Should you build your own Factorial?
Track documents, leave, schedules, and onboarding without payroll calculations
A consolation build is possible, but the paid product's decisive value sits outside a solo rebuild. For Factorial, track documents, leave, schedules, and onboarding without payroll calculations. The hard boundary is hr workflows, time, payroll integrations, compliance, analytics, and support, plus compliance, payroll, and regulated integrations.
ENOriginal research content in English. Original prompt preserved in English.
Build a closest honest personal substitute for Factorial in an empty repository.
Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and Docker Compose; do not offer alternative stacks.
The core loop is: track documents, leave, schedules, and onboarding, maintain approvals and records, and export data without calculating payroll or making employment decisions.
Make the first run work locally with one documented command.
Store all user data locally by default and make export straightforward.
Put secrets in .env, ship .env.example, and never commit credentials.
Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
Use least-privilege roles and log every read or change to sensitive records.
Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
Keep compensation fields optional and never calculate payroll, taxes, benefits, or statutory filings.
Provide a data dictionary and explain which fields should not be stored without legal review.
Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure.
Include clear empty, loading, success, and recoverable error states.
Add input validation, safe filenames, and graceful handling of unavailable APIs.
Write focused tests for the core transformation and one end-to-end happy path.
Create a README with setup, architecture, permissions, data location, and backup steps.
Do not add accounts, billing, telemetry, analytics, or a hosted control plane.
Do not claim to reproduce proprietary data, network liquidity, regulated access, or frontier infrastructure.
Deliberately leave out payroll calculation or money movement.
Deliberately leave out automated hiring decisions or applicant scoring.
Deliberately leave out tax, benefits, immigration, identity, and global-employment compliance.
Finish by running the tests and listing the exact commands used.The prompt opens pre-filled in your agent. Review it before running. · this prompt is generated from the build plan · improve it via PR
What would building your own look like?
Track documents, leave, schedules, and onboarding, maintain approvals and records, and export data without calculating payroll or making employment decisions.
What you will need
- PostgreSQL
- private self-hosted deployment
- strict admin access
- documented retention policy
People still pay for Factorial because HR platforms survive because mistakes affect pay, benefits, immigration, and legal obligations, not because forms are difficult to render. The recurring cost buys sensitive data, access, retention, audit, payroll calculations, filings, benefits, employment law, incident response, and support, not just the visible interface.
xHR workflows, time, payroll integrations, compliance, analytics, and support
xpayroll rails
xtax and labor-law compliance
xbenefits integrations
xidentity checks and global employment infrastructure
Prefer something ready-made?
Frappe HREmployee documents, onboarding, leave and shifts in one full HR stack; you operate the stack.Open source↗
Horilla HRDocuments, onboarding, leave and rotating shifts in Docker; administration is the free-plan limit.Open source↗
Connecteam Small Business PlanDocuments, leave, schedules and onboarding for ten people; user eleven starts the subscription.Free↗View all 3 alternatives to Factorial →· Licença, instalação e limitações em cada alternativa.
How much does Factorial cost?
- Monthly billing
- $8/mo$8/mo · per person
- Per year
- $96/yr$96/yr
- On a Brazilian card, with 3.5% IOF
- R$41.81/moR$502/yr
Saved to My list. You will see a notice on this site when the price changes.
You complete the purchase on Factorial’s site. Vibe Radar does not handle payments.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| factorial core | $8/user≈ $8 | - | Starts at $8/user/month; employee directory, onboarding/offboarding, payslips, bulk documents, e-signatures, notifications, and fillable PDFs |
| custom module bundle | custom | - | Quote-selected modules can include Time Off, Time Tracking, Performance, Shift Management, Recruitment, Engagement, Projects, Expenses, and Training |
Free tierno free tier; demo only
Billing termscontract/annual terms are quote-only; public page states only a starting monthly per-user rate
Additional costsThe $8/user/month figure is a starting price for Core, not a complete bundle. Operational modules are separately selected and quote-priced, so the final per-user cost is not public.
verified 2026-08-10 · source ↗
Is it cheaper to build or buy Factorial?
Adjust the numbers: hours to build, your hourly rate, running costs and the subscription price.
Over 24 months, subscribing is cheaper.
Starting hours estimated from the analysis (closest consolation build: one sitting). Does not price what you give up (support, integrations, security).
Can I rebuild Factorial?
Not really. Factorial’s value is not the code: Recheck price before merge. See the honest breakdown above.
How much does Factorial cost?
Factorial costs about $8/mo (Business, checked 10/20/2026), which is $96 per year.
What do I lose by replacing Factorial?
Honestly: HR workflows, time, payroll integrations, compliance, analytics, and support; payroll rails; tax and labor-law compliance; benefits integrations; identity checks and global employment infrastructure. If any of those are load-bearing for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Factorial?
Yes: Frappe HR (Employee documents, onboarding, leave and shifts in one full HR stack; you operate the stack.) Horilla HR (Documents, onboarding, leave and rotating shifts in Docker; administration is the free-plan limit.) Connecteam Small Business Plan (Documents, leave, schedules and onboarding for ten people; user eleven starts the subscription.) All 3 curated free alternatives are at https://viberadar.si/factorial-hr/alternatives. The prompt is for when you want it exactly your way.