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Pricing

One number.
No asterisks.

Free for your first 5 employees, forever. €8 per active employee per month above that, with every feature on every tier. Or self-host the whole platform from GitHub for €0.

Free

€0 / up to 5 employees

For side projects, tiny teams, and anyone evaluating Pulse honestly before committing.

Start free
  • Up to 5 active employees
  • All Money / People / Work modules
  • Full API + webhooks (no tier gate)
  • SSO via Google / Microsoft
  • Commessa-native time tracking
  • Command bar (⌘K / ⌘J)
  • Community support on GitHub

Not included

  • Multi-country in-house payroll filing
  • SOC 2 report under NDA
  • Dedicated onboarding engineer

Standard

Popular
€8 / per active employee / month

Everything in Free, no feature asterisks. One tier for teams from 6 to 500.

Start free — upgrade later
  • Everything in Free, unlimited seats
  • Multi-country payroll (US · UK · IT · ES · FR · DE · IE · NL)
  • Statutory filings (F24, 941, PAYE, Modelo 111, URSSAF, Lohnsteuer)
  • Tax GL + journal export (QuickBooks / Xero / SAP)
  • SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit log
  • Priority email + Slack Connect support
  • SOC 2 Type II report under NDA
  • Annual billing: 15% off

Self-host

€0 / FSL-1.1-MIT license

Run the whole platform on your own infra. Source is public, license is self-serve.

See on GitHub
  • Full source code, every module
  • Docker Compose reference (single-node)
  • Helm chart for Kubernetes
  • Terraform modules for AWS / GCP / Hetzner
  • Contribute back via PR
  • No per-seat fees, no license keys

Not included

  • Managed payroll filing rails
  • Commercial support SLA
  • Uptime guarantee

Contractors

€4 / per active contractor / month

A separate line for anyone paid outside your local payroll — freelancers, consultants, international contractors.

  • Anyone paid outside local payroll — freelancers, consultants, international contractors.
  • Full profile, time tracking and expenses; no statutory filing.
  • Switch the same person between contractor and employee with no data loss.
  • Not counted toward the free-for-5 employee allowance.

What self-hosting costs you.

The software is €0. The infra under it isn't. A Pulse deployment for a 50-person team fits comfortably on a €20–40/month Hetzner box, or about $30–60/month on AWS us-east-1 (RDS + ECS + an S3 bucket). Add your own payroll filing rails if you want to skip our managed ones.

Reference infra costs at /docs/self-host in the repo.

Pricing FAQ.

Why "per active employee" and what does active mean?

An employee is active in a calendar month if they had a contract on any day of that month or were paid in that month. You don't pay for offboarded people after their exit date. Contractors don't count toward the employee tier — they have their own €4 line.

Is there any feature locked behind an enterprise tier?

No. API, webhooks, SSO/SAML, audit logs, SCIM, the full Labs suite — all included on Free and Standard. The only difference between Free and Standard is the employee cap and the managed payroll filing rails.

Can I mix modules? E.g. only People and Work, not Money?

Yes. Money / People / Work are independently toggleable. The per-employee price stays €8 regardless of how many modules you run — we don't charge twice for the same person.

Discounts for non-profits, education, open-source maintainers?

50% off for registered non-profits, accredited education institutions, and maintainers of projects with 1k+ GitHub stars. Email sales@pulsehr.it with a one-line proof.

What happens if I outgrow 5 employees?

We notify you in-app the month before you cross the threshold. Upgrade with a click; no data migration, no billing sidebar drama. Pay only from the following month onward.

Can I get an invoice in my company's entity's country?

Yes. We bill from our Italian entity by default; on request we invoice from our Delaware entity (US) or via EU reverse-charge VAT. Payment via card, SEPA, ACH or wire.

Still have pricing questions? Ask in public on GitHub Discussions, or email sales@pulsehr.it. Nothing gets routed to a funnel — real humans, real answers.

Your team deserves
better software.

Free for the first 5 employees — forever. No credit card. Import your data in under an hour.

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