Free attendance apps are easy to find and hard to keep. Here is the difference between a free tier and a trial with the price hidden.
A free attendance app is genuinely free for a small business only if it handles your whole team without a user cap, captures a timestamp and location at check-in, connects leave to attendance, gives you a path to payroll, and lets you export everything — indefinitely. Most "free" tiers fail at least two of those: a five-user limit, thirty days of history, no export, or a check-in that works but a register that is paid. The list below is what to check before your team builds a habit on something that will start invoicing you at employee number six.
| Hardware | Biometric devices per site, if the app assumes them |
|---|---|
| Per-user pricing later | What does employee 16 cost, and employee 60? |
| The second tool | Leave or payroll in a separate paid product, plus the monthly reconciliation between them |
| Migration out | No export means the cost of leaving is re-typing history |
| Your own time | A free app that still needs the register re-keyed into a salary sheet is not free; see the ROI calculator |
A vendor that answers all five plainly is selling a free tier. One that answers three is selling a trial. Either is fine, as long as you know which one you are installing on thirty phones.
| Deal-breakers | User cap below your headcount next year · history cut-off · no export |
|---|---|
| Must include | Unlimited users, timestamp + location at punch, rule-based late/half-day, leave linkage, register, self-service |
| Hidden costs | Devices, per-user pricing later, a second paid tool, migration out, your month-end hours |
| Free vs trial | Free has no cliff at a headcount or a date; a trial does |
| Ask first | What happens to my data if I stop? |
Yes, but check the shape of the free tier rather than the word. A genuinely free tier has no user cap you will hit, keeps history indefinitely, captures timestamp and location at check-in, links leave to attendance, and lets you export. Many free apps cap users at five or ten or keep only thirty days of history, which makes them trials.
Unlimited employees with self sign-up, check-in and check-out with a server timestamp and a reverse-geocoded location, late marks and half-days computed by configurable rules, leave and work-from-home requests that update attendance when approved, a monthly register per employee that feeds payroll without re-typing, employee self-service, CSV export and basic tenant security.
Only if location capture is included on the free tier. Check-in with a stored, reverse-geocoded location is what makes a field employee's attendance verifiable; some apps put that behind a paid plan. Also check that location is captured at the punch only, not tracked continuously.
Some can, if attendance and payroll are modules of the same workspace and share one record. If the app only produces a register that you upload or re-type into a separate payroll tool, the app is free but the monthly reconciliation is not — and that reconciliation is where most small-business payroll errors come from.
Per-user pricing that begins at a headcount you will reach, a separate paid tool for leave or payroll, biometric hardware the app assumes, the absence of export so leaving means re-typing history, and the owner's own time re-keying the register into a salary sheet every month.
Yes. Merik's company workspace is free to create with unlimited employee self sign-up and no card, and it includes geolocated check-in and check-out, configurable late and half-day rules, leave and work-from-home requests, a monthly register that feeds payroll directly, employee self-service payslip download and CSV export of the task log. Guided setup is available on request.
Merik's workspace is free, with unlimited employee self sign-up and no card. The attendance module is the full thing, not a preview: check-in and check-out from the employee's own phone with a server timestamp and a reverse-geocoded place name, late marks and half-days by the rules you configure, leave and work-from-home as approved requests that update the day, a live company-wide view for admins, and a monthly register that payroll reads directly — because payroll is in the same workspace.
Employees see their own history and download their own payslips; the task log exports to CSV; tenant isolation is enforced in the database. If the answers above are the ones you wanted, the pricing page says the same thing in more detail, and setup is three steps.
Message time is not arrival time, nothing is countable, nothing reaches payroll.
A practical comparison of the three ways to capture attendance.
How connecting attendance and leave directly to payroll removes errors.