Same job. Different honesty.
Both want to roster a venue and fill open shifts. Shiftly’s site sells a live pool and award pay. Sofia ships the venue first, and says Cover is a waitlist.
They market a live extra-hands pool and award pay. We ship a roster, an explainable fill from your own people, and a Cover waitlist.
What usually goes wrong
You need extra hands tonight
Their homepage offers “on-demand staff” and “extra hands, ready to go.” If that pool is actually live in your city, that is a real difference.
You need Modern Award pay calculated for you
They sell “award-accurate pay” — penalties, overtime, allowances. Sofia will not pretend to be a Fair Work engine.
You want unlimited staff at $0
Their site says free to use, no per-employee fees. Sofia is $200 per store per month. We publish that.
What Sofia does about it
Venue first, then a waitlist
Auto-Fill and staff claims try people already on the roster. Cover is a waitlist inside the same product. Nobody is sent — the pool is not live.
Rostering & Auto-FillLabor from wages you set
Cost is the rates you typed, while the week is still editable. CSV out. We do not name Xero, MYOB, or an award we have not built.
Labor cost control$200 a store
Unlimited staff at that location. Subscribe from Settings. $200 USD per store per month.
Their public site, our codebase
| Topic | Shiftly.au (28 Aug 2026) | Sofia |
|---|---|---|
| Extra hands | “On-demand staff” / “extra hands, ready to go.” On-demand “launching this September.” | Cover waitlist. Listing a gap does not dispatch anyone. |
| Pay rules | “Award-accurate pay.” Penalties, overtime, allowances. | Wages you set. Not a Modern Award engine. |
| Payroll out | “Syncs timesheets and entitlements to payroll instantly.” | CSV export. We do not push into Xero or MYOB. |
| Price | “Free to use. No per-employee fees.” | $200 / store / month. Subscribe from Settings. |
| Fill from the venue | Rostering calendar, copy templates, send the roster. | Auto-Fill: deterministic scorer, score attached, undo in one click. |
| AI | Not claimed as a language model on the homepage we read. | Call Sofia writes through Auto-Fill rules. In-app Ask Sofia is read-only. Number boarding. |
Shiftly lines are quotations or close paraphrases of shiftly.au as retrieved 28 August 2026. Sofia lines are verified against this codebase. We do not audit their product.
Questions, answered
Are you a Shiftly clone?
No. The job is the same — roster a venue and fill open shifts — but Auto-Fill is a deterministic scorer, Cover is a waitlist not a live marketplace, and we do not calculate Australian awards. The ledger site is ours; their photography is theirs.
Can Sofia send extra people tonight?
No. Fill from your own team (Auto-Fill, then claims). Cover is a waitlist. We will not demo a pool that is not live.
Do you calculate award rates?
No. Labor cost is the wages you enter. If you need a Fair Work Modern Award engine, say so — we would rather lose the deal than stretch the copy.
Is Sofia free for an unlimited team?
No. $200 USD per store per month, unlimited staff at that store. Subscribe from Settings. That price is on /pricing.
Explore more of Sofia
- Call Sofia
Staff call one number. Sofia covers late, sick, and Julie-take-Thursday — through the same rules as Auto-Fill.
- Rostering & Auto-Fill
See the week. Fill open shifts. Every pick is scored and reversible.
- Ask Sofia
Ask this week in plain language — open shifts, Cover waitlist, labor, overtime. Grounded in your data, read-only.
Get a store number, or let us show you around.
$200 a store. The line is boarding. Or open a workspace and run the roster today.