CharlieHR

CharlieHR is priced the way small companies actually budget. Instead of a per-seat rate that changes with every hire and leaver, it charges a flat monthly amount per headcount band, excluding 20% UK VAT: £21 for 1 to 4 people, £47 for 5 to 14, £108 for 15 to 29, £185 for 30 to 49, £323 for 50 to 99 and £754 from 250.

Every band is published, so the cost of the next two years can be worked out before the first call.

The trade-off is the step: hiring a fifteenth person takes the bill from £47 to £108 overnight, which is a bigger jump than a per-employee platform would produce.

The product is the small-team essentials — onboarding, time off and performance reviews — run by Charlie OS Limited in London, with the founders still holding significant control of the 2015 parent company.

Data sits in Ireland, inside the EU, on Amazon Web Services. On independent assurance it is the best documented tool in this category: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials, two audits rather than a GDPR statement. There is a 7-day free trial and no credit card is asked for.

It ranks last here on the first thing this site weighs, which is where the contracting company sits.

CharlieHR is British, and the United Kingdom is outside the EEA; transfers rest on the European Commission's adequacy decision, which is a political instrument subject to review rather than a permanent arrangement, and an EU employer has to accept that dependency for its personnel records.

The infrastructure is American too, even though the region is Irish. And the company publishes no full sub-processor list, so the parties behind the platform cannot be enumerated from the website the way they can with Sesame HR or Lucca.

What CharlieHR does well

• Flat monthly price per headcount band, every band published, from £21 for 1 to 4 people
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials — two independent audits, the most documented here
• Data held in Ireland, inside the EU
• 7-day free trial with no credit card
• Founder-controlled London company rather than a private-equity holding

Where CharlieHR falls short

• UK company outside the EEA — transfers depend on an adequacy decision that is periodically reviewed
• Runs on Amazon Web Services, so the Irish region is American infrastructure
• No full sub-processor list published
• Band pricing means one extra hire can raise the bill sharply, from £47 to £108 at fifteen people
• Small-team essentials only — no payroll execution and no depth for a large workforce

Standout feature. Two audits and a price list: CharlieHR is the only tool here that holds both ISO 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials and publishes what every headcount band pays.