Best Free HR Software UK Small Business 2026
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The Hard Truth About Free HR Software
If you’ve spent any time searching for free HR software, you know the frustration: most results lead to a 14-day trial or a “free plan” so stripped back it can barely send a contract. That’s not a jab at vendors — building HR software is expensive — but you deserve an honest picture before investing time in setup.
Genuinely free options do exist, particularly if your main need is holiday tracking, absence management or a basic employee database. This guide covers only tools with a real free tier or open-source licence, explains what you get for nothing, and says plainly what will prompt an invoice.
One note on the figures below. Free tiers, employee caps and paid rates in this category change often, and published comparisons — including this one — go stale quickly. Where we give a paid price it’s a rough indication for shortlisting, not a quote. Verify current terms on the provider’s own site before committing time to setup.
What Small Businesses Actually Need
For a UK business with one to twenty employees, the core needs are usually:
- Holiday and absence tracking — calculating statutory entitlement under the Working Time Regulations 1998, logging requests, avoiding clashes
- Employee records — contracts, contact details, emergency contacts, stored securely
- Onboarding — offer letters and collecting right-to-work documents
- Reporting — headcount, Bradford Factor, absence trends
More sophisticated functions — payroll integration, performance management, 360-degree reviews — are almost always paid. Set expectations accordingly.
The Best Free HR Software for UK Small Businesses
1. Leave Dates — Free Plan, Small Team Cap
UK-built absence tracker designed around British employment law. The free plan covers a small team and handles leave requests, bank holiday calendars including regional variations for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales, plus a simple team overview.
That regional bank holiday handling is a detail that matters and generic tools routinely miss — Scotland’s bank holidays differ from England’s, and a tool that assumes one set will quietly miscalculate entitlement.
What you don’t get free: larger teams, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace integrations, and Bradford Factor reporting.
Best for: small UK teams whose only real need is holiday tracking done correctly.
2. Factorial HR — Free Plan, More Rounded
One of the more generous free tiers. Includes an employee directory, basic document storage, and an absence and holiday tracker — covering the most common small-team needs in one place rather than as a single-purpose tool.
What you don’t get free: payroll, shift management, performance reviews, recruitment and advanced reporting. Third-party integrations are limited.
UK notes: supports Working Time Regulations holiday calculations and GDPR-compliant document storage. It doesn’t handle payroll submissions, so you’ll need a separate payroll tool regardless.
Factorial originated outside the UK, and some users report that UK-specific nuances around statutory sick pay and statutory leave types need manual configuration rather than arriving pre-set. Worth testing before you rely on it.
Best for: small teams wanting more than a leave tracker without paying.
3. Zoho People — Free Plan, Small Team Cap
One of the few genuinely permanent free plans rather than a disguised trial. For a small team you get an employee self-service portal, leave management and basic HR records.
Part of the wider Zoho ecosystem, which is a real advantage if you already use Zoho Books or Zoho CRM — both of which bill UK customers in pounds, so the same should apply here, though confirm at sign-up.
What you don’t get free: time tracking, performance management and analytics. Free plan support is community forums only.
UK notes: supports custom leave types, so you can align it with UK statutory entitlements, bank holidays and company policies — though that’s configuration you’ll do yourself rather than something that arrives correct.
Best for: existing Zoho users.
4. Absence.io — Free Plan, Small Team Cap
Does one thing and does it well. Leave requests, approvals, team calendar views, and integration with Google Calendar and Slack.
What you don’t get free: larger teams, advanced reporting, custom approval workflows and SSO.
Best for: teams whose requirement genuinely is just absence tracking, with a preference for calendar and chat integration.
5. HR Locker — Free Plan, Small Team Cap
An Irish-built platform that works well for UK businesses, with a permanent free plan covering leave management, employee records and basic document storage. A solid middle ground between a simple absence tracker and a full HR system.
What you don’t get free: performance reviews, recruitment and advanced analytics.
Best for: small teams wanting all-round basics rather than a single function.
6. OrangeHRM — Open Source, Self-Hosted
The most fully featured genuinely free option, if you have the technical appetite. The Community Edition is free to download, self-host and use without employee caps, covering leave management, employee records, recruitment and performance.
The catch, and it’s substantial. Self-hosting isn’t free in time or infrastructure. You’ll need web hosting, technical setup, and you become responsible for your own backups, security and updates.
And a GDPR point worth taking seriously. Self-hosting makes you responsible for the security of employee personal data — health information, bank details, National Insurance numbers. With a cloud provider you get a Data Processing Agreement and their security posture. Self-hosted, that’s on you, and “we run it on a cheap VPS nobody has patched since 2024” is not a defensible position if data is breached.
Best for: technically confident teams with someone who will actually maintain it. Powerful and genuinely free, but only on that condition.
7. Breathe HR — Trial Only, Not a Free Tier
Included so you don’t waste time looking. Breathe is consistently among the most recommended UK HR platforms, built around UK employment law with a clean interface. It has no permanent free plan — the 14-day trial gives full access, then it’s paid.
