Full-service restaurant / Scheduling and payroll
Scheduling and payroll for a dining room
Scored and compared prices dated
The short answer
7shifts is the pragmatic choice for most full-service sites: it is priced per location rather than per head, it integrates with the POS you are probably already running, and its free tier is a real single-location scheduler rather than a demo. Toast's own scheduling and payroll only makes sense if you are already committed to Toast for everything else, since it is sold as one more module on top of a system you have already paid to set up.
Reviewed by the editorial team · updated 11 August 2026
Step 3
What matters most to you?
Pick one or two. Everything below re-scores instantly, and we show you the maths.
Winner overall
7shifts
The scheduling app most restaurant staff have already used somewhere else.
The trade-off
No offline mode for managers. Staff can usually still see a schedule that already loaded, but building or editing one needs a connection.
Why it won
- price
- ease of setup
- support
- volume
- integrations
Our scores, 1 to 5, defined on the methodology page.
Everything else, ranked the same way
| # | Product | From | Contract | Card rate | Score | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 7shifts The scheduling app most restaurant staff have already used somewhere else. | Free, then $39.99 | month to month, annual billing saves 10-12% | not applicable | 3.6 | Pricing checked 11 Aug 2026 |
| 02 | Toast The one built for restaurants only, with the lock-in that implies. | Free, then $69 | multi-year is typical | 2.99% + 15¢ on the free Starter Kit, 2.49% + 15¢ on the $69 plan | 3.6 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
What's different about buying this for full-service restaurants
A dining room's scheduling problem is not just shifts; it is reconciling tipped and non-tipped roles, splitting a pooled tip across a server, a runner and a bartender fairly, and doing it in a way that survives an audit. That is a different job than counting heads at a counter, and it is where generic scheduling tools start showing their limits.
7shifts covers this with tip management and labour compliance built in, integrates directly with Toast, Square and Clover so the sales data that drives labour-cost-against-sales reporting actually flows in, and its paid tiers run $39.99 to $134.99 a month per location depending on headcount, with payroll bundled into the top Premium tier at $6 per employee paid on top of that. It is not trying to be your accounting system, which is exactly why it is quick to set up.
Toast's scheduling and payroll module is worth considering only as part of the wider Toast ecosystem; buying it standalone against a non-Toast POS defeats the point, since the appeal is the shared login and shared sales data.
Questions people actually ask
- Does either system handle tip pooling automatically?
- 7shifts has tip management built in and will split a pool by hours worked or a custom formula. Toast's version does the same, tied to its own POS sales data.
- What does payroll cost on top of scheduling?
- On 7shifts, payroll comes bundled into the top Premium plan at $134.99 a month plus $6 per employee paid; it is not a cheap add-on for the lower tiers. Toast bundles it differently, as one more line in its module stack, which tends to land total cost higher once everything is added up.