12 Best HR Apps for 2024 — Comparison Guide

Human Resources, (aka HR) a department known for managing mountains of paperwork and endless spreadsheets, has experienced a major transformation in productivity. Instead of manually maintaining these operational processes, HR teams have access to amazing human resource apps to easily streamline processes, boost productivity, and engage and motivate employees. 

With so many options across workforce management software, HR mobile apps, people analytics, and payroll tools, the biggest challenge is deciding which one is right for your HR department. But you're in luck, we've researched hundreds of apps to save you the legwork of finding your next HR software solution. Let's see how we can tackle your biggest challenges across recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and employee engagement in 2024.

12 best HR apps for 2024

1. Reclaim.ai -Best for productivity & work-life balance
2. BambooHR- Best employee experience
3. Rippling- Best for small & medium-sized businesses
4. Paychex Flex- Best for new companies
5. Workday - Best for enterprise
6. Monday.com- Best for customization
7. Deel- Best for remote teams
8. Justworks- Best for PEO
9. Paycor - Best for overall payroll
10. Zenefits- Best for freelancer management
11. Homebase- Best for managing hourly employees
12. Sage HR- Best for employees

1. Reclaim.ai - Best for productivity & work-life balance

Reclaim.ai is an AI calendar app that HR leaders love for helping teams defend focus time for productive work, get their meetings under control, and protect their work-life balance to combat employee turnover. The app automatically finds the best time for employees' tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in their busy schedules while keeping their calendars flexible for priority changes. This is the best overall HR app because it truly optimizes employees' most valuable resource -- their time. 

If you're looking for a big ROI boost in 2024, Reclaim can help your current employees operate up to 40% more productively by eliminating thousands of wasted hours in meetings, inefficient fragmented time blocks on the calendar, and all those daily distractions that pull employees out of productive work. Build a more productive culture in your organization with Reclaim, and track the transformation with advanced People Analytics to understand where employees spend their time -- and give company leaders the data they need to make strategic decisions around performance and goals.

Key features

• Tasks: Employees and managers can auto-schedule tasks to their calendars at the best time around existing events(while keeping schedules flexible for priority changes).
• Habits: Auto-schedule recurring routines at the best time around existing calendar events (hundreds of role/department templates available).
• Smart 1:1 Meetings: Find the best time for one-on-one meetings across both attendees' calendars.
• Scheduling Links: Share availability for meetings with high-priority and flexible duration settings to book important meetings sooner.
• Buffer Time: Auto-schedule breaks and travel time around calendar events.
• No-Meeting Days: Defend time for your team to get stuff done every week.
• Slack Status Sync: Allow employees to auto-sync their Slack status to their calendar to prevent interruptions and context switching.
• People Analytics: Analyze where employees spend time across meeting types, tasks, habits, and work-life balance metrics.
• Personal time tracking: Allow employees to track their time across activities so they can defend more time for productive work and monitor their time in meetings.
• Calendar Sync: Allow employees to protect personal commitments on their work calendar to avoid conflicts.
• Integrations: ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Linear, Google Tasks, Zoom, and Slack.

Limitations

• Currently only supports Google Calendar (Outlook coming soon).

Reclaim.ai pricing: Free → paid plans start at $8/user/month

2. BambooHR - Best employee experience

If you need to manage employee data and streamline HR processes, BambooHR is the HR app for you. This cloud-based HR software offers a range of features, including onboarding for new employees, self-service options, and simplified reporting. Plus, with valuable insights into your workforce, BambooHR can help businesses of any size optimize their HR operations.

We consider BambooHR to be one of the best HR software apps on this list because it simplifies and supports every step of the employee experience through its intuitive features such as data, reporting, hiring, onboarding, payroll, time off, benefits, employee experience, and performance -- along with its many integrations with other apps and services like Indeed, Slack, Greenhouse, and more.

