If price is the deciding factor, Book Time Off is the cheapest direct alternative at £1 per user per month (vs Timetastic's £1.20 basic / £2 Pro). On headline price, Leave Dates is cheapest, from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing. If you want a full HR system rather than a leave-only tool, look at BrightHR or BambooHR. If you are already on Timetastic and it is doing the job, the cost of switching probably is not worth it · the alternatives are better-value but not radically different in capability for the average UK SME.
What Timetastic does well in 2026
It would be unfair to write a comparison piece without first acknowledging what Timetastic actually does well. We have used it. We respect it. The product has been around since 2012 and that maturity shows in the polish.
The basic workflow · request leave, manager approves, balance updates, calendar shows who is off · is fast and reliable. The mobile app is good. The shared calendar feed (you can subscribe to it from Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar) is the kind of small thing that matters every day. Approvers get an email with one-click approve / decline. Bank holidays are pre-loaded. The interface is clean and uncluttered.
Timetastic is also backed by Citation Group (a UK HR services business), which means it is not going to disappear overnight. Customer support is UK-based. And the company publishes its prices clearly on its website rather than hiding them behind a "request a quote" form, which we appreciate.
If you are happy on Timetastic, stay on Timetastic. The cost of switching tools · re-importing allowances, retraining staff, updating bookmarks · is real. The reasons to switch usually come down to needing a feature their basic plan does not include, or the £1.20 vs £1 monthly cost adding up at scale.
Prefer the short, dated version? Our Timetastic alternatives comparison page puts the same options in a single at-a-glance table with each competitor's price checked against their own site, plus the one design difference that decides most choices.
Why teams look for a Timetastic alternative
From the conversations we have with teams switching to Book Time Off, the reasons fall into four buckets:
- Price at scale. £1.20 per user per month is fine for a team of 10. It is £1,440 a year for a team of 100, vs £1,200 on Book Time Off. The £240 difference on its own is small · but it is a recurring cost that compounds and competes for budget against other tools.
- Features locked behind Pro. Accrued leave for hourly staff, multi-level approval workflows, SSO, and proper company-wide reporting are all on the £2 Pro plan. For teams that need any of these, the actual cost is £2 per user per month, not £1.20.
- Single department membership. Timetastic users belong to one department. If you have someone who works across two teams (a designer who supports both Marketing and Product, for example), the calendar view and approval routing get awkward.
- The basic plan does not include accrued leave. If you employ part-time, casual, or zero-hours workers whose entitlement accrues at 12.07% as they work, the basic plan does not handle this · you have to upgrade to Pro or do the maths externally.
None of these are dealbreakers in isolation. They become reasons to switch when two or more apply at once.
The leading alternatives at a glance
Here is the comparison most people are looking for · pricing, what is included, and the ideal team size for each tool. Pricing is per user per month, billed monthly, on the entry-level plan unless noted.
| Tool | Entry price | Free tier | Best for | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timetastic (basic) | £1.20 / user / mo | No | Established teams that want a mature, polished product | 30 days |
| Timetastic (Pro) | £2 / user / mo | No | Teams needing SSO, accrued leave, or absence analytics | 30 days |
| Book Time Off | £1 / user / mo | No | UK SMEs that want everything in one plan, lowest direct cost | 30 days |
| Leave Dates | From £0.75 / user / mo | No | Tiny teams that want the lowest headline price | 30 days |
| BrightHR | From £4 / user / mo | No | Teams that want HR document storage, sickness tracking, and rotas as well | Demo |
| BambooHR | Quote-based | No | Mid-market HR teams (50+ staff) wanting a full HRIS | 7 days |
The two questions that narrow the choice fastest are:
- Do you need leave tracking, or do you need a full HR system? If it is just leave, the top three (Timetastic, Book Time Off, Leave Dates) are the right shortlist. If you want documents, sickness, payroll integration, and onboarding alongside leave, look at BrightHR or BambooHR.
- How big is your team? Under 5 · Leave Dates has the lowest headline price. 5 to 200 · Book Time Off, Timetastic, or Leave Dates paid. 200+ · BambooHR or another HRIS will probably suit better.
Book Time Off · the cheapest direct alternative
Book Time Off
£1 / user / monthYes, this is our product. We will not pretend otherwise. The honest pitch: it does the same job as Timetastic basic · plus things Timetastic puts on its Pro plan, like Microsoft 365 single sign-on and Outlook and Teams sync · at a lower, flat price. What it deliberately leaves out is day-by-day accrual for hourly staff and absence-trend analytics, so if those are essential to you, weigh Timetastic Pro too. We are smaller, newer, and have less brand recognition · which is why this comparison piece exists. Try the 30-day trial and judge for yourself.
Leave Dates · lowest headline price
Leave Dates
From £0.75 / user / moBrightHR · alternative if you want full HRIS
BrightHR
From £4 / user / monthBambooHR · alternative for mid-market HR teams
BambooHR
Quote-based · ~£5+ / user / moHow to choose · a five-minute decision matrix
Here is the shortest version we can write of the decision tree:
- Want the lowest headline price? Leave Dates Starter is from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing.
