greytHR vs Keka: Which One to Pick in 2026?

greytHR vs Keka at a glance

Tool	Best for	Starting price	Free tier	External rating
greytHR	Compliance-first payroll for sub-200 employee Indian companies	₹2,495/month (Essential India, 50 employees)	No (free trial/demo only)	G2 4.4/5 (1,284 reviews)
Keka	Growing tech and services companies wanting payroll plus a real performance and hiring stack	Not published; contact sales (an older Keka page cites ₹6,999/month for 100 employees)	No (free trial only)	G2 4.4/5 (2,221 reviews)

Feature comparison by criteria

What they actually cost

I checked both pricing pages directly on August 15, 2026, and the two vendors are not playing the same game anymore.

greytHR still publishes real numbers. Essential India runs ₹2,495/month for 50 employees. Growth India runs ₹4,495/month for 50 employees. Both figures come straight from greytHR’s own pricing data, not a third-party estimate. You can see the price before you talk to a salesperson, which matters if you are comparing three vendors in an afternoon.

Keka’s live pricing page shows no numbers at all. Every tier, Foundation, Strength, and Growth, reads “Contact Us.” This is a change from what Keka itself used to publish. A separate Keka-owned page, a “best HR software” roundup still live on keka.com, states pricing “starting at just Rs. 6999 monthly for up to 100 employees. Additional employees can be added for just Rs. 60 per month.” That page also happens to quote greytHR at ₹3,495/month for 50 employees, a different number than what greytHR’s own current pricing shows, ₹2,495. Neither of those older figures should be treated as current. Whichever one you use, verify it against the vendor’s own live pricing page before you budget against it.

The honest read: greytHR is the transparent one right now. If seeing a real number before a sales call matters to you, that alone is worth something. Keka may still land at a competitive price once you actually talk to them, but you will not know until you do, and you should discount any Keka price you find in a blog post, including ours, until we get a live quote.

Payroll compliance, compared

This is the category where Indian HR software actually gets tested. Getting PF, ESI, professional tax, TDS, and gratuity wrong is not a UX complaint, it is a legal and financial risk.

greytHR has the longer specific history as a payroll-and-compliance vendor. It was built around statutory processing before it became a broader HRMS, and that shows in how the product handles multi-state PF/ESI registrations, form generation, and challan filing. Companies with complex multi-location statutory setups, or with a mostly blue-collar workforce where compliance accuracy is the entire job, tend to trust greytHR here.

Keka covers the same statutory ground, PF, ESI, PT, TDS, gratuity, and does it correctly. It is a newer entrant to the payroll-compliance-first conversation than greytHR, having built its reputation on the broader HR experience first and payroll depth second. For a typical mid-market services or tech company with a single-state or two-state payroll setup, Keka’s compliance handling is not a weak point.

Where this actually matters in practice: a factory operator running payroll across five states with strict PF inspector audits should lean toward greytHR’s specialist depth. A 150-person SaaS company running payroll out of Bangalore and Pune has less to worry about either way.

AI features, compared

greytHR shipped NAVOS in June 2026, an agentic AI assistant built into the product. NAVOS answers questions, searches records, and executes tasks like granting leave, publishing letters, and pulling attendance musters through plain-language prompts. greytHR’s own FAQ states NAVOS is available on all paid plans, though rollout is still phased by account.

Keka AI is a broader plan: Keka Copilot as a conversational assistant, AI embedded across hiring, payroll, and onboarding, and a Keka MCP Server that connects Keka’s data to external tools like Claude and ChatGPT. But as of August 2026, Keka’s own AI page runs on a “Join the waitlist” signup, and two modules, Performance and Employee engagement, are marked “Coming Soon.”

The real difference is not the feature list, it is what is actually usable today. NAVOS is live inside paid greytHR accounts right now. Keka AI’s broader vision is more ambitious on paper, but a chunk of it is still pre-launch.

Where Keka wins

Performance management that people actually use. Keka ships continuous feedback, structured 360-degree reviews, and goal or OKR tracking as native features, not a bolted-on module. Managers running quarterly or annual review cycles get a system built for that job, not a payroll tool stretching to cover it.

A real applicant tracking system. Keka’s ATS handles structured pipelines, interview scheduling, and candidate communication in a way that a company actually hiring 5 to 20 roles a quarter can run its recruiting process on. greytHR’s recruitment tooling exists but is thinner.

Employee experience and mobile app polish. Employees interact with an HR system mostly through leave requests, payslips, and the mobile app. Keka’s interface is newer and consistently gets better marks from end users for how it looks and feels, not just what it does.

