Best Discount Platforms for UK Staff (2026 Comparison)
Pick the wrong UK staff discount platform and you will pay £6 per employee per month for a portal nobody opens. Pick the right one and the cashback alone covers the platform fee three times over. Six platforms genuinely compete for the UK SMB and mid-market staff-discount business in 2026, plus a handful of free directories. This is the comparison no platform vendor will run because half of them lose: who has the best catalogue, who has the cleanest implementation, and where the free alternatives are good enough.
The shortlist of UK staff discount platforms
Six paid platforms make the serious shortlist:
- Perkbox — SMB market leader, broad catalogue, wellness layer included.
- Reward Gateway / Boostworks — enterprise-grade, deepest catalogue, premium pricing.
- BrightHR Perks — bundled with BrightHR's HR software.
- Edenred — strong on benefits-administration heritage, particularly childcare/meal vouchers.
- Pluxee (formerly Sodexo) — enterprise-leaning, polished, particularly strong cinema and travel partner offers.
- MyStaffShop / Each Person — SMB-friendly, mid-tier price.
Plus two free directories worth knowing:
- Leavely Perks (this site) — public editorial directory, no employer sign-up needed.
- Discounts for Carers / Blue Light Card — sector-specific schemes.
Side-by-side comparison
| Platform | Price (per user/mo) | Min seats | Catalogue depth | Wellness layer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perkbox | £5–£7 | ~10 | High | Yes |
| Reward Gateway | £8–£12+ | 50+ | Highest | Yes |
| BrightHR Perks | Bundled | HR sub required | Medium-High | Limited |
| Edenred | £3–£8 | 10+ | Medium | No |
| Pluxee | Enquiry-only | ~50 | High | Yes |
| MyStaffShop | £2–£4 | ~10 | Medium | No |
| Leavely Perks | £0 | None | Curated | Indirect |
Pricing is approximate and varies by negotiation. All paid platforms run sector-specific discounting.
Which platform wins on which metric
Catalogue depth
Reward Gateway has the deepest UK retailer catalogue by margin. Around 1,500+ retailers, including most major UK supermarkets, fuel chains, fashion brands, restaurants and entertainment partners. Perkbox is roughly 60–70% of Reward Gateway's catalogue depth at half the price — a strong cost-per-retailer ratio. BrightHR Perks is broadly equivalent to Perkbox in catalogue depth.
Free directories like Leavely Perks are editorially curated rather than exhaustive — typically 100–300 carefully-selected retailers across the categories employees actually use, rather than thousands of long-tail brands.
Cashback rates
Reward Gateway leads on supermarket cashback (typically 4–6% vs 2–4% on competitor platforms) because it negotiates centrally at scale. For a household spending £4,400/year on groceries, that 2–3 percentage point difference is £100+/year per employee. At 50+ headcount, this difference alone often justifies the higher Reward Gateway platform fee.
Mobile app and UX
Perkbox has the best-rated mobile app of the paid platforms. Reward Gateway is a close second but the UI feels more enterprise-leaning. Pluxee is polished but heavier. Edenred and MyStaffShop are functional but unremarkable.
Wellness and recognition layers
Perkbox bundles a meditation/learning app and a peer-to-peer recognition tool. Reward Gateway has a deeper recognition module (Reward Gateway Recognition) and integrates with employee-of-the-month and milestone reward flows. BrightHR has a basic recognition layer.
Implementation effort
BrightHR Perks is the easiest to roll out — if you are already a BrightHR HR-software customer, the perks layer activates inside the existing portal. Perkbox has a self-serve sign-up that takes around an hour. Reward Gateway, Pluxee and Edenred all involve a sales call, contracting cycle and 2–4 weeks of implementation. MyStaffShop is closer to Perkbox in self-serve speed.
Total cost of ownership: 50 employees, three years
| Platform | 3-year platform cost | Estimated employee savings (3yr) | Net to employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perkbox | £10,800 | £75,000 | +£64,200 |
| Reward Gateway | £18,000 | £135,000 | +£117,000 |
| BrightHR Perks | Bundled | £60,000 | +£60,000 to employer cost-net |
| MyStaffShop | £5,400 | £45,000 | +£39,600 |
| Leavely Perks (free) | £0 | £35,000 | +£35,000 |
Employee-savings figures are estimates based on average UK staff use rates of around 50% and average savings per active user. Real numbers vary widely — measurement-discipline is important to assess actual ROI.
Free alternatives — when do they win?
Free directories like Leavely Perks win for businesses where:
- Headcount is below 10–15 (sub-platform-minimum scale).
- Budget is genuinely zero.
- Employees are tech-savvy enough to navigate a public directory rather than expect a corporate-branded portal.
- Leadership wants to assess the appetite for perks before paying for a platform.
The trade-off is real: no co-branded experience, no usage analytics, no consolidated billing, and no formal employer/scheme membership. For sub-15-employee businesses, the trade-off is rarely worth £900+/year in platform fees.
The best fit by business type
Tech startup, 10–30 employees
Perkbox. The catalogue and UX are right for the demographic; the price is sustainable. Layer in an EAP and you have a credible benefits package.
Care home or hospitality, 25–100 employees
Reward Gateway or BrightHR Perks. Cashback rates on supermarkets, fuel and family days out matter most for these workforces, and Reward Gateway leads on those. BrightHR Perks if the HR-advice-line bundle is also valuable.
Charity, education or NHS-adjacent
Sector-specific schemes (Blue Light Card, Discounts for Teachers) supplement whichever paid platform you pick. Sector discounts on the platforms themselves often bring effective per-employee cost below £4/month.
Professional services / law / accountancy, 25–75 employees
Reward Gateway or Pluxee. The slightly more enterprise-feeling experience suits the demographic, and cinema/travel partner offers (Pluxee) are particularly strong for professional-services workforces.
Sub-10-employee SMB
Leavely Perks (free) plus a few direct corporate-rate sign-ups (Specsavers Corporate, PureGym Corporate, a Samsung EPP). Add a paid platform when headcount and budget justify it.
Implementation pitfalls to avoid
- Buying for breadth over depth. 1,500 retailers in the catalogue does not matter if 12 are used. Buy on top-100 retailer overlap with your team's spending.
- Not promoting after launch. Adoption decays sharply after week 4. Schedule a Friday round-up forever, not just at launch.
- Underweighting the wellbeing layer. The retention case for perks rests heavily on the wellbeing categories — a discount-only portal misses half the value. See our wellbeing perks guide.
- Not measuring use. You cannot assess platform ROI without month-on-month adoption data. Every paid platform reports it; ask before signing.
Bottom line
For most UK SMBs the right answer is Perkbox at £6/user/month, with sector-specific schemes layered in for free where applicable. Reward Gateway becomes the right answer at 50+ employees where the cashback differential pays for the higher fee. BrightHR Perks wins if you are already paying for BrightHR HR. Free directories like Leavely Perks are credible for sub-15-employee teams. See the SMB-specific scheme review.
Some links on this page are partner / affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Read our full affiliate disclosure.