- Do you only need leave booking and want the cheapest credible UK option? Use Book Time Off.
- Are you happy on Timetastic and using the basic plan effectively? Stay there. The switching cost is not worth £0.20 per user per month of savings on a small team.
- Do you need single sign-on, Outlook and Teams sync, or carry-forward, and are weighing Timetastic Pro at £2 against alternatives? Book Time Off includes those at a flat £1, so at the £2 price point it is the cheaper pick. But if you specifically need day-by-day accrual for hourly staff or absence-trend analytics, Timetastic Pro still has the edge · compare feature by feature and decide.
- Do you want HR document storage, sickness, contracts, rotas, all in one tool? Look at BrightHR (UK-focused) or BambooHR (more enterprise-feeling).
Switching from Timetastic without breaking anything
If you decide to move, the process is straightforward. The two things that catch people out are mid-year balances and pre-approved future bookings.
- Export your data from Timetastic. Go to Settings → Reports and download the CSV of allowances, balances taken, and pending bookings. Keep this file safe · it is your audit trail.
- Set up the new tool. In Book Time Off, this means creating your team, setting your leave year start date, and adding your UK location for bank holidays. Takes about 10 minutes.
- Enter custom allowances per person. Use the export from step 1. Each person needs their full annual allowance set, plus the amount already used this leave year.
- Re-enter approved future bookings. Anything that has been approved in Timetastic but has not yet been taken needs to exist in the new tool so the calendar and balances are accurate. This is usually 5 to 20 bookings · do it manually.
- Run both in parallel for two weeks. Tell the team to use the new tool for new requests, but keep Timetastic accessible read-only for reference. After two weeks, cancel Timetastic and you are done.
Switching tip: Time the switch to coincide with the start of your leave year if you can. This avoids the awkward mid-year balance transfer entirely · everyone starts with a fresh, full allowance and no bookings to migrate.
Sources
| Source | What we used it for |
|---|---|
|
timetastic.co.uk
|
Current pricing for the Timetastic basic and Pro plans, and the feature breakdown between them. |
|
leavedates.com
|
Current pricing tiers for Leave Dates (Starter from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing). |
|
brighthr.com
|
Feature scope and positioning for the BrightHR HRIS platform. |
|
bamboohr.com
|
Feature scope, target market, and pricing model for BambooHR. |
|
Capterra UK
|
Cross-checking user reviews, ratings, and the wider competitive landscape for leave management tools in the UK. |
Frequently asked questions
Timetastic is a solid, mature product · it has been on the market since 2012 and has over 170,000 users across 8,000+ businesses. It does the basics well: shared calendar, holiday allowances, approval workflow, and a clean mobile app. The main reasons people look at alternatives are price (Timetastic is £1.20 per user per month on the basic plan, with extras gated to the £2 Pro tier), the lack of multi-level approval on the basic plan, and limitations around accrued leave on basic. If those things matter for your team, an alternative may suit better. If they don't, Timetastic is a perfectly fine choice.
Book Time Off is currently the cheapest direct alternative at £1 per user per month, compared with Timetastic's £1.20 basic plan and £2 Pro plan. Leave Dates is priced from £0.75 per user per month on its annual Starter tier (£1 monthly), with a 30-day free trial and no free-forever plan. The price gap on small teams is small in absolute terms · on a 10-person team you are looking at £2 a month difference between Book Time Off and Timetastic basic · but on a 100-person team it adds up to £240 a year, which can pay for other tooling.
Timetastic's £2 Pro plan adds: limits on bookings per leave type, absence trends and burnout alerts, company-wide reporting, enhanced staff profiles, deeper Microsoft Teams integration, single sign-on (SSO), accrued leave calculations, and the ability to cap individual leave types. If you only need the core holiday-booking workflow, the basic plan covers it. If you want analytics, SSO, or accrued leave for hourly staff, Pro is essentially required.
For very small teams, Leave Dates is hard to beat on headline price, from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing. Book Time Off at £1 per user per month is the cheapest flat-rate option and includes everything in one tier · no Pro upsell. Timetastic basic at £1.20 is the closest like-for-like comparison. For teams in the 5 to 25 range, the choice usually comes down to interface preference rather than pricing.
Leave Dates, Book Time Off and Timetastic are all paid after a free trial; none has a free-forever tier today. Leave Dates is cheapest on headline price, from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing, and the others are paid-only after a free trial · typically 30 days. Free spreadsheet templates are technically an alternative for very small teams, but they break down quickly once you have more than a handful of people booking leave or once you need a calendar view, an approval workflow, or accurate balances.
Most modern leave-management tools can be set up in an afternoon. The actual work involves: exporting your current allowances and remaining balances from Timetastic (a full Excel export is supported), inviting your team into the new tool, importing or re-entering balances, and adding any approved bookings that have not yet been taken. For a 20-person team you can realistically be live by the end of the working day. Run both systems in parallel for a few weeks if you want a safety net.
Pricing accuracy: All prices in this article were verified against each provider's own pricing page in May 2026. Pricing changes · check the current rates on the provider's site before making a final decision.