PagarBook vs Shiftelio · verified August 2026
PagarBook alternative: Rs 5,999 flat instead of Rs 699 a head
PagarBook charges per staff member per year, and payroll only arrives on the Rs 699 tier. For a team of 25 that is Rs 17,475 before GST, and face recognition means buying their Lens device on top. Shiftelio is Rs 5,999 a year flat for up to 25 employees, with payroll, GPS and phone-camera face verification in the price.
Price comparison for a team of 25
PagarBook figures are from their listing on Techjockey, re-read in August 2026: Rs 499 per staff per year on Mobile, Rs 699 on App + Web, Rs 1,398 on App + Web + Lens, all excluding GST. Shiftelio figures are from our own pricing page. The Lens row also excludes the cost of the Lens hardware itself, which is quoted separately.
| Plan | Works out to | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Shiftelio, everything included | Rs 500 a month equivalent | Rs 5,999 |
| PagarBook Mobile, no payroll | Rs 499 per staff x 25 | Rs 12,475 |
| PagarBook App + Web, payroll included | Rs 699 per staff x 25 | Rs 17,475 |
| PagarBook App + Web + Lens | Rs 1,398 per staff x 25, plus the device | Rs 34,950 and up |
PagarBook prices exclude 18 percent GST, which adds about Rs 3,145 to the App + Web plan for a 25-person team, taking it past Rs 20,600. The per-staff model also means the number moves every time you hire: at 40 staff the same plan is Rs 27,960 and Shiftelio is still Rs 14,999 for up to 100.
Feature comparison
PagarBook rows are from their published plan contents on Techjockey and from what reviewers on Capterra India, SoftwareSuggest and Techjockey report, as at August 2026. The rows where they tick are genuine ticks.
Flat annual price with no per-staff charge
Per staff member per year on every tier, so the bill moves with every hire.
Payroll included in the entry plan
Payroll starts at the Rs 699 App + Web tier. The Rs 499 Mobile tier is attendance and cashbook only.
Face verification using the phone the employee already owns
PagarBook's face attendance runs through Lens, a separate device you buy and mount at the site.
Full web dashboard on the entry plan
Web access begins at the Rs 699 tier. The Rs 499 tier is the Android app only.
Break shifts, for staff working two shifts in a day
Reported missing by a SoftwareSuggest reviewer, who names it directly.
API access
Third-party software directories list no API access for PagarBook.
Tally and accounting integration
Not documented in PagarBook's published materials.
Loans and salary advances with a recovery schedule
PagarBook handles advances, which is one of the things it does well for a small shop.
GPS and selfie attendance
Leave management
Android and iOS apps
PF, ESI and statutory payroll compliance
Reviewers report that compliance has to be checked manually rather than being handled for you.
A cashbook for daily shop expenses
Theirs. If your staff register and your shop cashbook want to be the same app, that is a real reason to stay.
How the two bills are shaped
A single total is only true at one headcount. The shape of the charge is what decides the bill as your team changes size, and it is the part that does not go stale.
| PagarBook | Shiftelio | |
|---|---|---|
| Charging model | Per staff member per year, on every tier. | Flat annual price per plan. Rs 999, Rs 5,999 or Rs 14,999 depending on headcount band. |
| What happens when you hire | The bill goes up by the per-staff rate, every time. | Nothing, until you cross the plan's employee limit. |
| Where payroll starts | At the Rs 699 tier. The Rs 499 tier does not include it. | Every plan, including the Rs 999 one. |
| Face attendance | Through Lens, a separate device bought and mounted at the site. | A selfie from the employee's own phone, paired with a GPS fix. No hardware. |
| GST | Quoted excluding 18 percent GST, so add roughly a fifth to every figure. | Quoted the same way, so compare like with like: the ratio does not change. |
| Where the crossover is | Cheaper below roughly nine staff. | Cheaper above it, and the gap widens with every hire. |
The honest headline is that PagarBook is cheaper than us for a very small shop and this page does not dispute it. Per-staff pricing at Rs 699 crosses Rs 5,999 at about nine employees. Below that, buy theirs. Above it, the gap only grows, and by 25 staff it is roughly three times.
Company financial position
Publicly reported by Entrackr in April 2025, and not re-verified since. We include it because vendor stability is a legitimate factor when choosing a platform that will hold your payroll records, and because a reader comparing two products deserves to weigh it themselves rather than find out later.
An 85 percent valuation drop between rounds
Reported as falling from roughly Rs 1,084 crore at Series A4 to roughly Rs 163 crore at Series A5.