Key features

• All-in-one platform: Nearly all HR functions, including HR data & reporting, employee experience & performance, payroll, time, & benefits, and more, are simplified and supported, connected to a single secure data source.
• Hiring & onboarding: Applicant tracking system and proactive tasks make hiring and onboarding easy, and provide a great experience for candidates and new hires.
• Payroll: Supports several payroll functions, including direct deposit, pay stubs, runs, reporting, automatic tax filing, and employee self-service platform.
• Benefits: Streamline the entire benefits administration process, including open enrollment, new hires, QLEs, along with comprehensive reporting.
• Compliance: Automatically handles all federal, state, and local taxes to keep your organization compliant with all necessary regulations.
• Time tracking: Supports hourly time management features, including timesheet management, automated reminders, self-service time entry, time clock, and remote worker support.
• Data & reporting: Offers instant reports, automated workflows, employee data management, and analytics.
• Employee experience: Provides various tools to collect feedback, enhance employee contentment, and nurture your workforce.
• Integrations: Indeed, Google, Slack, Microsoft, Human Interest, Checkr, and more. 

Limitations

• Pricing is not transparent.
• Access to BambooHR's marketplace and open API is limited to specific paid plans.

BambooHR pricing: contact sales for quote

3. Rippling - Best for small & medium-sized businesses

Rippling is an HR app that is a top choice for small to mid-sized businesses. Rippling makes it simple to handle payroll, benefits, expenses, devices, apps, and more from a single platform. This all-in-one approach simplifies HR management, saving businesses time and money while ensuring compliance with ever-changing laws and regulations. Whether it's a small team in the US or a fully distributed workforce around the world, Rippling gives you a single system to run everything you need to hire, pay, and manage your team.

Key features

• All-in-one platform: Combines dozens of HR, IT, and operations functions into a platform.
• Recruiting, hiring, & onboarding: Automate the hiring process across headcount planning, candidate sourcing, recruiting, hiring, and employee onboarding.
• Payroll: Sync all your HR data with payroll for both US and global payments.
• Benefits: Manage employee health insurance, 401(k), commuter, and more, while automating benefits administration across enrollment, updating deductions, and administering COBRA.
• Compliance: Automatically handle all tax and compliance work, for local, state, and national regulations. 
• Time, attendance, & PTO: Track various workforce-related information such as time, attendance, paid time off (PTO), sick time, and schedules.
• Employee engagement: Engage employees with the Pulse library of employee survey templates, or create your own to send employee-wide or to specific teams.
• IT management: Manage employees' apps, devices, data, and security across all locations.
• Finance: Automate dozens of financial tasks such as managing corporate cards, expense accounts, bills, and more.
• Self-service portal: Allow employees to access and update their own information.
• Customization: HR administrators can customize their workflows to accommodate their unique processes*.*

Limitations

• Rippling does not include modules for performance or engagement, and instead relies on third-party ATS (applicant tracking system) and LMS (learning management system).

• Rippling isn't well suited for larger companies or enterprises.

• Rippling's feature set is not as comprehensive as other established HR and payroll apps.

Rippling Pricing: Starting at $8/user/month

4. Paychex Flex - Best for new companies

Paychex is one of the leading providers of payroll, HR, and professional employer organization (PEO) solutions. Paychex Flex is especially notable for its highly-rated mobile apps, available for both iOS and Android devices. While the backbone of their platform is the Paychex Flex payroll software, which provides easy payment options for desktop and mobile users, Paychex does offer flexible solutions for managing basic to advanced HR payroll processes, making it an ideal choice for small businesses looking to scale.

Key features

• Self-service portal: Allow employees to access and review their own pay stubs and tax forms.
• Onboarding: Leverage electronic onboarding and online employee handbooks to streamline new employee setup.
• Payroll: Offers payroll package bundles and custom solutions to support self-employed businesses through large enterprise companies.
• Benefits: Access to cost-effective and comprehensive employee benefits packages, including 401k, HSAs, FSAs, health, vision, and dental insurance, and ancillary benefits.
• Compliance: Work with compliance experts to guarantee your reporting and tax filing comply with state and local regulations.
• Time & attendance: Track time and attendance with Paychex's web punch, mobile app, kiosk app with facial verification, biometric iris and fingerscan time clocks, and interactive voice response system.
• Accessible mobile app: Paychex Flex HR mobile app allows employees to view pay and tax information, while employers can submit payroll and view reports.

Limitations

• Can be expensive for smaller companies.

• UX and UI is a bit clunky and could be improved.

• Users have shared that customer support is inconsistent.

