If you’re a small or medium-sized business in the UK looking for a better way to manage employee leave, you’ve probably come across both of these tools. Breathe HR is one of the most established HR platforms in the UK market, trusted by over 17,000 SMEs. Day Off is a dedicated leave management app used by teams across the globe, including a growing number of UK businesses looking for something lighter and more focused.
They’re both legitimate tools. They just answer different questions.
Breathe HR asks: what if one platform handled all of your HR admin? Day Off asks: what if leave management worked perfectly, cost less, and your whole team actually used it?
This article gives you an honest, side-by-side comparison, real pricing, real features, and a clear recommendation for who each tool is built for. No fluff, no affiliate bias.
What is Breathe HR?
Breathe HR is a UK-based HR software platform built for SMEs with up to 250 employees. It launched as a holiday and absence management tool and has since grown into a full HR suite covering people records, performance management, recruitment, rota scheduling, expense tracking, and more.
It’s genuinely well-regarded in the UK market. With over 17,000 SME customers, strong Trustpilot ratings, and a partner network of over 1,000 HR consultants who recommend it, Breathe has become the default choice for many UK businesses when they first outgrow spreadsheets.
Its core proposition is all-in-one HR for small businesses: one platform, one login, one place for everything people-related.
What is Day Off?
Day Off is a dedicated leave management app. It doesn’t do recruitment, expense tracking, or performance reviews. What it does, managing annual leave, sick leave, public holidays, approvals, accruals, carryovers, and team calendars, it does with a level of depth and polish that broader HR platforms rarely match.
Day Off is used by small and medium teams globally, with a particularly strong following in teams that operate across multiple countries with different public holiday calendars and leave policies. Its pricing model, free for teams up to 10, then $2 per seat per month for the Pro plan, makes it significantly more affordable than most HR platforms for small teams focused primarily on leave.
Pricing: a real-world comparison
This is where the tools diverge most starkly. Let’s use concrete examples.
Breathe HR pricing
Breathe charges per business, not per person, which is genuinely good value at small team sizes. All plans include core HR features: holiday and absence management, an employee database, document storage, and performance tools.
Breathe HR monthly cost by team size
| Team size | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| 1–10 people Micro | £24/month |
| 11–20 people Starter | Higher tier see breathehr.com |
| 21–50 people Regular | Higher tier see breathehr.com |
| 51–100 people Pro | Higher tier see breathehr.com |
Optional add-ons on top of the base plan:
- Rota, Time & Attendance: from +£11/month
- Learning & Development: from +£15/month
- Recruitment tracking: from +£16/month
- Expenses management: from +£14/month
- Health & Safety: from +£12/month
A 20-person team using Breathe HR with rotas and expenses would be paying well over £50/month before VAT. That’s reasonable for a full HR platform, but it’s worth knowing if you only need the leave management piece.
Day Off pricing
Day Off pricing
Simple per-seat leave management pricing
| Plan | Cost | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Free For small teams | £0/month | Up to 10 employees, calendar view, basic leave types, one-step approval, reports |
| Pro For growing teams | $2/seat/month Approximately £1.60 | Unlimited employees, advanced leave types, accruals, carryover, multi-approvers, sub-teams, integrations, multi-location, and blockout dates |
Minimum Pro plan charge: $20/month (~£16/month).
For a 20-person UK team on Day Off Pro: approximately £32/month (20 seats × ~£1.60). That’s for a tool entirely focused on leave, no rota management, no recruitment, no expenses.
The honest pricing verdict: If you genuinely need a full HR platform, employee records, performance reviews, recruitment, rotas, Breathe HR at £24+/month for a small team is good value. If you need excellent leave management and nothing else, Day Off is meaningfully cheaper and more focused. A 10-person team could use Day Off’s free plan indefinitely.
Feature comparison: leave management specifically
Since both tools include leave management, let’s look at that feature set directly, this is the area most readers are actually evaluating.
