Honest comparison
Free payroll software (India)
One salary sheet in, and the whole month out: a payslip per employee, a combined PDF, the bank transfer file and a register workbook. Free, and the sheet never leaves your machine. It does not compute TDS, it does not file a return and it does not watch the compliance calendar.
14 free tools linked from this page · 11 with no account at all · 3 AI tools that need one
The payroll run here takes one salary sheet and gives you the month. A payslip PDF for every employee in a zip, a combined PDF to print, the bank bulk-transfer CSV, and a register workbook with the provident fund, ESI, professional tax and TDS summaries whose totals tie back to the slips. It is free, it needs no account, and the sheet is read and written entirely by your own browser.
It is not payroll software in the sense a payroll company means the phrase. It does not compute TDS, it does not file anything, it does not know your compliance calendar and it has no memory of last month. Those four things are most of what you are paying for when you pay, so most of this page is about them.
What a payroll package does that we do not
The first one is deliberate, and we would make the same choice again. The rest are simply gaps.
- TDS. We do not compute it, on purpose. A month’s deduction depends on an employee’s projected annual income, the regime they have chosen, their declarations and what has already been deducted this year — and none of those four things is in a salary sheet. Put your own figure in a column and it is carried through to the payslip, the register and the TDS summary. A payroll package holds all four and works it out for you, which is the right answer if you have the data.
- Returns, challans and Form 16. Provident fund and ESI returns, professional tax, TDS returns, and the annual certificates. We generate none of the statutory return formats and file none of them, and we do not keep the acknowledgements.
- The compliance calendar. Due dates, rate changes, state-by-state professional tax and every new notification. A payroll company watches those for a living. Ours sit in one clearly-marked constants block in one file with the date they were last checked and a note telling you to check them before you file. That is honest. It is not the same as somebody watching.
- Last month, and the year to date. Arrears, a mid-year revision, a joiner in the middle of a month, a full and final settlement against what has already been paid — every one of those needs history. We have none. Each run is one sheet, with no memory of the one before it.
- A place employees can go. Self-service for payslips and declarations, and somewhere the whole year lives. We hand you files; distributing and keeping them is yours.
Side by side
6 rows go their way and 4 go ours, and the ones they win are printed first. Nothing in the right-hand column is a claim about any particular product’s price or features — we have no way to check those, so we do not state them.
| What you need | Here, free, in your browser | A payroll package you subscribe to |
|---|---|---|
| TDS computed | No, by design. Supply your own figure and it is carried through to the slip, the register and the TDS summary. | Computed from declarations, the chosen regime and the year to date. |
| Statutory returns and annual certificates | None generated, none filed. | This is what the subscription is for. |
| Keeping up when a rate or a slab moves | One dated constants block, and a note in the tool telling you to check it before you file. | The vendor’s job, and they are paid to do it. |
| History: arrears, revisions, mid-year joiners | None. Each run is a single sheet. | Held, and used. |
| Employee self-service | No. You distribute the slips yourself. | Usually included. |
| Your bank’s exact bulk-transfer format | A CSV with the five fields every format is built from, and a note in the register so you can reorder it for your bank in a minute. | Usually the exact layout your bank wants, already configured. |
| Provident fund, ESI and professional tax | Computed here — the fund at twelve per cent with the wage ceiling and the pension-scheme split, ESI while gross wages are inside the limit, professional tax from the state you pick — or taken from your sheet untouched when your consultant has already done it. | Computed. |
| Starting this month, with no implementation | Drop in the sheet you already keep. Column names are matched for you and every match is shown in a dropdown you can correct; any numeric column the mapping did not claim is offered back as an extra earning or deduction and prints under its own name. | Employee masters, components and opening balances. A project, not an install. |
| Refusing to pay somebody a negative amount | The run stops, writes nothing at all, and names the people whose deductions exceed their earnings. | Every product has its own validation; ask to see what it refuses to do. |
| Where the salary sheet goes | Nowhere. It is read, computed and written by your own browser — which matters, because a salary sheet is the most sensitive file a small business owns. | A hosted service holds your employees’ salary data under its own terms. |
| Cost | Free, for any number of employees, with no account. | Usually a monthly charge that scales with headcount. The vendor has the figure. |
When you should buy payroll software
If you employ people in India and you are responsible for their deductions, most of this list applies to you.
- You are responsible for deducting TDS correctly. That is nearly every employer, and it is the one thing this tool deliberately refuses to guess at.
- You have to file provident fund, ESI and TDS returns, and you would like the challans and the certificates to come out of the same place as the payslips.
- You are past twenty or thirty people, or you have joiners and leavers most months. History stops being optional at that point.
- You want somebody else watching when a rate or a state slab moves. Our figures carry a date and a warning; a vendor carries the responsibility.
- You want employees fetching their own payslips and filing their own declarations instead of emailing you.
What you can do here for nothing
Everything below runs in your browser unless it is marked “free to try”, which means an AI tool with an account and a monthly allowance. None of it files anything.
The monthly run
One sheet in, everything the month needs out.
Structuring a salary
What the job costs, and what the person actually takes home.
Joiners and leavers
The paperwork at both ends.
The tax questions employees ask you
So the answer is a page rather than an argument.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free, for any number of employees?
Yes. There is no account, no per-employee charge and nothing to cancel. The practical limit is your own machine: it is arithmetic and PDF drawing in a browser tab, so a few hundred rows is comfortable.
Why will it not calculate TDS?
Because it cannot do it honestly from a salary sheet. A month’s deduction depends on projected annual income, the regime the employee chose, their declarations and what has already been deducted this year. Guessing at any of those and printing the result on a payslip would be worse than leaving the column to you.
Does it compute provident fund, ESI and professional tax, or do I supply them?
Either, and it is a switch. Leave it on compute and the fund is twelve per cent of basic and dearness allowance, with the wage ceiling optional, ESI applies while gross wages are within the limit, and professional tax comes from the state you pick. Switch it to take from the sheet and your own columns are used untouched, which is what you want when a consultant has already computed them.
Are the statutory rates current?
They are as last checked, the date is written in the file beside them, and the tool tells you in its own tips to check them against the current rules before you file. When something moves there is one block in one file to correct, which is the point of keeping them there.
Can I use this alongside a payroll consultant?
That is one of the shapes it works best in. Your consultant gives you the TDS and the statutory figures, you switch the deductions to take from the sheet, and the run produces the slips, the combined PDF, the bank file and the register without anybody retyping a salary.
Does my salary sheet get uploaded?
No. It is read by your own browser, the PDFs and the workbook are written there, and the downloads come out of memory. Nothing is uploaded, queued or logged.
The authorities behind the figures
- EPFO — provident fund rates and the wage ceiling — provident fund rates and the wage ceiling
- ESIC — contribution rates and the wage limit — contribution rates and the wage limit
- Income Tax Department, India — TDS, the regimes and the annual certificate