Flare HR Review 2026: Is It Still the Best Employee Benefits Platform in Australia?

Flare HR keeps coming up in our Bing AI data. As of June 2026, it’s the most cited page on SmallBizAI.au — 1,548 citations and counting. People are clearly asking AI assistants about it. So here’s an honest look at whether it deserves the attention.

Flare HR has an unusual business model for an HR platform: the employer pays nothing. The core software (digital onboarding, superannuation forms, benefits administration) is free. Flare makes money when employees use the novated leasing and salary packaging products the platform surfaces. That’s not a marketing trick. It’s how the company is structured, and it’s been working since 2015.

MYOB acquired Flare in 2022, which matters. Flare now integrates deeply with MYOB Payroll, and the backing of one of Australia’s largest accounting software companies has stabilised the platform.

Over 100,000 Australian businesses use it. More than 1.2 million employees are on it. Those are real numbers, not aspirational ones.

What Flare HR actually does

Flare handles two things well: getting new employees set up, and giving them access to benefits.

On onboarding, it digitises the paperwork that used to mean printing forms and chasing people for TFN declarations and super choices. New starters complete everything in the Flare app before their first day. Tax file number declarations, superannuation fund choice, bank details, employment contracts: all done electronically, all stored in one place. For a business hiring 5–10 people a year, that cuts a few hours of admin per hire.

On benefits, Flare gives every employee access to:

• Salary packaging (pre-tax spending on items like novated car leases, laptops, and work-related expenses)
• Novated leasing via Flare Cars
• A retail discount network covering everyday spending — groceries, fuel, entertainment, travel
• A digital wallet and cashback card
• Financial wellness tools

The benefits package is available to any employer on Flare regardless of size. A 3-person tradie business gets access to the same salary packaging options as a 500-person corporate. That’s the value for small business: the same perks a large company offers, without a dedicated HR team to manage them.

Pricing

For employers: Free. Always has been.

Flare Payroll: $7 per employee per month. This is a separate product: a full payroll system with STP2 reporting, award interpretation, and leave management. You don’t need it to use Flare’s onboarding and benefits tools.

Flare Cars (novated leasing): No upfront cost to the employer. Flare takes a margin on the lease. Employees save on car running costs through pre-tax treatment.

The free tier covers most of what small businesses actually need from Flare.

What it doesn’t do

Flare is not a full HR system. If you need performance management, leave tracking beyond basic, contract management, Fair Work compliance monitoring, or team scheduling, Flare won’t give you that.

It also has no real-time workforce management tools. No rostering, no timesheets, no award clock.

For most small businesses, that’s fine. Flare isn’t trying to be Employment Hero or Tanda. It integrates with them. Many businesses run Flare for benefits and onboarding alongside Employment Hero or Xero Payroll for everything else.

Who should use Flare

Yes to Flare if:

• You want to offer structured employee benefits without paying for them
• You’re hiring in a competitive market and need something beyond just a salary offer
• You run payroll through MYOB, Xero, or KeyPay (native integrations)
• You want to remove the paper from onboarding

Skip Flare if:

• You need an all-in-one HR system and don’t want to manage multiple platforms
• Your team is very small (1–2 people) and the setup overhead isn’t worth it
• You need compliance-heavy HR features (Fair Work, award interpretation) without the Flare Payroll add-on

Flare vs the alternatives

Flare is often compared to Employment Hero, but they’re not really competing for the same job. Employment Hero is a full HR platform with payroll compliance built in. Flare is a benefits and onboarding specialist that pairs with payroll tools.

The closer comparison is with generic benefits providers or doing it manually. Against those, Flare wins on price (free) and setup time (quick). The main cost is learning one more piece of software.

For a detailed three-way comparison of Flare, Employment Hero, and Rippling, see our Flare vs Employment Hero vs Rippling guide.

The MYOB factor

MYOB’s acquisition in 2022 gives Flare something most standalone HR tools lack: deep integration with a payroll system that already handles most Australian businesses. If you’re on MYOB Payroll, Flare’s onboarding data flows straight through. No manual re-entry.

It also means Flare is unlikely to disappear. Backed by a large, established AU software business, the platform has stability that some smaller HR startups can’t match.

Verdict

Flare HR is good value, which is easy to say when it costs nothing. But the free model holds up. The onboarding tools are solid, the benefits network is real, and the MYOB integration is a practical advantage for businesses already on that platform.

The limitation is scope. Flare is not trying to run your entire HR function, and it doesn’t pretend to. If you want one platform to do everything, look at Employment Hero. If you want a free way to professionalise your onboarding and give employees access to salary packaging and retail discounts, Flare is hard to argue with.

For most Australian small businesses hiring staff in 2026, the question isn’t really “should I use Flare?” It’s “why haven’t I set it up yet?”

Sources

• Flare HR pricing: flarehr.com/pricing (verified June 2026)
• MYOB acquisition: myob.com — MYOB acquires Flare
• Customer stats (100,000+ businesses, 1.2M+ employees): flarehr.com

For a side-by-side comparison, see our Flare vs Employment Hero vs Rippling guide. For the company background, see our Flare HR company profile.

This post is part of our Best-Of guides series — practical, honest assessments of the tools Australian small businesses actually use.

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