Keka Hire alternatives (2026): an ATS without the payroll suite

Keka Hire is the hiring module of Keka's HRMS and payroll suite, priced per recruiter on top of the HRMS plan, and Keka no longer publishes prices. Here is who should stay on Keka, who is paying for a suite they do not need, and what a free applicant tracking system replaces.

Last updated 2 September 2026. Competitor pricing and plan limits are re-verified against each vendor’s own pages.

Keka is an HRMS and payroll suite. ofper is not. If you need payroll, attendance, leave or Indian statutory compliance, Keka is the right kind of product and this page will not change that. If you need an applicant tracking system and nothing else, read on.

Keka Hire cannot be bought on its own. It is a separate module priced per recruiter per month on top of an HRMS subscription priced on employee headcount, plus a setup fee whose amount Keka does not publish. Keka removed all prices from its pricing page; the last published India rates, archived 2 July 2025, were ₹1,500 and ₹2,500 per recruiter for Hire Pro and Hire Advanced, over an HRMS entry plan of ₹9,999 a month for up to 100 employees.

ofper is a free applicant tracking system with unlimited jobs, candidates and team members, for Indian companies that want to hire in a structured way without buying a payroll suite to do it. It has no Naukri or LinkedIn posting, no referrals, no approvals and no e-signature, all of which Keka Hire has.

Why people leave Keka Hire

Too expensive for the company's size. Keka's last published entry plan was a flat fee for up to 100 employees, so a 12-person startup paid the 100-employee price. Reviewers on Capterra name cost for small businesses as a recurring complaint, and Keka is structurally the wrong fit below roughly 30 employees.

No price without a sales call. Keka's pricing page renders no figures for any plan, and its FAQ confirms a setup fee without saying how much. A self-serve buyer cannot budget without talking to sales.

Hiring is a second subscription. The HRMS is priced per employee and Keka Hire per recruiter, so bringing a hiring manager into the recruiting process has a price.

Support responsiveness. On Capterra, Keka scores 3.9 for customer service against 4.4 overall — the weakest dimension by a clear margin — and refund delays recur in reviews.

Configuration rigidity. Reviewers describe adapting their process to Keka rather than the reverse, with non-standard approval or stage flows hitting walls.

Paying for a suite to get one module. Companies that only want hiring — or only payroll, or only timesheets — object to stacking module subscriptions. That unbundling cohort is the only one ofper can serve, and it is a minority of people searching for Keka alternatives; most want a different payroll product.

Keka Hire pricing

How it is priced: Quote-only since Keka removed the figures from its pricing page. Keka Hire is a separate module priced per recruiter per month, bought on top of the HRMS subscription, which is priced on employee headcount. (the live page renders no prices; the Hiring tab lists Pro and Advanced plans with Free Trial buttons) verified 29 August 2026

Hire Proper recruiter, on top of an HRMS plan: No current price published. The last published India price, from an archived snapshot dated 2 July 2025, was ₹1,500 per recruiter per month. Includes requisition approvals, custom hiring stages, a basic career portal, referrals and offer approvals. (historical — Keka no longer publishes prices) verified 29 August 2026
Hire Advancedper recruiter, on top of an HRMS plan: No current price published. The last published India price, archived 2 July 2025, was ₹2,500 per recruiter per month. Adds career-portal customisation, an AI resume-to-job match score, unlimited talent pools, workflow automation, custom roles and custom reports. (historical — Keka no longer publishes prices) verified 29 August 2026

Keka Hire costs beyond the subscription

Keka Hire cannot be bought alone. It is a separate tab with its own plans on top of an HRMS and Payroll subscription, whose last published India entry price was ₹9,999 per month for up to 100 employees — the same flat fee for a 12-person company as for a 90-person one. (historical, archived July 2025 — Keka no longer publishes prices) verified 29 August 2026
Keka's pricing FAQ states that a nominal setup fee applies to cover its onboarding process, including payroll configuration and employee data import. The amount is not published. (amount not published; figures on competitor blogs are unverified) verified 29 August 2026

Keka Hire free plan vs ofper

Keka Hire free plan

Keka has no free plan. Every plan card carries a Free Trial button, and the trial length is not stated on the pricing page. verified 29 August 2026

ofper

Free

Unlimited active jobs
Unlimited candidates
Unlimited team members
No credit card, no trial period

Keka Hire and ofper compared

Keka Hire compared with ofper. Capability rows, not a score.
Capability	Keka Hire	ofper
Price	Not published; per recruiter on top of an HRMS plan	Free, published
Free plan	No, free trial of unstated length	Yes
Sold without payroll	No	Yes
Minimum company size	Entry HRMS plan was a flat fee for up to 100 employees	None
Setup fee	Yes, amount not published	None
Payroll and statutory compliance	Yes	No
Hire to employee record handoff	Yes	No
Naukri and LinkedIn posting	Yes	No
Talent pools and AI resume match	Hire Advanced	No
Requisition and offer approvals	Yes	No
Employee referrals and internal job board	Yes	No
E-signature on offers	Keka Sign	One-time-code acceptance
Assessment, video and calendar integrations	Yes	No
Reporting and analytics	Hire Advanced	No
Kanban hiring pipeline	Yes	Yes
Screening questions with knockouts	Yes	Yes
Candidate self-scheduling	Not documented	Yes
Automated stage emails	Reviewers report none in Hire	Via your own mailbox
JobPosting structured data on job pages	None in served HTML	Built in
Public job marketplace with verified employers	No	Yes
Hindi interface	English only	Yes

