The short answer
Use the free tier regardless, scheduling and a basic time clock for a single location cost nothing. But the feature that actually addresses fraud, GPS verification and geo-fencing at clock-in, sits behind the paid Essentials plan (from roughly $24.99/month per location). So the real “worth it” question for a services business isn't about Homebase generally, it's whether that specific upgrade is worth $25 a month.
What free actually gets you
Core scheduling, shift swaps, team messaging, and a basic time clock for one location. What it doesn't include is any location verification at all, an employee can clock in from anywhere, which means the free tier replaces paper timesheets but doesn't actually close the buddy-punching gap paper timesheets have.
The real fraud fix is the paid tier
A GPS snapshot at clock-in, plus a geo-fence around your actual location, catches the most common version of buddy punching: someone clocking in from their couch instead of the counter. For a services business, a restaurant, salon, retail shop, running a handful of hourly staff, $24.99 a month per location is cheap against even a conservative estimate of time-theft cost, industry figures commonly put buddy punching around 2% of gross hourly payroll, which crosses $25 a month fast once you have more than a couple of part-time staff.
What's free vs. paid
GPS = paid tier
Homebase's free plan covers scheduling and a basic clock for one location. GPS clock-in verification and geo-fencing, the actual fraud control, require the Essentials plan and up.
Where it stops being enough
GPS isn't biometric. A coworker with your unlocked phone can still clock you in from the right location, the check confirms where the punch happened, not who actually made it. If that specific problem shows up repeatedly at your business, the software-only step up is Buddy Punch's photo-on-every-punch, or Jibble's free facial recognition, which is a genuinely stronger check for zero additional software cost, worth comparing directly before you assume Homebase's GPS tier is the ceiling.
Bottom line
Worth it for a services business running hourly shift staff, but specifically the paid GPS tier, the free plan alone doesn't address buddy punching at all. See the full Jibble vs. Homebase comparison if a coworker with access to someone's phone is a realistic risk at your business, not just a stranger clocking in remotely.