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ERPNext HR vs Zoho People: What Each One Actually Costs
Both systems cover attendance, leave, appraisals and recruitment, so a feature list will not separate them. Two things will. The first is that they are not priced the same way at all: Zoho People is a subscription per employee per month, so the bill grows every time you hire, while Frappe HR is free open-source software and you pay for hosting, which does not care how many people are on it. The second is that Zoho People does not calculate pay — that is Zoho Payroll, a separate product with a separate edition per country. Prices below were read from each vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026, and the Zoho figures are the ones shown to a visitor in Egypt.
| Feature | ERPNext HR (Frappe HR) | Zoho People |
|---|---|---|
| What you are actually buying | Nothing per person. The software is open source under AGPL-3.0 and free to download; you pay for hosting and for the one-off implementation. | A subscription. Every employee on the system is a paid user, every month, for as long as you use it. |
| Is there a per-employee licence? | No. Frappe Cloud’s pricing page puts it directly: "pay only for what you use, and not per user". | Yes. The published price is per user per month — 40 employees means 40 paid users. |
| Published price | Frappe Cloud: a shared site from $5/month, a dedicated server from $40/month. Self-hosting on your own server costs whatever that server costs. Headcount does not enter the calculation. | Per user per month, billed annually, local tax on top: Essential HR E£43.75, Professional E£70, Premium E£105, Enterprise E£157.50. Free for up to 5 users; above 500 users Zoho asks you to request a quote. |
| Cost at 100 employees | Unchanged — the server bill, from roughly $40/month. Implementation is a separate one-off project cost. | On Professional, the first plan with attendance: 100 × E£70 = E£7,000 per month, about E£84,000 a year before tax, and payroll is not in that number. |
| Cost at 500 employees | Still the server bill. A bigger server, not five times the licence. | On Professional: 500 × E£70 = E£35,000 per month. 500 is also the point where Zoho switches you to a sales quote. |
| Plan needed for attendance and shifts | Included. There are no plans — shifts, auto attendance and rosters are part of the product. | Professional or above. Time tracking and shift scheduling are not in the entry plan. |
| Plan needed for HR helpdesk and training (LMS) | Not in the product at all. Frappe HR does not carry an LMS or an HR case desk. | Enterprise only — the top plan, at E£157.50 per user per month. These are real modules Frappe HR has no answer to, but they are priced at the top of the ladder. |
| Is payroll included? | Yes, in the same application. Salary structures are built from earning and deduction components carrying conditions and formulas, and a payroll run posts accruals and bank entries. | No. Zoho People handles HR; pay is calculated in Zoho Payroll, a separate product bought separately. |
| Payroll for an Egyptian company | Same system, no second subscription. Egyptian rules are written as salary components and formulas. | Zoho Payroll has no Egypt edition — requested from Egypt, its pricing page serves the India edition. In the Gulf it does exist and is cheap: UAE Standard is AED 35 a month per organisation including 5 employees, then AED 7 per extra employee. |
| Reading a fingerprint or face terminal | Biometric device logs synced from multiple locations, plus mobile check-in with geolocation. | Wider out of the box: web, mobile, biometric integration, RFID, location, and Zoho’s own kiosk with facial recognition. |
| Turning a timestamp into money | Shift settings control the working-hours threshold, the calculation method and the grace period; auto attendance flags late entries and early exits, and the result feeds the payroll run in the same system. | Shift scheduling, shift patterns, automatic rotation and attendance-deviation rules — with the pay consequence applied afterwards, in Zoho Payroll. |
| Link to the accounting ledger | Same system as ERPNext: the general ledger stays in sync with payroll, and payroll expense can be booked against cost centres. | Zoho Payroll posts to Zoho Books, with Zoho Expense alongside it for reimbursements. |
| Who runs it | You do, or Frappe Cloud does. Upgrades, backups and uptime are somebody’s job either way. | Zoho does. Nothing to host, patch or back up — and no access to the source. |
| Best fit | Companies with a few hundred staff or more, companies already on ERPNext, and companies whose pay rules have to be written rather than picked from a list. | Smaller teams, and companies that want the engagement, training and HR-helpdesk side more than they want payroll arithmetic. |
Our Verdict
This is a headcount question before it is a features question. The two cost curves have different shapes: Zoho People multiplies by the number of people, Frappe HR does not move when you hire. For a team of twenty, Zoho People on Professional is around E£1,400 a month and needs no implementation project — nothing about ERPNext HR beats that. Around a hundred people the subscription passes E£80,000 a year and the one-off cost of implementing Frappe HR starts to look like a smaller number than next year’s renewal. At several hundred people it is no longer close, and that is before payroll, which Zoho People does not do and which has no Egypt edition to buy. What pulls the other way is real: the HR helpdesk, the learning management system and the engagement surveys are genuine modules Frappe HR simply does not have. If those are the reason you are buying an HR system, pay for the Enterprise plan and do not look back. If you are buying one because attendance has to become a payslip and a journal entry correctly, every month, the arithmetic points the other way. Bi Innovate implements both.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Zoho People cost per employee?
For a visitor in Egypt in August 2026, Zoho publishes E£43.75, E£70, E£105 and E£157.50 per user per month on annual billing for Essential HR, Professional, Premium and Enterprise, with local tax on top and a free plan for up to 5 users. Attendance and shift scheduling start at Professional. Above 500 users Zoho asks for a quote rather than showing a price.
Do you need a licence per employee for ERPNext HR?
No. Frappe HR is open source under AGPL-3.0 and Frappe Cloud states plainly that you "pay only for what you use, and not per user". The cost is hosting — from $5 a month for a shared site, from $40 for a dedicated server — plus a one-off implementation. Adding a hundred employees does not change the monthly bill.
Which is cheaper?
It depends entirely on headcount. Below roughly thirty employees Zoho People is cheaper in total, because the subscription is small and there is no implementation project to pay for. Somewhere in the low hundreds the lines cross, because the subscription repeats every year while the implementation does not. At a thousand employees they are not comparable.
Does Zoho People run payroll?
No. Zoho People covers attendance, leave, performance, onboarding and employee records. Pay is calculated in Zoho Payroll, a separate product sold in country-specific editions. Zoho Payroll has editions for India, the USA, Canada and the GCC — a UAE organisation pays AED 35 a month for the first five employees and AED 7 for each one after that on the Standard plan. Egypt is not among the editions.
Can both read a fingerprint or face terminal?
Yes. Zoho People lists biometric integration alongside RFID, mobile and its own kiosk with facial recognition. Frappe HR syncs logs from biometric devices across multiple locations and supports mobile check-in with geolocation. The difference is what happens after the log arrives: in Frappe HR it lands in the same system that calculates the payslip, and in Zoho People it has to reach Zoho Payroll to become money.
We already run ERPNext. Does that decide it?
It weighs heavily. Frappe HR is the same platform, the same database and the same ledger, so attendance flows into payroll and payroll into accounts with nothing in between and no second subscription. It still does not decide it — if training, an HR helpdesk and engagement surveys are what you actually need, Zoho People has them and Frappe HR does not.
Tell us your headcount, how people clock in, and which rules turn their hours into money. We will put the two costs side by side for your numbers rather than for an example.