong half of the product.
Unlimited users is the structurally interesting part of the model. Because the price tracks construction volume rather than headcount, everyone including subs and architects can be in the system without a seat negotiation, which is why it dominates at scale: the value comes from everyone being in one place, and per-seat pricing works against that.
For a contractor with fifteen workers it is not a candidate, and it is worth being blunt about that. The contract is an upfront annual fee scaled to construction volume, implementation is a project in its own right, and the workforce planning that overlaps this category is one module of a platform bought for entirely different reasons.
For a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or landscaping business, the appointment model is exactly right. The unit of work is a customer visit with an address, a time window, and an invoice attached, and a tool built around that removes quoting, scheduling, and collecting payment in one purchase. That is a genuinely different and more valuable job than publishing a shift roster.
For a crew that reports to a site for the week it is the wrong shape and the wrong price. At $29 an added user a fifteen-person operation runs to several hundred dollars a month for a scheduling model that does not describe how the work happens. If your workers do not go to individual customer addresses on individual appointments, this category is not yours.
What a 5 and 15-worker crew actually costs
The table prices every tool with a published scheduling rate for one office running one to three crews, on annual billing, with base fees counted rather than footnoted. It uses two crew sizes rather than one, because the base fees in this category behave completely differently at each.
| Option | Pricing basis | 5-worker crew | 15-worker crew | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sling by Toast Free | Free to 30 users | $0 | $0 | Pure scheduling, no time tracking layer |
| busybusy Free | Free tier, unlimited users | $0 | $0 | Time tracking and job costing; scheduling starts on Pro |
| Homebase Basic | Free, one location | $0 | n/a | Single site, capped at 10 employees |
| Connecteam Small Business | Free to 10 users | $0 | n/a | All hubs inside the cap, then the cap binds |
| Homebase Essentials | Per location | $24 | $24 | Identical at both sizes; headcount does not price it |
| Connecteam Basic | Flat per hub, to 30 users | $29 | $29 | A second hub doubles it; geofences start on Advanced |
| When I Work Essentials | Per user plus attendance | $20 | $60 | Includes the $1.50 a user attendance add-on |
| Deputy Lite | Per user | $25 | $75 | The $30 monthly floor applies only to monthly plans |
| ClockShark Standard | $40 base plus per user | $85 | $175 | Pro tier is $60 base plus $11 a user |
| busybusy Pro | $40 admin license plus per user | $80 | $180 | License covers the first user; Premium is $14.99 a user |
| Contractor Foreman | Tiered by user count | $166 | $221 | Plus to 8 users, Pro to 15; project scheduling |
| Jobber Connect | Team tier by user count | $149 | $299 | Core is a one-user plan; extra users $29 each |
The five-worker column is the one that changes decisions. ClockShark at $85 a month for five workers is charging $40 of that as a fixed fee, so the effective rate is $17 a head, against $9 on the rate card and nothing at all on the free tiers.
At fifteen workers the same ClockShark plan comes to about $12 a head, and the fixed fee falls from nearly half the bill to under a quarter. That is where the construction premium starts to look reasonable.
Dwight SchruteSales3 people
Darryl PhilbinWarehouse1 person
Kelly KapoorCustomer Service1 personManpower and resource planning
Manpower and resource planning is a separate question that gets described with the same words. Scheduling asks who works Tuesday; manpower planning asks whether you can staff the job you are bidding in March, and no crew scheduling tool on this page answers it.
| Question | Horizon | What answers it | Where small contractors go wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who is on which job this week | Days | Crew scheduling software | Keeping it on a whiteboard nobody in the field sees |
| Did they arrive, and on which job | Live | GPS clock-in tied to a job | Reconstructing it from memory at payroll |
| Are two crews committed to the same week | Weeks | A capacity view across concurrent jobs | Finding out when the second client calls |
| Can we staff what we are bidding | Months | Resource planning against the pipeline | Bidding first and staffing later |
| Do we have the certifications required | Per job | Qualification data in the people record | Discovering it on the morning of the inspection |
Below about three concurrent jobs, a spreadsheet handles rows three and four adequately, and buying software for them is premature. Above that, the failure mode is committing the same crew twice and discovering it late, and the tool that fixes it is a capacity view rather than a better calendar.
The last row is the one that reliably bites small contractors. Certifications, licenses, and training records live in people records rather than in the scheduler, and a schedule built without checking them eventually puts the wrong person on the wrong job.
