ChiefOnboarding vs Deel
ChiefOnboarding and Deel are both HR and payroll software. ChiefOnboarding is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 934 GitHub stars. Deel is a commercial product from Deel.
Which to pick
- Pick ChiefOnboarding when
- You hire regularly, use Slack, and want onboarding sequences without paying for an HR suite.
- Pick Deel when
- You want to hire staff or contractors in countries where you have no legal entity.
Side by side
An employee onboarding platform that sends new hires tasks, resources and introductions through Slack or a web portal on a schedule.
Hires and pays people in other countries through employer-of-record entities, contractor management and global payroll.
Small project with essentially one maintainer, under AGPL.
EOR fees per employee are high, and you rely on Deel's local partners for compliance.
Usable
Production-ready
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service and mobile app
Python, Django and PostgreSQL
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Deel
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
934 GitHub stars
4.1k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 6 years ago, latest release v2.5.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More HR and payroll software
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.