Free & Low-Cost HRMS for Startups Under 50 Staff

Quick answer: For a startup under 50 people, the cheapest sensible route is a free or per-employee HRMS that handles payroll, leave and attendance without an implementation project. Kredily publishes a free-forever plan and low-cost paid tiers, Zoho People suits teams already using Zoho apps and offers a free edition for up to 5 users and a 30-day trial, and sumHR lists a flat per-employee annual price. Compare total cost for your headcount, not just the headline.

What a 20-person startup actually needs from HR software

At this size HR is usually the founder, an operations person and an accountant sharing the work. The recurring jobs are modest but unforgiving: salaries on time with correct PF, ESI and TDS where applicable, leave balances, attendance for a hybrid team, payslips that employees can download, and a clean set of employee documents when an investor or auditor asks.

You do not need talent-management suites, learning modules or succession planning yet. A tool that sells these as bundled extras will cost you more and slow down setup. Judge any product on the narrow job list above, and treat the rest as a bonus.

One more point: free is not the same as cheap. Free tiers often limit features or support, and the real cost is the hours your team spends fixing mistakes. Put a value on that time before you pick the lowest sticker price.

Kredily: the free plan with real payroll

According to Kredily's website, its free-forever plan costs ₹0 per month, supports unlimited employees, and includes payroll, HR, attendance, leave management and PF, ESI, PT and TDS calculation, with no credit card required. Paid tiers, as listed there (checked October 2026): Payroll OS at ₹1,249 per month for up to 25 employees and ₹50 per employee beyond that, and Professional at ₹1,749 per month for up to 25 employees and ₹70 per employee beyond that. Enterprise is quoted.

The site also lists seven attendance capture modes including GPS, selfie, face recognition and biometric integration, an employee mobile app, salary advances and earned-wage access, an insurance dashboard, and ICICI Bank integration for direct payouts. It describes a "Magic Upload" for migrating employee data and says setup can be same-day. Kredily states 25,000+ companies, 10,00,000+ employees and ₹1,000+ crore of payroll processed.

Fit: very small teams that want to start at zero and add paid features later. Check what exactly the free tier excludes compared with Payroll OS before you commit, because the page lists feature differences only briefly. For 40 employees on Payroll OS, the list price works out to ₹1,249 plus 15 times ₹50, which is ₹1,999 per month, before taxes.

Zoho People: good when you already live in Zoho

Zoho's page for People describes cloud HR software covering recruitment, onboarding and offboarding, attendance and time, payroll and benefits, performance, learning, documents, engagement surveys, analytics and a helpdesk, with native Android and iOS apps. Zoho says 50,000+ businesses use it and offers a 30-day trial on all plans with a per-user pricing model. Zoho's pricing page (checked October 2026) lists a Free edition for up to 5 users covering the employee database, leave and documents, and paid editions called Essential HR, Professional, Premium and Enterprise with a minimum of 5 users. It shows prices in your local currency, so read the rupee amount for your headcount there. Zoho also lists a separate payroll product, see Zoho Payroll, which you would evaluate alongside.

Fit: teams that use Zoho Books, CRM or Workplace tools and want everything in one login. Watch-out: confirm whether the plan you need includes Indian payroll or requires the separate payroll add-on, and count users carefully, since per-user pricing scales with every hire. If you also run accounts in the Zoho family, our guide to Zoho Books and the accounting category may help.

sumHR: simple per-employee pricing

sumHR's site lists seven functions: HRIS, payroll with expense claims, attendance (biometric, GPS, web), performance (OKRs, 360 reviews), operations (HR letters, documents, assets), onboarding with helpdesk, and a recruitment module marked "coming soon". It also mentions self-service portals on web and mobile, approval workflows, SSO, shift planning and leave management. The cost shown on the site (checked October 2026) is ₹1,428 per employee per year on a pay-as-you-go subscription, which is ₹119 per employee per month. The site says it serves 28+ companies, a small base, so ask for references.

Fit: a startup that wants one predictable annual figure and a feature set slightly wider than basic payroll. For 40 employees, that is ₹57,120 a year before taxes. Watch-out: with a small stated customer base, ask about support response times and data export before you rely on it.

Total cost for 30 and 50 employees

Figures are list prices from the vendors' websites, before GST and any add-ons. Check each vendor's page again before buying, because prices change.

Other low-cost options to benchmark against

Two other published prices are useful as reference points. greytHR lists an Essential plan at ₹2,495 per month for a base of 50 employees (per the vendor's pricing page, checked October 2026), and Pocket HRMS lists Standard at ₹2,995 for up to 50 employees. Both are slab-priced rather than per head. You can browse further in the HRMS software category and read our list of HRMS software in India. See greytHR and Pocket HRMS for details.

A one-week setup plan

Day 1: Collect the employee master: names, joining dates, bank details, PAN, UAN and ESI numbers where applicable, and current salary structures. Day 2: Create the tool account, import data, set leave policy and holidays. Day 3: Configure salary components and statutory settings; get your accountant to review one sample payslip. Day 4: Run last month's payroll in the tool as a dry run and compare it with the real salary sheet. Day 5: Invite employees to the app, explain how to mark attendance and apply for leave, and publish the policy. Week 2: Run the live payroll, keep the old sheet as a backup for one cycle.

Who should not use a free HRMS

If you are heading for 100+ staff in a year, with multiple entities, complex incentive plans or a need for audit trails, start with a tool that scales so you do not migrate twice. If your team is entirely remote across countries, check multi-country payroll support. And if you have regulated workforces such as contract labour, ask the vendor how it handles those registers.

Questions to ask before you sign up

Whatever you pick, ask four things. First, is statutory compliance for your state, including professional tax, built in or an add-on? Second, how are employee records exported if you leave? Third, what support do you get on the free or entry plan, and in which hours? Fourth, what does the price become when you cross 50 employees or add recruitment? A startup that asks these questions in week one avoids a forced migration in year two. Also keep a simple HR folder outside the tool, with offer letters, ID proofs and statutory registrations, so that you stay in control of your own records.

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