Feature comparison
Breathe HR vs Day Off leave management
| Leave management feature | Breathe HR | Day Off |
|---|---|---|
| Holiday request & approval | ✅ | ✅ |
| Team leave calendar | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multiple leave types | ✅ | ✅ |
| Sick leave tracking | ✅ | ✅ |
| Absence trend reporting | ✅ | ✅ |
| UK public holidays built-in | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-country public holidays | ❌ UK-focused | ✅ 100+ countries |
| Multi-approver workflows | Limited | ✅ Advanced |
| Leave accrual automatic | Basic | ✅ Full accrual engine |
| Carryover rules | Basic | ✅ Configurable |
| Blockout / blackout dates | ❌ | ✅ |
| Sub-team leave policies | ❌ | ✅ |
| Hours-based leave tracking | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multi-location policies | ❌ | ✅ |
| Slack integration | ❌ | ✅ |
| Google Calendar sync | ❌ | ✅ |
| Outlook calendar sync | ✅ via Outlook integration | ✅ |
| Dedicated mobile app | ✅ | ✅ |
| Free plan | ❌ 14-day trial only | ✅ Up to 10 users, free forever |
Breathe HR covers leave management competently, it’s what the platform started as. But Day Off goes considerably deeper on the leave-specific features: accrual engines, carryover configurations, multi-country public holiday calendars, blockout dates, and sub-team policies. For teams with straightforward UK leave needs, both cover the basics well. For teams with any complexity, multiple locations, international employees, and varied leave policies by department, Day Off has a clear edge.
Full platform comparison: beyond leave
Complete HR software comparison
Breathe HR vs Day Off
Breathe HR is a broader HR platform, while Day Off focuses on fast, modern leave management.
| Feature area | Breathe HR | Day Off |
|---|---|---|
| Leave management | ✅ Included | ✅ Core focus |
| Employee database / records | ✅ Full employee profiles | ❌ Not included |
| Document storage | ✅ Unlimited GDPR-compliant storage | ❌ Not included |
| Performance management | ✅ 1-to-1s, objectives, appraisals | ❌ Not included |
| Recruitment / ATS | ✅ Add-on (+£16/mo) | ❌ Not included |
| Rota & shift scheduling | ✅ Add-on (+£11/mo) | ❌ Not included |
| Expense management | ✅ Add-on (+£14/mo) | ❌ Not included |
| Learning & development | ✅ Add-on (+£15/mo) | ❌ Not included |
| Health & safety module | ✅ Add-on (+£12/mo) | ❌ Not included |
| Absence trend analytics | ✅ Bradford Factor, sickness trends | ✅ Leave reports |
| UK employment law alignment | ✅ Built for UK compliance | ✅ Supports UK rules |
| GDPR compliance | ✅ ISO certified, UK-based | ✅ GDPR compliant |
| Onboarding tools | ✅ E-signature, digital docs | ❌ Not included |
| Payroll integrations | ✅ Xero, others | Limited |
| API access | ✅ | ✅ |
| Free plan | ❌ 14-day trial only | ✅ Up to 10 users free |
| Pricing model | Per business (flat fee by size) | Per seat ($2/month) |
| Starting price | £24/month (1–10 people) | Free / ~£16/month (Pro, 10 people) |
| UK customer base | 17,000+ UK SMEs | Global, growing UK presence |
| Setup time | Days (full HR platform) | Under 10 minutes |
Who Breathe HR is built for
Breathe HR is the right choice when:
You want one platform for all your HR needs.
If you’re currently juggling spreadsheets for leave, a filing cabinet for contracts, email chains for appraisals, and a separate tool for rotas, Breathe consolidates all of that into one place. That consolidation is genuinely valuable if you actually use those features.
You’re a UK-focused business with a UK workforce.
Breathe is built specifically for the UK market, UK employment law, and UK public holiday structures. If your team is entirely UK-based, that focus is a feature, not a limitation.
You’re between 10 and 100 employees.
Breathe’s pricing model, flat fee per company size band, works very well at this scale. A 40-person team pays the same monthly rate as a 30-person team, which means growth doesn’t immediately increase your bill.
You value having HR consultant support available.
Breathe has a network of over 1,000 certified HR partners across the UK who recommend and support the platform. If you work with an HR consultant, there’s a good chance they already know Breathe and can help you configure it.
You need absence trend analysis.
Breathe’s Bradford Factor reporting and sickness trend tools are solid and built into the base plan. For UK businesses managing frequent short-term absence, this is a meaningful differentiator.
Who Day Off is built for
Day Off is the right choice when:
Leave management is your primary need, and you don’t want to pay for features you won’t use.
