Home › Compare apps › Spark
Looking for a Spark alternative?
Spark has been a shift calendar for fire, police and EMS for over fifteen years. Below, the two of them feature by feature.
What Spark is
Spark has been going for over fifteen years and its listing says it is used daily by fire, police, EMS and healthcare workers. It is one of the most established shift calendars there is, and it is the strongest of the general apps on the tracking side.
Its listing covers vacation, sick time, comp time, overtime and trades, hundreds of pre-loaded department schedules, several calendars at once so you can follow family or colleagues, and Cloud Connect, which syncs an encrypted calendar across your devices using your email address.
What Spark does well
- Time balances. Vacation, sick and comp time are kept up to date as you enter events. BlueShifts does not do this.
- Shift trades, including sending a trade request to another Spark user.
- Pre-loaded department schedules, so setup can be a couple of taps.
- Following more than one person's schedule at once.
Where BlueShifts is different
Spark tracks the time you work for your agency. BlueShifts tracks the work you pick up outside it.
- Paid duty jobs by employer, with the pay, the kilometres and whether the money has arrived.
- A PDF report of any date range, every job listed, the year totalled.
- Court, jail and hospital addresses, gate codes and tow companies.
- Nothing leaves your phone unless you send it. Spark syncs your calendar to their cloud against your email address; BlueShifts keeps everything on the device.
If comp time balances and trades are the part you need, Spark is a strong and long-established pick. If the off-duty money is what keeps getting lost, that is what BlueShifts was built for.
Everything below is on your phone in a couple of minutes: the rotation, the off-duty work, and what it earned you.
Side by side
| BlueShifts | vs | Spark |
|---|---|---|
| The rotation and calendar | ||
| Yes | Repeating rotation patterns | Yes |
| Yes | Build your own custom rotation | Yes |
| Not statedYou save your own template | Pre-loaded department schedules | Yes |
| Not stated | Several calendars at once, for family or colleagues | Yes |
| Not statedStays on your phone | Sync and share across devices | YesCloud Connect, linked to your email |
| Yes | Fills the calendar backward over months already worked | Not stated |
| Yes | Custom holidays you add yourself | Not stated |
| Hours and money | ||
| Not stated | Overtime tracking | Yes |
| Not stated | Vacation, sick and comp time balances | Yes |
| Not stated | Shift trades, including requests to other users | Yes |
| Yes | Paid duty jobs logged against the employer | Not stated |
| Yes | Pay recorded per job | Not stated |
| Yes | Paid and unpaid tracked separately | Not stated |
| Yes | Kilometres recorded per job | Not stated |
| Yes | PDF report you can hand to someone | Not stated |
| On the road | ||
| Yes | Court, jail and hospital addresses | Not stated |
| Yes | Gate codes, tow companies, vehicle maintenance | Not stated |
| In development | Reference documents (SFST, HAZMAT, VIN, CVE) | Not stated |
| Yes | Address autocomplete, or drop a pin | Not stated |
| Yes | Navigate to the job from your calendar | Not stated |
| Yes | Send a directory entry or a scheduler by text | Not stated |
| YesA Court category; the subpoena details go in the notes | Court dates and subpoena details | Not stated |
| YesA Training category, with alerts before the day | Training dates, set well ahead | Not stated |
| Paid duty work and money | ||
| Yes | Hourly rate or flat pay per job | Not stated |
| Yes | Travel time or travel pay, kept separate | Not stated |
| Yes | Kilometres reimbursement when a patrol car is used | Not stated |
| YesCancelled, pending, awaiting payment, paid | Four payment states, not just paid or unpaid | Not stated |
| Yes | Live earnings while you work the job | Not stated |
| What the year tells you | ||
| Yes | Which scheduler you get the most work through | Not stated |
| Yes | One employer against the average of the rest | Not stated |
| Yes | Your employers ranked by what they brought in | Not stated |
| Yes | The days you normally work for each employer | Not stated |
| The app itself | ||
| Yes | Works with no internet connection | Not stated |
| Yes | Backup and restore | Not stated |
| YesThirteen intervals from 5 minutes to a week, or your own | Reminders and alerts | Not stated |
| Yes | Import and export your schedule | Not stated |
| YesFour skins, dark mode in one tap | Skins and a full dark mode | Not stated |
| Yes | No account needed | Not stated |
| Sharing with someone else | ||
| Yes | Link two phones by scanning a QR code | Not stated |
| Yes | Shifts and events shared, pay never shared | Not stated |
| Yes | Send someone your rotation template | Not stated |
| About the app | ||
| Police officers | Built for | Fire, police, EMS, healthcare and shift workers |
| On your phone only | Where your schedule lives | Synced to their cloud, linked to your email |
From each app's own App Store listing, checked 1 August 2026 — the Spark listing.
How this comparison was put together
Everything in the table comes from each app's own App Store listing, checked on 1 August 2026. Where a listing does not mention a feature, the table says not stated rather than no — an app may do something its listing never mentions. Nothing here is a test of the apps themselves. Anything marked in development is a BlueShifts feature being built now, not one you can use today.
Listings change. If something below is out of date or wrong, tell us and it gets fixed.
Coming from Spark?
Spark syncs your schedule to their cloud against your email address. Everything in BlueShifts sits on your phone until you decide to send it, and the off-duty side comes with it.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
