Breathe HR

Breathe HR is an HRIS and HCM platform for small businesses with up to 250 employees, founded in 2012 and part of Australia’s ELMO Group, listed on the ASX, since 2020.

• 17,000+ small business customers (currently sold to the UK market); 40+ features covering employee records, leave and absence, onboarding with e-signatures, performance and reporting, plus add-ons for recruitment, rostering and time and attendance, e-learning, expenses, and health and safety.
• ISO 27001 certified, with ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification for AI management (June 2026), B Corp certification and GDPR compliance; data hosted on AWS in the UK.
• 14-day free trial with no credit card and no cancellation fees; pricing per business published (in GBP).
• Published review ratings: G2 4.4/5 (535 reviews), Capterra 4.4/5 (538) and Trustpilot 4.0/5 (576).

Best for: small businesses under 250 staff wanting self-serve HR administration software at low cost, noting the platform currently serves the UK market with UK data hosting and GBP pricing.

Breathe HR includes absence and leave management as a core module of its HR platform for small businesses.

• Leave requests, approvals and absence tracking handled within the platform, with reporting dashboards and a mobile app.
• Customer survey outcomes cited by the vendor: around 16 hours of HR administration saved per month and approximately 440 per cent ROI.
• Sits alongside onboarding with e-signatures, performance management and document management in one system.

Best for: small businesses replacing leave tracking on spreadsheets with self-serve requests and approvals, noting the product currently serves the UK market.