Breathe

Breathe is a Horsham-based HR platform for UK and Irish SMEs, run by Centurion Management Systems Limited and still widely recognised by its original name, BreatheHR.

Holiday and absence management sit on every plan rather than behind an add-on, and the sickness side goes further than most of this category: automatic Bradford Factor scoring per employee, configurable trigger rules with manager alerts, and stored sick notes with return-to-work documentation. It is not as deep on the metric as edays, which built its whole product around Bradford Factor and multi-country leave rules, but it is close, and here it is bundled rather than sold separately.

Pricing is published and shaped unusually for this category: six tiers priced per business rather than per employee, from GBP 24 a month for up to ten staff to GBP 579 for up to two hundred, with roughly 10 to 15 per cent off on annual billing.

Holiday and absence tracking, reporting, document management and performance management are included at every tier; rota and time tracking, recruitment, expenses, learning and health and safety are separate paid add-ons. The 14-day free trial needs no card, but there is no permanent free plan, so a five-person team pays the same GBP 24 a month as a team of ten.

Centurion Management Systems Limited is UK-registered, company number 03020608, trading as Breathe from Foundry Lane in Horsham, and has been part of the Australian ELMO Software group since a 2020 acquisition — a non-European parent, even though the contracting entity and the data stay British.

Customer data sits in a London data centre on AWS with a UK failover site, and the vendor states none of it leaves the UK for UK or Irish customers; the company holds ISO 27001 and, since 2026, ISO 42001 for its AI features. As with edays and Cezanne HR, the trade-off is a UK entity outside the EU rather than an EU one.

What Breathe does well

• Holiday, sickness monitoring and Bradford Factor scoring included on every tier, not sold as an add-on
• Published pricing across six tiers, GBP 24 to GBP 579 a month, with no sales call needed
• 14-day free trial without a credit card
• ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certified, with data held in a UK data centre on AWS
• Used by more than 17,000 UK SMEs, so the product is mature rather than new

Where Breathe falls short

• Priced per business in bands, not per employee, so a team of five pays the same as a team of ten
• Owned by the Australian ELMO Software group since 2020, even though the contracting entity and data stay British
• No free plan, and rota, recruitment, expenses and learning are all separate paid add-ons
• Bradford Factor and sickness tooling is close to edays' but not as deep, and edays remains the sharper specialist

Standout feature. Bradford Factor scoring and return-to-work tracking bundled into every tier, at a UK SME price edays does not offer.