For most UK small businesses, Book Time Off is the staff holiday booking system we would recommend: a flat £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial and no card required, UK bank holidays loaded automatically, and the integrations rivals tend to charge extra for (Microsoft 365 sign-on, Outlook sync, Slack and Teams, admin reports with CSV) in the one plan. Choose Timetastic if you want the most established name or a separate balance per leave type, Leave Dates for the lowest headline price on annual billing, and Vacation Tracker if your team books leave inside Slack or Microsoft Teams, or genuinely needs a free plan.
What a staff holiday booking system must do
Names vary: some tools call themselves a leave tracker, others a holiday planner or an employee holiday booking system. The job is the same, and a good one for a UK small business should cover the essentials below. Use this as a checklist when you trial any of the tools that follow:
| What to look for | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Self-service requests and approvals | Staff book their own leave and a manager approves it, so the record updates itself rather than relying on email. |
| Allowance, days used and days remaining | Each person has an annual allowance, and the balance counts down automatically as leave is approved. |
| Shared team calendar | Everyone can see who is off at a glance, so clashes are spotted before they happen. |
| Half-day bookings | Mornings and afternoons, not just whole days. |
| Carry-forward of unused leave | Unused days roll into the new year within whatever limit you set. |
| UK bank holidays, automatic | The right nation's bank holidays load on their own and are not deducted from allowance. |
| Departments and capacity limits | A maximum-absent limit per team stops too many people being off at once. |
| Notifications and calendar sync | Email, Slack or Teams alerts, and a feed into Outlook, Google or Apple Calendar. |
| Reports and CSV export | A clear summary of leave taken that you can export for payroll or records. |
Every dedicated tool below does the core of this. The differences are in price, polish, integrations and one design choice: whether each leave type gets its own counted-down balance, or whether annual leave is the single allowance and other types are recorded for visibility.
The best options, ranked
Prices and trial terms were checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026. Figures move, so the dated sources are listed at the foot of the page.
Book Time Off
Recommended for most UK SMEs£1 per user / month · 30 days free · no card · no minimum
A focused holiday booking tool built for UK small businesses. Calendar and team (wallchart) views with today highlighted, custom annual allowances per person, half-day bookings, one-click email approvals, days used and days remaining at a glance, departments with a manager and a maximum-absent limit, blocked dates, group bookings, and carry-forward with a company-wide limit and an optional expiry window. UK bank holidays load automatically from the GOV.UK feed for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and are never deducted. At the flat £1 it also includes Microsoft 365 single sign-on, per-user Outlook sync, Microsoft Teams notifications and a daily who's-off digest, a full Slack integration (request and approval DMs, in-Slack booking, /whosoff, automatic statuses), read-only iCal feeds for Google and Apple Calendar, and an admin reports view with month, type and department insight charts plus CSV export. It imports the Timetastic full-organisation export in one upload.
Trade-offs. Leave types share one allowance (annual leave deducts, others are recorded for visibility) rather than a separate balance per type, the working week is company-wide, it is leave only with no contracts or performance features, there is no public API, and as a newer product the brand is less established than Timetastic.
Timetastic
Most established name£1.20 Basic · £2 Pro · 30-day free trial
The most established dedicated leave tool in the UK, polished and widely used. It runs a separate counted-down balance for each leave type, so if you need distinct pots and an approval flow per type, it does that out of the box. Its £2 Pro tier adds single sign-on, platform integrations, absence insights and burnout alerts on top of Basic.
Trade-offs. At £1.20 on Basic it is the dearest dedicated option on headline price, a fifth more than Book Time Off, and single sign-on and the integrations sit on the £2 Pro tier. If all you ever deduct is annual leave, you may be paying for per-type machinery you will not use. See the full Book Time Off vs Timetastic comparison.
Leave Dates
Lowest headline priceFrom £0.75 per user / month (annual; £1 monthly) · 30-day free trial
The lowest headline price here, built around a clean visual wall chart and a personal year chart. It supports custom allowances and carry-over of unused leave, and runs a 30-day free trial with no payment details up front. A well-known, UK-built dedicated leave tool.
Trade-offs. The lowest rate needs an annual commitment; on monthly billing it is £1, level with Book Time Off, which has no minimum and includes Microsoft 365 sign-on, Slack and Teams and reporting in the same price.
Vacation Tracker
Chat-first, for Slack and TeamsFree plan · Core $2 · Complete $4 per user / month (USD)
Built around Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace, so people book and approve leave inside the chat tool they already use. There is a genuine free plan (one location, one department, one leave type), and paid tiers add leave policies, reporting, accruals and multi-level approvals. It runs separate leave policies and balances, so it handles per-type pots that Book Time Off does not.
Trade-offs. Pricing is in US dollars with monthly minimums on paid tiers, and it is less UK-specific than the UK-built tools, so check how it applies UK bank holidays per nation.
Set allowances, load UK bank holidays automatically, approve a request and run a report. 30 days free, no card required.
Is there a free staff holiday booking system?
Mostly no, and it is worth being clear-eyed about the exceptions. Vacation Tracker is the one dedicated tool here with a genuine free-forever plan, and it is deliberately limited: one location, one department and one leave type. If your whole team fits inside those limits, it is a real option.
The other free route is a spreadsheet, and it is genuinely free right up until it is not: miscounted balances, no approval trail, version sprawl and personal data in an unprotected file. Our free leave tracker spreadsheet is a reasonable starting point for a very small team, and managing staff holidays without spreadsheets covers the tipping points where the spreadsheet stops coping.
And to be equally clear about our own product: Book Time Off is not free. It is 30 days free with no card required, then a flat £1 per user / month with no minimum, so a ten-person team pays £10 a month. We think that is the right trade against the limits of the free options, but it is a paid product and we say so plainly.
