Disclosure
HRMZY is our product. It is the last one on this page, it is priced in dollars rather than pounds, and we have not converted it into pounds to make it look better or worse against the others. Everything below about another company comes from that company’s own pricing or product page, read on the date printed beside the figure.
Short answer
UK HR software is published in pounds by CharlieHR, Breathe, Sage HR, Staffology HR and PeopleHR, but in four different shapes — per user, per headcount band, per business, and in one case a figure with no unit stated at all. This guide gives each vendor’s published rate and the date we read it, and a monthly cost for a team of twenty only where the vendor publishes enough to work one out. HRMZY is ours, is priced in US dollars, and is not converted into pounds anywhere on the page.
Written by
Subhan Khan, Founder
·
·
UK Employment Law
How we chose these five, and what their prices mean
This is a UK list, so the test was a simple one: the product has to be sold to UK companies, and its own website has to publish what it costs in pounds. That rules out a good deal of the HR software people compare online, where the pricing page is a form.
A vendor is on this page if its own pricing page publishes a rate, or says plainly that it quotes instead — both are answers a reader can act on. A vendor whose page publishes no rate in any currency, only a request for a quote, is not listed here at all: a row that says nothing but “ask them” adds no information and takes the place of one that does.
We do not score these products and the list is not ranked — the order carries no judgement, and ours is last because we make it. Every price is read from the vendor’s own page on the date shown beside it, never estimated, never taken from a review site, and never converted between currencies.
Five vendors, four different ways of charging
The awkward part of comparing UK HR software is that a published price is not one kind of thing. These five charge in four genuinely different shapes, and a figure from one is not the same sort of number as a figure from another:
- <strong>Per user, per month.</strong> Multiply by your headcount and you have your bill. Two of the five price this way, and they are the only two that behave the way most people expect software pricing to behave.
- <strong>A flat fee per headcount band.</strong> The bill is the same anywhere inside a band and steps up when you cross into the next one, so hiring one more person costs either nothing at all or a great deal, depending on where you are standing.
- <strong>A flat fee per business.</strong> One price for the whole company, published as a starting figure, with the bands above it named on the page but not priced.
- <strong>A figure with no unit attached.</strong> One vendor publishes a “From” price and states nowhere on the page what it buys — not per employee, not per user, not per month.
That is why there is no league table here. Where a vendor publishes enough to work out a monthly cost for a team of twenty, that figure appears beside its published rate below. Where it does not, nothing appears, because the only way to fill the gap would be to invent the missing unit and present the result as the vendor’s price.
The five, in no particular order
Each card says what the vendor’s own page says the product does, and what that same page says is charged separately. Prices are in pounds because that is how these vendors publish them.
CharlieHR — a flat fee that steps with your headcount
Where it wins
Core HR aimed squarely at small UK teams, and charged per company rather than per person: the fee is the same anywhere inside a published headcount band. Ten bands are listed openly on the pricing page, which makes the next step up easy to see before you hire into it.
Watch out for
Because the price steps rather than slides, the hire who takes you over a band boundary costs a great deal more than the one before them. The smallest band is offered at a promotional rate for the first six months and reverts to the standard band price after that; the figure below is the standard one. Charlie Recruit and Charlie Grow are separate add-ons, each with its own band table.
£21 a month for the smallest band · £108 a month for twenty people · www.charliehr.com, checked 2026-09-20
Breathe — one price for the business
Where it wins
Priced per business rather than per person, which suits a small team that expects to grow: inside a band, adding people does not change the bill. The page offers a free trial of all features.
Watch out for
Only the entry figure is published as a number. The page names six headcount bands — micro, starter, regular, pro and two larger — without printing a price beside any of the others, so what you would pay above the smallest band is not something the page settles. Rota, recruitment and expenses are add-ons charged on top.
from £24 a month per business · www.breathehr.com, checked 2026-09-20
Sage HR — published in pounds, from a UK page
Where it wins
Core HR and leave management sold together at a published per-employee rate, from a vendor most UK finance teams already know by name. The page states it suits companies up to two hundred and fifty employees.
