Arc vs Hearth

Hearth is the closest thing to a like-for-like alternative to Arc: built for Ofsted-regulated children's homes in England, priced openly, no contract, migration included. On monthly price the two are now identical at every published band. The differences are in what the record does once you are in it.

Every claim about Hearth on this page is taken from their own public material and linked to the page it came from. Where they don't publish something, we say so rather than guess. Last checked August 2026.

Request a demo Jump to the comparison

The short version

Arc compiles the handover

Hearth publishes rota and cover planning but no handover record — the word does not appear anywhere on their site. Arc builds the handover from what staff logged during the shift.

Arc's AI is switched on

Both include AI in the price. Hearth's own security page marks AI for real children's records as planned, held off until their AI provider's data-processing agreement is signed. Arc's runs today, de-identified and UK-only.

Matched monthly, cheaper annually

Both publish £149 for one to three beds, £199 for four to six and £249 above that. Paid annually Arc is £1,490, £1,990 and £2,490 against Hearth's £1,548, £2,148 and £2,748. Staff accounts are unlimited on both.

from £149 / home / month, all in

See what's included →

Side by side

Arc and Hearth, row by row

Same rows on every comparison we publish, so nothing is chosen to flatter us. Numbers in brackets link to the Hearth page each claim came from.

Arc leads on 4 of 18 rows Hearth leads on 1, level on 13. Shaded cells show which way each row goes.

Comparison of Arc and Hearth across cost, the young person record, the regulations, and data assurance
CAPABILITY	Arc	Hearth
COST AND TERMS
Published price	£149, £199 or £249 per home / month by registered beds (1–3, 4–6, 7+), published on our pricing page. Two months free if you pay annually.	HEARTH LEADS £149 / £199 / £249 per home per month ex VAT by bed band, published in full. Annual plans £129 / £179 / £229. [1]
What the price is charged on Per-home, per-licence and per-bed models produce very different bills for the same home.	The home. Staff accounts are unlimited and never change the price, whether you run five staff or twenty-five.	The home, banded by registered beds. Staff accounts unlimited, including bank and agency. [1]
AI included in the price	ARC LEADS Included. Advisory drafts, de-identified before inference, UK-only and audited, at no extra charge.	Included at no extra charge, but off by default — and their security page lists AI for real children's records as planned, gated until their AI provider agreement is signed. [2]
Minimum contract	None. Billed monthly and cancellable at any time, or annually for two months free if you prefer.	None, and no exit fee. Billed monthly, cancel any month. [2]
Setup and migration fees	None. Onboarding, training and help moving your existing records across are in the monthly price.	None. Setup, data import and onboarding included, with migration from your current system in the price. [1]
Price across a group of homes Some vendors discount the per-home rate as you add homes.	Each home is banded on its own registration, so a group of small homes pays small-home prices. Combined billing across the group, published rates at every home, and no renegotiation as you grow.	Group pricing offered but no rate or discount published. [3]
THE RECORD AND THE REGULATIONS
Who the product is built for	UK children's residential homes only.	Ofsted-regulated children's homes in England, plus registered supported accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds. [1]
One record per young person	One living record: timeline of every event and entry, care plans and goals, keywork, contact, and wishes and feelings.	A per-child view assembling chronology, incidents, notifications and the Quality Standard each entry evidences. [3]
Daily recording	Structured daily journals that compile from what staff log during the shift, with mandatory-field prompts.	Daily logs built through a form builder, each entry tagged to an Ofsted Quality Standard. [3]
Handover	ARC LEADS Compiled automatically from the shift rather than re-typed at the end of it.	Not published. Rota, leave and cover planning is named; a handover record is not. [3]
Incident tracking	ARC LEADS Incidents stay open until they are formally resolved and signed off, with missing episodes, return home interviews and physical intervention records.	Incident recording, re-categorised so counts line up with Annex A, alongside restraint and missing episodes. [4]
Safeguarding workspace	ARC LEADS A separate, role-restricted workspace rather than a folder everyone can open.	Safeguarding is a named record type, but no separate access-restricted safeguarding area is published — the only role-restricted area described is staff and HR files. [5]
Regulation 40 notifications	Raised by a manager at incident review, where the decision belongs, then tracked per recipient with a 24-hour overdue clock and a compiled PDF for the Ofsted submission.	Yes. Serious events auto-draft a Regulation 40 notification for the manager to review. [3]
Regulation 44 independent visits	Structured independent-visit record with the monthly due date tracked.	Yes, and unusually thorough: a read-only login for the independent visitor, with every requirement and recommendation tracked to completion. [3]
Regulation 45 quality of care reports	Compiled from the record already entered, with manager sign-off and a full audit trail.	In scope and tracked with review-due dates, though no report-generation feature is described. [1]
DATA AND ASSURANCE
Where the data is held	United Kingdom, named to the service: the application on Amazon EC2 and the database on Amazon RDS, both in the UK region.	United Kingdom, published to the region: AWS eu-west-2, London, with a full subprocessor register. [5]
Independent security certification Formal certification held by the supplier itself, separate from its hosting provider.	Role-restricted access, an append-only audit trail on every record, and a signed data processing agreement, running on ISO 27001-certified AWS infrastructure in the UK.	None held. Cyber Essentials and then ISO 27001 are stated as roadmap items. [5]
Track record and availability How long the product has been running, and how widely.	Live now, with onboarding, migration and UK-based support included from day one. Request a demo before 1 January 2027 and your first home is free for its first year.	No customer or home count claimed; they state directly that they are early with a small number of homes. Hearth Systems Ltd, company no. 17349265. [1]