Paychex Flex pricing: Starting at $39 + $5/user/month

5. Workday - Best for enterprise

Workday is a cloud-based HR software designed to manage various HR functions like payroll, benefits, recruiting, talent management, and time tracking. It is a comprehensive tool that simplifies nearly all HR processes by automating tasks and streamlining workflows. With its advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, Workday helps organizations make data-driven decisions and gain insights into their workforce. However, while its scope does make it one of the most powerful HR tools on our list, it is fairly expensive and better suited to larger enterprise companies.

Key features

• Suite of HR apps: Seamless suite of apps across financials, HR, talent, payroll, analytics, and more.
• Recruiting: Gives recruiters a single platform to manage their entire hiring workflow, including application assessments and interviews.
• Payroll: Unified system that syncs HR, payroll, and time data all in one, along with several payroll partners, such as Alight, everBe, and OneSource Virtual, to give you more control over your payroll operations.
• Time tracking: Employees can use a desktop, tablet, or mobile device to clock in and out, along with physical time clock integrations via Workday APIs.
• Analytics & reporting: Provides a complete picture of your people data, including their skills, well-being, performance, and location.
• Talent management: Provides tools to promote employee development, reward employees, and help managers assist in career planning.
• Vendor management: Uses AI and machine learning to help HR, finance, and procurement teams optimize their operations, along with additional features like consolidated invoicing, streamlined approval processes, SOW milestone payment, simplified time and expense entry, and more.
• Finance: Automates your financial processes and delivers data from all corners of your organization while automatically ingesting, enriching, and transforming event data into accounting.
• Planning: Provides budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analytics features for companies of all sizes.
• Employee self-service: Employee portal helps quickly onboard new hires with important company documentation.

Limitations

• Can be slow to load for some users.

• Can be prohibitively expensive for some organizations.

• Not suited for smaller or mid-sized companies.

Workday pricing: Starting at $45/user/month

6. Monday.com - Best for customization

Technically, Monday.com is not necessarily an "HR app". However, it has many useful work and project management features that can be applied to many HR tasks. For example, if you're recruiting new employees, you can use its Kanban boards and dashboards to efficiently create, assign, and track hiring-related tasks. The platform also offers HR templates (which can be customized) to assist you in monitoring and managing the recruitment pipeline, new hire onboarding, and more.

Key features

• Dashboards: Create custom dashboards for easy data analysis of HR activities.
• Kanban boards: Help teams manage their workflow and improve their efficiency.
• Gantt charts: Easily track project timelines by visualizing key dates and dependencies.
• Recruitment & onboarding: Create custom workflows and templates to track your recruitment pipeline and automate the onboarding process for new hires.Automations: Avoid time-consuming meetings and email chains by creating custom automation in minutes.
• Performance monitoring: Track employee progress across tasks and teams to improve performance toward company goals.
• Time off: Collect and monitor PTO requests from employees, and receive reminders for pending leave requests.
• Performance reviews: Manage your performance reviews, streamline meetings, and track outcomes from the discussions.
• Integrations: Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Miro, DocuSign, Jobflows, Growstars, & more.

Limitations

• Powerful project management capabilities that can help HR, but itself does not contain most HR functions found in other apps.

Monday.com pricing: Free → $16/user/month

7. Deel - Best for remote teams

Deel is an all-in-one HR platform that provides hiring and payment solutions to businesses recruiting globally. It's one of the best HR apps for remote teams because it simplifies the process of managing payroll and compliance obligations across different countries, eliminating the need to establish legal entities in each country in which they operate. This saves remote teams time, money, and resources by centralizing all of their payroll and compliance obligations in one easy-to-use platform.

Key features

• All-in-one platform: Manage your entire workforce and provide an exceptional experience for contractors, EOR employees, and in-house employees by consolidating them onto one platform.
• Hiring: Onboard employees and contractors abroad, fend off misclassification risks, and run background checks globally.
• Payroll: Facilitate payments and taxes to workers all around the world.
• Benefits: Offer all statutory, common, and competitive benefits in each market.
• Compliance: Offers extensive assistance for addressing compliance, legal inquiries, and potential contractor misclassification.
• Numerous payment methods: Supports a variety of payment methods companies can use for their payroll operations.
• In-house visa support: Streamline international hiring in 30+ countries with in-house immigration support.
• Equipment shipping: Ship and manage all the necessary tools and equipment to your team members.
• Integrations: BambooHR, Greenhouse, Ashby, Quickbooks, and more.