Watch out for
The rate is published in pounds only, on an in-page anchor of the UK product page rather than a standalone pricing URL. We checked for a dollar equivalent and the US product page returns a not-found error, so a reader outside the UK should expect a regional quote rather than this figure. Performance, timesheets and shift scheduling are each charged on top per employee, expenses less again, and recruitment is a flat monthly fee — none of that is inside the core rate.
£5 per employee a month · £100 a month for twenty people · www.sage.com, checked 2026-09-20
Staffology HR — the IRIS HR product, priced per user
Where it wins
Cloud HR covering records, absence and documents, integrated with IRIS payroll — which is the point of it if your payroll already runs on IRIS. The Foundation tier’s rate is published per user per month as a starting figure.
Watch out for
The product was rebranded, and the old IRIS HR address now redirects to the Staffology page — so the name you may be searching for is not the name on the product. Foundation is the entry tier: Essentials and the tier above it are charged at higher per-user rates, which makes the published figure a floor rather than a price.
from £0.76 per user a month · from £15.20 a month for twenty people · www.iris.co.uk, checked 2026-09-20
PeopleHR — four plans, and no unit printed on any of them
Where it wins
Employee records, document management, absence tracking and a mobile app, with four plans published openly on the page and a free trial offered.
Watch out for
The pricing page prints each plan as a “From” figure and states no unit anywhere on it — not per employee, not per user, not per month. So the published number cannot be turned into a monthly bill without inventing what it buys, and we have not. Core, Pro and Elite+ are higher again, and payroll is sold as its own separate set of plans.
from £3 — the page states no unit · www.peoplehr.com, checked 2026-09-20
HRMZY — ours, and priced in dollars
We make this one, so read what follows as the interested party’s account of it. HRMZY is charged per company rather than per person: Standard is $25 a month and covers up to 20 employees, and Premium is $80 a month up to 200.
Those figures are in US dollars. We have not converted them into pounds anywhere on this page, and they are not directly comparable to the pound figures above — the rate on the day you buy is not something we can publish honestly in advance. What is comparable is the shape: like Charlie and Breathe, we charge for the company rather than the head, so a team that is hiring knows its bill before it hires.
There is a 14-day free trial. Current plan prices, and what each plan includes, are on our pricing page.
What UK payroll rules mean for the software you pick
Whichever of these you choose, the same statutory obligations sit underneath it, and they are the reason a UK company usually wants its HR records and its payroll talking to each other rather than living in separate places. These are the ones that shape the decision.
Statutory paid holiday is 5.6 weeks, which for a five-day week comes to 28 days and may include bank holidays. Anything you buy has to hold that entitlement, pro-rate it for part-timers and carry it across a leave year.
Auto-enrolment minimum contributions are at least 3 per cent from the employer and 5 per cent from the member of staff, normally calculated on a band of earnings rather than on full pay. Enrolment, the letters that go with it and opt-outs are recurring admin, not a one-off setup.
Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week, or 80 per cent of average weekly earnings where that is lower, paid by the employer for up to 28 weeks. Getting it right means your absence records and your payroll have to agree about which days somebody was off.
Payments and deductions go to HMRC on a Full Payment Submission. If your HR system and your payroll do not share one view of starters, leavers and changes, that submission is where the disagreement surfaces.
Employer Class 1 National Insurance is 15 per cent for the main category letter, and eligible employers can reduce their annual National Insurance liability by up to £10,500 through Employment Allowance. Neither is something an HR system works out for you, but both are why the payroll half of this decision deserves as much attention as the HR half.
The UK figures above were read from official sources on 18 August 2026, and are here to frame the software decision rather than to advise on tax or employment law. More on running HR in the UK is on our UK page.
Which one to shortlist
If your headcount is stable and small, a per-business or per-band price is usually the calmer choice: you can budget it a year ahead, and hiring does not reopen the conversation. If you are growing quickly, a per-user rate is easier to reason about, because it moves in a straight line instead of stepping.
Whatever you shortlist, get the figure from the vendor in writing for your actual headcount before you commit. Every price on this page is what that vendor published on the date printed beside it, and list prices move without notice or announcement.
The global version of this guide ·
HR software for UK companies ·
Our plans and prices