Top 10 Attendance Tracking Software Tools (Free & Paid) 2026

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about most “top 10 attendance software” articles: they’re written to rank in search, not to help you decide. The tools at the top usually have the biggest marketing budgets. The free options are buried at the bottom. And there’s rarely an honest answer to the question you actually came here to ask which one should I use for my specific situation?

We’ve tried to do something different. Ten tools, genuinely evaluated, with a clear answer for who each one is right for. We’ve split this between free and paid options because those are different decisions. A 10-person team with zero budget and a 100-person manufacturing plant have completely different needs and the same “best” tool can’t serve both.

Waggex is in this list and we’ll be clear about why we think it earns its spot. But we’ve also tried to be honest about where others do specific things better because picking the wrong tool costs you more than the subscription.

Free vs Paid: What You Actually Get

Before the list because this question comes up before the comparison does.

Free tools are genuinely worth considering if your only need is tracking who showed up and when, payroll is handled separately, and your team is under 20–25 people. The best free tools in 2026 are not crippled Jibble gives you face recognition and GPS for unlimited employees at ₹0. That’s real value.

Free tools have a real ceiling once you need attendance connected to Indian payroll PF, ESI, TDS, Professional Tax calculated automatically. None of the free tools do this well. The moment payroll is part of the equation, you’re looking at a paid option, and the right question stops being “what’s free?” and starts being “what’s worth paying for?”

The hidden cost of free is the manual reconciliation step someone exporting attendance from one tool and entering it into a payroll system every month. For a 30-person team, that’s 2–3 hours every single month. Over a year, that’s a week of someone’s time. At that point, a ₹699/month connected system often costs less than the free option does in human hours.

FREE OPTIONS

1. Jibble Best Free Option for Pure Attendance Tracking

Jibble is the most capable free attendance tool available in 2026 and we mean that without qualification. Unlimited employees, GPS geofencing, AI face recognition, clean mobile app on Android and iOS, and offline tracking that syncs when connectivity returns. All at ₹0, with no expiry date.

The honest limitation: Jibble doesn’t do payroll. It doesn’t know what PF is. ESI, TDS, Professional Tax none of it. Jibble tracks who was present and when. What you do with that data to generate salaries is your problem. For teams where those two things genuinely live in separate worlds maybe you have a CA who handles payroll from a register Jibble works beautifully. For everyone else, the manual bridge between Jibble and payroll is real work every month.

Best for: Small teams (any size, actually), agencies, schools, or any organisation that just needs a reliable attendance record and handles payroll elsewhere. If you’re on the paid plan, note the 2026 price increase Premium went from $2.49 to $4.49/user/month.

2. Clockify Best Free Option for Freelancers and Agencies

Clockify approaches attendance from a completely different angle than every other tool in this list. It started as a time tracker how long did you spend on Project X? How many billable hours did you log for Client Y? The attendance piece is secondary, a consequence of time tracking rather than the primary purpose.

This makes it the wrong tool for a company tracking whether employees showed up at the office. It makes it the right tool for a digital agency, a software development firm, a law firm, or any service business that needs to track time against clients and projects and then see attendance as a byproduct of that time data.

Where it’s genuinely strong: Unlimited users and projects on the free plan, integrations with 80+ apps, simple reports that show who worked what hours. For Indian freelancers working with international clients and billing in hours, Clockify is one of the most-used tools for a reason.

Best for: Freelancers, agencies, consulting firms, and any team where tracking time against clients or projects matters more than clocking into an office. Not suited for field teams or payroll compliance needs.

3. Kredily Best Free Option for Bootstrapped Indian Startups

Kredily earns its place on this list for one specific reason: it’s the only free tool here that combines attendance tracking with basic Indian payroll PF and ESI calculations, leave management, and salary processing all at ₹0, for unlimited employees, with no time limit.

The catch that matters most: TDS calculation and Form 130 (the updated Form 16) are behind the paid tier. Any employee earning above the income tax exemption threshold has a TDS obligation which in a tech startup with even mid-level salaries is pretty much everyone. The moment TDS becomes relevant, you’re on the ₹999/month Payroll OS plan or doing TDS manually. Know this before you build your payroll process on the free plan.

