The question to ask first

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

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If the honest answer is "mostly leave"

You are paying for a full HR platform to do the job of a leave tracker. A dedicated tool gives you the same leave management at a fraction of the cost. If you genuinely use CharlieHR's onboarding, employee records, HR documents and performance tooling, 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 CharlieHR users to. It is a focused tracker, UK bank holidays load automatically, and there are no VAT tier surprises: a 15-person team pays £15 a month. We make Book Time Off and say so; where a competitor fits better, we name it below.

The cost gap by team size

CharlieHR is tiered by team size and quoted before VAT; Book Time Off is a flat £1 per user / month with no tiers. The gap for leave-only use is large and widens with each band:

Team size CharlieHR (May 2026, + VAT) Book Time Off Roughly
10 people £45 + VAT (5 to 14 band) £10 / month ~5x
15 people £105 + VAT (15 to 29 band) £15 / month ~8x
30 people £180 + VAT (30 to 49 band) £30 / month ~7x
50 people £315 + VAT (50 to 99 band) £50 / month ~8x

The jump from one band to the next can be steep: a team growing from 14 to 15 people crosses from the £45 band to the £105 band on CharlieHR, while Book Time Off simply moves from £14 to £15. None of this means CharlieHR is overpriced for what it is; it means you should not pay HR-suite prices to do only leave.

The alternatives at a glance

Dedicated-tracker pricing was checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026; CharlieHR's bands were 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; CharlieHR 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
CharlieHR From £45 + VAT / month (tiered) 7 days No card Full HR suite · per business by band
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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 a flat £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial, no card, no minimum and no VAT tier games.
Trade-offs It is leave only: no onboarding, employee records, HR documents or performance tooling, so it replaces CharlieHR only if leave is all you use CharlieHR 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 CharlieHR-specific importer yet, so the move is manual.
Best for CharlieHR users from roughly five to a hundred staff who only really use it for leave and want to cut cost sharply 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 CharlieHR

We are not pretending CharlieHR is the wrong choice for everyone. It is a polished, design-led UK HR platform, 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 CharlieHR expensive, another full HR suite such as Breathe is a like-for-like comparison rather than a leave-only swap.

How to move your leave data across

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

  1. Export from CharlieHR. Download your people and leave data 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 CharlieHR alternatives for leave tracking 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 CharlieHR?

It depends on whether you use CharlieHR's wider HR features. If you mainly use it to track leave, a dedicated leave tracker is far 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 CharlieHR for onboarding, HR documents, employee records and performance, keeping it (or moving to another full HR suite like Breathe) makes more sense than a leave-only tool.

How much does CharlieHR cost?

CharlieHR is tiered by team size and quoted before VAT. As of May 2026 the bands were around £45 + VAT per month for 5 to 14 people, £105 + VAT for 15 to 29, £180 + VAT for 30 to 49 and £315 + VAT for 50 to 99, with a 7-day free trial and no card required. Verify the current figures on CharlieHR's own pricing page, as they change.

Is Book Time Off cheaper than CharlieHR?

For leave tracking, by a wide margin. Book Time Off is a flat £1 per user per month with no VAT tier surprises and no minimum. A 15-person team pays £15 a month, against roughly £105 + VAT (about £126) on CharlieHR's 15 to 29 band. Depending on team size, that is roughly 7 to 15 times more on CharlieHR if leave is all you use it for. The gap only matters if you are not using CharlieHR's wider HR features.

Can I import my CharlieHR data into Book Time Off?

There is no CharlieHR-specific importer in Book Time Off yet (the only platform-specific importer today is for the Timetastic full-organisation export; broader imports are on the roadmap). CharlieHR lets you export your people and leave data, so the move is manual: add each person with their allowance and approver, then re-enter any approved future leave. For a small team this takes well under an hour.

When is CharlieHR worth keeping?

When you use the breadth, not just leave. CharlieHR is a polished UK HR platform that bundles onboarding, employee records, HR documents and performance tooling alongside leave, so it earns its price when those are part of your day-to-day. If leave booking is the only feature you ever open, you are paying full HR-suite money for one module that a dedicated tracker does for a fraction of the cost.

Sources

Dedicated-tracker facts were checked against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026; CharlieHR's bands were 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
CharlieHR (tiered by team size + 20% VAT: £45 / £105 / £180 / £315 for the 5-14 / 15-29 / 30-49 / 50-99 bands; 7-day trial, no card) May 2026 charliehr.com/pricing
Book Time Off claims (features, pricing, Microsoft 365, no CharlieHR 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 CharlieHR 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.