EasyHR vs greytHR: A 2026 Comparison for Indian SMEs

EasyHR vs greytHR — the short version

greytHR (built by Greytip Software, Bangalore) is the most established product in the Indian SME HR space. They’ve been doing this since around 1994, have over 25,000 customers, and are particularly strong on payroll — that’s their original product, and it shows.

EasyHR is a more recent entrant, built around modern UX, mobile-first attendance, and predictable per-employee pricing without the minimum-headcount cliff. We aim at the same SME segment but optimize for a different buyer: the HR generalist who wants to be live in two weeks, not two months, and who needs the mobile app to actually work in the field.

If we’re being honest: greytHR has the deeper installed base, the longer track record on payroll, and a price point at the entry level (free up to 25 employees) that’s hard to argue with. Where EasyHR pulls ahead is feel-of-use, attendance reliability, support responsiveness, and how the product scales as your team grows past the free plan into paid tiers.

Pricing — the math actually changes shape at 50 employees

This is the most interesting part of the comparison and the hardest to surface from marketing pages on either side.

greytHR’s pricing structure:

• Free Starter — up to 25 employees, includes core HR, leave, attendance, payroll
• Essential — ₹3,495/month, starting at 50 employees
• Growth — ₹5,495/month, starting at 50 employees
• Enterprise — ₹7,495/month, starting at 50 employees
• Per-employee additional — from ~₹35 PEPM (the lowest in the Indian HRMS category)

The free plan is genuinely good for very small teams. The catch is what happens between 26 and 49 employees — you’re either on a free plan that’s no longer scaling or paying for a plan that bills for 50 minimum. For a 30-person team, that’s a real subsidy.

EasyHR’s pricing is straightforward per-employee on three tiers (Starter, Growth, Enterprise) with no minimum-headcount cliff. You pay for the headcount you have, and you can move tiers as your needs change without re-implementing.

For teams over 100 employees, greytHR’s per-employee cost (~₹35 PEPM) is often lower than EasyHR’s. For teams under 50, EasyHR is usually cheaper. In the 50–100 range it’s close, and the right tiebreaker becomes implementation cost and total cost of ownership rather than the subscription line item.

Features — both broad, optimized differently

Payroll and statutory compliance

Both products handle the standard Indian payroll workload: PF, ESI, TDS, professional tax, LWF, gratuity, multi-state PT, multiple pay groups, arrears, bonus reconciliation, statutory return generation (Form 16, Form 24Q, ECR for EPFO).

greytHR has been doing payroll for 25+ years and that maturity shows in edge cases — unusual deduction structures, complex variable-pay calculations, multi-entity reconciliation. If your payroll is genuinely complicated, the depth is meaningful.

EasyHR’s payroll engine covers the same statutory workload and handles 95% of standard SME complexity cleanly. The difference matters at the tail of edge cases. For most SMEs it doesn’t.

Time and attendance

Both support biometric integration, mobile clock-in, leave management, and shift management. This is where EasyHR pulls clearly ahead.

greytHR’s attendance module is a recurring source of user complaint on G2 and Capterra — slow auto-updates, employees needing to email HR for regularization, occasional system instability. Some of that is workload (greytHR runs at large customer scale), some is the architecture of an attendance module retrofitted onto a payroll-first product.

EasyHR’s attendance module was built core-first. Selfie attendance, GPS, and geofencing are not afterthoughts — they’re core flows that get nightly QA. If you have field sales, retail outlets, shop-floor staff, or distributed clinical teams, this gap compounds quickly.

Core HR, leave, ESS

Both handle employee master data, document generation, onboarding workflows, leave policies and accruals, employee self-service portals, custom roles, and reminders. UX style differs — greytHR’s interface is functional but feels older; EasyHR’s is more modern with cleaner mobile parity. Most teams find both workable; whoever does the demo at 4pm Friday wins on this dimension.

Performance management, expenses, claims, recruitment

greytHR offers more breadth in its higher tiers, with 40+ modules across HR, payroll, performance, recruitment, and engagement. EasyHR offers focused performance management, claims, recruitment, and training modules — opinionated, not exhaustive.

