Akrivia HCM vs Keka: India HR Software Comparison

Keka has earned its place as one of the most recommended HR software choices in India, and for good reason. The interface is modern, PF, ESI, and TDS compliance is handled reliably, and onboarding a new employee takes minutes rather than days. If you’re comparing Akrivia HCM against Keka, you’ve likely reached the point where Keka works well for what it does, but you’re asking whether it still fits where your business is headed. 

This comparison gives you the honest breakdown across compliance, scale, HR suite depth, and multi-country capability, so you can see exactly where each platform earns the recommendation. 

At a glance: Akrivia HCM vs Keka

Compliance

Indian payroll compliance has shifted more in the past year than in the decade before it. Two changes matter most for anyone comparing platforms in 2026: 

• The four labor codes came into force in November 2025. The rule reshaping CTC structures across the country is that allowances can no longer exceed 50% of basic pay plus dearness allowance, and any excess is now treated as basic salary for PF calculation. 

• The Income Tax Act 2025 took effect in April 2026. Salary TDS moved from Section 192 to Section 392, and Form 16 became Form 130, a change that trips up any payroll system that hasn’t updated its form templates and field labels. 

The core statutory rates for 2026: 

Late EPF deposits attract interest and damages, and EPFO has moved toward a simplified damages structure; confirm the current rate against the latest EPFO notification before relying on any specific figure. 

Both Akrivia HCM and Keka handle PF, ESI, and TDS reliably within their core payroll engines, and Keka’s compliance depth at this layer is genuinely one of its strongest attributes. The difference shows up as complexity scales. Akrivia HCM applies these updates automatically across every legal entity and state a business operates in, from one dashboard, while Keka’s compliance strength is most reliable in single-entity, straightforward payroll structures. 

Also read: Best HRMS/HRIS in India 2026 

Scale and multi-entity complexity

This is the category where the two platforms diverge most clearly. Keka is one of the most frequently recommended choices for Indian businesses in the 100 to 500 employee range, and the recommendation holds at that scale. The ceiling shows up around 500 employees, particularly as organizational complexity increases. Multi-entity management and multi-state payroll rules require workarounds that grow more painful as headcount and entity count grow together, complex leave policies and non-standard pay structures need configuration time that grows disproportionately, and multi-level approval chains that mirror a genuinely complex org structure are harder to model. 

Akrivia HCM is built for the stage past that ceiling. Multiple Indian legal entities, pay groups, and pay cycles are managed from one dashboard without per-entity pricing penalties, and PF registrations, professional tax state slabs, and LWF obligations apply correctly per entity automatically, with centralized compliance reporting across entities for EPFO and income tax audit readiness. 

HR suite breadth 

Keka’s full HR suite, recruitment, performance management, time and attendance, and payroll, is a genuine strength at the scale it’s built for, and the platform’s UI adoption rates among Indian mid-market teams are consistently strong. 

Akrivia HCM covers the same lifecycle breadth, recruitment with ATS, digital onboarding, core HR, leave and attendance, payroll, performance management, a native LMS, and AI-powered people analytics through Akrivia CoPilot, with the added depth of multi-entity and multi-country configuration built into every module rather than layered on top. 

Multi-country capability

Keka is built for India, and it does that well. It does not extend into other markets. When an Indian business starts hiring in the UAE, expands into Malaysia, or acquires a Singapore entity, Keka cannot follow. A separate local vendor becomes necessary for each new market, creating separate data sets and a monthly reconciliation process that grows more complex with every market entered. 

Akrivia HCM covers India alongside the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the broader GCC and Southeast Asia natively within one platform. For Indian businesses where GCC or Southeast Asia expansion is increasingly common, this removes the second-vendor problem before it starts rather than deferring it to the next fundraising round or acquisition. 

Pricing and support

Keka’s pricing is transparent and accessible at mid-market scale, a real advantage for businesses that want to see costs upfront before a sales conversation. The most common switching trigger reported by businesses leaving Keka is not a missing feature. It is a support SLA that breaks during a payroll week, a real operational risk when compliance deadlines don’t move regardless of ticket queue length. 

Akrivia HCM does not publish flat tier pricing, structuring cost around company size, entities, and modules, which reflects its positioning for businesses with more complex requirements than a single-entity mid-market setup. 

Read more: HR & Payroll Software Pricing in India  

Choose Akrivia HCM if

• You manage multiple Indian legal entities, pay groups, or states from one payroll operation. 

• You’ve hit the support SLA wall during payroll week and need more dependable compliance-critical support. 

• You’re expanding, or already operate, in the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, or the broader GCC and Southeast Asia. 

• You need AI-powered people analytics rather than standard operational reporting. 

Migration note 

Keka provides standard data export for historical payroll, employee records, and PF/ESI history. A parallel payroll run during Akrivia HCM’s implementation, processing one cycle on both systems simultaneously, validates PF, ESI, TDS, and professional tax accuracy across every entity before full cutover. 

Conclusion

Keka earns its recommendation honestly at the stage it’s built for: single-entity Indian businesses between 100 and 500 employees that want a modern, transparently priced HR platform. The comparison changes once multi-entity complexity, support reliability during payroll week, or regional expansion enter the picture. 

Akrivia HCM is built for exactly that next stage: native PF, ESI, and TDS compliance across every entity, multi-country payroll that follows the business into the UAE, Malaysia, or Singapore, and one unified system from recruitment through retirement instead of a platform that starts creating workarounds past 500 employees. 

Explore Akrivia HCM with a free demo and see how it can adapt to your entity structure and future growth. 

FAQs

Can Akrivia HCM handle India and UAE payroll in one system?
Yes. Akrivia HCM covers India natively alongside the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, and the broader GCC and Southeast Asia in one platform. 

How does the 2025 labour code’s allowance rule affect payroll software?
Allowances above 50% of basic plus DA are now treated as basic salary for PF calculation, which changes CTC structures set up before November 2025. 

How long does migrating from Keka to Akrivia HCM take?
Most Indian mid-market migrations complete within 8 to 12 weeks, including a parallel payroll run to validate PF, ESI, and TDS accuracy.