--- title: Breathe Reviews meta_title: 'Breathe Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 606 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Breathe works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 606 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-13' parent_category: name: HR url: https://www.g2.com/categories/hr --- # Breathe Reviews **Vendor:** Breathe **Category:** [Core HR Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/core-hr) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 606 ## About Breathe Breathe is a type of human resource management software solution designed to help users streamline their core people processes online. Specifically tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, Breathe facilitates the management of essential HR functions, allowing businesses to save time, enhance efficiency, and provide peace of mind, regardless of their operational location. Targeted primarily at UK-based SMEs and charities, Breathe addresses the unique challenges these organisations face in managing their workforce. With over 16,000 businesses already utilizing the platform to oversee more than 500,000 employees, Breathe has established itself as a trusted partner in the HR space. Its endorsement by a network of over 950 partners further solidifies its reputation as a reliable solution for organisations looking to modernise their HR processes. Breathe offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to meet the diverse needs of its users. Key functionalities include holiday and leave management, which simplifies the process of tracking employee time off, and sickness and absence monitoring, ensuring that organizations can maintain productivity even when employees are away. The platform also includes performance management tools that help businesses set goals and evaluate employee performance effectively. Additionally, expense management and employee scheduling features streamline financial tracking and workforce planning, while time tracking capabilities provide insights into employee hours and productivity. The platform's employee database and analytics feature allows organizations to maintain a centralised repository of employee information, facilitating better decision-making through data-driven insights. Unlimited document storage ensures that essential HR documents are easily accessible and securely stored, while rota, time, and attendance functionalities help organisations manage their workforce efficiently. By integrating these features into a single platform, Breathe stands out in its category, offering a holistic approach to HR management that is both intuitive and user-friendly. Overall, Breathe provides a robust solution for SMEs looking to enhance their HR processes. By moving core people management functions online, organisations can not only save time but also improve compliance and employee satisfaction. The platform's focus on security and ease of use makes it an appealing choice for businesses aiming to modernize their HR practices while maintaining a strong connection with their workforce. ## Breathe Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Breathe, highlighting its intuitive interface and helpful customer support. (36 reviews) - Users appreciate the **user-friendly interface** of Breathe, which simplifies navigation and enhances overall experience. (23 reviews) - Users appreciate the **intuitive navigation** of Breathe, making it easy to use and set up for everyone. (23 reviews) - Users appreciate the **user-friendly interface** of Breathe, highlighting its ease of navigation and intuitive design. (20 reviews) - Users love the **easy access** of Breathe, finding it simple to track leave and manage employee details. (18 reviews) - Holiday Management (14 reviews) - Leave Management (14 reviews) - Easy Setup (13 reviews) - Users appreciate the **navigation ease** of Breathe, finding it intuitive and user-friendly for effective staff management. (13 reviews) - Simplicity (13 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **limited features** of Breathe frustrating, leading to a clunky and confusing experience during reviews. (11 reviews) - Users find the **missing features** in Breathe, especially regarding customization and integrations, frustrating for their workflow. (11 reviews) - Users experience **limited customization** that hampers specific reporting needs and integration with other essential systems. (9 reviews) - Users experience **navigation difficulty** within Breathe, finding it confusing to locate objectives and key areas. (7 reviews) - Users find **navigation challenging** , often struggling to locate objectives and deliverables within the Breathe platform. (6 reviews) - Users find the **interface not user-friendly** , struggling with hidden features and a lack of detailed guidance. (5 reviews) - Poor Interface Design (5 reviews) - Difficult Navigation (4 reviews) - Users note significant **improvement needed** in customization, integrations, and notification reliability for better functionality of Breathe. (4 reviews) - Inadequate Reporting (4 reviews) ## Breathe Reviews ### 1. Centralizes HR Admin with Intuitive Self-Service **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jessel W. | Senior HR Operations Specialist, Human Resources, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 10, 2026 **What do you like best about Breathe?** The employee self-service portal is hands down the biggest time saver for our team. Our client manufacturing staff can log in independently to book annual leave, submit sick notes and upload updated employment paperwork without sending dozens of repetitive emails to our HR inbox every day. I also rely heavily on the immutable timestamped activity logs the platform generates; every single time an employee file is opened, edited or downloaded is recorded automatically. These logs serve as foundational proof we submit during routine DSGVO personnel data audits for our Stuttgart-based manufacturing clients, eliminating the need for us to manually track who accessed sensitive staff records. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** The most frustrating limitation is the complete absence of native DATEV Lohn und Gehalt integration. Each week I have to manually export full employee datasets, restructure column formatting, adjust absence coding and reupload everything separately into DATEV payroll software — this repetitive data mapping eats up multiple work hours every week. All platform data is hosted solely on UK servers with no EU-only storage tier available, which introduces major Schrems II compliance risks holding German personnel data. There are zero pre-built report templates tailored to German labour and data protection laws, meaning every audit document, retention summary and staff master data overview has to be custom built from scratch inside spreadsheets. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Before implementing Breathe, we tracked leave requests across scattered shared calendars, stored staff contracts across unorganised local drive folders and maintained employee master data in dozens of disconnected Excel workbooks. This fragmented setup made cross-referencing records for DSGVO audits incredibly slow and prone to human error. Breathe consolidates all absence management, holiday approval workflows and digital personnel document storage into one unified system, slashing redundant manual data entry for our 78-person HR team. The automatic access trail logs also standardise our audit evidence process, cutting down days of prep work before client compliance reviews. ### 2. Streamlined HR Processes with Room for Improvement in Compliance **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hellgren G. | Senior HR Systems & Digital Transformation Consultant, Human Resources, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2026 **What do you like best about Breathe?** As an HR systems consultant supporting German SMEs, the self-service portal is Breathe’s biggest strength. Employees independently handle holiday requests, update personal details and pull their own digital personnel files, slashing repetitive routine tickets for client HR teams. The unified document archive logs every view and edit action automatically, producing clear audit trails that hold up during DSGVO inspections. Its raw CSV outputs are neatly structured too, which trims down data cleaning time ahead of payroll handovers to accountants using DATEV. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** There are zero pre-built templates tailored to German employment law, plus no native connection to DATEV LODAS or Lohn und Gehalt. I have to manually build every custom field for social security identifiers, tax classes and working hour regulations from scratch for each client. The exported CSV layout never lines up with DATEV’s required import schema, so monthly payroll prep always involves tedious column reordering and value remapping. There’s also no automated reminder function for DSGVO retention deadlines, leaving us reliant on external spreadsheets to flag records due for archiving or secure deletion. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Most of our clients previously managed staff data across unlinked Excel files and unsecured shared drives, leading to fragmented records and inconsistent leave tracking. Breathe consolidates all personnel information, absence workflows and official documents into one secure cloud environment. Self-service functionality cuts low-value HR admin overhead, standardises how employee data is categorised to align with DSGVO rules, and supplies consistent export datasets that simplify pre-payroll data preparation before handoff to tax advisors. ### 3. Effective Stress Relief with Seamless HR Integration **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Priyanshu P. **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2026 **What do you like best about Breathe?** I like the Breathe app for its minimalist design, simplicity, and effectiveness in providing a quick, guided reset. It works exceptionally well as a simple, haptic-driven tool to 'reset' the nervous system, especially when paired with specific environmental conditions, settings, and complementary apps. I find it integrates well with several third-party tools to streamline HR processes, reduce manual data entry, and centralize information. The initial setup for learning proper breathing techniques, like diaphragmatic or deep breathing, is made to be very simple and accessible, often only taking a few minutes to get started. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** Breathe HR is praised for its simplicity and affordability for SMEs, but there are areas frequently highlighted as needing improvement or not working as well for users. It could also enhance its functionality to improve user experience and scalability. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Breathe to guide me through deep breathing exercises, helping shift from anxious to relaxed breathing, reducing stress, and improving focus. ### 4. Simple, intuitive HR software that makes managing people easy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mona V. | Head of Strategy, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Breathe?** Breathe has streamlined our HR processes and saved us time on admin. Breathe is incredibly user-friendly, even for those who aren’t tech-savvy. I especially like how clean and intuitive the interface is, everything from booking leave to reviewing performance is straightforward. It’s easy to navigate, requires very little training, and gives a clear overview of our team at a glance. The self-service functionality has empowered our team to manage their own records, which saves us so much time. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** There are occasional limitations with customisation, especially around reporting and integrating with other systems. It would be great to have more flexible dashboards or more integrations with payroll tools. Sometimes the performance review templates can feel a bit rigid. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Breathe is solving several key HR challenges for us, particularly around time-consuming admin, lack of visibility, and inconsistent processes. Before using Breathe, managing annual leave, sickness records, and performance reviews involved clunky spreadsheets and lots of email chasing. Now, everything is centralised and automated, which has significantly reduced errors and freed up time for more strategic work. It’s also improved our internal communication and accountability, team members can easily access their own records, and managers have real-time oversight of their teams. This has led to a more efficient, transparent, and empowered workplace. **Official Response from Anneli Briars:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Breathe. We're glad to hear that our self-service functionality has empowered your team and saved you time. We understand the importance of customisation and integrations, and we are constantly working to enhance our platform to provide more flexibility and seamless integrations with other systems. Your feedback on the performance review templates is valuable, please add this as an idea via the Breathe portal and we will take it into consideration for future improvements. ### 5. Compact HR system **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Emma Z. | Office Manager / H&S Advisor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Breathe?** It is handy to keep all employee records in one place and makes it easier to track holidays/ sickness and breathe will even analyse the data. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** It would be good if a calendar were included in the basic subscription, so that if changes are made in Breathe, they would also update on Outlook. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping employee records in one place. ### 6. Makes HR admin super easy! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tymiah F. | Office Administrator and Operations Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Breathe?** I find the platform incredibly easy to use and very intuitvie - its easy for the team to use and navigate and me myself as a HR administrator. I find the interface to be clean and simple, it's very flexible with all of the features you can add to, I like the idea of your whole employee profile with promotions etc being in one place. Automated reminders are really good for keeping things streamlined. I can see easily when someone has made a change in their profile. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** I would love to be able to see all info on a staff member in one page rather than going to all the different tabs, maybe could do jump to X section instead? **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes booking leave for the whole team very easy and it is easy for me to go through and verify everyones leave requests. It also is helpful for me as the office admin to see certain info about people such as their start date, type of contract they are on etc. **Official Response from Anneli Briars:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Breathe! We're glad to hear that the platform has made HR admin tasks easier for you and your team. We understand your suggestion about viewing all info on a staff member in one page. Please submit this as an idea via the Breathe Portal and we'll keep that in mind for enhancing the user experience. ### 7. Easy to use interface, clear on holiday booking! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jelka I. | Executive Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2024 **What do you like best about Breathe?** It's useful to see when other people in the company are off so you can choose your dates knowing that they are most likely to be approved. Sickness is also very easy to record and refer back. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** I believe this an additional paid for feature, but cancelling holiday required authorisation before we can book anything else, which can lead to delays. Also, HR Users dont show which the rest of the company you have to search for them seperately, and they also dont show in the group calendar so you can't see when they are off. In small businesses this is really useful to have the visibility of the entire company even if they are a HR user, or Managing Director. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Absences and Sickness tracking. Easy one place to look to ensure payroll is correct. ### 8. Great System **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Human Resources | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2025 **What do you like best about Breathe?** User-friendly with an interface that is easy to navigate. The Intercom forum is very useful for finding instructions on how to do different things and how to use/navigate through the system. The customer support is also excellent and easy to get through to. Also integrates with Hireful, which is great for streamlined recruitment. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** Reporting could do better, custom reports could be very useful. You can extract loads of data via full data reports, but this involves loads of filtering and data manipulation. **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Client relations management, core HR and data storage. Good for time keeping against client records as well as client documentation management, benefiting me by having a centralised platform with all client data contained. **Official Response from Anneli Briars:** > We're glad to hear that you find Breathe user-friendly and easy to navigate. Thank you for your feedback on the reporting feature. Please add this as an idea via the Breathe portal and our team will take this into consideration for future enhancements. ### 9. HR Software that makes my life easier! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Milly H. | Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Breathe?** Easy to go from different client portals. Centralised documentation and an easy platform to navigate. Makes for an efficient relationship as a remote consultant when helping employees and the employers. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** Not being able to change working patterns and holiday allowances in advance was a big one, but the recent update has changed this which is great. I would like the Time and Attendance module to be a bit easier to understand! I have a lot of clients that using clocking in software and are therefore reluctant to move to BreatheHR as it doesn't quite fit their needs, nor do I understand it well enough to promote it. I have a call arranged with my Account Manager to hopefully resolve this too. It would be good to be able to bulk upload Company Documents as this is time consuming! **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a remote consultant, it allows me to manage the admin side or HR effectively for each of my clients. ### 10. Managing my team is easy with Breath HR software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Katy W. | Projects Team Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Breathe?** It's an easy platform to manage a team in one place with easy access to their profiles/documents/training. It hasuseful tools to help manage things like annual leave (such as displaying the % used vs the days worked etc). I can also upload all their paperwork into the system for only myself and them to see. **What do you dislike about Breathe?** I do find the layout a little tricky to navigate sometimes - I might find a page of useful info and then struggle to find it again a second time **What problems is Breathe solving and how is that benefiting you?** Rather than having an HR team or multiple folders/files to keep track of - in Breath everything is in one central location. **Official Response from Anneli Briars:** > We're glad to hear that Breathe HR software is making team management easier for you. We appreciate your feedback about the layout, please submit this as an idea via the portal and we will take it into consideration for future improvements. ## Breathe Discussions - [File uploading. Is there any scope to allow sub folders?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/file-uploading-is-there-any-scope-to-allow-sub-folders) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How do i update the company branding in the top left of the platform?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-update-the-company-branding-in-the-top-left-of-the-platform) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Admin Resetting user's Passwords](https://www.g2.com/discussions/admin-resetting-user-s-passwords) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [C](https://www.g2.com/discussions/breathe-c) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Who owns BreatheHR?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/who-owns-breathehr) - 1 comment - [View Breathe pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/centurion-management-systems-breathe/reviews/breathe-review-4990673?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-16+20%3A15%3A40+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=a1c5605b-cf2b-44d3-977b-e0baa3876d2f&secure%5Btoken%5D=0974b8d5431e3482c4ffb52e9ba92eb8e9b63b98a9670a11f58e47b8275d3be2&format=llm_user) ## Breathe Features **Core HR** - Organization Management - Time, Attendance, and PTO - Expense Management - Compliance - Benefits Administration **Automation** - Process Automation **Platform Basics** - Performance - Security **Platform Basics** - Reporting - Dashboard - Performance **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization **Logistics** - Dashboards & Reporting - Data Collection **Platform Functionality** - Mobility **Generative AI** - AI Text Summarization **Time Tracking** - Ease of Completing Timesheets - Tracking Time to Project/Task - Billable Time Rate Management **Management** - Schedule Creation Tools - Schedule Management - Employee Leave Management - User Access - User Role Access - Employee Information **Platform Data** - Reporting - Platform Search - Visualization **Platform Additional Functionality** - Integrations - Mobility - Forecasting - Portal **Monitoring** - Integration **Platform** - Integration APIs - User, Role, and Access Management - Dashboards **Mobile Time Tracking** - Time Tracking **Administration** - Business Tool Integration - User, Role, and Access Management **Platform** - Reporting - APIs / Integration - Performance and Reliability - Mobile User Support **Workforce Management Platform Features** - Shift Scheduling - Time & Attendance Tracking - Absence & Leave Management - Skills Management - Self-Service Capabilities - Mobile Shift Scheduling - Team Communication ## Top Breathe Alternatives - [BambooHR](https://www.g2.com/products/bamboohr/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (5,216 reviews) - [Access PeopleHR](https://www.g2.com/products/access-peoplehr/reviews) - 4.0/5.0 (436 reviews) - [HiBob HRIS](https://www.g2.com/products/hibob-hris/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (2,480 reviews)