Limitations

• Does not offer performance management features found in other HR apps.

• May not be well-suited to larger companies.

Deel pricing: Free → $599/month

8. Justworks - Best for PEO

Justworks is another excellent PEO and payroll platform that helps businesses streamline many HR functions. Justworks bundles payroll, compliance, HR, and benefits access all into a single platform, so you don't need to worry about administering employment-related responsibilities. Not only that, but with group buying power, you can access several PEO health insurance options and other perks. Finally, it is designed for small and medium-sized businesses, offering scalable pricing plans.

Key features

• Fully centralized HR dashboard: Automate administrative tasks and visualize important information, such as permissions, organization charts, company directories, employee database, handbooks, policies, and company docs.
• Hiring & onboarding: Easily expand into new states for remote hires, organize employee documentation, and integrate with Greenhouse applicant tracking to streamline hiring and onboarding.
• Payroll: Automates the payroll process, including automatic direct deposit for full-time and part-time employees, and support for a global workforce.
• Benefits: Manage employee benefits and access a variety of high-quality health insurance plans, and access top-tier benefits and perks usually only available to large companies.
• Compliance: Helps employers stick to all employment regulations, covering federal taxes, state taxes, employment practices liability insurance, workers' compensation, and local regulations.
• Time-tracking & attendance: Monitor contractor work, employee work, and overtime with time and attendance features.

Limitations

• The ATS heavily relies on Greenhouse's third-party integration.

• Can be expensive for larger teams.

Justworks pricing: $59/month → $99/month

9. Paycor - Best for overall payroll

If you're looking for more than just a payroll platform, Paycor is a great option. Automate your tedious HR tasks so you can spend more time on your important work. With Paycor, your employees can use self-service tools to update their profiles, sign digital documents, and complete tasks without interrupting your workflow.

One of the best things about Paycor is its transparent reporting system. You can easily access reports on headcount, turnover rate, compensation levels, and absenteeism, and communication is a breeze with mobile push notifications and chat messages. Plus, you can create unlimited workflows and automate as many tasks as you need. Paycor also has several pre-made workflows for recruiting, scheduling, and paying staff designed for several different industries.

Key features

• All-in-one platform: Comprehensive human resources tools that encompass payroll, benefits, workforce management, and analytics tools.
• Recruitment & hiring: Find qualified candidates, source new talent, and easily streamline your onboarding through automated processes.
• Onboarding & talent development: Easily onboard new employees,  share access to all necessary paperwork, tax forms, and direct deposits, and support continuous development for existing employees.
• Payroll: Automate your payroll processes for all employee types, for organizations with 1-1,000 employees.
• Benefits: Manage and administer employee benefits across health insurance, life insurance, retirement plans, and disability insurance, manage workers comp, and streamline ACA reporting.
• Compliance: Handles all tax calculations, filing, and payments, including sending out W-2 and 1099 forms along with tracking and storing critical regulatory documentation. 
• Time tracking: Create and manage employee schedules, and monitor attendance from your dashboard.
• Analytics & tracking: Use pre-made reports to easily analyze data and make informed decisions.
• Employee engagement: Create pulse surveys to gather feedback, offer career management support, and build personalized training and development plans.
• Mobile app: Available as a browser-based application, and a mobile or tablet app.

Limitations

• Can be slower to implement compared to other options.

• More expensive than other HR platforms.

• Some important features are exclusively included in higher-priced plans.

Paycor pricing: contact sales for quote

10. Zenefits - Best for freelancer management

Zenefits is a top-notch HR software solution that caters to the needs of startups and small businesses. It excels in benefits administration, making it the go-to choice for most small companies. Its benefits reporting features are unmatched compared to many other HR platforms, and it offers effortless administration, customizable add-on services, and expert human advisers to assist you when needed.

