Best Free PTO Tracking Software in 2026: Free Plan Limits and Paid Prices

Leave tracking looks like a spreadsheet job until the first holiday request arrives. Someone has to know how many days each person has left, who is away on which dates, and who approved what. A free PTO tracker should handle those three things without a bill, and most do not. This page checks seven leave products on their own pricing pages and asks one question of each: what does a 10-person team pay once the free tier stops?

Toolradar data: of the 105 time tracking tools we evaluated as of October 2026, 6 have a free plan. PTO tools sit in that same pool, so a free tier is the exception here too. Every free plan below has a cap, a missing feature or both.

Hourly time clocks are a different job, covered in the best time tracking software guide. This page is about balances, accruals and approvals.

A PTO tracker records each person's leave balance, takes requests, routes approvals and shows who is away. The balance is the part that matters. A calendar that shows who is out is useful, but it cannot tell you whether someone has five days left or minus two. Some tools add accruals, which earn days each pay period. Others only log what was taken.

Most products here sell leave as one module inside something larger. Connecteam bundles time off into a workforce app. BambooHR keeps it inside an HR record, and Homebase keeps it inside a scheduling tool. Timetastic and Vacation Tracker are built around leave, and AttendanceBot pairs leave with time tracking. That split decides which free plan is useful. A bundled app can be free for a small team and still lack balances, while a leave-only tool may have no free plan at all.

Leave errors cost more than the software. A balance that is one day too high approves a trip the payroll record later cancels, and an approver who cannot see who else is out signs off two people for the same week. Switching later is slow, because balances, carryover rules and approval chains have to be rebuilt in the new tool. A free tier is a poor reason to choose unless it keeps the balance rules you will still use in six months. For how leave sits next to payroll, the best HR software guide covers the wider suite choice.

The free tiers here work for a team of five or ten. They stop being useful at the first rule change, such as a second accrual type, a carryover limit or a second location. Check the rule your company uses most before you choose on price alone.

Methodology: we read the public pricing page of each product on October 10, 2026, and priced a 10-person team at one location in US dollars. Annual prices are used where the vendor shows them, and monthly prices otherwise. We kept products whose public pricing page lists a leave or time-off feature, then ranked them by the cheapest plan that keeps a running leave balance per person at 10 users, with a free plan that does this ranking first. Timetastic calls its balance a holiday allowance record.

Totals at 10 users: Connecteam Small Business is free on its card, and its HR & Skills Basic is $29 a month billed yearly. Timetastic Business is $15 a month. Vacation Tracker Core is $25 a month, because 10 times $2 falls below the $25 minimum. Sling Business is $34 a month billed annually, or $40 billed monthly. Homebase Plus is $56 a month for one location billed annually. AttendanceBot Pro is $60 a month billed annually. BambooHR Core is a flat $250 a month.

Sources, all read on October 10, 2026: Connecteam pricing, Timetastic pricing, Vacation Tracker pricing, Homebase pricing, AttendanceBot pricing and BambooHR pricing. The time tracking category figure comes from Toolradar. Teams that also need rotas should read the shift scheduling guide before choosing. Single-location shift teams can also check the free Basic tier in the Homebase review.