BambooHR

Custom dashboards come only with Elite, from $25 per employee a month

How BambooHR turns HR records into dashboards, benchmarks and AI answers

BambooHR’s people analytics works on the records its HR system already holds. It comes in three parts. Dashboards and reports show your own figures. Benchmarks compare them with other companies. AI assistants answer questions in plain language.

The plan you hold decides how much of this you get. Core includes dashboards that visualise key HR metrics and a custom report builder. It also includes an AI assistant for HR data questions and eNPS surveys. Pro adds 360 review cycles and questions about policies and uploaded documents in Ask BambooHR. Elite adds custom dashboards, HR Benchmarks and the Advanced AI Assistant.

Custom Dashboards & Analytics lets you build dashboards and combine charts of live data. No coding is needed. Custom formulas follow Excel-like syntax. You can mix headcount, turnover, diversity, hiring and engagement-score metrics. The dashboards sit beside BambooHR’s standard operational reports.

What data can reach a dashboard decides how useful it is. The data comes in groups called topics, such as Hiring Applicants and Hiring Job Openings. The report builder also draws on applicant tracking, performance, time off and benefits data. Elite customers can upload their own CSV file of up to 500,000 rows as a new topic. That lets data from outside BambooHR join in. BambooHR also advertises more than 150 integrations. To share figures, dashboards export as PDF, PNG and Excel. The home-page Insights Dashboard gives a quick view. It has 16 possible widgets covering demographic, employment, hiring, pay, benefit and time-off data.

HR Benchmarks compares your figures with anonymised data from other BambooHR customers. That data covers more than 30,000 companies and 3 million employees, and it updates daily. Turnover benchmarks split total, voluntary, involuntary, regrettable and non-regrettable turnover. Companies headquartered in the United States can use AI to match a peer group. Elite’s salary benchmarking uses integrated Mercer data.

The AI comes in three named tools. Ask BambooHR answers questions from HR data. Core includes it for HR data questions. Pro adds questions about policies and uploaded documents. Elite includes the Advanced AI Assistant. It answers benchmark questions and gives strategic insights and scenario forecasts.

Bamboo AI is the third. It answers plain-language questions with answers, charts and reports. Its Report Assistant builds a custom report from a plain-language request. Bamboo AI points out risks such as burnout or turnover early and suggests next steps. It also flags unusual patterns in time-off use. It completes routine work and brings in a person when human judgement matters.

You can also connect your own AI tool. BambooHR hosts a connection point for this, called an MCP server, at your own BambooHR address. A Claude connector reads BambooHR data and can take actions. Most connection tools only read data, and some write or delete it. Each request runs as the signed-in user under the same permissions. An administrator must switch the AI Connectors app on and choose who may connect. The API can also run a saved custom report and return its data. It can query reporting datasets and return the rows too.

Permissions follow the data, and you can switch the AI off

Four things work in your favour if your records already sit in BambooHR. Most concern who can see what.

Customers from 15 employees upward report results from it

BambooHR publishes customer stories for Elite dashboards, Bamboo AI and Ask BambooHR. The smallest has 15 employees. SANS Institute has 875, and Derivco is larger. The results are the customers’ own reports.

Elite starts at $25 per employee per month, and contracts differ by term

The price gap between plans is the main cost. The term you choose then decides how much you can change later. Here are the prices, the contract rules and what happens to your data when you leave.

BambooHR sells three plans. Core is $10.25 per employee per month and Pro is $17.50. Elite starts at $25. Companies with more than 25 employees pay per employee. Companies with 25 employees or fewer pay a flat monthly rate. It is $250 for Core, $425 for Pro and $650 for Elite. In the UK, per-employee plans start at £8.10 a month. The UK flat rate for 25 employees or fewer starts at £200 a month.

Take 300 employees as an example. At these rates Elite costs $7,500 a month, Pro costs $5,250 and Core costs $3,075. The gap between Core and Elite is $4,425 a month. Volume discounts apply automatically by headcount, so your own bill may be lower. That gap buys what Elite adds, such as custom dashboards, HR Benchmarks and the Advanced AI Assistant. Registered nonprofits get an additional 15% off.

A 15% bundle discount applies when you buy Payroll and Benefits Administration with any plan. It is available only for employees based in the US. Payroll, Benefits Administration, Time & Attendance and Global Employment are offered beside the plans as add-ons. The Claude connector is in open beta and costs nothing extra for customers with an active Claude account.

