Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in Australian dollars.
Small business HR software is about getting the people admin, employee records, onboarding, leave and documents, off spreadsheets and email, without paying for an enterprise system you will not use. The good news for a small Australian business is that the entry point is genuinely cheap, and in one case free. Below are our ranked picks, then a live comparison table and calculator so you can cost each at your own headcount.
How we chose
Small businesses weigh HR software on cost first, then on how much of the real work it takes off your plate: onboarding a new hire, tracking leave, storing employee documents and staying on the right side of Australian employment obligations. We ranked on the real monthly cost once you count employees and any minimum, the depth of core HR (records, onboarding, time off, self-service), fit with Australian employment practice, and how well the tool suits your kind of workforce, desk-based or deskless. Pricing is live from our database in Australian dollars.
What small businesses should prioritise
Start with the shape of your team, because it decides the answer more than any feature list. A small office-based team is best served by a proper HRIS, and Deel HR gives you that at a flat $7 an employee a month with no minimum, so there is little reason to pay much at small scale. A deskless or shift-based team, hospitality, retail, trades, care, has different needs, rostering and a mobile time clock, and Connecteam is built for exactly that. Employment Hero is the one to reach for when Australian compliance depth matters most, but read its minimum: at about $100 a month it is priced for a growing team, not a founder plus one. Cost the tool at the headcount you expect in a year, not the one you have today.
Cheap HR software, and what a genuinely free tier actually covers
One of these picks is genuinely free, and it is worth being clear on what that buys. Connecteam's free plan, up to 10 employees, is an operations tool: rostering, a time clock, checklists and chat, rather than a records-first HRIS; the paid HR hub is $40 a month for your first 30 users once you outgrow it. Deel HR is not free (it dropped its free-up-to-200-employees tier in 2026), but Core HR is a flat $7 an employee a month with no base fee and no minimum, which is a full HRIS: records, onboarding, time off, documents and org charts. For a small office-based team it is close enough to free to be the easy default.
The verdict
For most Australian small businesses, Deel is the default: a real HR system at a flat, low $7-an-employee rate with no minimum, and room to grow into global hiring later. Choose Connecteam if your team is deskless or shift-based and you need rostering and a time clock more than a records system, and want the genuinely free tier. Choose Employment Hero when Australian compliance depth and a tightly joined HR-and-payroll platform matter, and your team is large enough to absorb its roughly $100 a month minimum. Use the calculator above to cost each at your employee count.
Running payroll too?
HR software and payroll overlap but are not the same purchase. If you also need to run pay, lodge Single Touch Payroll and interpret Modern Awards, see our guide to the best payroll software for small business, where Employment Hero and the accounting-based options are ranked on cost per employee.