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The Best Keka Alternative for Small IT Teams in India (2026)

April 2026•Workclave Team•8 min read

Keka HR is one of India's most widely used HR platforms. It handles payroll, compliance, and attendance for thousands of companies. But if you run a small IT team — 5 to 50 people — Keka has a problem that shows up before you even add your first employee: the price floor.

Keka's base fee starts at ₹9,999 per month before you add a single user. For a 10-person startup, that is ₹12,000–₹15,000 per month just to track attendance. For a 20-person agency, you are comparing ₹18,000+ to tools that start free.

This guide is for teams actively evaluating Keka alternatives — and specifically for IT services companies, software agencies, and consultancies where time tracking and project billing matter as much as payroll compliance.

Why small IT teams outgrow Keka

Keka was built for the Indian mid-market — companies with 100+ employees, dedicated HR teams, and complex payroll needs. That is actually where it performs well. G2 reviews for Keka consistently praise its payroll accuracy and compliance features.

The friction starts when smaller teams try to use it.

The minimum fee problem. Keka charges a base platform fee regardless of team size. For a 10-person team, you are paying the same platform cost as a 200-person company. This is explicitly designed for enterprise buyers, not startups.

The complexity problem. Keka has modules for everything — payroll, PMS, recruitment, expense management, learning. For a 15-person IT firm that just needs to track which developer worked on which client project, this is overwhelming. Software review data from Capterra shows “overwhelming complexity” as a recurring complaint from small business users.

The project-billing gap. Keka tracks attendance — when people arrived and left. It does not track what they worked on. For IT teams that bill clients by the hour, this forces you to maintain a second tool (Toggl, Harvest, or spreadsheets) just to reconstruct billable hours at month-end.

What to look for in a Keka alternative

Before comparing tools, it is worth being precise about what “attendance management” actually needs to do for a project-based IT team.

According to NASSCOM's FY2024 IT sector report, India has over 740,000 tech SMEs. The vast majority of them work on multiple client projects simultaneously. Their attendance challenge is not “did Priya show up?” — it is “what did Priya work on, for which client, and for how long?”

A genuine Keka alternative for this use case needs:

Session or project-level tracking — not just clock-in/clock-out timestamps
Approval workflows — manager review before hours are finalised for billing
No large minimum fees — pay for what you use
Quick setup — not weeks of implementation and configuration
India compliance— Shops & Establishments Act, Professional Tax, Labour Code documentation

The top Keka alternatives compared

1. Workclave — Best for IT teams and agencies that bill by the hour

Workclave is purpose-built for the use case Keka does not serve well: project-based attendance for IT teams. Instead of clock-in/clock-out, it tracks work sessions — each tied to a specific project and client, with manager approval before the session closes.

Pricing: Free up to 5 users. ₹199/user/month for Pro. No base fee, no minimums.

What makes it different: Every session creates a structured record — member, project, duration, approval status. This is billing-grade data that can go directly into a client invoice without reconstruction. The AI weekly summary tells managers what their team actually spent time on, before the client asks.

Best for: IT services firms, software agencies, QA companies, design studios — any team where hours need to be linked to client projects. For the full feature breakdown, see the Workclave vs Keka comparison page and the deeper session-based vs clock-in/clock-out write-up.

Limitations: Payroll processing is not yet fully built (expected Q3 2026). For complex payroll with variable pay components, you would still need a dedicated payroll tool.

2. Zoho People — Best if you are already in the Zoho ecosystem

Zoho People is part of Zoho's suite of 55+ business applications. If your team already uses Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, or Zoho Projects, the integration value is real.

Pricing: ₹50–375/user/month depending on plan. No large base fee.

What works: Timesheets, leave management, and compliance features are solid. The free tier allows up to 5 users.

What does not:Support is routed through Zoho's partner ecosystem, which G2 reviewers consistently flag as slow and expensive. Attendance is a feature inside a 44-app suite — it gets treated accordingly.

3. GreytHR — Best for payroll-first compliance needs

GreytHR is the go-to payroll platform for small and mid-sized Indian companies. Its statutory compliance — PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS — is genuinely excellent.

Pricing: ₹70–150/user/month. Minimum 25 users on most plans.

What works: If payroll accuracy and statutory compliance is your primary need, GreytHR is hard to beat in India.

What does not: Attendance is basic clock-in/out. No project linking. The UX has been criticised as outdated in recent reviews. Not the right tool if billable hour accuracy matters to you.

4. Clockify — Best free option for simple time tracking

Clockify has a generous free tier and works well for individual freelancers and very small teams that just need a simple timer.

Pricing: Free (unlimited users and projects). Paid plans from $3.99/user/month.

What works: The free tier is genuinely functional, not crippled. Basic reporting and project tracking work without paying anything.

What does not: No approval workflows on the free plan. No India compliance features. No payroll integration. At scale, you will need paid add-ons for features that should be standard.

5. Hubstaff — Avoid for most Indian teams

Hubstaff is popular internationally but has two significant problems for Indian IT teams.

First, its core feature set includes screenshot monitoring and keyboard/mouse activity tracking. Privacy and employee trust concerns are real — and increasingly relevant as Indian employees become more aware of workplace surveillance rights under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023.

Second, pricing at $7–25/user/month converts to ₹580–₹2,000+/user/month — significantly more expensive than Indian alternatives with equivalent features.

Side-by-side comparison

	Workclave	Keka	Zoho People	GreytHR	Clockify
Starting price	₹0	₹9,999/mo base	₹0 (5 users)	₹70/user	$0
20-person team cost	₹3,980/mo	₹12,000–₹18,000/mo	₹7,500/mo	₹3,500/mo	₹0
Session-based tracking	✓	✗	✗	✗	Partial
Project-level billing	✓	✗	Partial	✗	✓
Approval workflows	✓	✓	✓	✗	Paid only
India compliance	✓ (Pro)	✓	✓	✓	✗
Setup time	< 1 hour	Days–weeks	Days	Days	< 1 hour
AI analytics	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗

The real cost of switching

Switching attendance tools has a cost beyond the monthly fee. Your team needs to learn a new tool, historical data needs migrating, and approvals workflows need reconfiguring.

The legitimate question is: is the switching cost worth it?

For teams currently paying Keka's minimum fee of ₹9,999/month for fewer than 30 people, the math is straightforward. At ₹199/user/month with no base fee, a 20-person team saves approximately ₹6,000–₹8,000 per month — that is ₹72,000–₹96,000 per year. Most teams complete the Workclave setup in under an hour.

For teams primarily using Keka for payroll and not attendance, switching is less compelling. Keka's payroll module is genuinely strong. The case for switching is specifically for teams where billable hour accuracy is a revenue issue.

Bottom line

Keka is a good tool for what it is designed for — HR and payroll for Indian mid-market companies. If that is your primary need, it is worth the price.

But if you are an IT services firm, software agency, or consultancy under 100 people, and your attendance problem is really a billing accuracy problem, Keka's clock-in/clock-out model will always leave a gap between “who worked today” and “what did they bill to which client.”

Workclave is free to try, takes under an hour to set up, and does not require a ₹9,999/month commitment to get started.