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Our pick for most UK SMEs

Book Time Off, at £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial and no card required, is the alternative we would point most small UK teams to. It is a focused leave tracker, it imports your Timetastic data from the full-organisation export, and it loads UK bank holidays automatically. It is genuinely the right answer when leave tracking is the job you need done. Where it is not, we say so below.

If you are reading this, you have probably already used Timetastic or shortlisted it, and you are checking whether something fits your team or your budget better. The honest position is that the dedicated leave trackers (Book Time Off, Leave Dates, Timetastic and Vacation Tracker) are close on core features and separated mostly by price and by one design decision we explain below. The HR suites (Breathe and CharlieHR) are a different category: more capable, more expensive, and worth it only if you need HR beyond leave.

One thing to get straight early, because it is the question buyers most often get wrong when comparing these tools.

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The one real difference between these tools

Timetastic and Vacation Tracker run a separate balance for each leave type. Book Time Off does not: leave types such as sickness, unpaid or compassionate leave are recorded as categories on the same calendar under one approval workflow, and annual leave is what draws down the allowance. Most small UK teams only ever deduct annual leave from an allowance and record the rest for visibility, which is exactly what this does. If you genuinely need a distinct pot and approval flow per type, that is the one place a competitor has the edge, and you should weigh it deliberately.

The alternatives at a glance

Pricing and trial terms below 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 is in the first row.

Tool Price Free trial Card to start Pricing model
Book Time Off £1 / user / month 30 days No card Flat per user, no minimum · dedicated leave
Leave Dates From £0.75 / user / month 30 days No card Per user, tiered (annual billing for lowest rate) · dedicated leave
Timetastic £1.20 Basic / £2 Pro 30 days No card Per user · dedicated leave
Vacation Tracker $2 Core / $4 Complete (USD) 7 days No card Per user, USD, monthly minimums · free tier available
Breathe From ~£20 / business / month 14 days No card Per business by employee band · full HR suite
CharlieHR Per employee, tiered 7 days No card Per employee · full HR suite

The takeaway: on a flat, predictable per-user price for leave alone, Book Time Off and Leave Dates are the value picks, Timetastic is a fifth dearer on Basic, Vacation Tracker is priced in dollars with monthly minimums, and Breathe and CharlieHR are in a different price bracket because they do far more than leave.

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Book Time Off
Our pick · best value

Book Time Off · the £1 pick for leave tracking

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 set 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, group bookings with one-click group cancellation, and the ability to trim a single day out of a booking and refund just that day. 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 they are not used 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 all included, plus read-only iCal/ICS subscribe feeds (a personal feed and a privacy-aware team feed) that add Book Time Off to Google, Apple or Outlook calendars through a revocable link. It imports the Timetastic full-organisation export, and it is £1 per user / month with a 30-day free trial, no card and no minimum.
Trade-offs Leave types share one allowance: they are categories on the same calendar under a single approval workflow rather than separate balances, so a team that needs a distinct pot per type should look at Timetastic or Vacation Tracker. The working week is set company-wide, so there are no per-person working-day patterns. It is leave only, with no contracts, documents or performance features, and there is no public API and no Slack integration; calendar sync is one-way (an Outlook write and the iCal subscribe feeds), not a two-way write-back. As a newer product the brand is less established than Timetastic.
Best for UK SMEs from roughly five to a hundred staff who want a focused, low-cost leave tracker, especially teams moving off a spreadsheet or off Timetastic to cut the per-user price.
See it with your own team in the trial

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

Start free trial
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Leave Dates
Lowest headline price

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 Essentials and Plus tiers above it. Leave Dates is built around a clean visual wall chart and a personal year chart, supports unlimited employees, custom allowances and carry-over of unused leave, and runs a 30-day free trial with no payment details taken up front. It is a well-known, UK-built dedicated leave tool.
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 who prefer a traditional calendar. The richer features sit on the higher tiers, so the headline £0.75 is not the all-in price for everyone.
Best for Cost-led teams happy to pay annually, and anyone who prefers a visual year-planner layout over a calendar grid.
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Vacation Tracker
Slack and Teams first

Vacation Tracker · Slack and Teams first

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 live in. There is a genuine free plan (one location, one department, one leave type), and paid Core ($2 per user / month) and Complete ($4 per user / month) tiers add leave policies, reporting, accruals, hourly tracking, time off in lieu 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, which means currency exposure and VAT handling for a UK buyer, and the paid tiers carry monthly minimums ($50 on Core, $100 on Complete) that hurt very small teams. The free plan's single-location, single-type limit is tight. It is less UK-specific than the British tools and the 7-day trial is short.
Best for Slack or Teams-centric teams that want leave handled inside chat, and teams that genuinely need a separate balance per leave type.
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Breathe
Full HR suite

Breathe · leave inside a full HR suite

Breathe

From ~£20 / business / month
UK HR platform · leave is one module among many
Strengths A well-established UK HR platform used by many thousands of organisations, bundling holiday and absence tracking with documents, sickness records and wider HR admin. It prices per business by employee band rather than per user, so for a larger team the all-in cost can compare well against per-user tools once you are using the HR features too. Holiday booking handles bank holidays and carry-over, and there is a 14-day free trial with no card up front.
Trade-offs If all you need is leave, you are paying for a lot you will not use. Per-business banded pricing rises in steps as headcount grows, and add-on modules are charged separately. For pure leave tracking, a dedicated tool is cheaper and simpler to run.
Best for UK SMEs that want one tool for documents, sickness records and HR admin alongside leave, not leave on its own.
5
CharlieHR
Full HR suite

