Choose Leavely when absence is the daily bottleneck
Leavely keeps holiday requests, sickness records, TOIL, return-to-work notes, balances, clock-in records, and manager approvals in one focused workspace.
Compare a focused leave and absence workspace with broader HR platforms. Use this guide to decide whether your team needs a full HR suite first, or a faster way to manage holiday, sickness, TOIL, clock-in records, and approvals.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.
Quick proof
Trial
14 days
Start without a payment card.
Price
£8
Per active user per month.
Plan
One
Every Leavely feature is included.
BreatheHR and PeopleHR are wider HR platforms. Leavely is narrower by design: it focuses on the leave and absence workflow managers need to trust every week.
Leavely keeps holiday requests, sickness records, TOIL, return-to-work notes, balances, clock-in records, and manager approvals in one focused workspace.
BreatheHR and PeopleHR are broader HR platforms. They can make sense when employee records, documents, recruitment, reporting, and configurable HR processes are the first buying priority.
Leavely has one published plan at £8/user/month. Buyers comparing BreatheHR or PeopleHR should confirm current package, module, and employee-band pricing directly before purchase.
Use this as a shortlist filter, then confirm current BreatheHR and PeopleHR package details directly before purchase.
| Area | Leavely | BreatheHR | PeopleHR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published Leavely price | £8/user/month | Team-size monthly plans | Package tiers |
| 14-day trial without payment card | Included | Check current offer | Check current offer |
| Holiday requests and approvals | Included | Included | Included |
| Shared team leave calendar | Included | Included | Included |
| Automatic leave balance tracking | Included | Included | Included |
| Sickness absence records | Included | Included | Included |
| TOIL tracking | Included | Check plan | Check setup |
| Bradford Factor visibility | Included | Check plan | Check module |
| Return-to-work forms | Included | Check plan | Check module |
| Clock-in records | Included | Check package | Check package |
| Employee documents and records | Included | Included | Included |
| Best-fit buyer | UK SMEs wanting focused leave and absence operations | Teams buying broader HR admin | Teams buying configurable HR workflows |
Competitor package names, pricing, modules, and trial terms can change. Check current vendor details before buying.
BreatheHR and PeopleHR are broader HR platforms. They help companies centralise employee records, documents, HR workflows, and people administration. For many teams, that breadth is useful. For others, it is more than they need when the urgent problem is still very practical: who is off, who is sick, who has allowance left, and whether approving a request will create a coverage problem.
Leavely is built for the narrower operational decision. It publishes one plan at £8/user/month, includes a 14-day trial without a payment card, and puts leave requests, balances, sickness records, TOIL, return-to-work notes, clock-in records, and manager approvals together. If your comparison is really about fixing absence admin quickly, Leavely should be on the shortlist.
A broader HR suite can be the right choice when your business wants a single HR backbone. That usually means employee records, document storage, recruitment workflows, performance processes, reporting, and configurable HR administration beside absence management. If that is the project, compare BreatheHR and PeopleHR carefully and confirm which package includes the modules you need.
The trade-off is evaluation complexity. Wider platforms can involve package boundaries, feature tiers, add-ons, implementation decisions, and a longer internal comparison. That is not automatically bad. It is just a different buying motion from choosing a focused tool for a painful weekly workflow.
Leavely does not ask the buyer to start with a full HR transformation. The product starts with the absence workflow managers repeat every week. Employees request time off. Managers review balances and team availability. Sickness is logged. TOIL and return-to-work notes stay with the absence record. Clock-in records give operational context where attendance matters.
That focus matters for UK SMEs because leave admin often breaks down in ordinary places: spreadsheets drift, managers approve without checking cover, sickness notes sit in inboxes, and staff ask the same balance questions repeatedly. Leavely is designed to replace that mess with a shared workflow before the business decides whether it also needs a broader HR suite.
Start by naming the buying job. If the goal is to modernise HR administration across the company, BreatheHR or PeopleHR may be the right category. If the goal is to remove leave clashes, reduce manual balance checks, track sickness consistently, and give managers a clearer approval process, a focused absence workspace can be faster to prove.
The cleanest test is practical. Put Leavely beside your current process for a short trial. Add real leave policies, invite a small manager group, process real requests, and compare how many checks move out of spreadsheets, chat messages, and email. Then compare that result with the BreatheHR and PeopleHR package you would actually buy, not just the broad product category.
Keep the shortlist tied to real work. The right answer depends on whether your team needs absence operations fixed now or wider HR administration rebuilt first.
List how holiday requests arrive, who checks balances, where sickness notes live, and how managers spot leave clashes today.
If the pain is leave, sickness, TOIL, return-to-work notes, and approvals, a focused product can be easier to roll out than a full HR replacement.
For BreatheHR and PeopleHR, check current pricing, package boundaries, add-ons, trial terms, and whether the workflows you need are available in the plan you are considering.
Add real policies, invite one manager group, process a few real requests, and decide using the workflow your team will actually use.
Leavely is the better fit when the immediate problem is leave and absence operations: requests, balances, sickness, TOIL, Bradford Factor visibility, return-to-work notes, clock-in records, and manager approvals. BreatheHR and PeopleHR may be better fits when the main priority is a broader HR platform.
Leavely publishes one price at £8 per active user per month, with a 14-day free trial and no payment card required. BreatheHR and PeopleHR use different package or plan structures, so buyers should check each vendor directly for the latest pricing.
Leavely can replace the leave and absence workflow for teams that do not need a wider HR suite first. It is not positioned as a full replacement for every broader HR platform module, so compare your required workflows before switching.
UK SMEs often shortlist BreatheHR and PeopleHR because they are broader HR platforms with absence features. This page helps buyers decide whether a focused leave and absence workspace is enough before committing to a wider HR system.