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Breathe vs Workable - Comparison 2025

Breathe vs. Workable

Last updated on

Reviewed by Steph Leung

Stackfix Product & Operations Lead

SL

Workable and Breathe serve distinct market segments within the HRIS space, with Workable excelling in user experience and a robust integrated applicant tracking system (ATS), while Breathe offers stronger learning and development features.

Workable is better suited for growing companies prioritizing efficient onboarding and intuitive HR processes, particularly those already using its ATS. Breathe, on the other hand, is more appropriate for organizations focusing on employee development and requiring built-in expense management and time tracking capabilities. While both platforms cover core HRIS functionality, Workable's superior customization and ease of use make it the stronger choice for companies prioritizing user experience and workflow efficiency.

Breathe Product Logo

Advantages of Breathe

Breathe offers expense management functionality

Breathe includes expense management functionality, allowing companies to review and reimburse employee expenses. Workable lacks this feature entirely, which could be a significant drawback for organizations needing to manage business expenses through their HRIS.

Breathe offers learning management functionality

We found Breathe's learning management system to be particularly strong, offering a comprehensive library of pre-built courses covering various topics. Unlike Workable, which doesn't offer learning management functionality, Breathe allows managers to assign courses with completion dates, track progress, and filter assignments by role, department, or division. This is especially valuable for companies prioritizing continuous employee development.

Workable Product Logo

Advantages of Workable

Workable offers superior workflow automation
Workable's workflow automation capabilities, particularly for onboarding, are significantly more advanced than Breathe's basic task creation system. While testing, we found Workable's ability to seamlessly transfer candidate information to employee profiles and schedule automated onboarding emails particularly valuable for HR teams managing multiple new hires.
Workable is significantly more user-friendly
We found Workable's interface to be notably more intuitive and easier to navigate compared to Breathe. While testing both platforms, Workable's logical layout and clear navigation made it possible for new users to master the system within an hour, whereas Breathe's interface was often confusing, with important features like time-off requests hidden under unintuitive menu locations.
Workable provides better time-off management
Workable's time-off management system is more sophisticated than Breathe's, offering rich customization options for different types of leave and holiday allowances. Unlike Breathe, which requires individual policy assignments and lacks a dedicated time-off dashboard, Workable makes it straightforward to manage and track employee absences.
Workable has superior customization capabilities
Workable offers significantly more flexibility in customization compared to Breathe's limited options. While testing, we found Workable allows extensive customization of entities, office locations, and data fields, whereas Breathe restricts users to just 5 custom fields with limited options.

Breathe is best for

  • Businesses <20 employees based in the UK
  • Who are looking for a low-cost, entry-level HRIS with learning management and recruitment tracking

Workable is best for

  • Businesses with under 50 employees who already use Workable's ATS
  • And/or who just want core HR functionality like time-off management and employee information storage

Breathe is less good for

  • Business > 20 employees
  • Who need an HRIS with robust functionality and customisability, especially with regards to performance reviews and managing HR workflows
  • And/ or value quality customer support

Workable is less good for

  • Medium to large teams (>25 teams)
  • Who do not plan on using Workable as an ATS

Gallery

Breathe logoBreathe
Breathe screenshot
Workable logoWorkable
Workable screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

Breathe logo

Breathe

Starting at

$24.16

Converted from GBP

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Workable logo

Workable

Starting at

$60

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
5

Functionality

5/10

<p>While Breathe appears to offer a wide range of features on paper, including core HR, performance management, an integrated ATS, and learning &amp; development, much of this functionality feels half-baked and unintuitive.</p><p>For example, the "performance review" module merely allows you to attach an appraisal to an employee's profile, offering no capability to create a company-wide performance review cycle with pre-set questions.&nbsp;</p>
5

