Field notes › Comparisons
Mustr vs When I Work for shift teams
When I Work is one of the most approachable scheduling apps on the market: clean, quick to learn, and cheap. It's American, priced in US dollars, and aimed at hourly teams in retail, hospitality and services. For labour hire it's the easiest comparison on this list, because one gap decides it.
What When I Work does well
Published per-user pricing from $2.50 US a month, with auto-scheduling, availability, shift swaps, open shifts and team messaging in every plan, and time tracking as an add-on. For a manager rostering a cafe or a gym, it's likeable software at a price that's hard to beat.
The gap that decides it
There is no certificate or qualification tracking in the product's published plans. None. No ticket records, no expiry dates, no notion that a worker might be unqualified for a site. For its home market that's fine, a barista doesn't carry a White Card. For labour hire it means the entire compliance layer, the reason your clients pay you, lives somewhere else: a spreadsheet, a filing cabinet, someone's memory.
What that costs in practice
Every gap between your roster tool and your compliance record is a manual reconciliation someone has to remember to do, on the day they're busiest. The cheap roster app isn't cheap once you price the near-misses, the audit scrambles and the client conversations after a lapsed ticket reaches site.
How Mustr is different
- Certificates, inductions and availability live in the same system as the roster, and every booking is checked against them before it's made. Failures are blocked.
- Client sites get their own portal: their roster, their requests, their logistics.
- One flat AUD price per bracket, GST included, hosted in Australia with 2FA on every login.
Which should you pick?
If your workers need no tickets and your clients never audit you, When I Work is decent, inexpensive scheduling. If a missing cert can turn a worker around at a mine gate, you need the roster that already knew. 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.