# YouShift vs QGenda

> A sourced side by side comparison of YouShift and QGenda for physician groups: scheduling engine, modules, pricing model, reviews, and when each wins.

- Canonical URL: https://youshift.com/compare/youshift-vs-qgenda
- Author: Pablo de Quadras, Revenue lead
- Published: 2026-09-22
- Verified: 2026-09-22
- Language: en
- Publisher: YouShift (https://youshift.com/)

Markdown edition of the page at the canonical URL above.

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**A sourced comparison for physician groups choosing scheduling software.**

## The short version
QGenda is the enterprise standard in healthcare workforce management and YouShift is a scheduling led platform built for physician groups. Both generate schedules from rules, both connect the schedule to time tracking and pay, and on core scheduling the two are at feature parity. The decision comes down to how much of the enterprise suite you actually need, what you are willing to spend running it, and whether the schedule itself is your hard problem.
Choose QGenda if you need full provider credentialing and payer enrollment, residency management, or nurse and staff scheduling bought under one enterprise contract.
Choose YouShift if the schedule is the thing that breaks, and you want the operations that hang off it, maintenance, swaps, time tracking, pay, credential expiry and staffing analytics, running on the same engine that built the schedule.
You do not have to decide this on a demo. YouShift runs free for a full scheduling period: we set it up with you, on your own coverage rules and your own clinicians, and your scheduler runs the period. QGenda does not offer a trial, per its Software Advice and Capterra listings.
[Run your next month free](https://youshift.com/demo)

Not ready to talk? [Work out what your coverage actually costs first.](https://youshift.com/blog/cost-of-clinical-coverage)

## YouShift and QGenda at a glance

|   | YouShift | QGenda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Category | Healthcare workforce operations, scheduling led | Healthcare workforce management suite |
| Ownership | Independent | Hearst announced its agreement to acquire QGenda in August 2024, from Francisco Partners and ICONIQ Growth |
| Built for | Physician groups and departments | Health systems, academic medical centers, national practice groups, private practices |
| Scheduling engine | Rules and preferences in, complete rule legal schedule options out | Described by QGenda as an automated, rules based scheduling engine with AI powered scheduling optimization |
| Schedule maintenance | Swaps and open shifts validated by the same rules engine that generated the schedule | On call management and open shift management modules |
| Time and attendance | In platform, mobile clock in, reconciled against the schedule | Separate module. Provider product is mobile with geo verified time punches and schedule based automated time entry. Nurse and staff product also supports RFID badge time clocks |
| Credentialing | License and credential status and expiry, surfaced against the schedule. Not a full credentialing platform | Full provider credentialing and payer enrollment modules |
| Residency management | Not offered | Yes |
| Analytics | Staffing cost by site, team and period from the same dataset | QGenda Insights, dashboards and drill down visuals |
| Pricing model | Per clinician actually being scheduled | Quote based, sold by module |
| Published pricing | No | No |
| Free trial | One full scheduling period, any group size, set up with the YouShift team | Not offered, per Software Advice and Capterra |
| Migration from the other | Importer for QGenda schedule history and clinician records | Not applicable |

## What QGenda is
QGenda is a healthcare workforce management platform sold as a suite of modules covering provider and nurse scheduling, on call management, time and attendance, credentialing and payer enrollment, clinical capacity management, residency management and workforce analytics. It positions itself as healthcare only, and as the only vendor to unify those functions on a single platform.
It is the incumbent by a wide margin. QGenda reports more than 4,500 customers and more than 850,000 physicians, nurses and staff on the platform, per its homepage as of September 2026, and it has been recognized in the Best in KLAS reports, most recently as market leader for Time and Attendance in the 2026 report published in February 2026.
It has also been consolidating. QGenda acquired [Shift Admin](https://youshift.com/compare/youshift-vs-shift-admin) in January 2021 and completed the acquisition of New Innovations, the residency management vendor, in July 2025. Hearst announced its agreement to acquire QGenda from Francisco Partners and ICONIQ Growth in August 2024, and QGenda now appears among the Hearst Health group of companies.
One thing worth knowing if you score vendors on KLAS. QGenda's most recent Best in KLAS recognition is in Time and Attendance. It has not won the Scheduling: Physician category since 2023, and the product that won it for QGenda in 2021, 2022 and 2023 was QGenda Shift Admin Scheduling, the product QGenda acquired rather than the one it built. The category has gone to PerfectServe Lightning Bolt in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
If you are comparing scheduling vendors, QGenda belongs on the list. The honest question is not whether it works. It is whether you need what you would be buying.

