Shift It vs Nursly - Nurse Shift Calendar Comparison

Nursly is one of the few shift calendar apps built specifically for nurses, with Australian-localised features and healthcare-specific shift patterns. If you’re a nurse looking at both, here’s an honest comparison of what each app actually does.

What Nursly does

Nursly is a shift tracker designed around nursing rosters. It supports 8-hour and 12-hour shift patterns, rotating schedule tracking, calendar sync with Apple and Google Calendar, and PDF payroll exports. It has regional versions for Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US, and the Australian version includes fields for penalty rates and shift differentials.

On the pay side: Nursly lets you input your own base rate and calculates earnings using formula-based logic for overtime and differentials. It is not connected to live Australian nursing award rates — you enter the rates yourself, and the app does the maths. Whether those rates are correct is up to you to verify.

Where Shift It differs

The same comparison applies here as it does across most shift apps: what does it use for the pay calculation?

Shift It’s Pay Check is linked to the actual award. For nurses covered by the NSW Nurses and Midwives Award, the VIC Nurses and Midwives Agreement 2024–28, or the Nurses Award (national), Pay Check applies the correct penalty rates for each shift automatically — you don’t enter rates manually, because the award defines them. A Sunday night shift that crosses midnight splits at the rate-change boundary. Public holiday stacking is handled. Overtime for shift overruns is calculated correctly per the relevant agreement.

Nursly requires you to enter those rates yourself. If you don’t know your exact penalty rate for a Sunday afternoon into Sunday night into Monday morning, you’ll need to look it up. Shift It looks it up for you.

Platform availability

Nursly is iOS only (requires iOS 17.0 or later). There is no Android version.

Shift It is on both iOS and Android. If you or a colleague uses Android — common in public hospital settings — Nursly isn’t an option.

Roster import

Nursly’s core shift entry is manual. Shift It imports directly from spreadsheets, which matters if your hospital or health service publishes rosters in Excel format (most do). Free users get two imports per month; Pro is unlimited.

Feature comparison

Feature	Shift It	Nursly
iOS	Yes	Yes (iOS 17.0+)
Android	Yes	No
Australian nursing awards	Yes — automated (Pro)	Manual rate entry
NSW Nurses Award	Yes	Manual rates only
VIC Nurses 2024–28	Yes	Manual rates only
Spreadsheet import	Yes	Not mentioned
12h / 8h shift patterns	Yes (Roster Wizard)	Yes
Payslip comparison	Yes (Pro)	No
Live Pay counter	Yes (Pro)	Earnings summary
Calendar export / PDF	Yes	Yes
Team features	Roster Buddies (P2P)	None
Multi-device sync	No (v3.1 coming)	Not confirmed

Who should use which?

Nursly is a reasonable option if you’re on iOS, comfortable looking up and entering your own penalty rates, and want an app that’s designed around nursing shift patterns specifically. It’s a newer, focused app from a solo developer.

If you want the award calculation done for you, need Android, or want to import your roster directly from your hospital’s spreadsheet, Shift It covers all three. The meaningful difference is automation: Nursly gives you the maths framework; Shift It gives you the answer.

For nurses who’ve ever finished a run of nights and had to manually calculate whether they were paid correctly for seven different rate boundaries across four shifts, the automation isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the point.