Scheduling subcontractors, not employees
Subcontractor scheduling software means two different products depending on which side of the contract you sit on. A general contractor sequencing trades against a milestone needs the project platforms above, where the unit of work is a task on a Gantt chart. A subcontractor scheduling their own crews needs the crew tools instead.
The trap is putting 1099 subs, meaning independent subcontractors rather than employees, on the same crew calendar as your own staff. Mandatory shifts, geofenced clock-in, and an assigned start time are the kind of control that misclassification claims are built on, and the IRS counts behavioral control, whether you direct what a worker does and how, as evidence of employment. Give a sub a scope and a date window instead.
Either way, check the seat math before you invite anyone. Per-user tools bill a sub crew exactly like employees, so a ten-person sub crew on a $6 seat rate adds $60 a month, and flat-rate plans count them against the user cap. Procore is the exception for its core project tools, which price on construction volume with unlimited users, although its Field Productivity product is priced on full-time equivalents.
Travel time between job sites
Travel time between job sites is a scheduling decision with a payroll consequence, and one of the most commonly misapplied rules in construction. Where you tell a worker to report changes what you owe them before they lift a tool.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Portal-to-Portal Act, an ordinary commute from home to work and back is not compensable (not paid working time), but travel between job sites during the workday generally is.
The continuous workday is the mechanism behind that rule. Once a worker performs their first principal activity (the first real task of the job, such as loading materials at the yard), the period until the last one ends counts as hours worked, including the driving in between. The Department of Labor sets out the framework for hours worked in Fact Sheet 22.
| The arrangement | Likely treatment | Why | What the schedule should say |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home to the first site, straight there | Not compensable | Ordinary home to work commute | Report to site at start time |
| Home to the yard to load materials, then site | Compensable from the yard | Loading starts the workday | Report to yard, note the task |
| Between two sites during the day | Compensable | Continuous workday covers the transit | Both sites in the same daily record |
| Foreman collecting a company truck first | Depends on what happens at the yard | Loading tools or taking instructions counts; an agreed commute in a company vehicle does not | Record any loading or briefing as a scheduled task |
| Riding as a passenger by choice | Generally not compensable | A commute does not change by carpooling | Do not require the meeting point |
| Special assignment to a distant site | Depends on hours and role | Separate rules apply to overnight and remote work | Record travel hours separately |
The table has two practical consequences. First, requiring workers to meet at the yard is a decision with a price attached, and it should be made deliberately rather than by habit.
Second, if you have been paying for travel that was not strictly required, the Portal-to-Portal Act treats that custom or practice as making the time compensable for as long as it stands, so changing it is a policy question rather than a payroll tweak. Whatever you decide, travel hours count toward the overtime threshold like any other hours worked.
Prevailing wage and certified payroll
If you bid public work, prevailing wage and certified payroll rules determine what your scheduling and time data has to be capable of producing, and almost no scheduling listicle mentions them.
The scheduling consequence is specific. Certified payroll is reported by classification, the trade category that each prevailing wage rate is set for, so your hours have to be attributable to a worker, a job, and a classification. A worker who spends part of a day in two classifications needs both recorded.
Generic shift tools capture the person and the shift and nothing else, which means reconstructing the classification split later from memory. The construction-specific tools that track hours to jobs and cost codes get you materially closer, though most integrate with a construction payroll system for the reporting itself rather than producing it directly.
The verdict by contractor type
A single ranking assumes every contractor has the same problem. Across this audience the right answer changes at least seven times, and for several profiles the answer costs nothing.
| Your situation | What usually fits | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 workers, one crew, schedule is the problem | Sling by Toast free, or Connecteam free to 10 users | Construction tools with base fees, which cost more per head |
| 10 to 30 workers, one or two crews | Connecteam Basic at $29 flat a hub | Per-user pricing, which costs more for the same job |
| Crews spread across several sites daily | Workyard or ClockShark, despite the higher bill | Shift apps that record hours by person only |
| Bidding on labor and guessing at cost | A tool that tracks hours to job and cost code | Scheduling-only tools, which leave you guessing |
| Public work with prevailing wage | Construction time tracking plus construction payroll | Assuming one purchase covers certified payroll |
| Sequencing trades against a milestone | Contractor Foreman, or a builder platform at scale | Crew scheduling apps, which do not model dependencies |
| Service calls at customer addresses | A dispatch platform built for appointments | Shift scheduling, which models the wrong unit of work |
| Certifications decide who can work | Deputy, or qualification data held in HR records | Any schedule built without checking who is qualified |
The uncomfortable summary is that a contractor with one crew and a whiteboard problem is fully served by a free plan, and much of what markets itself hardest in this category is priced for a stage past that. The honest sequence is to run a free tier for a full pay cycle, find the specific thing it will not do, and buy against that rather than against a feature list.
