Keka vs Offrd, compared for Indian teams under 250 people
Keka is an HRMS built around performance reviews, OKRs and recruitment, sold through a sales call with a setup fee. Offrd is document first, costs ₹50 per active employee a month with everything included, and is running in about two minutes. The right answer depends on whether you run appraisal cycles.
Last updated 24 August 2026. Keka figures read from keka.com/pricing.
Who is each one actually built for?
These two products are not substitutes for each other, and pretending otherwise wastes your time. Keka was designed for a company with an HR function: someone who owns the system, configures it, runs a review cycle through it and keeps a hiring pipeline moving. Offrd was designed for the company one step earlier, where HR is a job someone does on top of another job.
The clearest test is the appraisal question. If your company runs a formal appraisal cycle with ratings, goals and a calibration meeting, you need software built for that, and Offrd does not have it. If your appraisals happen in a conversation and a revised offer letter, the Keka modules that justify its price will sit idle.
Lean teams, document heavy
- Indian companies under 250 employees
- One HR person, often sharing the role with admin or finance
- Hiring one to five people a quarter, in bursts rather than steadily
- Needs offer letters, payslips, onboarding and exit paperwork to be statutorily right
- No appetite for a configuration project before the first letter goes out
Structured HR, active hiring
- Companies with a dedicated HR and finance function
- Formal performance cycles, goals, ratings and nine box reviews
- A recruiter running a live pipeline through an applicant tracking system
- Budget for a setup fee and a guided implementation
- Multi tier payroll and biometric hardware already in place
What does each one cost?
This is the part where most comparison pages quietly guess. Keka does not publish a price. Its pricing page routes you into a sales conversation, and the figures circulating on review sites for a 25 person team disagree with each other by roughly 40 percent while still naming plans Keka no longer shows. We are not going to repeat any of them here. Ask Keka for a written quote, and ask specifically whether the setup fee is included.
Keka's own pricing FAQ did confirm a setup fee as of March 2026, described as covering guided payroll configuration, employee data import, validation of past salary records and feature setup. The amount was not disclosed. Treat it as a real line in your first year budget rather than a rounding error.
Offrd publishes both of its prices. The subscription is ₹50 per active employee a month with every feature included and no employee minimum. The pay per document plan runs on credits: an offer letter is 10, an onboarding is 15, a full and final settlement is 10, a policy is 10, a probation or increment letter is 5 and a payslip is 2 per employee. Packs start at ₹99 for 10 credits and fall to about ₹8 a credit on the ₹1,999 pack.
Signup gives you 50 free credits with no card. That is enough for one offer letter, one onboarding and a dozen payslips, which is a real end to end test rather than a demo. If you want to model this against your own headcount, the HR software cost comparison lays out the arithmetic for several vendors at once.
Where do the feature sets actually diverge?
The table below covers what a company under 250 people uses week to week. It is not exhaustive, and it deliberately leaves out the enterprise surface area where Keka is stronger. Keka rows reflect its published feature pages as read in March 2026, and plan structures move, so verify anything that would change your decision.
