The question to ask first

Before comparing tools, answer one thing honestly: what do you actually use BreatheHR for?

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If the honest answer is "mostly leave"

You are paying for an HR platform to do the job of a leave tracker. A dedicated tool gives you the same leave management, often a better booking experience, at a fraction of the cost. If you genuinely use Breathe's documents, onboarding, sickness records, performance and HR admin, the rest of this page is not for you and you should keep it.

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Our pick for leave-only teams

Book Time Off, at £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial and no card, is the one we would point most leave-only Breathe users to. It is a focused tracker, UK bank holidays load automatically, and for a 15-person team it costs £15 a month against a per-business HR-suite bill. We make Book Time Off and say so; where a competitor fits better, we name it below.

The alternatives at a glance

Dedicated-tracker pricing was checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026; Breathe's figure was last verified May 2026. Figures move, so the dated sources are at the foot of the page. Book Time Off is in the first row; Breathe is shown last as the incumbent baseline.

Tool Price Free trial Card to start Type
Book Time Off £1 / user / month 30 days No card Dedicated leave · flat rate, no minimum
Leave Dates From £0.75 / user / month 30 days No card Dedicated leave · tiered (annual for lowest)
Timetastic £1.20 Basic / £2 Pro 30 days No card Dedicated leave · per-type balances
Vacation Tracker $2 Core / $4 Complete (USD) 7 days No card Dedicated leave · free tier · chat-first
BreatheHR From ~£24 / business / month 14 days No card Full HR suite · per business by band

The pattern is clear: for leave alone, the dedicated trackers are a fraction of an HR-suite bill. Breathe earns its price only when you use the wider platform.

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Book Time Off
Our pick · best for leave-only

1. Book Time Off · best for leave-only teams

Book Time Off

£1 / user / month
UK-built · dedicated leave tracking · that's us
Strengths Calendar and wallchart views with today highlighted, custom annual allowances per person, half-day (AM/PM) bookings, one-click email approvals, days used and days remaining at a glance, departments with a manager and a max-absent limit, blocked or blackout dates, and group bookings with one-click group cancellation. Carry-forward of unused allowance runs with a company-wide limit and an optional expiry window, where carried days sit in a separate labelled balance with a use-by date and are dropped automatically if unused in time. UK bank holidays load automatically from the GOV.UK feed for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and are never deducted from anyone's allowance. Microsoft 365 single sign-on, per-user Outlook sync, Teams notifications and a daily who's-off Teams digest are included, plus read-only iCal/ICS subscribe feeds. It is £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial, no card and no minimum.
Trade-offs It is leave only: no documents, onboarding, contracts, sickness-policy workflows or performance tooling, so it replaces Breathe only if leave is all you use Breathe for. Leave types share one allowance (categories on one calendar under a single approval workflow, not separate balances per type), the working week is company-wide, and there is no Breathe-specific importer yet, so the move is manual.
Best for Breathe users from roughly five to a hundred staff who only really use it for leave and want to cut cost without losing leave-tracking quality.
See it with your own team in the trial

Add a few people, set allowances, book and approve a request, and watch UK bank holidays appear on the wallchart. 30 days free, no card.

Start free trial
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Leave Dates
Lowest headline price

2. Leave Dates · lowest headline price

Leave Dates

From £0.75 / user / month
UK-built · visual year planner · dedicated leave
Strengths The lowest headline price here: the Starter tier is from £0.75 per user / month on annual billing (£1 on monthly), with higher tiers above it. Built around a clean visual wall chart and personal year chart, with custom allowances, carry-over of unused leave and a 30-day free trial with no payment details up front.
Trade-offs The lowest rate needs annual commitment; on monthly billing it matches Book Time Off at £1. The visual planner suits some teams and feels constrained to others, and richer features sit on the higher tiers.
Best for Cost-led teams happy to pay annually, and anyone who prefers a visual year planner over a calendar grid.
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Timetastic
The established name

3. Timetastic · the established name

Timetastic

£1.20 Basic / £2 Pro
UK-built · the best-known dedicated leave tracker
Strengths The most established dedicated leave tracker in the UK, polished and widely used, with a 30-day free trial and no card. It runs a separate balance for each leave type, so if you need distinct pots and approval flows per type it does that out of the box. A Pro tier (£2 per user / month) adds further controls.
Trade-offs At £1.20 on Basic it is the dearest dedicated tracker on headline price, and some features sit on the £2 Pro tier. If you only ever deduct annual leave, you may be paying for per-type machinery you will not use.
Best for Teams that want the most established brand, or that genuinely need a separate balance and approval flow for every leave type.
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Vacation Tracker
Slack and Teams first

4. Vacation Tracker · chat-first leave

Vacation Tracker

$2 / $4 per user / month (USD)
Chat-first leave tracking · priced in US dollars
Strengths Built around Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace, so people book and approve leave inside the chat tool they already use. A genuine free plan covers one location, one department and one leave type for unlimited users, and paid Core ($2 per user / month, or $1 annual) and Complete ($4 per user / month, or $3 annual) tiers add leave policies, reporting, accruals and multi-level approvals, with separate balances per type.
Trade-offs Pricing is in US dollars, so currency and VAT handling for a UK buyer, and the paid tiers carry monthly minimums ($50 Core, $100 Complete) that hurt very small teams. The free plan's single-location limit is tight and the 7-day trial is short.
Best for Slack or Teams-centric teams that want leave handled inside chat, and teams that need a separate balance per type.

