Homebase pricing 2026: plans, payroll and add-on costs
2026-11-13 · 7 min read
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It's Tuesday afternoon, the slow hour between lunch and dinner. The owner of a 40-seat restaurant is at the bar with a laptop, next week's schedule in a spreadsheet, and a phone full of texts from servers asking to swap Friday. The timesheets are a paper sign-in sheet by the kitchen door. Payroll is due Thursday, and she'll spend an hour of it squinting at handwriting.
Someone told her to look at Homebase. This post covers Homebase pricing for that restaurant: what each plan costs, what it includes, what payroll and the add-ons do to the bill, and what still lands on the owner afterward. Every price below comes from Homebase's pricing page, which I checked on November 13, 2026.
Homebase pricing at a glance
| Plan | Price on Homebase's page | Limits | What the page lists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 per location per month | 1 location, up to 10 employees | Basic scheduling, basic time tracking, point-of-sale integration |
| Essentials | $30 per location per month | Unlimited employees | Everything in Basic, plus advanced scheduling, advanced time tracking, team communication |
| Plus | $70 per location per month | Unlimited employees | Everything in Essentials, plus a scheduling assistant, PTO and time-off controls, departments and permissions |
| All-in-One | $120 per location per month | Unlimited employees | Everything in Plus, plus employee onboarding without payroll, HR and compliance |
Don't put that table in a budget yet. The page has an Annual and Monthly toggle with a "Save 20%" badge, but the copy I pulled showed one set of prices and didn't say which billing period they belong to. Flip the toggle yourself before you write a number down.
Plus also showed a $0 next to the $70 when I checked. That's a promotion: add payroll, and Homebase says you get six months of payroll and the Plus plan free. The page calls it a limited time offer with terms and doesn't print an end date, so I'd budget on the $70.
And the pricing is per location. A second location doubles the plan price and takes you off the free plan, since Basic covers one location only.
The trial is 14 days of All-in-One with no credit card. If you don't choose a plan when it ends, the account drops to free Basic. If you have more than 10 employees or more than one location, you'll be asked to pick a paid plan instead. The page says you can change plans or cancel anytime, and that a plan change takes effect at the start of the next billing cycle. It doesn't list a contract length.
What payroll and the add-ons cost
For most restaurants the plan is the smaller half of the bill. Payroll and the add-ons are priced separately:
| Add-on | Price on Homebase's page |
|---|---|
| Payroll | $49 per month base fee, plus $6 per month per employee paid. The page also lists $29 per month for teams up to 5. Available on every plan |
| Tip Manager | $25 per month per location |
| Task Manager | $13 per month per location |
| Background checks | $30 each |
| Job post boosts | Starting at $50 per post |
| Hiring Assistant | Starting at $99 per month |
Payroll includes employee onboarding. Custom onboarding documents need All-in-One, according to the page's footnote.
What a restaurant actually pays
Here's the arithmetic for one location, using only the published rates above. It leaves out the promotion and any annual discount, so treat it as the ceiling, and count only the employees you pay in a given month.
| Setup | Plan | Payroll | Add-ons | Monthly total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 employees, scheduling and time clock only | Basic, $0 | None | None | $0 |
| 18 employees, scheduling only | Essentials, $30 | None | None | $30 |
| 18 employees with payroll | Essentials, $30 | $49 + (18 × $6) = $157 | None | $187 |
| 18 employees with payroll and tips | Essentials, $30 | $157 | Tip Manager, $25 | $212 |
| 18 employees with payroll and tips | Plus, $70 | $157 | Tip Manager, $25 | $252 |
Going from Essentials to Plus adds $40 a month. Turning on payroll for 18 people adds $157. If you already run payroll somewhere you're happy with, payroll is the line to think hardest about. The scheduling side of Homebase is cheap, and the payroll side grows with every hire.
Which plan fits a small restaurant
Basic works if you have ten or fewer people at one address and your real problem is the paper sign-in sheet. You get a schedule, a time clock and a connection to your point of sale for nothing.
Essentials is where most single-location restaurants land. The employee cap goes away, and team communication starts here, which matters if schedule changes currently live in a group chat. I compared those two approaches in group text vs scheduling app for restaurant shift coverage.
Plus is for the place where time-off requests and permissions have become their own job. PTO and time-off controls start on this plan, along with departments, so a kitchen manager can run the back-of-house schedule without seeing front-of-house pay.
All-in-One adds HR and compliance and lets you onboard new hires in Homebase without buying its payroll. If you hire a lot of seasonal staff and your payroll is elsewhere, that's the reason to pay $120.
What stays by hand on any plan
Homebase holds the schedule and the timesheets. The rest of the week still belongs to whoever is running the place. On every plan, someone has to:
- Decide who covers when a cook calls out two hours before service, and check that the person who said yes knows the station.
- Keep roles and availability current, or the tool will offer shifts to the wrong people.
- Answer the phone during the rush, or call back the catering inquiry that came in at 6:15 on a Friday.
- Train the new hire on your kitchen, your menu and your closing routine. I covered that in restaurant onboarding SOPs and paper vs app closing checklists.
- Read the labor numbers against sales each week and do something about them.
Automating around Homebase without moving up a tier
You don't need the top plan to close those gaps. A few small pieces can run next to whatever plan you're on:
- Call-out intake. A sick text goes to one number, the manager gets a short summary with the shift and station, and the people who can work that station get asked first.
- Missed-call text back. A caller who rings during service gets a text within a minute with the hours, the reservation link and a way to ask about catering.
- Catering and event follow-up. An inquiry gets an immediate reply, a prompt to the owner, and a check-in if nobody has answered in a day.
- A Monday summary for the owner: last week's labor hours next to sales, call-outs, and open catering quotes, on one page.
I've built this kind of intake and tracking for a Chicago-area pool service company, where leads and payments used to live in texts and memory. A restaurant's version runs on call-outs and catering calls, but the handoffs work the same way. Builds start at $500 one-time, then a flat monthly from $99 after an included run-in period, cancellable. There's more on the automation for restaurants page.
What stays with a person
The manager still decides who works Saturday. Software can show you who is available and who is close to overtime. It has no idea that two of your servers shouldn't share a section this week. A person approves the time off, has the conversation about the third late arrival, and signs off on payroll before it runs. Wage, tip and scheduling rules vary by state and city, so check yours before you change how tips are pooled or how shifts get posted. What I automate is the asking and the reminding, so the hour before service goes to the food.
Before you pick a plan
If you're pricing Homebase, or you're already on it and the schedule still eats your Tuesday, book a free 20 minute process audit. We'll walk through one week of scheduling, call-outs and payroll prep and see whether the fix is a different plan, an add-on, or a small build beside the plan you have. Book it here.