If you want every conceivable HR module under one login, greytHR offers more surface area. If you want the modules you actually use to be polished and fast, EasyHR’s narrower scope works in your favor.

Implementation — three to four weeks vs one to two

greytHR’s implementation cycle for a 100-employee company typically runs 3 to 4 weeks for standard configurations, longer for complex multi-entity payroll. The configuration surface is wide and the company has documented their implementation playbook well — but the throughput is the throughput.

EasyHR’s implementation runs 7 to 14 days for similar-sized teams. We do data migration in parallel with policy setup rather than after it, and we limit the configurable surface area to decisions that actually need to be made. For most SMEs, that trade-off is in favor of speed.

If you’re switching off another HRMS or coming from spreadsheets and you need to be live by next month-end, this gap matters more than any feature comparison.

Customer support — ticketing vs dedicated

greytHR runs a ticket-based support organization with typical 24-hour response. The infrastructure is mature — they have a knowledge base, training programs, and partner network. The downside reviewers consistently surface is inconsistency, particularly during high-load periods or for issues involving calculation errors.

EasyHR runs a smaller, dedicated support team. Typical response time is under 2 business hours during business days. The trade-off is reach — we don’t operate 24/7, and we don’t have the partner-implementer network greytHR has built up. For 95% of SMEs, the response-time difference matters more.

Industry fit and customer profile

greytHR’s customer distribution skews to the 20–500 employee segment, which is the heart of Indian SME. They have customers across every sector and the product is genuinely sector-agnostic. The marketing leans toward established mid-market with structured HR processes.

EasyHR sits in the same headcount range but specifically optimizes for cross-sector fit — manufacturing, retail, BFSI, healthcare, IT services, professional services. We’ve built industry-specific configurations for the most common sectors and the field-attendance features are central to the product, not optional.

If your team is mostly desk-based knowledge workers, both products work fine. If you have shop-floor staff, retail outlets, field sales, or shift-based clinical staff, EasyHR’s mobile-first attendance flows are typically the deciding factor.

Switching from greytHR to EasyHR

We’ve migrated customers off greytHR. The standard scope:

1. Employee master data export from greytHR’s data export tools, mapped and imported into EasyHR
2. Year-to-date payroll history (gross, deductions, net, statutory contributions) — preserved for Form 16 continuity
3. Leave balances, accrual histories, holiday calendars
4. Document attachments (offer letters, ID proofs, statutory forms)
5. Org structure, reporting hierarchy, custom fields
6. Statutory entity setup (PAN, TAN, PF/ESI registration numbers)
7. One full parallel payroll run before cutover

Most migrations complete in 5–10 working days. Bundled into onboarding — no separate fee. We’ll also run a side-by-side feature parity check before you commit so there are no late-stage surprises.

How to choose

Three questions cover most of the decision.

One — how big is your team and how does it grow? Under 25 employees and not in a hurry to grow: greytHR’s free plan is hard to beat. 25–50 employees: EasyHR avoids the headcount cliff. 100–500 employees: greytHR may win on raw subscription cost; EasyHR may win on total cost of ownership. 500+: both work, the decision is about feature fit.

Two — how heavily do you use attendance? If attendance is the daily lifeblood of your operation (retail, manufacturing, healthcare, field sales), EasyHR’s attendance module is the cleaner choice. If attendance is mostly desk-bound and you don’t need mobile selfie/GPS/geofencing, greytHR is fine.

Three — what matters more to you, vendor longevity or product modernity? greytHR has 25 years and 25,000 customers — that’s stability. EasyHR has 10 years, 2,000+ businesses, and a faster product cycle. Both are real businesses; the right answer depends on whether you optimize for vendor risk or product fit.

If you’re at a real buying-decision moment, start a 14-day EasyHR trial and compare it against your greytHR demo with one of your actual payroll runs. The comparison gets concrete in 48 hours of real use.