Sources

[1] https://carehearth.co.uk/pricing “Per home, per month, excluding VAT. Unlimited staff accounts on every tier. Registered beds / Monthly / Annual plan / 1 to 3 £149 £129 / 4 to 6 £199 £179 / 7 to 10 £249 £229” “Per home, banded by registered beds. Staff accounts are unlimited and included, which matters if you run bank or agency cover: per-user pricing quietly penalises exactly the homes that need the most flexible staffing.” “Setup, data import and onboarding. Migration from your current system is included, not quoted separately.” “Adult social care. Hearth is built around Ofsted and the Children's Homes Regulations. If you are CQC regulated, this is the wrong product.” “The whole regulatory surface: Annex A export, Regulation 40 notifications, Regulation 44 independent-visitor access, Regulation 45 review, evidence packs.” “Hearth is early and has a small number of homes on it. I would rather write that down than imply otherwise”
[2] https://carehearth.co.uk/terms “AI features are off by default and only enabled for your home once the data-protection paperwork covering the AI provider is in place with you. You can keep them off entirely. The price doesn't change.” “No minimum term and no exit fee. Cancel any month; the service runs to the end of the period you've paid for.”
[3] https://carehearth.co.uk/ “Running several homes? Group pricing available.” “One screen that assembles a child's record the way an inspector reads it: chronology, incidents, notifications, and the Quality Standard each entry evidences.” “Daily logs, incidents, safeguarding: recorded your way, in minutes, with no template lock-in. Every entry maps to an Ofsted Quality Standard, so the evidence assembles itself while your team does the work that matters.” “Shifts, annual leave and sickness in one place, with gaps in cover visible before they happen rather than after.” “Serious events auto-draft a Regulation 40 notification for the manager to review; admissions and discharges are recorded under Regulation 41.” “A read-only login for your independent visitor, and every requirement and recommendation they raise tracked to completion with an owner and a date. The home can't edit a finding made against it.”
[4] https://carehearth.co.uk/switch “Incidents, restraint, missing episodes / Migrated and re-categorised so they count correctly in Annex A”
[5] https://carehearth.co.uk/security “Role-based access within a home. Carer, manager, Responsible Individual, organisation admin, and a read-only independent-visitor role for Regulation 44 visits. Staff/HR files are restricted to manager roles; per-home access is enforced for multi-home organisations.” “UK hosting. The database runs in London, United Kingdom (AWS eu-west-2, managed by Supabase), and the application is served from London infrastructure. Children's records are stored and processed in the UK.” “Cyber Essentials certification, then ISO 27001 on the roadmap after it. We claim no certification we do not hold.”

