The short answer
You can manage employees for free in three ways: use the free plan of a cloud HR tool, download and host open-source HR software yourself, or run a well-built spreadsheet. Free plans are quickest to start but cap users, rules or features; open-source software has no licence fee but needs a server and someone technical; a spreadsheet is free and familiar but can't prove who was at work.
This guide lists twelve genuinely free options, checked on each vendor's own site on 27 October 2026, and includes our free Excel employee management template, which you can download with the button at the end of this page.
Free download: employee management template for Excel
The template is a single Excel workbook that works without any software beyond Excel or Google Sheets. It has six tabs: Employees (the master list with joining date, status and monthly gross), Attendance (a monthly grid with one code per employee per day), Leave (opening balance, leave taken and closing balance for casual, sick and earned leave), Salary (payable days and earned gross), Lists (the attendance codes and how much each one pays) and Start Here.
Set the month once and the grid shows the right number of days and weekdays. Codes come from a dropdown: P present, HD half day, A absent, CL, SL and EL for paid leave, WO weekly off and H holiday. Payable days and leave balances calculate on their own. In the sample data, an employee on ₹22,000 with one absence and one half day in a 30-day month gets 28.5 payable days and an earned gross of ₹20,900. Deductions such as PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS are left for you to add, or for payroll software.
- Up to 100 employees, with formulas ready in every row
- Works in Excel and Google Sheets; no macros
- Copy the workbook each month and keep the old ones as your records
Free plans from cloud HR and attendance tools
These tools have a free plan you can sign up for online, with nothing to install. Limits are as listed on each vendor's site in October 2026:
- Kredily: Free Forever for unlimited employees, subject to an active-usage policy; payroll, web clock-in, leave, PF, ESI, PT and TDS calculations and an employee app; limited to 250 MB, one leave and attendance rule and one salary structure
- Zoho Payroll: free forever for up to 10 employees, with EPF, ESI, state professional tax, LWF and a TDS worksheet
- Zoho People: free plan for a small number of users covering the employee database, time off and documents, without attendance
- factoHR: free for up to 20 employees with a limited set of modules
- Empxtrack: payroll free for up to 10 employees, plus five free appraisals
- Jibble: free time tracking for unlimited users, with mobile and web clock-in and basic timesheets
- Connecteam: all hubs free for up to 10 users, with limits such as one time clock and one schedule
- Zoho Shifts: a free scheduling plan
- PagarBook: staff attendance is free; salary, PF and ESI features are paid per staff member
Open-source employee management software (free download)
Open-source HR systems are free to download and use, but you host them: you need a server or cloud machine, someone to install updates and take backups, and time to configure Indian payroll where it isn't built in. They suit companies with an in-house developer or IT partner.
- OrangeHRM Starter: open-source HR with employee records, leave, time tracking, recruitment, performance and a mobile app; download after registering on orangehrm.com; community support only
- Odoo Community: the free edition includes the Employees, Time Off, Attendances, Recruitment and Expenses apps; Payroll and Appraisals are only in the paid Enterprise edition; download from odoo.com
- Frappe HR: open-source HR and payroll under the AGPL-3.0 licence, on GitHub; Frappe documents an India payroll extension for EPF, ESI, professional tax and LWF; self-host, or use Frappe Cloud hosting from US$5 a month
- IceHrm: an open-source edition that is free forever, downloadable from its GitHub releases; the paid Pro edition is a one-time licence
Beware of 'free download' versions of paid software
Searching for a free download of paid HR or payroll software often leads to cracked installers on file-sharing sites. Avoid them. They are a common way to spread malware, they never receive statutory updates (a wrong PF or TDS rule costs more than a licence), and an HR system holds your employees' bank details, PAN and Aadhaar numbers. Download only from the vendor's own website, an official app store or the project's official GitHub page.
What free plans leave out
Free plans are designed to show you the product, not to run a growing business on. The usual limits:
- User caps: 5, 10 or 20 users, after which every user is paid
- Attendance checks: free plans often allow web clock-in only, without GPS, geofence or face verification
- Payroll filing: calculations are free, but challans, Form 16 and salary payouts are paid
- Rules: one shift, one leave policy or one salary structure
- Support: community forums or email only, with no help during setup
When to move from free to paid
Stay free while everyone works in one place, salary structures are simple and nobody disputes attendance. Move to a paid plan when staff clock in from sites or the field and you need proof of where they were, when PF and ESI make payroll a monthly risk, or when the time spent fixing the spreadsheet costs more than a subscription. Our guide to employee management software for small business shows what paid plans cost at 10, 25 and 50 employees, and free attendance software in India looks at free attendance tools in more depth.
Attend Mitra after the free tools
Attend Mitra doesn't have a free plan, but it has a 14-day free trial and is priced per employee, so a small team pays only for its own size: Attendance is ₹29 per employee a month, and you add Leave (₹9) and Payroll (₹32) when you need them, before GST. Staff clock in from Android or iPhone with face, GPS or Wi-Fi checks, even offline. See the module prices or how the mobile app works.