## What YouShift is
YouShift is a healthcare workforce operations platform that starts from the schedule. Coverage requirements, compliance rules and clinician preferences go in, and the engine returns complete schedule options that satisfy those rules, which the scheduler chooses between rather than assembles by hand.
The design principle is that the schedule is the richest operational dataset a physician group owns, and that everything downstream of it should run on the same engine and the same data. Swaps and open shift offers are validated by the rules that built the schedule, so a trade that would break coverage or a duty hour rule cannot be made. Clock in and clock out reconcile against the shift that was scheduled. License and credential expiry dates are read against future assignments, so a gap surfaces months before the shift rather than on the day. Staffing cost decomposes by site, team and period out of the same records.
YouShift is at feature parity with QGenda and ShiftAdmin on core scheduling. It is deliberately not a credentialing platform, and that is covered below.

## The three differences that actually decide this

### What you buy, and how it is priced
QGenda is sold by module. Scheduling, on call, time and attendance, credentialing, payer enrollment, capacity, residency and analytics are separate products in the suite, and the scope of a QGenda contract is a function of how many of them you take. Pricing is quote based and QGenda does not publish it. Software Advice lists no free trial and no free version, and pricing available on request. Third party directories publish estimated starting ranges, but no figure is confirmed by QGenda, so treat any number you find online as unverified until it arrives in a quote.
YouShift charges for clinicians actually being scheduled. That is the whole model. It matters most to groups with a long tail of PRN, locum and per diem clinicians who appear on a roster but not on many shifts, because a headcount based or seat based contract charges for all of them.
You should still put both quotes side by side over three years, including implementation and any module you would add in year two. That is the comparison, not the list price.

### What it takes to run once it is live
This is where reviews are more useful than either vendor's website. QGenda's implementation is configured by QGenda's own engineers to the organization's rules, and reviewers describe the process as time consuming and demanding due to extensive custom development, with several rounds of meetings before go live. Steep learning curve is the most consistent theme in the negative reviews across G2, Capterra, Software Advice and SelectHub, alongside slow loading and navigation across a large number of tabs. One CEO reviewing on Capterra put it as, "The software is difficult to implement because it's not user friendly. If you didn't work on the software 8 hours a day you would never know how to use it."
That is a fair description of enterprise software configured to enterprise complexity, and it is the cost of the breadth QGenda offers. It is also the reason a fifteen physician group and a four hundred physician system should not evaluate this the same way. The relevant question for a physician group is who inside the group will own the tool, how many hours a month that person has, and what happens when they leave.
YouShift is built for the case where that owner is a scheduler or a medical director with a clinical job, not a workforce management team. Rules are configured against how the group already works, and the person who owns the schedule runs the engine themselves.
We would rather not ask you to take that on trust. YouShift runs free for a full scheduling period, set up with our team and then run by yours, so how hard it is to operate gets answered by your own scheduler, on your own rules, before you sign anything. That is a different kind of evidence than a reference call.

### Where the schedule ends
Both platforms connect the schedule to time and to pay, and for providers both offer mobile, geo verified clock in with no dedicated hardware. Nobody wins on that. QGenda's nurse and staff product additionally supports RFID badge time clocks, which is a real advantage if you are timekeeping a nursing workforce and irrelevant if you are not.
The difference is what the connection is for. QGenda extends outward across the enterprise, into credentialing, payer enrollment, residency and capacity, so that a health system can standardize workforce administration across departments that have nothing else in common. YouShift extends downward from a single schedule, so that the maintenance, the timesheet, the paycheck, the credential warning and the cost analysis are all computed from the same records the schedule was generated from, and reconciliation between systems is not a task anyone performs.
If your problem is administrative surface area across a large system, breadth wins. If your problem is that the schedule decays the day after it is published and every downstream consequence has to be chased by hand, one engine wins.
[Run your next month free](https://youshift.com/demo)

Not ready to talk? [Work out what your coverage actually costs first.](https://youshift.com/blog/cost-of-clinical-coverage)

## Where QGenda is the better choice
There are four cases where we would tell you to buy QGenda, and we do.
You need full credentialing and payer enrollment. QGenda runs both as complete products. YouShift maintains license and credential status and warns you against the schedule when something is about to expire, which is a different job. If you are trying to replace a credentialing platform, YouShift will not do it.
You run residency or fellowship programs and want scheduling and program management in one contract. QGenda offers residency management. YouShift does not.
You are scheduling nurses and staff at scale alongside providers, under a single enterprise agreement and a single vendor relationship. QGenda's suite is built for that.
You are a large health system whose selection process requires the vendor with the longest reference list and the most Best in KLAS recognition, and where breadth of module coverage is scored directly. That is a legitimate way to buy, and QGenda scores well on it.

