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Keka and greytHR are the two systems most Indian mid-sized employers end up shortlisting against each other. Keka sells a single subscription covering core HR, payroll, attendance, performance, hiring and professional-services automation; greytHR is built outward from the payroll engine, with statutory computation and employee self-service as its centre and recruitment sold as a separate add-on module.
Both are India-built, both run payroll, and both will handle the pay cycle for a company of a few hundred people, which is why they land on the same shortlist so often. The difference shows up in how each one is packaged. Keka bundles its modules — core HR, payroll, time and attendance, performance, hiring, expense, engagement and a professional-services automation module for project-based firms — into one subscription, so a buyer gets breadth by default. greytHR concentrates on payroll depth: customisable salary structures, arrears, reimbursement claims with policy enforcement, full-and-final settlement, and an employee self-service portal and mobile app for payslips, leave balances and income-tax declarations, with hiring available through greytHR Recruit as a per-recruiter add-on. Deciding between them is mostly a question of whether you want one bundle or a payroll specialist you extend deliberately.
| Feature | Keka | greytHR |
|---|---|---|
| Packaging | Modules bundled into a single subscription rather than priced separately | Named tiers banded by employee count, with modules and add-ons unlocked as you move up |
| Centre of the product | The employee lifecycle end to end, with payroll as one of several first-class modules | The payroll run and the statutory paperwork around it, with other modules arranged around that |
| Indian statutory items named | TDS, PF, ESIC, PT, LWF, Form 16 and Form 24Q described as part of the core payroll engine rather than add-ons | PF with ECR generation, ESI computations and challans, PT with state-specific rules, TDS with eTDS returns, LWF, Form 16 and Form 24Q |
| Attendance and time | Biometric device support, mobile clock-in, GPS attendance, shift scheduling and rostering | Attendance and shift management, with the more advanced handling arriving at higher tiers |
| Hiring | An applicant tracking module inside the same subscription, with job posting to major boards, pipelines and e-signature-ready offer letters, plus a recruiter mobile app | greytHR Recruit, an add-on priced per recruiter, with skill-based shortlisting, a pre-screening assistant, scheduling and offer management |
| Employee self-service | Self-service across the suite, tied to the same employee record | A well-developed portal and mobile app covering payslips, leave balances, claims and tax declarations |
| Project and services firms | A professional-services automation module covering resource planning, project time, utilisation and billing | Not described — the product does not target project-based billing |
| Free option | Not described as a permanent free tier; evaluation is by demo and trial | A time-limited free trial rather than a permanent free tier |
| Best fit | Growing Indian companies that want one bundle covering HR, payroll and hiring, and services firms needing project economics | Indian employers whose priority is a dependable pay cycle and low HR query volume, extending into other modules over time |
The packaging difference is the most useful thing to understand here, because it shapes both cost and behaviour. Keka's approach is to put the modules in one subscription, so core HR, payroll, attendance, performance, hiring, expense and engagement are available by default rather than negotiated. That suits a company that knows it will use most of them and would rather not revisit the contract each time a new need appears, and its professional-services automation module extends that logic to firms that bill projects.
greytHR's approach is incremental. The entry tier covers payroll processing, leave management and employee self-onboarding and exit; higher tiers add advanced attendance and shift handling; other capabilities, including recruitment, arrive as priced add-ons. A company that mainly needs a dependable pay run can therefore start narrow and expand deliberately, which is genuinely cheaper if the extra modules never get used — and genuinely more expensive if they all eventually do. The decision is less about which product is stronger and more about how confident you are in your own two-year module list.
Feature lists will not separate these two, because on paper they overlap heavily. What separates them is behaviour on your own data. Run a parallel payroll for one real month in both systems using your actual salary structures, including whatever makes your case awkward — mid-cycle joiners, arrears, a full-and-final settlement, reimbursement claims with policy limits, and employees across more than one state if that applies. Then compare the outputs and, just as importantly, compare how long each took to configure.
Do the same for the parts employees touch, because that is where HR query volume is won or lost. Have a handful of real employees pull a payslip, check a leave balance, submit a claim and update an income-tax declaration on the mobile app in each system. Whichever produces fewer questions to the HR team is worth more than any comparison table. Finally, price the tier or bundle that actually contains everything you will use, not the entry price, and take current statutory guidance from a qualified advisor rather than from either vendor's marketing copy.
Choose Keka if you want breadth in one subscription and would rather not negotiate module by module, or if you run a project-based services business and need resource planning, utilisation and billing alongside HR. Choose greytHR if the pay cycle is the thing that must be right and you value depth there — ECR and challan generation, eTDS returns, digitally signed annual forms, and a self-service portal that absorbs employee questions — with other modules added deliberately as you need them. Both are credible for an Indian company of this size. Ask each vendor for a current quote against your actual headcount and the modules you will genuinely use, and confirm any statutory detail with a qualified payroll or tax advisor rather than relying on a product page.
Neither of these decisions is really about hiring, yet hiring is often what pushed the search in the first place. Both include recruitment — Keka inside the bundle, greytHR as a per-recruiter add-on — and neither describes async video interviewing on its recruitment pages. Pitch N Hire is not an HRMS and does not run payroll, so it is not an alternative to either. It is the hiring layer that sits beside whichever one you pick: an applicant tracking system with async AI video interviews through Intuvos, sourcing through OnJob.io, and a free single-user plan, for teams whose real constraint is getting through applicants rather than getting through the pay run.
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