Free vs paid attendance apps: what Indian SMBs actually need in 2026
An honest comparison of free attendance apps, paid HR software, and the biometric option. Where each one breaks down, and what to pick for a 5–50 person team.
· 10 min read
Type ‘free attendance app’ into the Play Store and you’ll get 50+ results. Most are good enough to mark attendance — which is exactly the problem. Attendance is the easy part. Everything that depends on attendance is where free apps break.
What free attendance apps do well
Marking present/absent on a date. Storing a list of employees. Maybe showing a calendar view. For a 5-person team where you trust everyone and don’t need a salary slip, free is fine.
Where they break
Salary calculation. Most free apps don’t do it. You still compute salary in your head or in Excel. That’s where attendance disputes come from — when your math and the employee’s math disagree.
Salary slips. Almost no free app generates a clean PDF slip. When your employee needs proof of income for a bank loan, you’re back in Word.
Leave management. Free attendance apps treat leaves as ‘absent.’ But absent and ‘approved paid leave’ are different things — one should cut salary, the other shouldn’t.
Audit / dispute resolution. If an employee challenges their salary, can you show a clean, dated, signed record? Most free apps say no.
The biometric machine option
A biometric machine costs ₹10,000–₹20,000. It’s great for a single fixed location with a stable team. It breaks every monsoon, can’t handle field staff, and still doesn’t calculate salary.
For most Indian SMBs, biometric is overkill. A GPS attendance app on the staff’s own phone gives you the same anti-buddy-punching guarantee at zero hardware cost.
The paid HR-software option
Enterprise-style HRMS tools (think names you’ve heard at corporate events) cost ₹100–₹250 per employee per month. They’re built for 500-person companies with an HR manager who knows how to use a desktop portal. For a 15-person salon, they’re absurdly over-built.
What an SMB actually needs
- Attendance — daily marking, half-days, lates
- GPS verification (optional, for field/buddy-punching)
- Auto salary calculation from attendance
- PDF salary slip per employee per month
- Leave management with balance and approval flow
- WhatsApp delivery so staff actually reads things
- Employee self-service so they see their own record
- All on a phone — owner doesn’t want to open a laptop
What it should cost
Under 10 employees: free. 10–25 employees: ₹500/month flat (not per-employee). 25+ employees: ₹1,000/month flat. That’s the price structure of Arth Saathi, and it works because we’re built for SMBs, not enterprises.
The honest pick
If your team is 3–4 people and you trust them implicitly: a free attendance app is fine. Use it.
If your team is 5+ and you want salary to be done in 10 minutes, slips to be clean PDFs, and disputes to drop to zero — pay for an integrated tool. The math on saved time alone makes it free.