Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in pounds sterling.
Small business HR software gets the people admin, holiday, onboarding, employee records and documents, off spreadsheets and shared inboxes, without paying for an enterprise suite you will not use. For a UK small business the entry point is cheap, and in two cases free, and there are genuinely British options built around UK holiday and employment practice. Below are our ranked picks, then a live comparison table and calculator so you can cost each at your own headcount.
How we chose
Small businesses weigh HR software on cost first, then on how much real work it removes: onboarding a new starter, tracking holiday and absence, storing records and staying on top of UK obligations like right-to-work checks and pension auto-enrolment. We ranked on the real monthly cost at a small team size, the depth of core HR, fit with UK employment practice, and how well the tool suits your kind of workforce, desk-based or deskless. Pricing is live from our database in pounds, excluding VAT.
What small businesses should prioritise
Start with the shape of your team. A small office-based team wants a proper HRIS with clean holiday and onboarding, and both Breathe and Charlie are British tools built for exactly that, while Deel HR gives you the same core free to 200 employees. A deskless or shift-based team, hospitality, retail, trades, care, needs rota scheduling and a mobile time clock instead, which is Connecteam's home ground. Watch how each one prices: flat per-band tools like Breathe and Charlie are predictable but you pay the band whether you are near its floor or its ceiling, so cost the software at the team size you expect within the year.
For a UK small business there is a real choice between a British-built platform and a global one. Breathe and Charlie are designed around UK holiday entitlement, statutory absence and the language UK employers use, and their support and content assume a UK context. Deel is a global platform with a free HR tier: excellent value and a clean HRIS, but lighter on UK-specific statutory detail. If holiday handling and British-English HR done the local way matter to you, lean to Breathe or Charlie; if free and simple is the priority and you may hire internationally later, Deel is hard to beat.
The verdict
For a UK small business that wants a British all-in-one, Breathe is the pick, predictable flat pricing from £24 a month and holiday and onboarding done the UK way. Deel is the value choice, a real HRIS free to 200 employees. Charlie suits a very small startup at a flat £20 a month for up to four, and Connecteam is the answer for a deskless or shift-based team, free to 10. Use the calculator above to cost each at your employee count.
Running payroll too?
HR software and payroll are related but separate purchases. If you also need to run pay, file Real Time Information to HMRC and handle pension auto-enrolment, see our guide to the best payroll software for small business, where the options are ranked on cost per employee.