Field notes › Comparisons
Mustr vs Deputy for labour hire crews
Deputy is probably the best-known rostering app in Australia, and it earns the position. If you run a cafe, a retail chain or a clinic, it's a polished product with serious scheduling firepower. Labour hire is a different job, though, and the differences matter more than the demo suggests.
What Deputy does well
Award interpretation, timesheets, time clocks with geofencing, auto-scheduling, demand forecasting, and a long list of payroll integrations. Its published Australian pricing is per user per month, ex GST: Lite at $6.75, Core at $8.75, Pro at $13, with paid add-ons for payroll, HR and analytics. For rostering employees inside your own business, it's a very capable tool.
Where labour hire strains it
Labour hire isn't rostering your own venue. Your people work on other companies' sites, under those sites' inductions and ticket requirements, and your client wants visibility you can't give them with a staff-facing app. Deputy has training and qualification records that can inform scheduling, but its public pricing page doesn't state which plan includes them, and there's no client-facing portal: your client can't log in and see their site's roster. SMS notifications are also metered separately.
How Mustr is different
- The check blocks. Tickets, inductions, availability and double-bookings are checked server-side before any booking is made. A failed check stops the booking outright.
- Clients get a login. Each client site sees its own roster, raises requests, and ticks off flights and accommodation. That's included, not an add-on.
- Flat pricing. One price per organisation by crew size, from $660 a month for up to 30 users to $1,540 a month at 100 users, GST included, everything on.
The pricing maths
At 100 workers, Deputy Core is $875 a month ex GST and Pro is $1,300 ex GST, before add-ons and SMS. Mustr is $1,540 a month including GST with everything in. At small crews Deputy is clearly cheaper; as the crew grows and you add the compliance layer you'd still need beside it, the gap closes and then reverses.
Which should you pick?
If you're rostering your own staff in your own venues and compliance means award rules, Deputy is a strong choice and we'd tell you so. If you place crews on client sites where a lapsed ticket means someone gets turned around at the gate, that's the job Mustr was built for. See it on your own roster.
Competitor details and prices in this article come from the vendors’ own published pages as at July 2026, quoted ex GST unless noted, and may have changed since. Check their sites for current figures. Mustr prices include GST.