Open-source alternatives to BambooHR

At a glance

Open-source alternatives to BambooHR compared
Tool	Licence	Self-hosting difficulty	Who it suits	Strengths
OrangeHRM	GPL-3.0-or-later	Easy to moderate: a PHP app with MySQL or MariaDB, and a Docker image is available	Small firms that want staff records and holiday booking and little else	Employee records, leave, time tracking, recruitment, performance reviews, reporting, mobile app
Frappe HR	GPL-3.0	Harder: Python, Node, MariaDB and Redis on the Frappe framework, usually alongside ERPNext	Growing firms that want HR, expenses and appraisals joined up, especially if they use ERPNext	Onboarding to exit, leave, attendance with mobile check-in, expense claims, appraisals, recruitment, very active development

OrangeHRM: GPL-3.0-or-later. This is the free Starter edition. OrangeHRM Advanced is a separate paid product. Licence checked 31 October 2026.
Frappe HR: GPL-3.0. Licence checked 31 October 2026.

Most small firms come to HR software for the same reason. The staff list is in one spreadsheet, the holiday chart is in another, and someone has to ask the office manager how many days they have left. BambooHR sorts that out nicely, but the price is aimed at bigger firms. Core is $250 a month (about £189) for up to 25 employees, so even a team of eight pays around $3,000 a year, or about £2,273.

If what you really need is staff records and holiday booking, that's a lot to pay. The two open-source options below do those jobs on your own server, with no per-employee fees.

One warning before we start: neither of these will run your UK payroll. More on that below.

OrangeHRM

OrangeHRM has been around for many years, and it comes in two forms. Starter is the free, open-source edition, and Advanced is the paid one. This page is about Starter.

The basics covered. Employee records, admin, leave management and time tracking, which is what most small firms are after.
More than you might expect for free. OrangeHRM's own comparison lists recruitment, performance management, reporting and a mobile app in Starter.
A simple stack. It's a PHP app on MySQL or MariaDB. Version 5.9 supports PHP 7.4 to 8.5, so it runs on the sort of ordinary server plenty of firms already have. A Docker image is available too.
Slack and Google Chat notifications were added in version 5.9.

The paid modules are worth knowing about, so you don't expect them here. Onboarding, rostering, training, surveys, discipline and a few others are Advanced only, priced per employee on a custom quote.

Frappe HR

Frappe HR is the more ambitious option, and it's the more modern one. It grew out of ERPNext, the open-source business system, and became its own product in version 14.

The whole employee lifecycle: onboarding, promotions, transfers and exit interviews.
Leave and attendance, with policies, regional holiday import and geolocation-tagged mobile check-in.
Expense claims and advances, with multi-level approval, linked to ERPNext accounting.
Performance: goals, self-evaluations and appraisal cycles.
Recruitment, from planning a role through to hiring.
A mobile app for leave requests, approvals and check-in.
Very active development on GitHub.

The price of all that is complexity. It needs Python, Node, MariaDB and Redis, on Debian or Ubuntu, and the local install steps pull in ERPNext as well. If you already run ERPNext it's an easy add-on. If you just want a holiday calendar, it's a lot of machinery. Frappe Cloud offers managed hosting if you don't want to run it yourself.

Which one?

My pick is OrangeHRM Starter. It's the simpler thing to run, and it covers staff records, leave and time tracking without a whole business system behind it. The main drawback is that it's a plainer product than BambooHR, so don't expect the same polish.

Staff records and holidays, kept simple: OrangeHRM.
HR, expenses and appraisals all joined up, or you already use ERPNext: Frappe HR.

What it costs

BambooHR publishes a flat monthly price for 25 employees or fewer, and from $10 per employee a month at 50 or more. Add-ons such as payroll are by quote, and volume discounts apply.

BambooHR

BambooHR Core: £189.38 a month for up to 25 people (converted from $250 at the European Central Bank reference rate on 2 October 2026). Checked 31 October 2026 (source).
BambooHR Pro: £321.95 a month for up to 25 people (converted from $425 at the European Central Bank reference rate on 2 October 2026). Checked 31 October 2026 (source).

Self-hosted, run for you

No per-user fees. Adding people doesn't add licence costs.
Setup: a one-off fee to set it up and move your data across.
Hosting and care: a fixed monthly fee covering every app on your server.
I'll quote once I know what you need.

Paid tool prices exclude VAT unless stated.

The UK angle

This is one category where UK specifics really do matter.

Keep your UK payroll separate. Employers must send HMRC a Full Payment Submission on or before each payday, through payroll software. I found no sign that either of these tools does that. Frappe HR has a payroll module, but it's built around salary structures and income tax slabs rather than PAYE, and a UK regional app on Frappe Cloud lists RTI submissions as "coming soon". So keep your existing payroll provider and use these for HR.
Health data needs extra care. The ICO treats sickness information as special category data, with stricter rules. Where you can, record absence rather than the medical reason, and limit who can see it.
Think about holidays. Check either tool handles your leave rules, particularly for part-timers and irregular hours. Test this before moving anyone across.
US-hosted HR tools are fine for most small firms, with the right checks. HR data has its own category under the UK-US data bridge, so if you stay with a US vendor, check it's certified for HR data. Self-hosting just means you can answer "where is it?" in one line.

Honest drawbacks

No UK payroll. It's worth saying twice.
Less polish. BambooHR is a very slick product, and employees will notice the difference.
Security is on you. A staff database is about as sensitive as a small firm's data gets. Someone must keep it patched, backed up and locked down.
Frappe HR isn't built around UK rules. Expect some setup work to fit it to how you run things here.
OrangeHRM's best features are upsold. Onboarding and rostering, two things growing firms often want, sit in the paid edition.
Moving in takes time. Holiday balances, start dates and contracts all need bringing across and checking, and it's best done at the start of a leave year.
Fewer integrations. BambooHR connects to a lot of other software out of the box.

If you need a UK leave rule handled properly, or your HR system talking to your payroll provider, the team at Dev Partners can build that on top of either tool.