## Where YouShift is the better choice
The schedule is your hard problem. Coverage rules are genuinely complex, fairness is contested, and the schedule publishes late because building it takes an evening nobody has. Everything else you need is downstream of fixing that.
You want the maintenance layer to be part of the engine. Sick calls, swaps and open shifts get resolved under the same rules that generated the schedule, in the app, rather than by phone chain on a Sunday night and an expensive unilateral decision at the end of it. Read our take on [what clinical coverage actually costs](https://youshift.com/blog/cost-of-clinical-coverage).
You have a long tail of PRN, per diem and locum clinicians, and you do not want to pay for people you are barely scheduling.
You are a physician group, not a health system. The decision is being made by a VP of operations or a managing partner who personally absorbs every scheduling emergency, and you want a platform sized to that, with the executive view of staffing cost that usually requires an analyst. This is most acute in [emergency medicine](https://youshift.com/blog/emergency-department-scheduling) and [anesthesia](https://youshift.com/blog/anesthesia-coverage-cost), where coverage gaps convert into premium spend immediately.
You have been sold to before and you want to see it work first. This is the honest reason most groups end up on a page like this one. Run a scheduling period free and judge the platform on the schedule it produces for your group, which is the only evidence that settles the question.
[Run your next month free](https://youshift.com/demo)

Not ready to talk? [Work out what your coverage actually costs first.](https://youshift.com/blog/cost-of-clinical-coverage)

## What QGenda costs
QGenda does not publish pricing. Contracts are quoted per organization and scoped by module, and Software Advice lists pricing as available on request with no free trial and no free version. Reviewers there score value for money at 4.02 out of 5, and pricing perceived as high relative to competitor offerings appears in the summarized cons on both Software Advice and SelectHub, where affordability for smaller organizations is flagged specifically.
Several third party directories publish estimated starting figures. None of them is confirmed by QGenda and the estimates disagree with each other, so we do not repeat them here. If you want a defensible number, ask QGenda for a three year total that names every module, the implementation fee, and the price of adding one module in year two, and ask the same of every vendor you are evaluating.
YouShift also does not publish a rate card, for the same reason every vendor in this category does not: the number depends on your group. What we will tell you on the first call is the model, which is that you pay for clinicians actually being scheduled, and a real number for your group.

## What QGenda users report
Aggregate ratings as of September 2026: 4.6 out of 5 across 164 reviews on G2 for QGenda Advanced Scheduling for Providers, and 4.2 out of 5 across 68 reviews on both Capterra and Software Advice. The QGenda mobile app holds 4.7 out of 5 on the US App Store, across the 14K ratings Apple displays. Those are strong numbers and they should be read as such.
What reviewers praise, consistently: centralization and real time visibility across locations, configurability, reporting depth on provider data, and responsive support.
What reviewers criticize, consistently: a steep learning curve requiring significant training, implementation that is lengthy and custom, slow loading and occasional crashes, navigation across many tabs, and support quality that several reviewers describe as inconsistent once the sale has closed. On Capterra one account executive wrote, "Does not do what we were promised it would during the sale. Once they got our business, customer support has pretty much been nonexistent."
Individual reviews are anecdotes. The pattern across four platforms is a signal, and the pattern here is that QGenda rewards organizations with the capacity to configure and maintain it.

## Is YouShift a QGenda alternative
Yes, for scheduling and the operations built on it. YouShift is at feature parity with QGenda on core scheduling, and it covers schedule maintenance, time tracking, pay, credential status against the schedule, and staffing analytics on one engine.
It is not an alternative to QGenda's credentialing and payer enrollment products, and it does not offer residency management. Groups that need those should either stay with QGenda or run a credentialing platform alongside.