Rs 70.4 crore net loss in FY2024
Against roughly Rs 13 crore of revenue in the same year, as reported.
A Rs 10 crore raise in April 2025
A small round for a company at that stage, which is why it was reported at all.
This is reporting about a company, not a claim about the product, and it does not mean PagarBook is going anywhere. It means that if you are choosing where five years of attendance and payroll records will live, it is worth asking any vendor including us what happens to your data if the company does not make it, and getting the answer in writing.
What PagarBook users say
Quoted unmodified from public reviews on Capterra India, SoftwareSuggest and Techjockey. PagarBook rates 4.2 out of 5 across 17 Techjockey reviews with 77 percent recommending it, so these are the low end of a mixed picture rather than the whole of it. They are here because each one names something specific you can test before you commit.
“Salary calculation is the worst part. Software lags even on paid version. Sales manager are not professionals and not keeping their word.”
“Break shift functionality is absent. There is no option for staff working two shifts in a day.”
“App has too many errors, and they do not provide service after the sale.”
“They always make some changes and because of this, you cannot mark attendance on time.”
“Occasional app disruptions and delays in customer support, especially for post-sales assistance.”
Why teams switch to Shiftelio
One flat price, and it stops moving
Rs 5,999 a year covers up to 25 employees across 3 locations. Going from 20 people to 22 changes nothing on the invoice, where per-staff pricing charges you for both.
Face verification without buying a device
PagarBook's face attendance runs through their Lens hardware. Ours runs on the camera in the phone your staff already carry, so there is nothing to buy, mount, power or replace.
Payroll on every plan, not the tier above
Payroll runs, payslips, PF and ESI, loans and advances, and letters are in the base price on all three plans, including the Rs 999 one.
Attendance that survives no signal
Sites and warehouses have patchy coverage. Check-ins queue on the phone with their location and time intact, and sync when the connection comes back.
What PagarBook is actually for
PagarBook is a staff register built for the Indian shop owner: attendance, salary, advances and a cashbook in one Android app, priced per staff member per year and sold to businesses that were previously running a paper khata. It is deliberately simple, it is cheap at very small headcounts, and for a five-person kirana or salon it does the job without asking the owner to learn anything. It rates 4.2 out of 5 across 17 Techjockey reviews. Their answer to face attendance is Lens, a separate device you buy and mount.
Stay with PagarBook when
If any of these describe you, this page has done its job and you should stop reading. We would rather lose the signup than the trust.
- You have five or six staff and want the cheapest thing that works. At that size per-staff pricing is genuinely cheap: six people on the Mobile tier is about Rs 3,000 a year, and no flat plan beats that.
- You want the staff register and the shop cashbook in one app. PagarBook's cashbook is a real feature aimed at exactly that habit, and we do not have one.
- You are replacing a paper khata and nothing more. If the goal is to stop keeping attendance in a notebook and you have no payroll compliance worries, PagarBook is a short, easy step and this page is over-thinking your problem.
- You have already bought Lens. If a device is mounted and working at your site, the sunk cost is real and a face-recognition terminal is a stronger control than a phone selfie.
Switch to Shiftelio when
- You have more than about ten staff. Rs 699 a head crosses Rs 5,999 at roughly nine employees, and every hire after that widens the gap. This is arithmetic, not opinion.
- You want face verification without buying hardware. Shiftelio uses the camera on the phone the employee already carries, so there is nothing to mount, power or replace.
- You need payroll on the plan you are actually buying. Here payroll, payslips, PF and ESI, loans and letters are in every plan including the Rs 999 one, rather than starting a tier up.
- Your staff work somewhere with bad signal. Check-ins queue on the phone and sync when connectivity returns, so a basement or a site with no bars does not cost you the day.
- You need the data out. Full attendance and payroll history downloadable at any time regardless of plan or payment status.
The differences that change a decision
Per-staff pricing has a crossover, and it is at about nine people
This is the only piece of arithmetic that matters here, so it is worth doing openly rather than burying. PagarBook's payroll tier is Rs 699 per staff member per year. Nine staff is Rs 6,291, which is already past our Rs 5,999. At 25 staff it is Rs 17,475 against Rs 5,999. At 40 it is Rs 27,960 against Rs 14,999. Below nine people they are cheaper and you should buy theirs. Above it, the gap only widens, and it widens on the day you hire rather than at renewal.