Support is community-based on the free plan, which is fine most of the time. It’s less fine at 6 PM on the last working day before salaries go out. Multiple user reviews flag auto log-out issues that disrupt workflow worth testing before your first payroll run.

Best for: Very early-stage startups (5–15 people) where payroll is simple and TDS isn’t yet a significant concern. A real stepping stone rather than a long-term solution.

PAID OPTIONS

4. Waggex Best for Indian SMEs with Field or Distributed Teams

We’re going to be upfront: we built Waggex, and we genuinely believe it earns the #4 spot (first in the paid section) based on what it does, not because we built it. Here’s the case.

Every attendance tool tracks presence. What makes Waggex different is that it verifies presence in a way that actually holds up, and then connects that verified data directly to Indian payroll compliance without a manual step in between. The GPS attendance validates location on our servers not just by trusting what the employee’s phone reports. A fake GPS app manipulates what the phone says; it can’t manipulate what our server independently cross-checks. The FaceLens face match runs on our server too so a printed photo or a colleague’s phone can’t fool it. And when attendance is confirmed, it flows directly into payroll with PF, ESI, TDS, and Professional Tax calculated automatically.

A real example of how this plays out: A plumbing services company in Hyderabad with 28 technicians spread across the city. Before Waggex, the office coordinator called every technician at 9 AM to confirm they’d reached their first job. That call took 35 minutes every morning. After switching, she opens the Waggex dashboard, sees 27 confirmed check-ins with location and face verified, messages the one who hasn’t checked in. Morning coordination went from 35 minutes to 3.

Where we’re lighter: Beat planning for FMCG sales routes, billable time tracking against clients, and enterprise-scale multi-entity HR are not Waggex’s focus. If those are your primary needs, other tools serve them better.

5. greytHR Best for Compliance-First SMEs

greytHR has 30,000+ companies and 2 million+ employees on the platform, and has been running Indian payroll since 2009. That track record on compliance PF ECR files, ESI challans, Form 130, multi-state Professional Tax is more tested than anything else in this list. The free Starter plan for under 25 employees includes real payroll, not just a teaser, which makes it a category of its own: free with genuine compliance depth.

Two things to understand before relying on it: First, attendance management is not included in the Essential paid plan. If you outgrow 25 employees, you need the Growth tier to keep both attendance and payroll together. Second, field workforce features and the mobile app experience feel dated compared to newer platforms. G2 reviews consistently mention the UI as the biggest friction point.

Best for: Any Indian business under 25 employees where compliance accuracy is the top concern. Also excellent for larger businesses that can afford the higher paid tiers and want the most trusted compliance engine available.

6. Hubstaff Best for Remote-First and International Teams

Hubstaff is what you use when your team works across multiple countries or timezones and you need to track hours, locations, and productivity without being in the same office or country as anyone. GPS tracking, automated timesheets, activity monitoring, project budgets, and integrations with project management tools like Asana, Jira, and Basecamp are all built-in. Payroll automation exists but is for international payments there’s no PF, ESI, or TDS.

For an Indian business with a purely domestic workforce and Indian compliance needs, Hubstaff isn’t the right fit. For a Bengaluru-based startup with developers in India, designers in Southeast Asia, and clients in the US Hubstaff’s ability to handle different currencies, timezones, and project billing in one dashboard is genuinely valuable.

Best for: Remote-first companies, IT services firms with international clients, or startups managing a distributed global workforce. Not the right choice for Indian compliance or field teams doing physical check-ins.

7. Keka Best for Growing Tech Companies

Keka is where companies go when they outgrow simple attendance tracking and need HR to become a proper function. Attendance flows into payroll, payroll connects to performance management, performance connects to the ATS for hiring. The interface is the most polished in this list employees actually enjoy using the mobile app, which matters more than most HR software articles acknowledge. A system that employees find annoying develops shadow workarounds.

The reason it’s at #7 and not higher: ₹6,999/month is a meaningful investment, and it’s flat so a 20-person team pays the same as a 90-person one. At 20 people, that’s ₹350/employee/month. At 80 people, it’s ₹87/employee/month. The maths changes dramatically with headcount. If you’re under 40 employees, Keka’s price is hard to justify unless the performance management features are specifically what you need right now.