When you need more than a booking system
Some searches for an HR holiday booking system are really searches for HR software: leave is just the first module you happen to need. If you also want contracts, documents, onboarding or performance reviews in the same place, a dedicated booking tool is the wrong shape and a full HR suite makes more sense. The two UK names to look at are Breathe (priced per business by employee band, with a 14-day free trial) and CharlieHR (priced per employee on tiered plans, with a 7-day free trial). Both cost more than a dedicated tool because they do far more than leave.
If that is your situation, our annual leave tracker vs HR software guide weighs the two routes on scope and cost, and BreatheHR alternatives and CharlieHR alternatives cover the cost gap in detail.
Pricing at a glance
Holiday booking software for UK small businesses sits in a narrow price band. Per user / month unless noted. Checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026.
| Tool | Price | Free trial | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book Time Off | £1 flat | 30 days, no card | Dedicated tool |
| Timetastic | £1.20 Basic / £2 Pro | 30 days, no card | Dedicated tool |
| Leave Dates | From £0.75 annual (£1 monthly) | 30 days, no card | Dedicated tool |
| Vacation Tracker | Free plan; $2 / $4 (USD) | Free plan | Dedicated tool |
| Breathe | Per business, by band | 14 days, no card | HR suite |
| CharlieHR | Per employee, tiered | 7 days, no card | HR suite |
We build Book Time Off, so we have a stake in this ranking. That is why every competitor figure is dated and sourced, and why we point you to Timetastic, Leave Dates, Vacation Tracker or a full HR suite wherever one of them is the better fit. We do not publish review scores or star ratings, because we have no independent review data to stand behind.
Best for and not best for
✓ Book Time Off is best for
- UK small businesses and SMEs, roughly 5 to 100 people
- Teams replacing email, paper forms or a holiday spreadsheet
- Anyone who values flat, predictable £1 pricing with no minimum
- Teams that want UK bank holidays, sign-on, Slack, Teams and reporting in one plan
- Businesses moving off a pricier tool such as Timetastic
Look elsewhere if you need
- A genuinely free plan and your team fits its limits (Vacation Tracker)
- A separate counted-down balance for every leave type (Timetastic, Vacation Tracker)
- The absolute lowest rate on annual billing (Leave Dates)
- Booking entirely inside Slack or Teams (Vacation Tracker)
- Full HR beyond leave: documents, onboarding, performance (Breathe, CharlieHR)
Frequently asked questions
A staff holiday booking system is an online tool where employees request annual leave, a manager approves it in a click, and the team calendar, days used and days remaining all update automatically. It replaces paper forms, email threads and holiday spreadsheets, and a good one also handles UK bank holidays, half-day bookings, carry-forward and reports. For UK small businesses, prices typically sit between £0.75 and £2 per user per month.
For most UK small businesses our pick is Book Time Off: a flat £1 per user per month with a 30-day free trial and no card required, UK bank holidays loaded automatically, and Microsoft 365 sign-on, Outlook sync, Slack, Teams and CSV reporting included in the one plan. Timetastic is the most established name, Leave Dates has the lowest headline price on annual billing, and Vacation Tracker suits teams that book leave inside Slack or Microsoft Teams. We make Book Time Off and say so throughout.
Vacation Tracker offers a free-forever plan limited to one location, one department and one leave type. A spreadsheet is also free, but it stops scaling once you have clashes, part-timers and carry-over to track. Most dedicated tools, including Book Time Off, run a free trial rather than a free tier: Book Time Off is 30 days free with no card, then £1 per user per month.
A holiday booking system does one job: leave requests, approvals, allowances and the team calendar. HR software such as Breathe or CharlieHR bundles leave with contracts, documents, onboarding and performance, and costs more as a result. If leave is your only gap, the dedicated tool is cheaper and faster to run; if you are consolidating several HR jobs at once, the suite earns its higher price.
Dedicated holiday booking software sits roughly between £0.75 and £2 per user per month. Book Time Off is a flat £1 per user per month on any billing with no minimum. Leave Dates starts from £0.75 on annual billing (£1 monthly). Timetastic is £1.20 on Basic and £2 on Pro. Vacation Tracker is priced in US dollars from $2 per user per month. Full HR suites such as Breathe and CharlieHR cost more because they do far more than leave.
Book Time Off pulls UK bank holidays directly from the official GOV.UK feed for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, refreshes them each year, and never deducts them from anyone's allowance. UK-built systems generally support UK bank holidays; the things to check are whether the right nation's calendar is applied per person and whether bank holidays are excluded from allowance automatically.
Sources
Every competitor figure above was checked against that provider's own current site on 5 June 2026. Prices and trial terms change, so verify on the day you decide.
| Provider | Checked | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Timetastic (Basic £1.20, Pro £2; Pro adds SSO, integrations, insights, burnout alerts) | 5 June 2026 | timetastic.co.uk/pricing |
| Leave Dates (Starter from £0.75 annual, £1 monthly) | 5 June 2026 | leavedates.com/pricing |
| Vacation Tracker (free plan; Core $2, Complete $4 USD) | 5 June 2026 | vacationtracker.io/pricing |
| Breathe (per business by employee band; 14-day trial) | 5 June 2026 | breathehr.com/pricing |
| CharlieHR (per employee, tiered; 7-day trial) | 5 June 2026 | charliehr.com/pricing |
| Book Time Off (flat £1 pricing; bank holidays, SSO, Outlook, Slack, Teams, reports, Timetastic XLSX import) | 16 June 2026 | Book Time Off live product |
| UK bank holidays (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) | 16 June 2026 | gov.uk/bank-holidays |