Horilla

What is Horilla?

Horilla is a free and open source HR management system (HRMS) that runs your entire employee lifecycle in one self-hostable platform. It bundles nine integrated modules — employee records, recruitment, onboarding, attendance, leave, payroll, performance, asset tracking, and a helpdesk — built on Python and Django with an HTMX front end.

What is Horilla best for?

Small and mid-sized companies that want a full HR suite without per-employee SaaS fees or storing staff data in a vendor cloud. Because it’s licensed under LGPL-2.1 and built on Django, it suits teams that need to self-host, keep HR data in-house, and customize the system to their own policies.

What can Horilla do?

• Manage a central employee database with org structure and LDAP integration
• Run recruitment end to end — job postings, applicant tracking, and interview scheduling
• Automate onboarding and offboarding with checklists and document collection
• Track attendance with biometric and mobile check-in plus geo-fencing
• Handle leave applications, approvals, and balance tracking
• Generate payslips in-app with overtime, deductions, and tax handling
• Run performance cycles with goals, OKRs, and 360° reviews
• Support multi-company, multi-country, and multi-currency setups

Where does Horilla fall short?

• It’s a younger project than incumbents, so the community, third-party tutorials, and pre-built integrations are thinner than what you get around BambooHR or a mature suite like ERPNext.
• Payroll tax logic is not localized out of the box for every country — you often configure rules, statutory rates, and filing formats yourself rather than getting turnkey compliance for your region.
• It’s a focused HRMS, not a full ERP. If you also need accounting, inventory, or manufacturing in the same system, a broader platform like Odoo or ERPNext fits better.

Is Horilla free?

Yes — Horilla is free forever to self-host under the LGPL-2.1 license, with full source access and unlimited employees at zero license cost. A managed cloud is available at $7 per user/month (30-day free trial) with automatic updates, daily backups, and a 99.9% uptime SLA, plus custom enterprise pricing that adds SSO/SAML and implementation help.

What does Horilla replace?

Horilla is a self-hostable alternative to BambooHR and Workday for core HR, and to payroll-focused services like Gusto. You get comparable employee, hiring, and payroll workflows while owning the data and skipping the recurring per-employee subscription.

FAQ

Is Horilla open source? Yes. Horilla is released under the LGPL-2.1 license, and the full source code is public on GitHub. You can use, modify, and self-host it freely.

Can I self-host Horilla for free? Yes — self-hosting is free forever with unlimited employees; you only pay for the server it runs on. The $7 per user/month cloud is the optional managed option.

Is Horilla a good BambooHR alternative? For teams that want to self-host and avoid per-employee fees, yes — it covers similar HR ground and even generates payslips in-app. BambooHR still leads on ecosystem maturity and ready-made integrations.

What do I need to run Horilla? A server with Python 3.11+ and Django 5.0+, or the official Docker images for Linux (amd64 and arm64) for a one-click install.