You choose month-to-month or an extended term, and each trades something. Month-to-month can end at any time, effective the last day of the subscription month. But BambooHR may change prices on 60 days’ notice, no more than once a calendar year per package.

An extended term trades flexibility for a fixed price. The price is fixed for the term apart from headcount or added services. But the term cannot be cancelled before it ends, and its fees are non-refundable. It renews automatically for 12-month terms, so not renewing needs at least 60 days’ notice. The minimum bill follows the Employee Minimum and Product Minimums on your order form, whatever your actual usage.

Ending early costs money. If you end an extended term without cause, you owe the unpaid fees for the rest of the term. BambooHR gives no refunds, and takes nothing off later bills, for partial months or implementation costs. Its liability to you is capped at the fees of the twelve months before the event, with stated exceptions.

You keep ownership of your Customer Data under the terms of service. After a subscription is not renewed, you can download your data for 30 days. After that BambooHR deletes it. Its Data Processing Agreement has BambooHR destroy or return all personal data, as you choose, when the contract ends.

Eight questions to settle before you pay for Elite

These eight questions cover the points where BambooHR’s own documents differ or where its terms can change. Each one comes with an answer worth accepting. Get each answer in writing, so it sits in your order form.

1. Which dashboards, benchmark views and AI assistants come with each plan, and which come only with Elite? Good answer: A written list by plan that covers the benchmark views in the Benchmarks tab.
2. Is Bamboo AI generally available for our account, or still in beta? Good answer: A written stage for our account, and a date for general release if it is still in beta.
3. Will you hold the AI features we buy in place for the length of our contract? Good answer: A written promise that a feature we pay for stays for the term.
4. If we opt out of sharing data for benchmarks, what do we lose and what stays in the historical datasets? Good answer: A written list of what stops, and what happens to the data we already shared.
5. Which companies handle our data for AI, and does any of it train a model beyond serving us? Good answer: One named list that matches the AI Addendum, and a clear no on wider training.
6. What will Elite cost us at our headcount after your volume discount? What is the Employee Minimum on our order form? Good answer: Written prices for each plan at our headcount, with every minimum on the order form.
7. If we connect our own AI tool, how will we know when permissions have cut an answer short? Good answer: A visible flag on every partial answer.
8. If we end an extended term, in what file format and by what date do we get our data? Good answer: A named format and one window, written into the order form.

Alternatives to BambooHR: Rippling, ChartHop, Visier and One Model

If BambooHR is not the fit, look at Rippling, ChartHop, Visier or One Model. Rippling is another HR system with analytics inside. ChartHop adds a layer on top of an existing HR system. Visier and One Model are separate analytics products. Staying on the BambooHR plan you hold is the last option.

Rippling suits a buyer whose questions mix people data with business data. Rippling connects business data from Salesforce, GitHub or a warehouse to the people behind it. A customer can ask Rippling AI a question and get a dashboard. BambooHR reaches outside data through more than 150 integrations and Elite’s CSV upload of up to 500,000 rows. Rippling’s dashboards can answer historical questions because it keeps what was true at past dates. Its US plans start at $8 per employee per month, with a monthly base fee.

ChartHop suits a company that wants analytics without replacing its HR system. Its platform is a layer on top of an existing HR system. ChartHop Core was $5 per employee per month in an archived copy of its pricing. That Core price included people analytics and dashboards, AI insights, an org chart and employee profiles. Its live pricing now asks three questions and prepares a proposal.

Visier prices by number of employees and sends buyers to sales. Where Visier prices by employee, extra employees come in blocks of at least 1,000. It counts contractors and inactive personnel who are not terminated as employees. Visier offers a 30-day free trial on a test copy, with sample data or your own. Its BambooHR connector is in Beta. One Model sells three editions, Essentials, Data Mesh and Enterprise, each by quote. It pulls HR data from Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, Oracle, Greenhouse and SmartRecruiters. Ask whether it reads BambooHR.

Staying put is the other route. Core includes dashboards that visualise key HR metrics and a custom report builder. It also includes an AI assistant for HR data questions and eNPS surveys. Pro adds 360 review cycles and policy questions in Ask BambooHR. Our people analytics guide covers the wider market. Our page on analytics inside an HR system covers when to buy something separate.