| Capability | Offrd | Keka HR |
|---|---|---|
| COMMERCIALS | ||
| Published price | Yes, ₹50 per active employee a month, or ₹99 per credit pack | No, quoted on a sales call |
| Employee minimum | None | Not stated publicly |
| Setup fee | None | Yes, confirmed on Keka's pricing FAQ, amount not disclosed |
| Free to start | 50 credits on signup, no card | Free trial, no permanent free tier |
| Time to first document | About two minutes, self serve | Guided implementation, typically two to four weeks |
| DOCUMENTS | ||
| Offer letters with statutory annexures | Yes, AI assisted drafting and editing | Yes, through the hiring module |
| Probation, increment, bond, experience letters | Yes, dedicated templates for each | Document storage available, specific letter types not listed |
| Full and final settlement | Yes, dedicated module with reference IDs and 19 deduction heads | Yes, exit module |
| HR policy generation from a questionnaire | Yes, POSH, leave, maternity, IP and more | Not listed |
| Form 16 assembly | Part B generated, Part A uploaded from TRACES, combined and sent | Yes, within payroll |
| ATTENDANCE AND PAYROLL | ||
| Attendance, leave and shifts | Included in the subscription through Atndnz | Yes, in the entry plan |
| Geofencing and GPS for field staff | Included, 500 metre radius, no tier upgrade | Above the entry tier as of March 2026 |
| EPF, ESI, PT and gratuity calculation | Yes, built into every document and payslip | Yes |
| Statutory return filing | No, exports EPF format for your CA | Stronger, payroll compliance at scale |
| PEOPLE PROCESSES | ||
| Performance reviews, OKRs, nine box, 360 | No, deliberately | Yes, this is Keka's core strength |
| Applicant tracking with a hiring pipeline | Screening only through Pre-Hire, stops at a ranked shortlist | Yes, full ATS |
| Expense claims, helpdesk, asset register | No | Yes |
| Multi level approval chains | No | Yes |
Keka data from keka.com/pricing, read March 2026. Statutory rates from the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation and ESIC. Offrd rates at offrd.co/pricing_plans.
What Keka does better than Offrd
Three things, and they are not small. Keka's performance module is the real article: goals, ratings, calibration, nine box grids, the whole apparatus a company uses when appraisals feed into compensation decisions. Offrd has none of it and is not building it.
Keka's applicant tracking system runs a hiring pipeline end to end, with stages, interview scheduling and a candidate database. Offrd's Pre-Hire screens resumes before the interview, scores them, flags padded credentials and hands you a ranked shortlist. That is a narrower job on purpose. If you have a recruiter whose week is the pipeline, Keka is the tool.
And Keka carries the operational modules a larger company expects: expense claims, an HR helpdesk, an asset register, layered approval chains. Offrd leaves all of it out, which is a feature at 40 people and a real gap at 400.
What Offrd does that Keka does not
Price transparency, first. You can read Offrd's rate, work out your monthly bill and sign up without speaking to anyone. That sounds like a small thing until you have sat through three discovery calls to learn what a product costs.
Document depth is the second. Offrd was built around the paperwork an Indian employer has to produce, which is a longer list than most platforms assume: offer letters with confidentiality and compensation annexures, probation confirmations, increments, bond letters, experience letters, relieving letters and a full and final settlement with 19 standard deduction heads and 13 exit specific payouts. Written appointment letters became compulsory under the Labour Codes that took effect on 21 November 2025, which turned a nicety into an obligation.
Third, the statutory engine sits at document level rather than only inside payroll. A PIN code resolves city, district and state, the professional tax slab follows from the state, the salary structure balances to total CTC, and the settlement letter pulls from the same salary heads as the payslip. See the payroll software page for how the calculation runs, and the attendance management page for what the bundled Atndnz app covers.
Fourth, the policy generator. A questionnaire walks you through POSH, leave, maternity, conduct and IP and produces a policy document at the end. POSH matters here: an Indian employer with 10 or more employees carries obligations under the POSH Act, and most tools at this price point simply store a policy you wrote elsewhere.
So which should you choose?
- You are under 250 people and HR is one person's part time job
- You want a published price and no sales call before you can start
- Documents and payslips are the pain, not appraisals
- Hiring is irregular, so a per employee floor is money burnt in quiet months
- You want attendance and geofencing without a tier upgrade
- Your CA already handles the statutory filing and does it well
- You run formal appraisal cycles that feed compensation decisions
- A recruiter is working a live pipeline every week
- You need expense claims, a helpdesk or an asset register in one system
- Payroll is complex across departments, shifts or entities
- Someone owns HR systems and has a month to configure properly
- Biometric hardware and deep integrations are already part of your setup
If you are still shortlisting rather than choosing between these two, the wider twelve vendor study of HR automation software for Indian small businesses compares both against ten more, with August 2026 prices and employee minimums for each.
Looking for a Keka alternative?
