Softwr

HR & Recruiting · head to head

Breathe HR vs Cassandra

Breathe HR logo

Breathe HR

HR & Recruiting

Simple HR software for SMEs

From
£13/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Cassandra logo

Cassandra

Database & Data Management

Manage massive amounts of data with linear scalability

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Cassandra has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Breathe HR pricing is banded by headcount, starting at £24 per month for 1 to 10 people, £44 per month for 11 to 20 and £99 per month for 21 to 50; Cassandra no support for joins across tables
  • They diverge on capability: Breathe HR covers Employee Database, Cassandra covers Linear Scalability.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Breathe HR and Cassandra actually diverge.

Attributes where Breathe HR and Cassandra differ
AttributeBreathe HRCassandra
Starting price£13/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionUnknown
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidLinux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes
CategoryHR & RecruitingDatabase & Data Management
Founded20122008

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Breathe HR

  • Employee Database
  • Absence Management
  • Document Storage
  • HR Reporting
  • Performance Management
  • Training
  • Slack
  • Google Workspace

Only in Cassandra

  • Linear Scalability
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Multi-datacenter Replication
  • Tunable Consistency
  • CQL Query Language
  • Distributed Architecture
  • No Single Point of Failure
  • DataStax

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Breathe HR

  • Holiday, absence and sickness tracking for a UK small businessnot Cassandra
  • Storing HR documents, contracts and e-signaturesnot Cassandra
  • Performance reviews and onboarding workflows for small teamsnot Cassandra

Cassandra

  • Real-time applicationsnot Breathe HR
  • Content managementnot Breathe HR
  • User profilesnot Breathe HR
  • Mobile backendsnot Breathe HR
  • Cachingnot Breathe HR

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Breathe HR

  • Pricing is banded by headcount, starting at £24 per month for 1 to 10 people, £44 per month for 11 to 20 and £99 per month for 21 to 50
  • Plans are capped by band up to 151 to 200 people, so it is not sold to organisations above that range on the published ladder
  • The free trial is 14 days
  • Health and safety, e-learning and other modules are sold as add-ons on top of the core HR plan
  • Pricing is quoted in pounds and the product is marketed to UK SMEs

Cassandra

  • No support for joins across tables
  • No ACID transactions across multiple rows
  • Data model must be designed around query patterns upfront, making schema evolution difficult
  • Partition key misconfigurations can cause uneven data distribution and hotspots that degrade performance

Pricing, plan by plan

Breathe HR

£13/month
  • Core$13/month
    • Employee Database
    • Absence Management
    • Documents
  • People Management$18/month
    • All Core features
    • Performance
    • Goals

Cassandra

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Cassandra review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Breathe HR if

  • You need employee database.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want absence management.
Breathe HR review

Choose Cassandra if

  • You need linear scalability.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
  • You also want fault tolerance.
Cassandra review

Questions people ask

Is Breathe HR or Cassandra better?
Neither clearly leads. Breathe HR starts at £13/month and Cassandra at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Breathe HR or Cassandra?
Cassandra has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at £13/month for Breathe HR and Free for Cassandra.
Does Breathe HR or Cassandra run on more platforms?
Breathe HR runs on Web, Ios, Android. Cassandra runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
Can I use Cassandra for free?
Yes. Cassandra has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Breathe HR starts at £13/month.
What is Breathe HR best used for?
Breathe HR is most often used for holiday, absence and sickness tracking for a uk small business, storing hr documents, contracts and e-signatures, performance reviews and onboarding workflows for small teams. Of those, holiday, absence and sickness tracking for a uk small business and storing hr documents, contracts and e-signatures are not what Cassandra is typically brought in for.
What can Breathe HR do that Cassandra cannot?
Breathe HR covers Employee Database, Absence Management, Document Storage, HR Reporting. Cassandra covers Linear Scalability, Fault Tolerance, Multi-datacenter Replication, Tunable Consistency.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cassandra: Does Cassandra support joins between tables?

No. Cassandra does not support joins or foreign keys. The data model requires denormalization, meaning data must be duplicated across tables to support different query patterns.

Source
Cassandra: Does Cassandra offer ACID transactions?

No. Cassandra provides only row-level atomicity and isolation, not full ACID transactions across multiple rows or tables. It uses lightweight transactions via Paxos for per-row compare-and-set operations.

Source
Cassandra: What programming languages can connect to Cassandra?

Cassandra supports official drivers for multiple languages including Python, Java, Node.js, and Go, allowing applications to communicate via the native Cassandra protocol.

Source
Cassandra: Can I deploy Cassandra in the cloud?

Yes. Cassandra can run on any cloud platform (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) via Docker, virtual machines, or managed services like DataStax Astra DB, which provides a fully managed DBaaS option.

Source
Cassandra: Does Cassandra have a free option?

The open source Apache Cassandra is free. DataStax also offers Astra DB with a free tier providing up to 25GB storage and 25 million read/write operations per month.

Source
ShareXLinkedInRedditWhatsAppEmail

Related pages

More on Breathe HR

More on Cassandra

Keep looking

Other head to heads