Before you choose
FirstHR covers the employment layer underneath the schedule: an HR platform for US small businesses handling onboarding, employee records, e-signature, training, and document management at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50. The crew calendar, clock-in, GPS, and job costing come from one of the twelve products above.
One connection is worth naming before you buy. Two things this page turns on are paperwork rather than software: the certifications and licenses that decide who can be scheduled on a job, and the written policies behind travel pay and location tracking that a crew has to receive and acknowledge.
Neither the certifications nor the signed policies live in a scheduler, and both get asked for at the worst possible moment. Whichever tool you choose, decide where the signed acknowledgment and the current certification dates live before the first schedule goes out.
How to choose construction scheduling software
Choose by working through five questions, in this order. The first one eliminates two thirds of the market in about ten seconds.
One last step before you buy is a real trial. Run one full pay period in parallel with your current method and put the awkward cases through deliberately: a worker who drives between two sites, a day split across two jobs, and one manual correction after the fact.
Most of these tools are free or on trial long enough to allow it, and a real week surfaces what no feature list can, particularly whether the crew clocks in without being chased.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is construction employee scheduling software?
It is software that puts named workers on jobs and shifts, sends the schedule to their phones, logs when they arrive and leave, and turns those records into hours for payroll. It is distinct from project scheduling, which sequences tasks and dependencies, and from dispatch software, which books technicians into customer appointment slots. All three are sold under the same name, so the first decision is which object you actually need scheduled.
How much does construction crew scheduling software cost?
For fifteen workers, from nothing to about $250 a month for labor scheduling. Three tools are free at that size, paid crew scheduling clusters between $24 and $75, and construction-specific tools with GPS and job costing run $175 to $250 because of fixed company fees. At five workers the fee weighs heavily: the same plan that costs $175 at fifteen costs $85 for five, nearly half of it fixed.
Is there free construction scheduling software?
Yes, and the free tiers are usable rather than trials. One scheduling tool is free for up to thirty users, one workforce platform is free for ten users with nearly every feature, one shift platform is free for a single location of up to ten employees, and one construction-native time tracker has a permanent free tier. Only the construction tracker includes job costing for free, and free plans rarely include prevailing wage support or a payroll export, which is what the paid alternatives charge for.
Do I have to pay workers for travel between job sites?
Travel between sites during the workday is generally compensable; an ordinary commute from home to the first site is generally not. The continuous workday is the mechanism: once the first principal activity begins, time until the last one ends counts, including transit. Reporting to the yard to load materials can start the workday there, and those hours count toward overtime like any others.
Does scheduling software handle prevailing wage and certified payroll?
Some construction-specific tools support the workflow; general shift tools do not. Federal construction contracts over $2,000 require prevailing wages plus fringe benefits and weekly certified payroll with a signed compliance statement on the optional form WH-347 or an equivalent, filed for each week in which covered work is performed. Confirm that hours can be held against a worker, a job, and a classification before buying anything if you bid public projects.
What is the difference between crew scheduling and manpower planning?
Crew scheduling answers who works which shift next week. Manpower planning answers whether you can staff a job three months out, across concurrent commitments. Scheduling tools are built around a weekly calendar; resource planning is built around capacity and allocation. Below about three concurrent jobs a spreadsheet handles it, and above that the failure is committing the same crew twice without noticing.
Do small contractors need GPS clock-in?
It depends on whether you can see the crew. On one site with a foreman present all day it adds weight for little gain. Across several sites it answers questions that otherwise cannot be answered, and job-level hours are what make labor cost knowable. If you enable location capture, tell the crew in writing what is collected, and check state rules before switching on any face or fingerprint verification.
Can I schedule crews and run payroll in the same system?
Partially. Several crew scheduling tools export approved hours into common payroll systems and a couple bundle payroll as a paid add-on with its own base fee. Construction-specific tools generally integrate rather than run payroll themselves. Almost nothing in this category handles prevailing wage, fringe benefits, and certified payroll end to end, so on public work assume two purchases and check the export format first.
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