Most people searching for a Keka alternative are not unhappy with Keka. They are a team under 250 people who asked for a price, got a sales call and a setup fee instead, and want to know what a published price looks like. Offrd is one answer. It is ₹50 per active employee a month with every module in, or ₹99 a document if you would rather not subscribe at all, and there is no minimum headcount and no setup fee.
The trade is honest. Offrd has no performance review, no OKR tracking and no recruiting pipeline. If those are the reason you looked at Keka, an alternative that lacks them is no alternative. If offer letters, payslips, attendance and exit paperwork are the work, Offrd covers them the same afternoon you sign up. The full comparison hub lists every Offrd comparison guide, by vendor and by question, if you want a wider shortlist.
Questions people ask before switching
- How much does Keka cost per month in India?
- Keka does not publish a price. Its pricing page routes you to a sales conversation, and figures circulating on review sites for a 25 person team disagree with each other by roughly 40 percent while still using plan names Keka no longer shows. Ask Keka for a written quote and treat any third party number as a guess.
- Does Keka charge a setup fee?
- Yes. Keka's own pricing FAQ described a fee covering guided payroll configuration, employee data import, validation of past salary records and feature setup, as of March 2026. The amount is not disclosed publicly. Offrd charges no setup fee and has no guided onboarding to pay for.
- What does Offrd cost for a 20 person company?
- Offrd is ₹1,000 a month at 20 active employees on the subscription plan, with every feature included and no employee minimum. On the pay per document plan the same team hiring one person a month spends closer to ₹520 to ₹650, because an offer letter is 10 credits, an onboarding is 15 and a payslip is 2.
- Is attendance and geo fencing included in the base plan?
- On Offrd, yes. QR check in, GPS check in for field staff at a 500 metre radius, geofencing, biometric device sync and shift schedules are part of the subscription through the bundled Atndnz app, with no tier upgrade. On Keka, location based attendance sat above the entry tier when its pricing page was last read in March 2026.
- Does Offrd do performance reviews or OKRs?
- No, and it is not on the roadmap as a selling point. Offrd has no performance review module, no OKR tracking, no nine box grid and no 360 feedback. If your company runs formal appraisal cycles, Keka is built for that and this comparison ends in Keka's favour.
- Does Offrd file EPF or TDS returns for me?
- No. Offrd calculates EPF at 12 percent employer plus 12 percent employee, ESI at 3.25 percent plus 0.75 percent, professional tax by state slab and gratuity, and it exports payroll in EPF return format for your CA. It does not file ECR to EPFO or 24Q to TRACES. Filing stays with your accountant.
- Can I move from Offrd to Keka later without losing anything?
- Every letter, payslip and settlement statement Offrd generates is a PDF you download and keep, and payroll history exports in EPF return format. On the pay per document plan there is no notice period and no contract to unwind, so leaving costs nothing beyond credits already bought.
- Which one is better for a 40 person company in India?
- If that company runs appraisal cycles, keeps a recruiter busy and has someone to own configuration for a month, Keka. If it has one HR person sharing the role with admin or finance and needs offer letters, payslips, attendance and exit paperwork to be right, Offrd. Most 40 person Indian companies are the second kind.
- Is Offrd a good Keka alternative for a small company?
- For a company under 250 people that needs documents, payroll, attendance and exit paperwork rather than appraisal cycles, yes. Offrd publishes its price, ₹50 per active employee a month or ₹99 a document, charges no setup fee and has no employee minimum. It is not a Keka alternative for performance reviews, OKRs or recruiting, because it does not have those modules.
Try it on your next hire
₹50 per active employee a month, every feature included, no minimum. Or pay per document from ₹99. Signup takes about two minutes and gives you 50 free credits, no card needed.
Disclosure: this page is published by Offrd and recommends Offrd. Keka feature and plan information was read from keka.com/pricing in March 2026. Keka does not publish a monthly price, so no Keka price figure appears here. We have not had independent platform access to Keka. Verify current pricing and plan contents with Keka directly before deciding. Questions about anything on this page go to service@offrd.co.