Keka Pricing: The Real Cost for a 20-Person Team (2026)

Most HR and attendance tools price per user: 20 people at ₹100 each is ₹2,000 a month, and the bill scales down as smoothly as it scales up. Keka deliberately does not work this way. Its India pricing has two components:

1. A flat monthly base fee — reported at ₹9,999, reported at ₹12,999, or reported at ₹15,999depending on plan (as of July 2026) — that includes up to 100 employees.
2. A per-employee charge above 100 — ₹90, ₹120, or ₹150 per additional employee per month, again depending on plan.

The design logic is straightforward: Keka is optimising for mid-size companies. For a 100–500 employee organisation, the blended cost per head is competitive with — often cheaper than — per-user enterprise HRMS suites. The trade-off is that the model has a hard floor. There is no smaller tier, no free plan, and the base fee does not shrink for smaller headcounts.

Two more line items belong in any honest budget. First, 18% GST applies to the subscription. Second, several reviewers and buyers report a one-time implementation/setup fee — commonly described as in the range of one to two months of subscription — though Keka does not publish a fixed figure on its pricing page, so treat that as a negotiable, confirm-on-quote number.

Because the base fee is flat up to 100 employees, the number that matters for a small team is not the sticker price — it is the effective cost per employee. Here is the Foundation-plan math at different team sizes (prices as of July 2026, excluding GST):

Read the “effective per employee” column top to bottom. That is the whole story of Keka pricing for small teams: the base fee dominates until you approach 100 employees. A 10-person team pays ten times the per-head rate of a 100-person team for identical software. At 20 people on Foundation you are at roughly ₹500 per employee per month; on Strength that becomes ₹650, and on Growth ₹800 — before GST, before any setup fee, before add-ons.

For context, per-user attendance and HR tools for small teams in India typically land between ₹50 and ₹375 per user per month. Keka at 20 seats costs more than most of that range not because its list price is high for what it does, but because you are effectively paying for 100 seats and using 20.

The flip side deserves equal emphasis: the same table shows why Keka is good value at 80–100+ employees. ₹100–₹160 per head for integrated payroll, attendance, and HR is a competitive rate, and past 100 employees the marginal cost (₹90–₹150 per head) stays flat and predictable.

This is not a hit piece — Keka is one of India's most successful HR platforms for good reasons. It is a strong fit when:

• You have (or will soon have) 75–100+ employees. The base-fee math turns in your favour, and the per-head economics keep improving as you grow.
• India payroll complexity is your core problem. PF, ESI, LWF, PT across states, TDS, Form 16/24Q, gratuity, F&F settlements — Keka's statutory automation is deep, and it is included from the Foundation tier.
• You have a dedicated HR function. The product is built to be driven by HR ops — performance cycles, policy configuration, analytics — rather than by a founder administering it between other jobs.
• You want one suite, not a stack. HR + payroll + attendance + performance in a single vendor relationship, accepting add-on pricing for edges like multi-entity and API access.

Conversely, if you are a 5–30 person software agency or startup whose actual daily need is attendance, leave, and knowing which hours went to which client project — and payroll is something your CA or a simpler tool already handles — you are the buyer the base-fee model quietly overcharges. We wrote a fuller breakdown of that scenario in the best Keka alternatives for small IT teams in India.

Workclave prices the way small teams expect: ₹0 for up to 3 users, then ₹199 per user per month on Pro — with no base fee. Cost scales with your actual headcount from the first user.

The honest framing: these are different products. Keka is a full HRMS with serious payroll; Workclave is attendance and work-hour tracking built for small IT teams, where every logged session carries a project and a manager approval — the record you need for both client billing and compliance registers. If your 20-person team is choosing between them, the question is whether you need Keka's payroll depth enough to pay a 100-seat base fee for 20 seats. For a feature-by-feature breakdown, see our Workclave vs Keka comparison, and the full plan details on our pricing page.