When to keep BreatheHR

We are not pretending Breathe is the wrong choice for everyone. It is a strong, established UK HR platform, used by over 16,000 organisations on its own count, and it is the right answer when you use the breadth, not just the leave module.

If two or more of those are true, a leave-only tool is a downgrade, not a saving. If none are, you are the reader this page is for. If you want HR breadth but find Breathe expensive, another full HR suite such as CharlieHR is a like-for-like comparison rather than a leave-only swap.

How to move your leave data across

There is no Breathe-specific importer in Book Time Off yet (a broader import including a Breathe option is on the roadmap; today the only platform-specific importer is for the Timetastic full-organisation export). So the move from Breathe is manual, and for a small team it is quick:

  1. Export from Breathe. Breathe provides a Leave Overview Report and a People Data Export to Excel. Download both as your historical record.
  2. Add your people in Book Time Off. Use the new-person form to add each person with their allowance and approver. For most small teams this is well under an hour.
  3. Re-enter approved future leave so the calendar and wallchart are correct, then invite the team. UK bank holidays load automatically.
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Want more detail?

Our blog goes deeper in BreatheHR alternatives 2026 and the step-by-step switching from BreatheHR for leave only. To sense-check entitlement first, try the free annual leave entitlement calculator, or see the wider best leave management software ranking.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best alternative to BreatheHR?

It depends on whether you use Breathe's wider HR features. If you mainly use it to track leave, a dedicated leave tracker is cheaper and simpler, and our pick is Book Time Off at £1 per user per month. Leave Dates and Timetastic are the other strong dedicated options, and Vacation Tracker suits Slack or Teams-first teams. If you genuinely use Breathe for documents, onboarding, sickness records and HR admin, keeping it (or moving to another full HR suite like CharlieHR) makes more sense than a leave-only tool.

Is BreatheHR worth it?

BreatheHR is a well-established UK HR platform used by over 16,000 organisations on its own count, and it is worth its price when you use the breadth: documents, onboarding, sickness records, performance and wider HR admin alongside leave. It is poor value if leave booking is the only part you ever open, because you are paying full HR-suite money for one module a dedicated tracker does for a fraction of the cost.

How much does BreatheHR cost?

Breathe prices per business by employee band rather than per user. As of May 2026 its smallest tier started from around £24 per business per month (up from £22 in early 2026), rising in steps as headcount grows, with some modules charged as paid add-ons. There is a 14-day free trial with no card required. Verify the current figure on Breathe's own pricing page, as it changes.

Can I import my BreatheHR data into Book Time Off?

There is no Breathe-specific importer in Book Time Off yet (a broader import including a Breathe option is on the roadmap; the only platform-specific importer today is for the Timetastic full-organisation export). Breathe lets you export your data, including a Leave Overview Report and a People Data Export to Excel, so the move is manual: add each person with their allowance and re-enter any approved future leave. For a small team this takes well under an hour.

Is Book Time Off cheaper than BreatheHR for leave?

For pure leave tracking, yes, usually by a wide margin. Book Time Off is a flat £1 per user per month with no minimum, so a 15-person team pays £15 a month. Breathe's per-business banded pricing for the same team sits well above that once you are only using it for leave. The saving only holds if you are not relying on Breathe's wider HR features.

Sources

Dedicated-tracker facts were checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026; Breathe's pricing was last verified May 2026. Prices and trial terms change, so verify on the day you decide.

ProviderCheckedSource
Leave Dates (Starter from £0.75 annual / £1 monthly, tiers, 30-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 leavedates.com/pricing-plans
Timetastic (Basic £1.20, Pro £2, 30-day trial, no card, separate balance per leave type) 5 June 2026 timetastic.co.uk/pricing
Vacation Tracker (free plan; Core $2 / $1 annual, Complete $4 / $3 annual USD; monthly minimums; 7-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 vacationtracker.io/pricing
BreatheHR (per-business banded, smallest tier from ~£24/month, up from £22 early 2026, add-on modules, 14-day trial, no card, 16,000+ customers) May 2026 breathehr.com pricing
Book Time Off claims (features, pricing, Microsoft 365, no Breathe importer yet) 5 June 2026 Book Time Off product (see help centre)
About this guide

Written by the Book Time Off editorial team. We build Book Time Off, a dedicated leave tracker, so we make one of the tools here and say so throughout, including a clear note on when BreatheHR is the right tool to keep. Competitor pricing was verified against each provider's own site on the dates shown; we describe only what each tool actually does.