If you need excellent holiday tracking, approval workflows, and team visibility without performance reviews or recruitment tools, Day Off gives you a more focused, more affordable experience.
You have a small team on a tight budget.
Day Off’s free plan covers teams of up to 10 people with no time limit. For very small businesses, that’s leave management at zero cost. Breathe’s minimum is £24/month for the same team size.
You manage a team across multiple countries.
Day Off supports public holiday calendars for over 100 countries and allows different leave policies per location. Breathe is built for UK-based teams and doesn’t natively handle international public holiday complexity at the same level.
You want your team up and running in under 10 minutes.
Day Off is purpose-built for speed of setup. You invite employees, set leave types, add your public holiday calendar, and you’re done. A full HR platform like Breathe naturally takes longer to configure properly because it does more.
Your team lives in Slack or Google Calendar.
Day Off integrates directly with Slack (leave requests and notifications in-channel) and syncs to Google Calendar and Outlook. If your team’s primary communication happens in Slack, having leave requests flow through that channel is a meaningful workflow improvement.
You’re a global-first or remote-first team.
Day Off’s multi-country support, multi-timezone awareness, and multi-policy configuration make it substantially better suited to distributed teams than Breathe’s primarily UK-centric feature set.
The honest verdict
These are not direct competitors in the traditional sense, they’re solving related but different problems.
Choose Breathe HR
If you want a single platform to centralise your UK HR operations, leave, records, documents, performance, and potentially rotas and expenses. It’s a solid, well-supported platform with strong UK market fit, reasonable pricing for what you get, and a 14-day free trial to test it properly. If you regularly work with an HR consultant, the likelihood they know and recommend Breathe is high.
Choose Day Off
If leave management is your primary requirement and you want the best possible experience for that specific job. You’ll pay less, get more leave-specific depth (accruals, carryover, multi-country, blockout dates, Slack integration), and have your team set up faster. If you have international employees or a distributed team, Day Off handles the complexity that Breathe wasn’t designed for.
There’s also a third option
worth considering: some UK teams use both. Breathe HR for employee records, documents, performance reviews, and absence trend analysis, and Day Off for the leave management workflow itself, because the approval experience, integrations, and international support are stronger. It’s a slightly more complex setup, but it means each tool is doing what it does best.
Not sure which fits your situation? Day Off has a free plan for teams up to 10, you can test it today without a credit card. Breathe offers a 14-day free trial of their full platform. Both are worth a hands-on look before committing.
Quick summary: Day Off vs Breathe HR at a glance
Quick comparison
Day Off vs Breathe HR at a glance
| Comparison point | Day Off | Breathe HR |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Leave-focused teams, global & remote | UK SMEs wanting all-in-one HR |
| Starting price | Free, up to 10 users | £24/month, 1–10 people |
| Pro pricing | ~$2/seat/month | Tiered flat fee by company size |
| Leave management depth | Excellent, core focus | Good, one of many features |
| UK public holidays | ✅ | ✅ |
| International teams | ✅ 100+ country calendars | Limited, UK-focused |
| Full HR platform | ❌ Leave only | ✅ 40+ features |
| Slack integration | ✅ | ❌ |
| Setup time | Under 10 minutes | Days |
| Free plan | ✅ Forever, up to 10 users | ❌ 14-day trial only |
| UK customer base | Growing | 17,000+ established |
Mobile experience
Both tools offer dedicated iOS and Android apps, which is increasingly a baseline expectation for any team tool.
Breathe HR’s mobile app
covers the full range of HR functions available on the web platform: viewing and requesting leave, accessing company documents, completing training modules, and checking team information. It mirrors the breadth of the desktop experience, which is useful for employees who need the full suite on the go.
Day Off’s mobile app
is focused entirely on leave: submitting requests, checking balances, viewing the team calendar, and receiving approval notifications. Because the app is purpose-built for one task, the mobile experience tends to feel more streamlined than a broader HR app trying to surface dozens of features on a small screen. Reviewers specifically mention the mobile app as easy to use across both Android and iOS.
Customer support
Breathe HR
offers dedicated UK-based customer support, available both during the free trial and after sign-up. Given its UK-only customer focus, support hours and cultural alignment are well-matched for British SMEs. The platform also has an extensive knowledge base, FAQs, and a community forum for peer support.
