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Comparison

Capstan and greytHR

greytHR is a serious product, and this page is not a scorecard. It sets out how each of the two is built, taking each side from how it is publicly positioned, and then gives you the questions worth putting to any vendor in this market, us included. Where greytHR is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.

What each one is built to be

Start here rather than with a feature list. Most of the difference between two HR products is decided before either one ships a feature, by what business the company is in.

greytHR, as publicly positioned, August 2026

greytHR presents itself as a full-suite HR and payroll product for businesses in India, from a company long established in that market. The centre of the published offer is payroll with Indian statutory compliance attached to it: the deductions a pay run produces, the challans, returns and year-end forms that follow it, and that content kept current inside the product as the rules move, with leave, attendance, employee self-service and the rest of the employee lifecycle around that core. Editions of the product are published for markets beyond India, the Gulf and South East Asia among them.

Capstan, published on this site

Capstan is an HR system of record for companies that employ their own people. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and the workflows around them, with paid modules for the rest. It is not an employer of record, it computes no payroll, and it runs as a self-contained stack in the one region you choose at signup.

Set out in full on the product page, with the residency model on security and every figure on pricing.

Three structural differences

One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what greytHR does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.

  1. Who computes payroll, and who produces what follows it

    greytHR, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    Payroll computation with Indian statutory content attached is the published core. Deductions are computed in the product, the challans, returns and year-end forms that follow a pay run are generated there, and the statutory content behind them is maintained by the vendor as the rules change.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan is the system of inputs and the system of record; the computation belongs to your payroll partner. It compiles attendance, leave, overtime, compensation changes and adjustments into a documented export, files the computed results back onto the employee record, and holds no statutory rate, slab or formula anywhere in the product. It files nothing with any authority and moves no money.

  2. What the plan you start on contains

    greytHR, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    Plans are published as a ladder, with payroll, leave and employee self-service in the entry offering and further HR capability arriving as you move up it.

    Capstan, published on this site

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Two things change when you pay: the cap lifts, and paid modules become available on their own units. Nothing in the core moves between plans, and every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

  3. How the product travels between countries

    greytHR, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    The product is published as country editions, each carrying the statutory content of its own market, for India and for markets beyond it.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan carries no statutory computation in any country, which is what lets it be the same product wherever it runs. Country-specific content is versioned data rather than code, and your data sits in the one region you choose at signup, each region a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys. India is the region live today, and the list in the footer is the whole of it.

The six questions to ask any vendor, including us

Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: greytHR’s answers are theirs to give, and a comparison page that fills them in has stopped being a comparison. Ask them the same six, and set what you are told beside ours.

  1. Who employs our people, and who carries the liability?

    It decides who is on the contract of employment, who answers a labour authority, and what you are actually buying: a service that takes the employment on, or a system that records it.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    You do. Capstan is not an employer of record, never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster, and moves no payroll money. If you need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is a different kind of vendor.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  2. Who computes payroll, and whose name is on the filing?

    Computation and filing are where liability sits. A vendor that calculates and files is taking that on. A vendor that prepares inputs is not, and you need the second half of the arrangement in place before you rely on either.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    Not Capstan, by design. It compiles joiners and leavers, pay structures, leave, attendance and adjustments into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula, and files nothing with any authority.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  3. Where does our data live, and who inside the vendor can reach it?

    Residency is a property of where the database is, not of a promise in a policy. Support access is the same question from the other end: not whether staff would look, but whether the system lets them without you switching it on.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    One region, chosen when you sign up. Each region is a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, so there is no runtime path from one region to another. Staff hold no tenant of their own, and access exists only while you have granted a time-boxed consent, masked by default and audited on both sides.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  4. What do we get on the plan we start on, and what changes as we grow?

    This is what growing costs you. If capability moves between tiers, the upgrade you eventually buy is largely software you were already being shown.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Paying lifts the cap and makes modules available, and it includes two of them, payroll and time and attendance, at no extra charge. Every other module is a separate add-on on its own unit. Every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  5. What happens to our data the day we leave, or the day a payment fails?

    Export is the price of leaving. Either it is written down before you join, or it gets decided at the moment you have the least leverage you will ever have.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    An owner can take a full export at any time: one archive of JSON and CSV, in open formats, with a documented manifest. Export deliberately sits outside the suspension check, so a workspace held for non-payment can still be exported. Deletion is cryptographic erasure followed by hard deletion, with a residue scan.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  6. Does any software judge our people, and can the person see why?

    Whether software scores, ranks or screens people decides who is accountable for the judgement, and whether the person it was made about can be shown the reason.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    No AI evaluates people in Capstan. That is architectural rather than a promise: nothing of the kind is built, no AI credential is required or read by any production code path, and the analytics engine can only ever narrow who sees what, with small-group suppression.

    greytHR’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

If an answer of ours turns out to be wrong, it is a bug and we will fix the page. The same standard applies to anything here about greytHR: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose greytHR if

This is the part of the page that makes the rest of it worth reading. If one of these describes you, the honest answer is that greytHR is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You want one vendor to compute Indian statutory payroll and produce the returns and forms that follow it. greytHR publishes that as the core of what it sells, and Capstan hands computation to a payroll partner permanently, so if you are shopping for one company to do both, that is the shorter path.
  • You want Indian payroll from a product that has been through many years of statutory change in that market, and that history is worth more to you than anything a newer product can offer. It is a fair trade and we would make it in your position.
  • You employ people in more than one of the markets greytHR publishes an edition for, and you would rather one vendor carried the statutory content across all of them than assemble a system of record plus a separate local arrangement in each country.

The part that costs us the sale

Where Capstan is the wrong choice

Not a softened version of the section above. These are requirements Capstan does not meet and is not going to meet, written down so you can rule us out in a minute rather than in a quarter. If one of them is true of you, nothing else on this page matters.

  1. You want your HR software to compute pay and produce your statutory filings. Capstan does neither, in any country, and that is a permanent product decision rather than a gap on a roadmap.

  2. Your statutory content has to come from your software vendor. Capstan holds no rate, slab or formula anywhere, so when a rule changes the authority is your payroll partner and your own advisers, not us.

  3. You need your data held somewhere Capstan does not run. India is the region live today, the footer list on every page is the whole of it, and nothing appears there before it is serving.

That is the list as we understand it today. If you hit a limit that is not on it, tell us: a disqualifier we did not know about belongs here more than anything else on the page.

If nothing on this page ruled us out, run it yourself.

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