Face & Geo-Fence Attendance Apps in India (2027)

Quick answer: For multi-site and contract workforces, Truein is built around face recognition plus geo-fenced clock-ins, and publishes a ₹69,000 yearly base plus ₹250 per user per year. For an HRMS that includes attendance, compare Keka, greytHR, Kredily, factoHR and Zoho People. Existing biometric machines can often stay if the software lists your device model. Treat face data as personal data under the DPDP Rules.

How we researched this: We read the pricing and product pages of Truein, Keka, greytHR, Kredily, factoHR, Zoho People, ubiAttendance and Jibble, the websites of device makers ZKTeco India and Matrix COSEC, the Ministry of Labour's Compliance Handbook, and the Press Information Bureau note on the DPDP Rules, 2025. Prices and features were checked in October 2026.

Three technologies, three kinds of fraud

"Attendance app" covers different controls. Buy the one that matches the fraud you actually have.

Face recognition and a geo-fence together are the combination vendors sell to stop both problems. Truein's site describes every clock-in as "face-verified, location-stamped, and rule-checked" and lists spoof and proxy punch detection and offline clock-ins that sync later. ubiAttendance lists fake time detection, fake location detection, selfie and location capture, QR code and kiosk modes. Keep that vocabulary in your demo script: ask each vendor to show a punch with mock GPS switched on, and a punch with a photo of a face.

What each tool says it includes

Two cautions. First, Zoho's comparison table does not show which plan holds each feature in the text we could read, so ask for the plan mapping in writing. Second, Jibble's page says time tracking is free for unlimited users but does not say which of the verification features sit in the free tier.

Published prices, and what they cost at 100 people

Scope differs, so read this as an attendance-capture budget, not a like-for-like ranking. All figures are from the vendors' pricing pages (checked October 2026) and the arithmetic is ours. GST is not included unless the page says so.

Truein says on its homepage that it is trusted by 500-plus customers in 25 countries, with 10,000-plus locations and 500,000-plus users, which are its own figures. Its base fee is the number to understand. The page says the base price is "a fixed fee charged per customer, regardless of the number of users or locations", which suits an operator with hundreds of workers across many sites and penalises a 15-person office. Kredily and factoHR bundle attendance with payroll and HR, so you are paying for more than a clock. Our guide to Keka vs greytHR explains the plan structure of two of these in more detail.

Keeping the biometric machine you already own

Many Indian factories and offices already have fingerprint or face terminals. The question is whether the cloud software can read them.

• Ask for the device list. Keka says it syncs with 120-plus biometric devices. greytHR's attendance page lists third-party attendance hardware, and its HRMS page names Matrix Biometrics Systems as an integration partner. Zoho People lists biometric integrations. ubiAttendance lists biometric attendance in its Premium plan.
• Know your hardware maker's cloud story. ZKTeco India's site lists fingerprint, face and iris attendance products and promotes BioTime Cloud 2.0. Matrix COSEC lists a cloud-based solution called COSEC VYOM, an on-premise one called COSEC CENTRA, and a face-and-RFID door controller, COSEC ARGO FACE. These are the vendors' own cloud products, so you may not need a third-party app at all if you only need gate attendance.
• Test the failure case. What happens when the internet drops at the gate? Truein says offline punches are stored on the device and sync later; ask every other vendor the same.

For a deeper look at shop-floor workers, see our factory and blue-collar payroll guide and field staff attendance apps.

Three Indian workplaces, costed

A security agency with 400 guards across 40 sites. Guards sit at remote gates, turnover is high and phones are basic. Truein's published structure favours this shape: ₹69,000 plus 400 × ₹250 is ₹1,69,000 a year, about ₹35 per guard per month, and the vendor says temporary workers can be onboarded within seconds via a kiosk and punches work offline. A bundled HRMS such as Kredily Professional would cost about ₹28,000 a month for 400 employees on our arithmetic before the ₹20,000 face-recognition add-on, but it also runs payroll. Read our guide to payroll for security and facility firms before deciding.

A 25-person Ahmedabad sales team. The need is office geo-fence plus visit tracking. Kredily Professional at ₹1,749 a month plus Live Tracking at ₹50 per user comes to ₹2,999 a month; greytHR Growth at ₹4,495 plus GPS Live Tracking at ₹140 per user is ₹7,995. Kredily's tracking is Android only, so check your team's phones. Pocket HRMS lists geo-tagging in its Standard plan and geo-fencing in Professional, but its page states a 50-employee minimum.

A 120-worker plant with an existing biometric machine and three shifts. Do not replace the hardware. Ask for the device sync, shift rotation and overtime rules, then add selfie or geo-fenced punches only for contract staff outside the gate. See HRMS for manufacturing companies and, for stores and branches, HRMS for retail chains.

Privacy, labour law and what to put in writing

Face templates and location trails are personal data. The Press Information Bureau's explainer says the DPDP Rules were notified on 14 November 2025, with an eighteen-month phased compliance period, that every Data Fiduciary must issue a separate, clear consent notice explaining the specific purpose of collection, and that the highest penalty, up to ₹250 crore, applies to failure to maintain reasonable security safeguards. It does not discuss employment-specific rules, so ask your lawyer whether a notice or consent is your basis for staff biometrics. Our guide to DPDP Act compliance software and the note on Indian data residency help here.

From the labour-law side, the Ministry of Labour's Compliance Handbook says employers must maintain an attendance register cum muster roll, a wage register and an overtime register, that these can be physical or electronic, and that records are preserved for five years. It also says overtime for workers with a minimum wage fixed under the Code must be paid at least at twice the normal wage rate. So choose software that exports a muster roll and an overtime register, not just a punch log.

Write these into your rollout:

• A purpose statement. Attendance and site presence only; no use for performance ranking unless stated.
• A retention rule. How long raw punches and face data are kept after an employee leaves.
• A fallback. What a worker with a damaged phone or a cut finger does, so no one loses a day's pay.
• Working-hours tracking limits. Switch off live tracking outside shifts.

A two-week pilot that exposes the weak spots, and who can skip it

1. Pick two sites. One with a good network and one with poor coverage.
2. Enrol 30 people and have the vendor demonstrate enrolment time per person.
3. Run adversarial tests. Mock location, a photo, a screen replay, a colleague's phone, and a punch in a lift or basement.
4. Measure exceptions. Count rejected genuine punches in the first week; each rejected genuine worker is a payroll dispute.
5. Export to payroll. Push a closed week into your payroll tool and compare hours against a muster you kept manually.

Compare other tools in the attendance software category, or review the broader HRMS category. If you are fighting proxy punches specifically, read how face and GPS attendance systems stop buddy punching.

Who this is not for

• A 10-person office with one door. A shared tablet with PIN or a simple app is enough; Jibble's free tier or a basic HRMS plan suffices.
• Teams that distrust surveillance. Continuous tracking can damage trust. Use geo-fenced clock-in, not live tracking.
• Companies without a payroll link. If attendance does not feed payroll, you have bought a report. Check the integration first.

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