## Switching from QGenda
The two questions that matter are what happens to your history and what happens to your rules.
The data is the easy half. We run an importer for QGenda, so historical schedules and clinician records come across without anyone rekeying them. The rules are the real work. A rule set that took eighteen months of configuration in another system encodes decisions nobody ever wrote down, and the migration is where those surface and, usually, get simplified. Plan for that conversation, not for a data transfer.
The second question is timing. Switch between scheduling periods, never inside one, and run the first generated schedule in parallel against the one you would have built by hand. The free scheduling period exists for exactly this. If the output does not survive the comparison, do not switch, and if you decide not to continue, ask and the YouShift team will give you your data, then delete it.

## Frequently asked questions

**What is QGenda?**
QGenda is a healthcare workforce management platform covering provider and nurse scheduling, on call management, time and attendance, credentialing, payer enrollment, capacity management, residency management and workforce analytics. QGenda's homepage reports more than 4,500 customer organizations and more than 850,000 users.

**What is YouShift?**
YouShift is a healthcare workforce operations platform for physician groups. It generates schedules from coverage rules and clinician preferences, and runs schedule maintenance, time tracking, pay, credential expiry warnings and staffing analytics on the same engine and dataset.

**Who owns QGenda?**
Hearst announced an agreement to acquire QGenda from Francisco Partners and ICONIQ Growth in August 2024, placing it within the Hearst Health group of companies. QGenda acquired Shift Admin in January 2021.

**How much does QGenda cost?**
QGenda does not publish pricing. Contracts are quoted per organization and scoped by module, and Software Advice lists no free trial and no free version. Third party estimates circulate online but none is confirmed by QGenda. Ask for a three year total that names every module and the implementation fee.

**Does QGenda offer a free trial?**
No. Both Software Advice and Capterra list QGenda as having no free trial and no free version. YouShift runs free for one full scheduling period, set up with our team, on your own coverage rules and your own clinicians. There is no size cap, and if you decide not to continue, ask and the YouShift team will give you your data, then delete it.

**Can I migrate from QGenda to YouShift?**
Yes. We run an importer for QGenda, so historical schedules and clinician records transfer without rekeying. The real work in any scheduling migration is the rule set, not the data. Switch between scheduling periods rather than inside one.

**Does YouShift do everything QGenda does?**
No. YouShift matches QGenda on core scheduling and covers maintenance, time tracking, pay and staffing analytics, but it is not a full credentialing or payer enrollment platform and it does not offer residency management.

**What does YouShift do that QGenda does not?**
YouShift prices on clinicians actually being scheduled rather than by module, and it runs schedule maintenance, timesheets, pay, credential warnings and cost analytics off the single dataset the schedule was generated from, so there is no reconciliation step between systems.

**Is QGenda good for small physician groups?**
QGenda serves organizations from small practices upward, but reviewers on Software Advice and SelectHub flag pricing as potentially prohibitive for smaller healthcare organizations and note a steep learning curve. Small groups should weigh who internally will own configuration.

**What is the best QGenda alternative for physician groups?**
It depends on what you need beyond scheduling. If you need credentialing and payer enrollment in the same contract, no scheduling led alternative will replace QGenda. If the schedule is the hard problem and you want maintenance, time, pay and analytics on one engine, YouShift is built for that case.

**How long does it take to implement YouShift?**
Implementation is scoped on the first call against your rule set and your next scheduling period. Because you can run a full scheduling period free before committing, the timeline is something you observe rather than something you are promised.

**Does YouShift work for emergency medicine, anesthesia and hospitalist groups?**
Yes. Optimization is specialty specific, because an emergency department, an anesthesia group and a hospitalist service do not share coverage logic, shift structures or fairness constraints.
[Run your next month free](https://youshift.com/demo)

Not ready to talk? [Work out what your coverage actually costs first.](https://youshift.com/blog/cost-of-clinical-coverage)

## Sources
All figures retrieved September 8, 2026.
- QGenda, company website and product pages (customer and user counts, module list, engine description, time and attendance capabilities)
- Hearst and QGenda, "Hearst Agrees to Acquire QGenda", August 12, 2024
- BusinessWire, "QGenda Acquires Shift Admin", January 14, 2021
- QGenda newsroom, "QGenda Named Best in KLAS for Time and Attendance", February 4, 2026
- G2, QGenda Advanced Scheduling for Providers reviews
- Capterra, QGenda reviews
- Software Advice, QGenda profile
- SelectHub, QGenda workforce management profile
- Apple App Store, QGenda app ratings