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Core HR software / Product assessment

CharlieCore HR software, costs and alternatives

People Ops Buyer research desk · UK · 75-person employer · GBP · Updated

Compare Charlie if you need onboarding and reviews alongside records and leave. At 75 people, its core subscription costs £148 more per month than Breathe, before VAT.

Test whether its onboarding and review tools replace the documents and reminders your team currently maintains.

Best fit
Employee records, onboarding, leave and regular performance reviews
Cost scope · GBP
£323/month for 50–99 employees; VAT and separate products extra.
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Assessment for UK · 75-person employer · GBP.

In this assessment
  1. When to choose Charlie
  2. What belongs in your quote
  3. Three things to settle before buying

When to choose Charlie

Charlie publishes £323 a month for 50–99 people, excluding VAT, with records, onboarding, time off, reviews and engagement among its core functions. Against Breathe’s core price at 75, the subscription difference is £148 monthly, or £1,776 over 12 unchanged months. This is a comparison of named subscriptions, not proof of identical functionality.

Our view: If onboarding and reviews are currently scattered across documents and reminders, focus your demo there. If you only need records and leave, start with Breathe.

Choose Breathe or another finalist when the required work is equally well supported and Charlie supplies no useful reason for the extra cost. Charlie Grow adds advisory scope; Charlie Recruit is a separate hiring purchase. Keep those separate products out of the quote if you only need core HR.

What belongs in your quote

£323/month for 50–99 employees; VAT and separate products extra.

Include the required modules, add-ons and any separately charged setup in the total.

Compare the full shortlist and its cost assumptions

Three things to settle before buying

  1. Demonstrate a starter, a leave correction and the handoff to retained payroll in the quoted edition.
  2. Price today’s workforce and the next likely headcount band, with necessary add-ons.
  3. Specify the data import, policy setup, training and responsibility for corrections.

Which alternatives belong on your shortlist?

  • Breathe

    Employee records, leave, documents and routine HR reports for a fixed headcount band

    Trade-off: compare the total after required add-ons and your next headcount band

  • Sense HR Elite

    Custom employee fields and screens, Report Writer, payroll connections and access roles

    Trade-off: requires someone on your team to maintain the custom fields, reports and access settings

  • PeopleHR

    Onboarding and e-signatures in Core; performance reviews and timesheets in Pro

    Trade-off: performance reviews, custom reports and single sign-on are available in different editions; confirm the features in your quote

See the full shortlist and ranking method

Sources and research scope

English-language UK buying research checked 1 October 2026. These are editorial recommendations. Public scope and pricing were researched; product reliability, implementation effort and support performance were not tested. No commercial partner supplied this ranking. Recommendations are desk research, not hands-on testing. Pricing/plan pages revisited 5 October 2026 for this UK HR software release; original source qualifications remain.

  1. Charlie pricing and billing bandsCore bands, separate products, VAT exclusion and next-invoice adjustment.