Why it’s still here: if you want to see what a properly built UK HR system looks like before committing, the trial is worth taking. Just don’t mistake it for a free tier.
What triggers a paid upgrade: day 15.
Side-by-Side Summary
| Tool | Genuinely free? | Cap | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leave Dates | Yes | Small team | UK holiday tracking, regional bank holidays |
| Factorial HR | Yes | Check current | Small teams wanting more than leave tracking |
| Zoho People | Yes | Small team | Zoho ecosystem users |
| Absence.io | Yes | Small team | Simple absence tracking with calendar integration |
| HR Locker | Yes | Small team | All-round basic HR |
| OrangeHRM | Yes, open source | None | Technically confident teams |
| Breathe HR | No — 14-day trial | Not applicable | Evaluating a full UK HR tool |
Free tier caps change frequently — confirm the current limit for any tool before setup.
What Free HR Software Won’t Do
You’ll almost certainly pay for these regardless of which tool you choose:
Payroll processing. Free HR tools and payroll are essentially never bundled. You’ll need separate software for PAYE and RTI. The good news is it’s cheap: Sage Payroll starts from £1.20 a month ex-VAT, FreeAgent is free with a NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank or Mettle business account, and HMRC’s Basic PAYE Tools is free for employers with 9 or fewer employees — though Basic PAYE Tools generates no payslips, which are a legal requirement.
Making Tax Digital compliance. MTD relates to tax, not HR, so no HR tool addresses it. Your accounting or payroll software handles that.
Right-to-work expiry alerting. Free tiers will usually store a document. What they won’t do is warn you that an employee’s time-limited visa expires next month. Given civil penalties reach £45,000 per worker for a first breach and £60,000 for repeat breaches, that gap is worth understanding before you rely on a free tool for compliance.
Keeping up with new statutory leave types. The list keeps growing — carer’s leave became a statutory right in April 2024 and neonatal care leave in April 2025, with further employment law reform in progress. Paid tools push compliance updates as part of the subscription; free tiers and open-source installs are considerably slower, and self-hosted software updates only when you update it.
Contracts and e-signatures. Some free tiers store documents, but generating and signing contracts usually needs a paid plan or a separate tool.
Recruitment. Applicant tracking is universally paid.
FAQ
Is there truly free HR software, or is it all trials?
Both exist, and you need to read the small print. Zoho People, Factorial, Absence.io, Leave Dates and HR Locker all have permanent free tiers at the time of writing. OrangeHRM is free as open-source software. Breathe HR, one of the most popular UK tools, is trial-only. Verify current terms before committing setup time.
Do free HR tools handle UK statutory holiday correctly?
The better ones do, but check. The UK statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks a year including bank holidays under the Working Time Regulations. Leave Dates and Breathe HR are built around UK rules. Tools of US or European origin may need manual configuration — and note that the rules for irregular-hours and part-year workers changed in recent years, so verify the calculation rather than assuming.
Can free HR software be GDPR compliant?
It can form part of a compliant setup, but software alone doesn’t make you compliant — your policies, retention rules and privacy notices matter equally. Check that any tool processes data within the UK or EEA, or has adequate transfer safeguards, and that a Data Processing Agreement is available before you store employee personal data. If you self-host, that responsibility sits entirely with you.
When does it make sense to pay?
When the cost of managing HR manually exceeds the software cost. For most businesses that arrives somewhere between 10 and 20 employees, though even small teams often find a paid tool pays for itself in time saved. For a confirmed benchmark, Sage HR starts from £5 per employee per month ex-VAT — £50 a month for ten people.
What’s the cheapest paid HR software for a UK small business?
On confirmed pricing, Sage HR from £5 per employee per month ex-VAT. Several free-tier providers here have cheaper per-user paid plans, but those figures move often — get current quotes and check whether you’re being priced per employee or as a flat company fee, since that difference matters more than the headline rate as you grow.
Conclusion: The Honest Recommendation
If you have a very small team and your primary need is holiday tracking, Leave Dates is the standout — UK-built, genuinely free, and it handles British bank holiday regional variations without configuration. That last detail is worth more than it sounds.
For a more rounded free experience that might see you through some growth, Factorial offers the most feature-complete free tier here — though test its UK statutory leave handling before relying on it.
If you’re technically minded and want the most powerful free option, OrangeHRM’s Community Edition is hard to beat, provided you’re honest with yourself about the hosting, maintenance and data protection responsibility that comes with self-hosting.
Once you’re approaching 10 to 15 employees, stop searching for free. At that scale the time a proper system saves outweighs the cost — around £50 a month for ten people on Sage HR’s confirmed rate, and less on some alternatives. Breathe HR’s trial is a reasonable starting point for that evaluation.
Pricing, free tier limits and features correct at time of writing and change frequently — always confirm current details on the provider’s website before purchasing. This article describes HR software rather than providing legal or employment law advice; your obligations around statutory leave, record-keeping, right-to-work checks and UK GDPR depend on your circumstances, so check current GOV.UK and ICO guidance or consult a qualified HR professional or employment solicitor.