CharlieHR · HR platform for startups

CharlieHR

Per employee, tiered
UK-built HR platform · design-led · leave plus core HR
Strengths A friendly, design-led UK HR platform that startups and agencies adopt easily, bundling leave with employee records, onboarding, HR documents and performance tooling. It is priced per employee on tiered plans and runs a 7-day free trial with no card. If you want leave and core HR in one modern interface, it is a strong fit.
Trade-offs It is a full HR suite, so it costs materially more per head than a dedicated leave tracker, and the exact per-employee rate depends on tier and team size (check their current pricing page). If leave is the only job you need done, you are paying for breadth you will not use, and the leave-booking flow sits inside a larger product.
Best for UK startups and agencies of roughly ten to fifty people who want leave bundled into a polished core HR system.

Switching from Timetastic

Moving off Timetastic is the part people expect to be painful, and with Book Time Off it is not. You do not retype anyone.

  1. In Timetastic, download the full-organisation export (the .xlsx or .xls file).
  2. In Book Time Off, upload that file once.
  3. It brings across your departments (with their manager and max-absent limit), your team members (allowance, approver, birthday and start date) and this year's approved leave history.

It is an XLSX full-export upload, not a CSV paste, and that is deliberate: the full export carries the structure of your organisation, not just a flat list of names, so the team calendar looks right from day one. For a longer walk-through, see our Timetastic migration guide and the in-app import help article.

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Still weighing it up?

If you want to sanity-check entitlement before you move, our free annual leave entitlement calculator shows the 5.6 weeks calculation and the statutory cap, and the wider best leave management software guide sets these tools in the context of the whole UK market.

Frequently asked questions

Is Book Time Off really £1 per user per month?

Yes. Book Time Off is £1 per user per month with a 30-day free trial, no card required to start, and no minimum number of users. You pay only for the people you actually add.

Can I move my Timetastic data into Book Time Off?

Yes. Book Time Off imports the Timetastic full-organisation export (the .xlsx or .xls file). Uploading it once brings across your departments (with their manager and max-absent limit), your team members (allowance, approver, birthday and start date) and this year's approved leave history. It is an XLSX full-export upload, not a CSV import.

Does Book Time Off give each leave type its own balance?

No, and this is the honest difference to know. In Book Time Off, leave types such as sickness, unpaid or compassionate leave are categories recorded on the same calendar under one approval workflow, and annual leave is what draws down the allowance. Birthday leave can optionally be a non-deducting perk. Timetastic and Vacation Tracker run a separate balance per leave type, so if you genuinely need a distinct pot and approval flow for each type, they have the edge.

Which Timetastic alternative is the cheapest for a UK small business?

On headline price, Leave Dates is lowest at its Starter tier from £0.75 per user per month on annual billing (£1 monthly). Book Time Off is a flat £1 per user per month on any billing with no minimum. Timetastic is £1.20 per user per month on its Basic plan. Breathe and CharlieHR are full HR suites priced well above dedicated leave trackers.

Do I need a full HR platform like Breathe or CharlieHR?

Only if you need HR features beyond leave, such as document storage, contracts, performance reviews or onboarding workflows. If your real problem is tracking who is off, approving requests and keeping allowances tidy, a dedicated leave tracker is cheaper and faster to run. Breathe and CharlieHR are worth their cost when leave is one of several HR jobs you are consolidating, not the only one.

Does Book Time Off work with Microsoft 365?

Yes. Book Time Off offers Microsoft 365 single sign-on, per-user Outlook calendar sync (approved leave is written to that person's Outlook as Out of Office; it adds and updates events only and never reads the calendar), Microsoft Teams notifications on requests, and a daily who's-off Teams digest. There are also read-only iCal/ICS subscribe feeds for Google, Apple and Outlook calendars (a personal feed and a privacy-aware team feed). A shared organisation-wide Team Leave calendar inside Microsoft 365 is still on the roadmap.

Is there a free plan rather than a free trial?

Book Time Off offers a 30-day free trial with no card, then £1 per user per month, rather than a free-forever tier. Among the alternatives, Vacation Tracker has a free plan limited to one location, one department and one leave type, and Leave Dates and the others run free trials. Pick on the total cost at your team size, not just on whether a free tier exists.

Sources

Every competitor fact 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.

ProviderCheckedSource
Timetastic (Basic £1.20, Pro £2, 30-day trial, no card, per-type caps on Pro) 5 June 2026 timetastic.co.uk/pricing
Leave Dates (Starter from £0.75 annual / £1 monthly, tiers, 30-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 leavedates.com/pricing-plans
Vacation Tracker (free plan; Core $2, Complete $4 USD; monthly minimums; 7-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 vacationtracker.io/pricing
Breathe (per-business banded pricing, smallest plan from ~£20/month, 14-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 breathehr.com pricing
CharlieHR (per-employee tiered HR suite, 7-day trial, no card) 5 June 2026 charliehr.com/pricing
Book Time Off claims (features, pricing, Timetastic XLSX import, Microsoft 365) 5 June 2026 Book Time Off product (see help centre)
About this comparison

Written by the Book Time Off editorial team. We build leave management software for UK SMEs, so we make one of the tools listed here and have been upfront about that throughout. Competitor pricing and trial terms were verified against each provider's own site on 5 June 2026; we describe only what each tool actually does and concede where a competitor is the better fit.