Where Keka Hire wins and where ofper wins

Where Keka Hire beats ofper

Keka Hire is one module of a full HRMS and payroll suite, so a hired candidate flows straight into employee records, onboarding and Indian statutory payroll. ofper is a recruiting tool only, and its pipeline ends at Hired.
Keka Hire posts to LinkedIn and Naukri in one click — the two job boards that matter in India. ofper has no job board distribution.
Keka Hire Advanced includes unlimited talent pools and an AI score matching each resume to the job description. ofper has no candidate search, no talent pools and no AI.
Keka Hire includes requisition management with approval workflows and an offer approval process. ofper has neither.
Keka Hire includes employee referrals, social referrals and an internal job board — dominant hiring channels in Indian companies. ofper has none of these.
Keka bundles Keka Sign for e-signature and a preboarding flow with background checks and document collection. ofper's offer acceptance uses a one-time email code and produces no signed document.
Keka Hire integrates Mettl and HackerEarth assessments, Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams for interviews, and Google and Outlook calendars for scheduling. ofper has no assessment, video or calendar integrations.
Keka Hire Advanced has custom reports and dashboards for hiring metrics. ofper has a dashboard and no reports.
Keka reports more than 12,500 customers, a $57 million Series A, and sales offices with published phone numbers in seven Indian cities. ofper is a free product from a new vendor.

Where ofper wins

ofper is free. Recruiting on Keka means an HRMS subscription plus a per-recruiter Hire subscription plus a setup fee, and none of those prices is currently published.
ofper has no minimum company size. Keka's last published entry plan was a flat fee for up to 100 employees, so the smallest companies paid the most per head.
ofper's public job pages are server-rendered with JobPosting and Organization structured data, a runtime sitemap and hreflang tags. Keka's tenant career sites, checked directly on 29 August 2026, delivered a JavaScript shell with no title, no heading and no structured data in the served HTML — what a crawler receives at fetch time.
ofper publishes every job on a public marketplace with a verified-employer badge backed by domain verification and displayed registration details. Keka has a per-company career portal and no cross-company marketplace.
ofper sends automated rejection, interview-invite, booking-confirmation and reminder emails through the company's own mailbox. Keka Hire connects Gmail and Outlook accounts, but at least one Capterra reviewer flags the absence of trigger emails in the hiring module.
ofper has a public interview booking page where candidates pick a slot. Keka documents calendar integration for recruiters; a candidate-facing slot picker is not documented in its hiring feature list.
ofper's interface is available in Hindi. Keka's Indian site is English-only in the pages checked.

Choose Keka Hire instead if…

You need payroll, attendance, leave or Indian statutory compliance — Keka is the right kind of product and ofper does not compete with it.
You already run payroll on Keka. Adding Keka Hire per recruiter with automatic candidate-to-employee flow beats a free second system.
You hire through Naukri and LinkedIn and need one-click posting to both.
Your offers need an e-signature and a preboarding document flow.
Referrals, requisition approvals or finance sign-off on offers are part of how you hire.

Questions, answered straight

Is Keka Hire included in the Keka subscription?

No. Keka's pricing page presents Hiring as a separate tab with its own Pro and Advanced plans and its own signup links, priced per recruiter per month on top of the HRMS and Payroll subscription. Checked against keka.com/pricing on 29 August 2026.

How much does Keka Hire cost?

Keka no longer publishes prices. The last published India rate card, from an archived snapshot dated 2 July 2025, listed Hire Pro at ₹1,500 and Hire Advanced at ₹2,500 per recruiter per month, on top of an HRMS plan starting at ₹9,999 a month for up to 100 employees, before a setup fee of unpublished amount. Treat those as historical and confirm with Keka.

Does Keka have a free plan?

No. Every plan on Keka's pricing page carries a Free Trial button, and the trial length is not stated. There is no free tier.

Can ofper replace Keka?

Only the hiring module, and only for companies that do not need Keka's payroll. ofper has no payroll, attendance, leave, expenses, performance or statutory compliance features. If you already run payroll on Keka, adding Keka Hire is a better choice than a free second system, because a hired candidate flows straight into employee records.

Do Keka career pages show up in Google for Jobs?

What can be verified is what a crawler receives: checked directly on 29 August 2026, two Keka tenant career sites returned a JavaScript shell of under 5 KB with no title, no heading and no JobPosting structured data in the served HTML. Google renders JavaScript, so this does not mean the pages are unindexed — but no structured data is delivered at fetch time, and non-rendering crawlers, including several AI answer engines, see an empty page. ofper's job pages are server-rendered with JobPosting markup.

What is a free ATS for a small company in India?

ofper is a free applicant tracking system with unlimited jobs, candidates and team members, a public job marketplace, a Hindi interface, and recruiting email sent through your own Gmail or Microsoft 365 mailbox. It does not post to Naukri or LinkedIn, and it is not a substitute for a payroll or HR system.