Hearth information taken from their own public material, last checked August 2026. We re-check every comparison at least every 6 months. If anything here is out of date or wrong, email hello@arccare.co.uk and we will correct it.

The honest bit

When Hearth is the better choice

Hearth's published assurance detail is genuinely deeper than ours: a named cloud region, a full subprocessor register, and gaps marked planned rather than hidden. They also cover Ofsted-registered supported accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds as a separate regulatory model with per-place pricing, which a per-home product does not do, and they are free until Ofsted grants your URN — so a home still waiting on registration pays them nothing and pays us from the day it opens. Neither of us holds a security certification, and neither of us has a track record to point at.

Cost

Compare the whole bill, not the headline

Arc is £149, £199 or £249 per home per month, set by the number of beds the home is registered for. That covers unlimited staff accounts, every feature, AI, onboarding and migration, with no minimum term. There is no premium tier and the price does not move as your team grows.

Headline prices in this market are rarely the whole bill. Add-ons, per-licence charges, setup fees and the discount that only applies on a three-year tie-in all change the number. Ask every supplier the same five questions and compare what comes back.

And for year one, the comparison is simpler than any of this: request a demo before 1 January 2027 and your first home costs nothing for twelve months.

See Arc's full pricing →

Questions to ask any supplier

Is the price per home, per registered place, or per user?
Which features sit behind a higher tier or an add-on — including AI?
What do onboarding, training and data migration cost?
Is that price conditional on a one, two or three-year term?
Where is our data hosted, and where does any AI processing happen?

Questions

Arc and Hearth: common questions

Is Hearth cheaper than Arc?

Not on monthly price: both publish £149 for one to three beds, £199 for four to six, and £249 above that. Paid annually Arc works out lower — £1,490, £1,990 and £2,490 a year against Hearth's £1,548, £2,148 and £2,748. Two differences worth knowing: Hearth caps its published band at ten beds and quotes above that, where Arc's £249 band has no upper limit; and Hearth is free until Ofsted grants your URN, so a home awaiting registration pays them nothing. Both include unlimited staff accounts, neither charges a setup fee, and neither requires a minimum term.

Do both include AI?

In the price, yes — Hearth state plainly that enabling AI does not change what you pay. The difference is whether it is running: their security page lists AI for real children's records as planned, gated until the data-processing agreement with their AI provider is signed. Arc's AI is live now, with identifying details stripped before inference and processing kept in the UK.

Which handles Regulation 44 better?

Both take it seriously and in similar ways. Hearth gives the independent visitor a read-only login and tracks every requirement and recommendation to completion, with the home unable to edit a finding made against it. Arc keeps a structured independent-visit record with the monthly due date tracked. Worth seeing both demonstrated.

Where is the data held?

Both in the UK, and both on AWS. Hearth publishes the specific region — eu-west-2, London — along with a full subprocessor register. Arc runs the application on EC2 and the database on RDS, in the UK region.

Switching

Moving from Hearth to Arc

Changing recording system mid-placement is a real risk, so we plan the move around your home rather than the other way round. Onboarding and migration are included in the monthly price.

Review what you hold

We look at your current records together and agree what must come across and what can be archived.

Migrate the record

Young person records, plans and open incidents are moved and checked before anyone relies on them.

Train on shift

Short sessions with the people who will use it, in the home, on real entries.

Run in parallel

A short overlap so nothing is lost, then a clean cut-over on a date you choose.