HiBob vs Horilla-hr
HiBob and Horilla-hr are both HR and payroll software. HiBob is a commercial product from HiBob. Horilla-hr is open source under LGPL-2.1, with 1.5k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick HiBob when
- A distributed tech or services company with a few hundred staff wants HR software employees like using.
- 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
HR platform (Bob) for midsize, often multi-country companies, with records, time off, performance, compensation and payroll in some countries.
An HR system with employees, recruitment, onboarding, attendance with biometric devices, leave, payroll, performance, assets and helpdesk.
Native payroll covers few countries, so many customers still need a separate payroll provider.
Payroll and tax logic need checking for your jurisdiction, and the interface leans on older jQuery.
Production-ready
Usable
Cloud service and mobile app
Self-hosted server and mobile app
Not published
Python, Django, HTMX, PostgreSQL and Redis
Closed source, sold by HiBob
Open source, LGPL-2.1 (weak copyleft)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
847 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
1.5k GitHub stars
Not known
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 makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.