Functionality

5/10

<p>Workable’s strength lies in its seamless integration with the Workable ATS, making it a great option for companies already using their recruiting platform. As a standalone HRIS, however, it focuses on core HR functionality like time-off management and onboarding. While it covers the basics well, it lacks some features SMBs might find valuable, such as time tracking, engagement surveys, and performance review management.</p>
Ease of Use
3

Ease of Use

3/10

<p>We found some aspects of Breathe's platform bizarrely unintuitive. For example, viewing the company's time-off calendar requires you to go into the "reports" section. Instead of creating performance reviews for groups of employees, you can only add performance reviews to each employee one-by-one. Furthermore, there are no separate tabs for onboarding and goals - these are all hidden away under a single “company” tab.</p>
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Workable has an easy-to-use system with a clear layout. Setting up new processes and policies is set up in a logical order, with tutorial videos often provided to assist users. An average SMB employee would require around an hour and minimal guidance to master the product.</p>
Look and feel
4

Look and feel

4/10

<p>The homepage of Breathe features a modern design, creating a strong first impression. However, as users navigate deeper into the platform, the design becomes less consistent with the initial modern aesthetic, and the layout feels cluttered with information.</p><p>Load times are efficient, averaging under 2 seconds.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>Workable has a pleasant look, with a simple layout and decluttered design. We experienced fast load times when navigating between pages.</p>
Customisability
3

Customisability

3/10

<p>Breathe offers very limited customizability across its modules, which can be a significant drawback for many teams. For instance, users can only create 3 text fields and 2 date fields as custom fields. When setting up a leave policy, there is no option to specify which group of employees the policy applies to.</p><p>Additionally, in the workflows module, customization is restricted to renaming tasks, with no flexibility to tailor the workflows further.</p>
7

Customisability

7/10

<p>You can customise most things on Workable, from entities and office locations, to data fields and report filters.</p><p>We found, however, that it lacks the deeper customisability offered by more mature HRIS (e.g., Rippling, Deel), such as creating workflows with conditional logic.</p>
Ease of Setup
9

Ease of Setup

9/10

<p>Breathe offers a self-serve free trial which doesn't require you to talk to sales in order to gain access. Purchasing doesn't require talking to sales. Due to Breathe' very limited customisability, fully customizing the platform can be done within 1-2 business days.</p>
6

Ease of Setup

6/10

<p>Workable does offer a self-serve free trial that doesn't require talking to sales to gain access. However, purchasing requires talking to sales first. Fully customizing and setting up the platform can be done within 1 week. Customization and setting up is simple enough to complete without assistance from an expert and more complicated processes (eg: creating custom automated workflows) can be done with help from the help center.</p>
Customer Support
3

Customer Support

3/10

<p>Users have access to help center with articles explaining the features available on the platform. Breathe also has a built-in AI chatbot, however, we found this chatbot to be quite useless. It answers queries by referring users to the help center. Furthermore, wait times for a human agent is a couple hours and only during UK office hours.</p>
6

Customer Support

6/10

<p>Workable has a number of customer support options. A detailed FAQ section provides considerable information. The AI-chat function was able to answer some of our questions about functionality, but struggled with more complex requests. Despite messaging during regular business hours, we were unable to speak directly with an agent on the live chat, and were faced with several hours of waiting until we heard back from an agent via email.</p>
Integratability
4

Integratability

4/10

<p>Breathe lacks a lot of basic integrations such as Slack. However, they do provide an API.</p>
4

Integratability

4/10

<p>Although Workable allows for integration with numerous third-party products, we found that its offering among the most relevant products was less impressive. If you're looking for integration with software such as Jazz HR, Ravio, or Guideline, you'll be disappointed.</p>
Ease of Migration
5

Ease of Migration

5/10

<p>Breathe's exporting functionality is standard with users being able to export most data within the platform from reports to employee information.</p>
7

Ease of Migration

7/10

<p>Workable provides a number of report types that are possible to export, from payroll information, to time-off. It does not provide functionality to generate reports using information outside of its standard categories.</p>
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