Key features

• Comprehensive HR platform: Provides tools for a wide range of HR functions, such as hiring, onboarding, employee management, and more.
• Recruiting & onboarding: Streamline job posting, candidate qualifications, and hiring, and automate onboarding documentation, benefits elections, and account setup.
• Payroll: Handles a wide range of advanced payroll functions, including unlimited payruns, direct deposits, tips reporting, garnishments, contractor payments, and automatic syncing across entire HR department. 
• Benefits: Offer and manage employee benefits, including medical, life and disability, health savings account (HSA), flexible savings account (FSA), and 401(k).
• Compliance: Automatically notify the right state when a new employee is hired, and automate federal and state tax filings, FLSA overtime, COBRA, and W2 and 1099s.
• Time tracking & scheduling: Create, edit, and track employee shifts, time off, and activity.
• Employee analytics: Provides detailed analytics and insights on headcount, employee demographics, compensation, equity, and more.
• People Hub: Allows employees to collaborate with one another while allowing people teams to communicate important information.
• User-friendly interface: Platform usability makes it easy for users to stay on top of their paperwork, benefits, and performance management tasks.
• Transparent pricing: Pricing structure is more transparent than many competitors.

Limitations

• Companies are required to pay for a minimum of five employees.

Zenefits pricing: Starting at $8/user/month

11. Homebase - Best for managing hourly employees

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If you manage hourly employees, Homebase is an excellent HR app that allows you to create schedules, monitor working hours, and enable employees to request shift trades, covers, and more. It's compatible with many POS (point of sale) systems, making it a perfect choice for retail businesses and restaurants. Also, Homebase includes a mobile app that is user-friendly and easy to use for both employer and employee.

Key features

• HR platform: Offers a suite of tools and HR guidance to manage employee information, track employee certifications, and track PTO requests.
• Hiring & onboarding: Post job openings, track applicants, schedule interviews, hire, and onboard new employees within the platform.
• Hourly payroll: Transform nearly any device into a time clock for monitoring working hours, breaks, and overtime for payroll.
• Compliance: Track breaks, calculate overtime, store time cards, stay on top of labor laws, and more to comply with federal, state, and city rules.
• Employee scheduling: Create, share, and optimize schedules for your whole team.
• Employee hub: Provides all the tools to help retain top employees with perks, including transparent communication, employee recognition, employee feedback, and more.
• Integrations: Paychex, ADP, Gusto, Rippling, Square, Toast, Clover, and more.

Limitations

• The available reports are limited and cannot be customized.

• Mostly suited to hourly workers.

Homebase pricing: Free → $80/location/month

12. Sage HR - Best for employees

Sage HR is a cloud-based tool for small to medium-sized businesses, which is part of the Sage business management suite. Sage has developed various software solutions to help businesses manage their HR, accounting, customer outreach, and more. The primary advantage of Sage HR is its user-friendliness. Its intuitive interface and clean design make it easy for both employers and employees to use the platform immediately after logging in.

Key features

• Core HR platform: Includes tools for a variety of HR functions, including org charts, employee information databases, company announcements, PTO review, expense reimbursement, eSigning, and automated workflows for common HR processes.
• Hiring & recruiting: Create job postings, manage applicants, and schedule interviews within the platform.
• Onboarding: Automate new employee onboarding through pre-assigned tasks and workflows.
• Shift scheduling: Easily create, edit, and share shifts with your employees.
• Performance management: Set goals, schedule 1:1s, manage performance feedback, and stay on top of goals and OKRs.
• Reporting: Draw insights, see trends, and make predictions on future behavior or organizational needs in HR data dashboard.
• Mobile app: Access HR functions through the mobile app on iOS & Android.
• Integrations: G Suite, Slack, SSO, and Zapier. 

Limitations

• Many functions, outside Core HR, require add-ons with an extra cost.
• No payroll support.

SageHR pricing: $5.50/employee/month

Enhance your Human Resources with the best tools 🙌

These powerful HR apps empower human resource teams to automate tasks, boost employee engagement, and make data-driven decisions. By streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency, your HR teams can focus on strategic initiatives and create a more productive, compliant, and harmonious workplace. As technology advances, the future of human resource management looks even more promising, making it an exciting time to embrace these digital solutions for a brighter, more efficient HR landscape.

Did we miss anything? What HR apps do you use? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!