ChiefOnboarding vs Horilla-hr
ChiefOnboarding and Horilla-hr are both HR and payroll software. ChiefOnboarding is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 934 GitHub stars. Horilla-hr is open source under LGPL-2.1, with 1.5k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick ChiefOnboarding when
- You hire regularly, use Slack, and want onboarding sequences without paying for an HR suite.
- Pick Horilla-hr when
- A small or mid-size company wants a free self-hosted HR suite and has someone to run Django.
Side by side
An employee onboarding platform that sends new hires tasks, resources and introductions through Slack or a web portal on a schedule.
An HR system with employees, recruitment, onboarding, attendance with biometric devices, leave, payroll, performance, assets and helpdesk.
Small project with essentially one maintainer, under AGPL.
Payroll and tax logic need checking for your jurisdiction, and the interface leans on older jQuery.
Usable (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Self-hosted server and mobile app
Python, Django and PostgreSQL
Python, Django, HTMX, PostgreSQL and Redis
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Open source, LGPL-2.1 (weak copyleft)
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
934 GitHub stars
1.5k GitHub stars
Established: started 6 years ago, latest release v2.5.1.
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release 2.2.0.
Other comparisons
More HR and payroll software
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.