The self-hosted Deputy alternative
Rostera — Self-hosted staff shift scheduler — a weekly rota, exact hours, double-booking caught. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying Deputy every month.
Stop renting Deputy
3 months of Deputy equals this one-time price.
Assumption: Per-seat with a $30/mo floor, so small teams pay at least that every month. Rostera has no seats and no recurring bill.
How Deputy pricing grows with you
Deputy bills per user across its Lite, Core, and Pro plans, and additionally enforces a minimum monthly spend per account regardless of how few people are on the team.
“Yes - there is a minimum monthly spend of USD $30/AUD $30/GBP £20 per month per invoice on our monthly Lite, Core & Pro plans from September 1, 2025.” — their own page, read 2026-08-11
What Deputy does that we don't
Deputy provides native clock-in apps across tablet, mobile, web, and smartwatch.
“Access our leading apps on tablet, mobile, web and watch” — their own page
Who should stay with Deputy
If you need a built-in time clock with biometric attendance capture, stay where you are — Rostera is not a time clock and has no time or biometric capture. Full honest limitations are on the product page.
Why owning beats renting Deputy
- One payment. No monthly, per-seat, or per-location fees — the license is perpetual.
- Your data stays on your server. It never lives in Deputy's cloud.
- No plan ceilings. Records and users are limited by your hosting, not a pricing tier.
- It keeps working if the vendor doesn't. Self-hosted software can't be sunset or price-hiked out from under you.
Fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up, and apply updates yourself — see the product page for honest limitations, and the full Rostera vs Deputy comparison.
Sources
- Deputy — price checked 2026-09-03 —
source “there is a minimum monthly spend of USD $30 ... per month per invoice on our monthly Lite, Core & Pro plans from September 1, 2025”
Competitor prices change — always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory — every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.