Engagement features. Keka has built out pulse surveys, recognition tools, and other engagement-layer features that greytHR does not prioritize. For a company actively trying to reduce attrition with data, this is not nothing.

Where greytHR wins

Lower cost at small headcounts. For a 20 to 80 employee company whose only real requirement is running payroll correctly and keeping compliance clean, greytHR’s flat small-team pricing beats Keka’s base-plus-per-employee model in most cases.

A narrower, more predictable product. Some HR teams do not want a platform with performance management, engagement surveys, and an ATS they will never fully use. greytHR’s more focused scope means less product to configure, fewer settings to get wrong, and a shorter path to a working payroll cycle.

Track record with statutory auditors. greytHR has been in enough India-specific payroll compliance situations, over enough years, that HR and finance teams handling PF inspections and labor audits tend to trust it as the safer, more conservative choice.

Where they’re the same

Do not make this decision based on the following, because both tools handle them adequately:

• Leave and attendance tracking. Both support configurable leave policies, biometric and geo-fenced attendance, and manager approval workflows.
• Employee self-service. Both let employees view payslips, apply for leave, submit reimbursement claims, and update basic profile data without HR intervention.
• Payslip generation and Form 16. Both automate this correctly, year after year, for standard payroll structures.
• Basic reporting. Headcount, attrition, and payroll cost reports exist on both at a reasonable level.
• Cloud-based, India-hosted infrastructure. Neither has a meaningful edge on uptime or data residency for an India-focused buyer.

If your checklist stops at the items above, the decision comes down to price and how much of the rest of the platform you will actually use.

Support and setup time

greytHR implementation for a payroll-only rollout typically runs one to three weeks for a company under 200 employees with a reasonably clean employee master data set. Support is generally responsive for statutory and payroll-cycle issues, which makes sense given that is the core of the product.

Keka implementation runs longer, typically three to six weeks, because a full rollout usually includes onboarding for performance management, the ATS, and attendance policies alongside payroll, not just payroll on its own. Support quality gets consistently positive mentions from buyers, particularly around onboarding hand-holding for HR teams that are new to running a structured performance cycle.

Neither vendor is known for weak support in this segment, which is one reason both show up reliably in Indian HR buyer shortlists year after year.

What reviewers say

I pulled both live G2 pages on August 15, 2026. greytHR sits at 4.4/5 across 1,284 reviews. Keka sits at 4.4/5 across 2,221 reviews. Same score, and Keka carries roughly 1.7 times the review volume, which tracks with Keka’s broader push into the mid-market HRMS category over the past few years.

greytHR reviewers consistently praise payroll accuracy and statutory compliance handling. The recurring complaint is that the interface and some of the secondary modules feel dated next to newer competitors.

Keka reviewers consistently praise the modern interface, the performance management workflow, and the mobile app. One recurring complaint worth flagging given everything above: reviewers mention pricing being unclear or requiring a sales conversation, which matches what the live pricing page now shows.

Tied G2 scores with a real gap in review count is a genuinely useful signal here. Keka has convinced more people to leave a review, but it has not convinced them to rate it any higher than the older, more compliance-focused greytHR.

Which one fits your company

Our pick

Pick greytHR if payroll and statutory compliance are the actual job to be done, and everything else is secondary. This is the right call for a 30-person services firm, a factory with a mostly blue-collar workforce, or any company where the HR team’s real KPI is “did payroll run correctly and did we pass the PF audit.”

Pick Keka if you are past the point of just needing payroll and are actively trying to run a real HR function. Performance reviews, structured hiring, and an employee experience people do not complain about are not luxuries once a company is past 100 employees and competing for talent.

The decision gets easier once you write down what you are actually trying to solve. If the answer is “get payroll right without overpaying,” greytHR wins that argument cleanly. If the answer includes “and also fix how we hire and review people,” Keka is worth the extra spend, because buying a second tool to cover what Keka already includes usually costs more than the price difference between the two platforms.

Most companies under 150 employees with simple payroll needs should start with greytHR. Most companies actively scaling their HR function, hiring regularly, and running structured performance cycles should start with Keka and skip the detour.

Affiliate disclosure: Topickz may earn a commission when readers click links to greytHR or Keka and become paying customers. This does not affect our ratings or recommendations. Pricing and feature claims in this comparison were checked against publicly available vendor and review-platform information as of August 2026; we recommend re-verifying exact pricing directly with each vendor before purchase, since both platforms quote final pricing through sales conversations for most company sizes. See our methodology and full disclosures .

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