What is Horilla used for?

Horilla is an open-source human resource management system covering recruitment, attendance, leave, payroll, performance and assets. It is a good fit for small and mid-sized companies centralizing HR, and teams running payroll and leave in one system.

Is Horilla open source?

Yes. Horilla is open source under the LGPL-2.1 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at horilla/horilla-hr.

Yes. Horilla is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Horilla?

Yes. Horilla can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Horilla an alternative to?

Horilla is an open-source alternative to BambooHR, Zoho People, Factorial and Personio. Other open-source alternatives to BambooHR include OrangeHRM, Frappe HR and Ever Gauzy.

Is Horilla actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Horilla was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is 2.1.8, published on 26 September 2026. The project has 1.4k stars on GitHub.

Horilla: open-source alternative to BambooHR, Zoho People

About Horilla

Horilla is a free and open-source human resource management system built with Python and Django. The README describes it as comprehensive and designed to streamline HR operations. It combines employee records with the common HR workflows into one application, so small and mid-sized organizations can manage staff without stitching separate tools together.

Core modules include employee management with LDAP integration, recruitment from job posting to onboarding, onboarding and offboarding workflows, attendance and time tracking with biometric integration, leave management with policy enforcement and approvals, payroll with salary processing and tax calculations, performance management with goals and reviews, asset management and a helpdesk for HR requests.

The project explains its branch layout: the 2.0 branch is the default for running or deploying Horilla, dev/v2.0 is where contributions should go, and version 1 is deprioritized with fixes considered case by case. It uses htmx and JavaScript on the front end and is licensed under LGPL-2.1. The project website is horilla.com.

Key features

Employee management with LDAP integration
Recruitment from posting to onboarding
Attendance tracking with biometric integration
Leave management with approvals
Payroll with tax calculations
Performance reviews and goal setting
Asset management and HR helpdesk

Good fit for

→Small and mid-sized companies centralizing HR
→Teams running payroll and leave in one system

Built with: HTML; Django; JavaScript; Python
Tags: hrms; hr; payroll; recruitment; attendance; leave-management; django; self-hosted

Horilla: questions and answers

What is Horilla used for?: Horilla is an open-source human resource management system covering recruitment, attendance, leave, payroll, performance and assets. It is a good fit for small and mid-sized companies centralizing HR, and teams running payroll and leave in one system.
Is Horilla open source?: Yes. Horilla is open source under the LGPL-2.1 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at horilla/horilla-hr.
Is Horilla free?: Yes. Horilla is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Horilla?: Yes. Horilla can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Horilla an alternative to?: Horilla is an open-source alternative to BambooHR, Zoho People, Factorial and Personio. Other open-source alternatives to BambooHR include OrangeHRM, Frappe HR and Ever Gauzy.
Is Horilla actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Horilla was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is 2.1.8, published on 26 September 2026. The project has 1.4k stars on GitHub.