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ERPNext HR vs Zoho People: What Each One Actually Costs
Both cover attendance, leave, appraisals and recruitment. What separates them is price shape: Zoho People charges per employee per month, so the bill grows with every hire, while Frappe HR is open source and you pay for hosting, whatever your headcount. And Zoho People does not calculate pay — that is Zoho Payroll, a separate product. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | The software is free under AGPL-3.0. Frappe Cloud charges "only for what you use, and not per user": a shared site from $5/month, a dedicated server from $40/month. Headcount does not enter the calculation. | Per user per month, billed annually, local tax on top: Essential HR $0.86, Professional $1.38, Premium $2.07, Enterprise $3.10. 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 × $1.38 = $138 per month, about $1,650 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 × $1.38 = $690 per month. 500 is also the point where Zoho switches you to a sales quote. |
| Attendance and shifts | Included — there are no plans. Shift settings set the working-hours threshold and grace period, auto attendance flags late entries and early exits, and the result feeds payroll in the same system. | Professional or above. Shift scheduling, automatic rotation and attendance-deviation rules, with the pay consequence applied afterwards in Zoho Payroll. |
| HR helpdesk and training (LMS) | Not in the product. Frappe HR does not carry an LMS or an HR case desk. | Enterprise only, at $3.10 per user per month. |
| Payroll | In the same application, with no second subscription. Salary structures are built from earning and deduction components with formulas, so Egyptian rules are written in, and a payroll run posts accruals and bank entries. | Not included — pay is calculated in Zoho Payroll, bought separately. It has no Egypt edition. 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. |
| 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. |
Prices checked Page updated
Vendor prices change. That date is the last time we read them off the vendor’s own pricing page. Zoho publishes and bills Egyptian customers in pounds; its dollar figures here convert at 50.82 EGP to the dollar, the mid-market rate on 1 September 2026.
Want to know how this works out for your company? Send us the question as you would ask it.
Our Verdict
At twenty employees, Zoho People Professional is about $27.5 a month with no implementation project, and nothing in ERPNext HR beats that. At a hundred, the subscription passes $1,600 a year, so a one-off implementation looks smaller than next year’s renewal — and that is before payroll, which Zoho People does not do.
The pull the other way is real: an HR helpdesk, an LMS and engagement surveys are not in Frappe HR. If those are why you are buying, pay for Enterprise. If you are buying so that attendance produces a correct payslip every month, the arithmetic points the other way.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Zoho People cost per employee?
For a visitor in Egypt in August 2026, Zoho publishes $0.86, $1.38, $2.07 and $3.10 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.
Does Zoho People run payroll?
No. Zoho People covers attendance, leave, performance, onboarding and employee records. Pay is calculated in Zoho Payroll, sold in country editions for India, the USA, Canada and the GCC. Egypt is not among them.
We already run ERPNext. Does that decide it?
It weighs heavily. Frappe HR is the same platform, database and ledger, so attendance flows into payroll and payroll into accounts with no second subscription. It does not decide it if training, an HR helpdesk and engagement surveys are what you need.
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.