Access PeopleHR vs HourSquare: UK payroll suite or free HR up to 10?
Short version: Access PeopleHR is the better fit for a UK or Irish business that wants HR and native payroll from one vendor, needs performance reviews or recruitment, and accepts a tiered per-employee price list with paid add-ons. HourSquare is the better fit for a team of up to 10 that wants every module free with no tier decisions, and for small teams outside the UK and Ireland that want payroll with tax packs for 24+ countries inside the HR tool. PeopleHR publishes prices from £3 per employee per month with a 14-day trial; HourSquare is free up to 10 employees and per-seat above that. Both are self-serve at the entry level.
Who this is for: Teams of 10 or fewer paying per employee plus add-ons for features they use lightly, teams outside the UK and Ireland that need payroll for other countries, and teams that want EU rather than UK hosting. Stay on PeopleHR if you need UK managed payroll, performance reviews, an ATS or a documented API.
- Pricing
- Free for teams up to 10 employees
- Free tier
- Every module, no card, no trial expiry, up to 10 employees
- Team size
- 1–200 employees
- How you buy
- Self-serve signup
- Hosting
- EU-hosted
- Pricing
- £3 per employee/month (Starter)
- Free tier
- Trial only
- Team size
- UK SMBs
- How you buy
- Self-serve signup
- Hosting
- UK (Telehouse N2, London); APAC customers at Equinix Sydney-hosted
Vendor facts as published on 2026-09-05. (source)
Choose HourSquare if…
If you have 10 or fewer employees, every module is free with no card, no tiers and no add-ons If you pay people outside the UK and Ireland, HourSquare runs payroll with tax packs for 24+ countries If you want timesheets, pulse surveys, whistleblowing and offboarding without per-module fees, HourSquare bundles them in the one price If you need EU hosting and an audit log of every change and sensitive read, HourSquare states both; PeopleHR is UK-hosted with logs on request If you want 2FA with passkeys and SSO for every user, HourSquare includes them on every plan
Choose Access PeopleHR if…
You want UK or Ireland payroll run or fully managed by the HR vendor You need performance reviews or appraisals; HourSquare has no performance module You need an ATS, learning, benefits or expenses in the same suite; HourSquare has none of these You need a native mobile app now; HourSquare's native app is still in development You need a documented API and pre-built integrations; HourSquare has no public API yet
UK SMBs that want HR and native UK/Ireland payroll from one vendor and are comfortable with a modular, tiered price list.
Side by side
Every Access PeopleHR cell links to the page it was read from. HourSquare cells describe what ships today — nothing on our roadmap counts.
Pricing & buying
People & records
Time off & time
Payroll
Engagement & insight
Access & security
Platform
Vendor facts for Access PeopleHR were checked on 2026-09-05. If something has changed, email support@hoursquare.com and we will fix it within a day.
About Access PeopleHR
UK HR and payroll suite for small and mid-sized businesses owned by The Access Group, sold in tiered per-employee plans with paid add-on modules.
Where Access PeopleHR is genuinely strong
Native UK and Ireland payroll with self-service or fully managed options Low published entry price of £3 per employee/month with a 14-day no-card trial SSO, 2FA and a documented API with 94 endpoints Large UK install base: over 7,000 businesses and 680,000 users Wide suite including learning, benefits, expenses and recognition
Where it tends to fall short for our typical buyer
Modular add-ons (timesheets, performance, recruitment, analytics) each add £1.50-£2 PEPM on top of the tier Pro and Elite+ tiers are quote-only and sales-led UK-centric product; payroll limited to UK and Ireland Owned by a large enterprise software group; product spans several Access brands G2 rating of 4.1 is lower than the other two vendors here
Public reviews: G2 4.1/5 (295) · Capterra 4.3/5 (source)
Pricing: tiers plus add-ons versus free up to 10
PeopleHR publishes a GBP price list per employee per month: Starter £3, Core £5.50, Pro £8 and Elite+ £9.50. Starter and Core have a 14-day trial with no card; Pro and Elite+ are sold through sales. Timesheets, performance, recruitment and premium analytics are add-ons at £1.50–£2 per employee per month each, so a 10-person team on Core with timesheets and performance pays around £90 per month before payroll. HourSquare is free for teams up to 10 employees with every module included, no card and no trial expiry. Above 10 employees it is a simple per-seat rate agreed with you, with no add-on pricing, no minimum seats and no annual commitment.
Where PeopleHR is stronger
PeopleHR runs native UK and Ireland payroll, as self-service software from £3 or fully managed from £5 per employee per month, which HourSquare does not offer as a managed service. It has a performance module with appraisals and reviews, an ATS, learning, benefits, expenses and recognition, native iOS and Android apps, and a documented API with 94 endpoints plus over 1,000 pre-built integrations. It is ISO 27001 certified, hosted at Telehouse N2 in London, and used by over 7,000 UK businesses. If you are a UK employer who wants HR, payroll and hiring in one suite with a mobile app, PeopleHR covers that today.
Where HourSquare is stronger for a self-serve small team
HourSquare includes everything in one price with no add-on decisions: timesheets with manager approval, shift patterns, onboarding and offboarding templates with automatic login disable, surveys and recurring pulse surveys, an anonymous whistleblowing channel, a reports hub with CSV/XLSX export, roles and per-employee permissions, an audit log of every change and every sensitive read, per-company SSO (Okta, Microsoft Entra, Google) and 2FA with passkeys. PeopleHR does not list offboarding, org chart or whistleblowing on its site, and its audit log is described as security logs available on request. HourSquare payroll runs for 24+ countries against PeopleHR's two, and HourSquare is hosted in the EU rather than the UK.
Migration: CSV export, no connector
There is no connector between PeopleHR and HourSquare. Moving means exporting employee records, absence balances and documents from PeopleHR as CSV and setting up HourSquare from those files. PeopleHR states data export and deletion within 30 days on exit. HourSquare has no public API yet, so PeopleHR's API cannot be used to sync into it. If you run UK payroll in PeopleHR, close the tax year or a full pay period there before switching.
How to decide
- You need UK or Ireland managed payroll from the HR vendor: PeopleHR.
- You need performance reviews, an ATS, learning or benefits modules: PeopleHR.
- You need a native mobile app or a documented API today: PeopleHR.
- You have 10 or fewer employees and want the full product free: HourSquare.
- You run payroll outside the UK and Ireland: HourSquare, with tax packs for 24+ countries.
- You want EU hosting, a full audit log and passkeys included: HourSquare.
Frequently asked
Does Access PeopleHR publish its pricing?
Where is PeopleHR hosted, and is it GDPR compliant?
How do I switch from PeopleHR to HourSquare?
Does PeopleHR run payroll, and which countries does each cover?
Other comparisons
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Free up to 10 employees · GDPR-native · EU-hosted