Deputy and our angle

Market note · checked on deputy.com and Deputy’s newsroom on 25 September 2026

Deputy already offers automatic scheduling from demand, so “an AI that builds the schedule” on its own is not a new product; Shiffty would need a clearer reason to exist.

What Deputy says it does

According to deputy.com and its auto-scheduling page, Deputy offers:

• Auto-scheduling that takes into account “staff availability, training, and spread of hours” and fills shifts by priorities such as “lowest cost, equal spread of hours, or matching your past preferences”.
• Demand-based scheduling using “demand signals, such as units you project to sell in a given period”.
• Guardrails for legal rules such as “minimum rest between shifts or maximum work hours per week”.
• Shift swapping, leave management, time tracking and a mobile app.
• An AI layer it calls Deputy AI. Deputy announced it in November 2025 as an assistant that answers managers’ questions and “acts autonomously to complete requested actions”, such as finding shift replacements and filling a schedule. It was in beta at launch. We found nothing saying employees can talk to it.

The pricing page lists $5 (Lite), $6.50 (Core) and $9 (Pro) per user per month; auto-scheduling and demand forecasting start from Core.

We have not used Deputy ourselves. The list above is what the company claims, not something we tested.

Where Shiffty could differ

These are hypotheses, not established advantages:

• The employee talks, not only the manager. Deputy AI, as announced, works for the manager. Shiffty would put the conversation in front of the employee and hand the manager one ready decision.
• Conversation instead of configuration. The manager describes the store and its rules in words; the employee asks for changes in words. Deputy is a full workforce platform with a lot to set up.
• The change loop. Most of the pain we remember came after the schedule was published. An assistant that solves a swap end to end and hands the manager a single decision is the part we want to be best at.
• Small stores and sliding shifts. A narrow tool for managers who do not want a full workforce platform.

Deputy is not the only one moving this way; see the competitive landscape. Whether any of these is enough for a store to choose Shiffty over Deputy or similar tools is the most important open question.