Best for: Tech companies and professional services firms with 50–500 employees where HR is a genuine function, not just payroll processing.

8. SalaryBox Best for Field-Heavy Operations

SalaryBox occupies a specific niche that no other tool in this list covers: it offers both a mobile attendance app and its own hardware face recognition device, both connecting to the same cloud payroll system. For a distribution company with a main warehouse gate (device for bulk check-in) and 30 field delivery executives (mobile GPS app), this hybrid setup means all attendance flows into one payroll run without managing two separate systems.

The offline GPS sync is particularly valuable for businesses in areas with unreliable connectivity attendance captured when offline syncs automatically once the phone connects. At ₹35/employee/month it’s more expensive than Waggex for a similar feature set, but the hardware device integration and the offline capability are genuinely distinctive for field-heavy industries.

Best for: Logistics companies, distribution businesses, security firms, and any operation needing both a fixed-location gate device and mobile GPS attendance connected to the same payroll.

9. factoHR Best for Manufacturing and Complex Shifts

factoHR has been building HR and payroll software since 2005 and it shows in one specific way: it handles complex workforce management better than any other tool in this list. Rotating shifts, night shifts, contract labour alongside permanent staff, compensatory-off tracking, multi-location attendance policies, and the kind of compliance documentation a factory audit actually requires. Customer support is consistently rated among the best in Indian HRMS on G2 and Capterra important when a payroll error affects 200 workers.

For a simple office team, factoHR is over-built and the starting price of ₹4,999/month reflects that. For a pharmaceutical plant or a multi-shift manufacturing unit, it’s probably the right tool not despite the complexity, but because of it.

Best for: Manufacturing plants, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and any business running multiple shift patterns for 100+ employees where compliance documentation needs to survive a labour audit.

10. Zimyo Best for Modern Mid-Market Offices

Zimyo rounds out the list as the modern, mid-market alternative a clean UI, a solid mobile app, GPS and biometric attendance, full Indian payroll compliance, and 50+ HR modules including performance management and employee engagement surveys. It’s grown quickly in Delhi NCR and urban mid-market companies looking for something more modern than greytHR without Keka’s price tag at medium headcounts.

At ₹60–100/employee/month on custom pricing, it sits between Waggex’s transparent tiered pricing and Keka’s flat fee. The main caution: support quality inconsistency is flagged in user reviews specifically around resolution time for billing and feature issues. Test the support experience during your trial, not after you’ve committed.

Best for: Mid-market companies of 50–300 employees wanting a modern HRMS with good attendance, GPS, and payroll, especially in a hybrid work environment where both office and remote attendance need to be tracked consistently.

All 10 Tools Side by Side

Here’s the full comparison scan this, then read the entries for the two or three tools that match your situation.

Pricing from official sources and verified third-party reviews as of July 2026. Always check current rates with each vendor before purchasing.

Which One Should You Use? The Honest Recommendation

Stop reading and pick based on your actual situation:

• Zero budget, just need attendance records, payroll handled separately: Jibble. Nothing else free comes close for pure attendance tracking.
• Zero budget, want some payroll basics included: Kredily. Know that TDS will need the paid plan once salaries grow.
• Freelancer or agency tracking billable time: Clockify. Built for exactly this, free for unlimited users.
• Indian SME, field or remote staff, want attendance to connect to payroll: Waggex. Free for 10 employees, paid from ₹699/month.
• Under 25 employees, compliance is the top priority: greytHR free Starter plan. Most trusted compliance engine, at ₹0.
• Remote-first company, international team, multiple currencies: Hubstaff. Accept that Indian statutory compliance isn’t part of it.
• Tech or professional services, 50+ employees, full HR needed: Keka. Earns its price at that scale.
• Field operations need both hardware gate device and mobile app: SalaryBox.
• Manufacturing, multi-shift, 100+ employees, complex compliance: factoHR.
• Modern mid-market office, hybrid team, good UI matters: Zimyo.