Mortality patterns at a subnational level or across subpopulations are often used to examine the health of a population. In small populations, however, death counts are erratic. To deal with this problem, demographers have proposed different methods but it is unclear how these methods relate to each other. We aim to provide guidance. First, we review recent demographic small-area methods for mortality schedules. Second, we evaluate three methodological approaches using simulated data. We show that there is considerable variability in the performance across ages and subpopulations/regions and that this performance can depend on the choice of incorporated demographic knowledge.