Day Off
provides email support and thorough help documentation. As a globally-focused product, its support is less UK-specific, though the platform’s simplicity means most teams rarely need to contact support at all, the setup is straightforward enough that questions tend to be uncommon.
For teams that anticipate needing regular hands-on support, or that value the ability to speak to a UK-based person when things go wrong, Breathe HR’s dedicated support offering is a meaningful advantage.
Manage your teams from your mobile
Frequently asked questions
Is Breathe HR only for UK companies?
Breathe HR is built specifically for the UK market, UK employment law, and UK public holiday structures. It’s not designed for international teams or companies with employees in multiple countries. Day Off supports public holiday calendars for 100+ countries and is a better fit for globally distributed teams.
Does Day Off work for UK employment law?
Yes. Day Off supports UK statutory leave entitlements (28 days including bank holidays), UK public holiday calendars for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland separately, and the approval and record-keeping workflows UK employers need. It does not include Bradford Factor reporting or absence trend analysis, which Breathe HR provides.
Can I use Day Off instead of Breathe HR completely?
If your primary need is leave management, holiday requests, approvals, balances, team visibility, then yes, Day Off replaces Breathe HR’s leave module and does it with more depth. However, Day Off does not replace Breathe’s employee database, document storage, performance management, or recruitment tools. If you need those features, Breathe or a comparable full HR platform is necessary.
Is Breathe HR free?
No. Breathe HR offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, but all paid plans start at £24/month for businesses with up to 10 people. Day Off has a genuinely free plan (not a trial) for teams of up to 10 people, with no time limit.
How does Breathe HR pricing work?
Breathe charges a flat fee per business based on company size, not per person. This means a 10-person team and a 5-person team pay the same rate within the same size band, which is good value as you grow within a tier.
Optional modules (rotas, recruitment, expenses, learning, health and safety) are available as monthly add-ons.
Which tool is better for a remote or hybrid team?
Day Off is better suited to remote and hybrid teams, particularly those with employees in different countries. It handles multiple public holiday calendars, different leave policies per location, and integrates with Slack and Google Calendar, the tools distributed teams rely on daily. Breathe HR’s UK focus is well-suited to office-based or hybrid UK teams but is less well-adapted to internationally distributed workforces.
Can I migrate from Breathe HR to Day Off?
Yes. You’d export your current leave balances and employee list from Breathe, use those to set up Day Off (under 10 minutes), and invite your team. Day Off doesn’t require historical leave data migration, you simply enter current balances and go live from a set date. Your historical Breathe data stays in Breathe, which you can keep as an archive.
Final thoughts: making the right call for your team
After reading through every dimension of this comparison, pricing, features, integrations, compliance, user reviews, and support, the decision usually comes down to one honest question: do you need a leave management tool, or do you need an HR platform?
They sound similar, but they’re meaningfully different problems. A leave management tool solves one specific, recurring pain point: knowing who’s off, when, how many days they have left, and making the approval process frictionless. An HR platform solves the broader challenge of centralising everything your business needs to manage its people, not just leave, but contracts, performance, recruitment, expenses, and training too.
If you asked most small UK business owners what’s frustrating them right now, the honest answer is usually leave tracking, the missed requests, the balance disputes, the colleague who books time off over a bank holiday and gets charged for it anyway. That specific pain points to Day Off: focused, fast, affordable, and genuinely excellent at the one job it’s built for. For teams under 10, it’s free. For teams up to 50, it costs less per month than a business lunch.
If the answer is “we’ve outgrown spreadsheets across the board, leave, performance reviews, onboarding, everything,” that’s a different problem. That’s where Breathe HR earns its place: one platform that replaces multiple disconnected systems, backed by a UK-based team, ISO-certified infrastructure, and a partner network of HR consultants who know the tool inside out.
There’s no wrong answer here, only the wrong tool for your specific situation. Both Breathe HR and Day Off are legitimate, well-built products used by thousands of UK businesses. The question is which one was built for your problem.
If leave management is the bottleneck, start with Day Off. The free plan costs nothing and takes ten minutes to set up. If you outgrow it or find you need the broader HR suite, Breathe will still be there. But most teams that try Day Off find they don’t need anything else for the leave side of things.