A cashbook is a different product from a payroll system
PagarBook grew out of the khata: a shop owner tracking who worked, who took an advance, and what went in and out of the drawer. That is a genuinely good product for that person, and the cashbook is a feature we do not have and are not building. But it is a different thing from an Indian payroll cycle with PF and ESI, statutory registers and letters, and the moment you have staff whose compliance you are responsible for, the second thing is what you actually need. Buying the first and hoping it grows into the second is how small businesses end up reconciling salary in a spreadsheet anyway.
Hardware is a cost you pay twice
Lens is a real device that does a real job, and a mounted face-recognition terminal is a stronger control than a phone selfie for staff arriving at one place. But it is bought per site, it needs power and a place on a wall, it has to be cleaned and it eventually fails, and none of that appears on a pricing page. A phone camera your employee already carries and already charges has none of those costs, and it goes where they go, which a wall-mounted device cannot.
What we are not
We do not have a cashbook, we do not sell hardware, and we are not the cheapest option for a five-person shop. If your whole problem is that attendance is currently in a notebook and there are six of you, PagarBook at Rs 499 a head is a smaller, cheaper and entirely sensible purchase, and we would rather say so here than take a signup that churns in month two.
Questions people ask
How much does PagarBook cost for 25 employees?
PagarBook is priced per staff member per year. The App + Web plan, which is the tier that includes payroll, is Rs 699 per staff per year excluding GST, so 25 employees is Rs 17,475 before GST or roughly Rs 20,600 with it. The Mobile-only tier is Rs 499 per staff and does not include payroll. The Lens tier is Rs 1,398 per staff plus the cost of the device. Shiftelio is Rs 5,999 a year flat for up to 25 employees with payroll included. Figures read from their Techjockey listing in August 2026.
What is a good alternative to PagarBook for Indian SMEs?
It depends almost entirely on headcount. PagarBook charges per staff member per year, so it is cheap for a very small shop and gets steadily more expensive as you hire. The crossover against a flat annual plan lands at about nine employees. Above that, Shiftelio at Rs 5,999 a year for up to 25 employees, with GPS attendance, payroll, PF and ESI and phone-camera face verification included, is the cheaper and more complete answer. Below it, stay where you are.
Does PagarBook include payroll in the basic plan?
No. The Rs 499 per staff per year Mobile tier covers attendance and the cashbook. Payroll begins at the Rs 699 App + Web tier, which is also where web access begins, so a business that wants payroll and a desktop dashboard is comparing the Rs 699 number rather than the advertised Rs 499 one. Every Shiftelio plan includes payroll, including the Rs 999 entry plan.
Do I need to buy hardware for face attendance on PagarBook?
For their face recognition, yes: it runs through Lens, a separate device you buy and mount at the site, priced on top of the Rs 1,398 per staff per year tier. Shiftelio does face verification with a selfie taken on the employee's own Android phone or iPhone, paired with a GPS fix, so there is no device to buy, mount, power or replace. For a workforce arriving at one gate, a mounted terminal is a stronger control and we would say so; for staff who move, it cannot help you.
Does PagarBook have an API?
Third-party software directories list PagarBook as having no API access, which means no programmatic or automated export, and integrations with accounting platforms such as Tally are not documented in their published materials. Shiftelio provides API access and lets you download your full attendance and payroll history at any time, in a format you can open, regardless of plan or payment status.
Can I move my staff records from PagarBook to Shiftelio?
Yes. Export your employee list and attendance history from PagarBook before you cancel, check the export covers the full period you need to keep for compliance rather than just recent months, and we will import a clean CSV of past attendance and employee records. That advice applies to leaving any vendor, us included, and it is worth doing while your subscription is still active rather than after it lapses.
See the price before you see a salesperson
Every Shiftelio plan and limit is on the pricing page. There is no quote to request, no implementation fee, no minimum billed headcount and no paid add-on for location verification.
This is a comparison written by Shiftelio, which is one of the two products described. Everything stated about PagarBook is drawn from their own published pages and positioning, together with their Techjockey listing for pricing, public reviews on Capterra India, SoftwareSuggest and Techjockey which are quoted rather than summarised, and Entrackr's April 2025 financial reporting which is dated where it appears, and was checked in August 2026. Where their pricing is quote-based or reported inconsistently across sources we describe the charging model rather than assert a figure, and you should ask them directly. Plans and prices change on both sides. PagarBook names and marks belong to their owners and are used here for identification only; no affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you believe anything here is inaccurate, write to support@shiftelio.com and we will correct it.