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Comparison

Capstan and Keka

Keka 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 Keka 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.

Keka, as publicly positioned, August 2026

Keka presents itself as a unified people platform, HR, payroll and talent in one core system, aimed at growing and mid-market companies that want to run people operations without a dedicated implementation team behind them. Its published material puts payroll with Indian statutory compliance inside the core product, alongside hiring, performance, time and attendance and engagement, and it publishes versions of the product for markets beyond India, the United States, the Middle East and Asia Pacific 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 Keka 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

    Keka, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    Payroll is computed inside the platform. Keka publishes statutory rules being applied within each pay run, and the statutory outputs of that run, the challans, returns and year-end forms, generated from it, with that content kept current as the rules change.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan compiles the inputs and hands a documented export to your payroll partner, then files their computed results, payslips, letters and settlements, back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula anywhere, moves no money, and files nothing with any authority. Where you need payroll computed, you engage someone who computes it.

  2. How much of people operations one subscription is meant to cover

    Keka, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    One core system spanning HR, payroll and talent: hiring, performance, time, attendance and engagement are published as parts of the same platform, bought per employee.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan splits those two deliberately. The record and the work around it, people, employment, leave, attendance, documents, workflows, onboarding, self-service and reporting, are core and identical on every plan including the free one. Recruitment, performance, learning, expenses, payroll data preparation and the rest are separate paid modules on their own units, each needing a paid plan under it, so the number to compare is the total at your real headcount with the modules you would actually switch on.

  3. Where the product runs, and how residency is settled

    Keka, as publicly positioned, August 2026

    Keka publishes versions of the product for several markets, and its published data protection material describes a subscriber tenant being provisioned in a selected data centre region.

    Capstan, published on this site

    One region, settled before signup because the app you sign into is your region, and permanent afterwards. 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 to another. India is the region live today, and the caveat that comes with it, stored data for that region in India while compute is served from South East Asia until our infrastructure vendor offers an India location, is written out on the security page rather than left for a questionnaire.

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: Keka’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.

    Keka’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.

    Keka’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.

    Keka’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.

    Keka’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.

    Keka’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.

    Keka’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 Keka: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose Keka 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 Keka is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You want statutory payroll computed by the same system that holds the employee record, with the filings coming out of it. Keka publishes that inside its core product, and Capstan gives computation to a partner permanently, so one vendor for both is the shorter path here.
  • Hiring, performance and engagement are part of the purchase rather than things you would add later. Keka publishes them as parts of one platform; in Capstan each is a paid module on top of a paid plan, so a team that wants the whole of people operations settled in one subscription will find that shape closer to what it is after.
  • You employ people in more than one of the markets Keka publishes a version of the product for, and you want the same vendor and the same platform across them.

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 system to compute pay and produce your statutory filings. Capstan does neither, in any country, by design and permanently.

  2. You want the whole of people operations, hiring and performance and learning included, in one bundle on one line item. Capstan is deliberately a core plus modules you switch on and pay for separately, and a buyer who wants one all-in subscription will find that shape wrong.

  3. Procurement requires a SOC 2 report specifically. Capstan holds an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate and no SOC 2 report, and publishes no target date for one, so if SOC 2 is the hard gate for you today then it is a hard gate.

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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