Comparison · Agency ops

Factorial alternative for agencies that need project profitability

Growee is a Factorial alternative for agencies and service companies. Both cover employees, leave, documents and performance reviews. Growee adds time tracking with billable and internal cost rates, project profitability across six billing models, and client invoicing on the same record. Factorial adds payroll in its home markets, which Growee does not have. Growee is an EU company hosting data in the European Union.

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Free for up to 3 employees. Every Factorial figure and capability on this page is quoted from Factorial's own pages and dated 19 September 2026.

Growee and Factorial, 17 rows

Every Factorial cell carries the page it came from and the date it was read. Where a page did not show a capability the cell says so, which is a statement about the documentation we could read and not a claim that Factorial ships nothing. Rows Growee loses are rows here, not footnotes, and three of them say Factorial wins in as many words.

Price and the employee record

Price basis and free tier

Growee
Free for up to 3 employees, and the free plan carries employees, leave, documents, performance reviews, time tracking, timesheet approval, projects and the MCP server. Above 3 employees the base plan is charged per employee, with no seat minimum and no platform fee. The current figure is on the pricing page.
Factorial
Quote based, from a published floor. The pricing page reads "Factorial starts at $8 per month, per user", then "We have plans for all businesses and budgets. Just tell us what you need, and we'll tailor one to you", with "Request a tailored quote" where a plan grid would be. No free plan and no per module price is stated on the pages checked. A trial exists as a call to action, "Start free trial" on the integrations page and "Try for free" and "Start for free" elsewhere, but no trial length and no trial terms are published on any page checked.Source: factorialhr.com/pricing, /integrations, /payroll and /digital-signature, 19 September 2026

Employee records and custom fields

Growee
Yes, on the free plan. One employee record with positions, departments, levels, work locations, contract types, benefits and custom fields you define.
Factorial
Yes, in every plan. "Employee directory" is one of the Factorial Core tools that "All plans include", beside "Onboarding/Offboarding", "Payslip distribution", "Send documents in bulk", "Legal E-signature", "Custom notifications" and "Fillable PDFs". No custom-field wording appears on the pages checked.Source: factorialhr.com/pricing, 19 September 2026

Documents with expiry dates and templates

Growee
Yes, on the free plan. Document types you define, filed on the person with an expiration date, plus templates that fill themselves from employee data.
Factorial
Yes, and strong on generation. A "Cloud based DMS" where you "access your HR documents from anywhere, even from your mobile app", plus "Fill forms automatically" to "Generate documents with fillable fields using employee information you already have in your HR files", and bulk document sending in Factorial Core. No document expiry-date wording appears on the pages checked.Source: factorialhr.com/document-management, 19 September 2026

Leave requests, policies and balances

Growee
Yes, on the free plan. Requests with approve, reject and cancel, policies per leave type, balances by year and type, calendar events, and CSV or XLSX export.
Factorial
Yes. "Smart time off validations", "Unlimited time-off policies" and "Custom absence types", with a "Time off calendar", approval "through desktop or mobile", "Set up who approves time off for each team", and policies created "based on location, contract type, and more".Source: factorialhr.com/pricing and /holidays-leaves-software, 19 September 2026

Public-holiday calendars

Growee
One calendar per workspace, filled from an automatic national-holiday source covering 99 countries. Legal holidays are scoped to the workspace with no country field, so a team spread across countries gets a single public-holiday calendar, never one per employee country.
Factorial
No per-country public-holiday calendar is described in the visible copy of any page checked. What those pages do describe is leave policy: time-off policies created "based on location, contract type, and more", and "Holiday policies" to "Create time-off policies and assign them to your employees". Those are policy rules attached to people, not a public-holiday calendar per country, and Factorial uses the word holiday for leave throughout.Source: factorialhr.com/holidays-leaves-software and /features, 19 September 2026

Performance reviews

Growee
Yes, on the free plan, and the review types are yours to define. Growee ships no preset evaluation types, so the cycle matches how you already run reviews.
Factorial
Yes. "360 Performance Reviews", "Competencies Tracking" and "Analytics of performance reviews", under a module that helps you "Find opportunities to grow your team's talent and boost their potential". Whether the review types are defined by the customer is not stated on the pages checked.Source: factorialhr.com/pricing, 19 September 2026

Time, rates, profit and the client bill

Time tracking

Growee
Yes, on the free plan. Start and stop timers, entries stored in worked minutes, weekly submission and approval with a weekly approval report behind it. No rota and no shift scheduling.
Factorial
Yes, and wider than ours. Clock in and out, "Geolocation", a "QR tracking system" and "Overtime Compensation", plus a "Time Tracking App" with "Geofencing" to "Limit work hours based on location" and a "QR Code" to "Clock in via QR code to track hours from specific locations". Rota is a separate Shift Management module: "Automated Shifts", "Shifts in bulk", "Rotating Shifts". Factorial wins this row.Source: factorialhr.com/pricing and /time-attendance-signing, 19 September 2026

Billable rate and internal cost rate per timesheet row

Growee
Both, on the timesheet row itself. Time tracking and projects are on the free plan, and the profitability those rates feed is on the paid plan. Each row carries a billed hourly rate and an internal cost hourly rate, and each project member carries a billed rate, a cost type and a per-project internal cost.
Factorial
Rates by role, seniority or phase. "Flexible billing rates", "Set custom rates by role, seniority, or phase to reflect the true value of your work", with "Hours, salaries, expenses, and bill rates sync automatically". The pages checked attach the rate to the role, the seniority or the phase, and do not state a rate carried on the individual timesheet row.Source: factorialhr.com/hr-project-management-software, 19 September 2026

Project profitability and billing models

Growee
On the paid plan, with six named billing models: retainer, fixed price, time and materials, PPC passthrough, revenue share and internal. The revenue basis follows the model rather than assuming every project is billed by the hour, and an internal project returns no revenue at all. Who sees it matters: the margin, the billed rates, the budget and the billing model need the payroll or salary permission, which no default role except the admin holds, so in a new workspace this is admin only until an admin grants it.
Factorial
Yes, and it is the headline of its project management page, not a footnote: "The project management software to run projects that are actually profitable", with "Real-time profitability", "Phase-by-phase margins", "Track margins by phase to isolate exactly where you’re winning or losing" and "Live budget consumption", "Watch your margin update live the moment a cost is logged, with no delays". No list of billing models, and no rule for which revenue basis each model uses, appears on the pages checked. Factorial also carries quoting, which Growee does not: "Structure quotes into clear phases with internal costs and margins per role" and "Auto-generate a project from the approved quote".Source: factorialhr.com/hr-project-management-software, 19 September 2026

Client invoicing, payments and reminders

Growee
On the paid plan. Invoices with lines, recorded payments, history and a tax field, late marking, payment reminder emails configured per workspace, and Romanian e-Factura filing.
Factorial
Not stated on the pages checked. Factorial names "billing of projects" and tells finance teams they "Gain visibility on costs, margins, and billing", but no client invoice, no recorded payment and no payment reminder appears on those pages. The only invoice wording found is expense capture, "Simply take a photo of your receipts and invoices and upload them to your Expenses folder", and a payroll statistic about "errors in invoices and paychecks".Source: factorialhr.com/hr-project-management-software, /document-management and /payroll, 19 September 2026

Payroll, benefits and signing

Payroll

Growee
None. Payroll in Growee is a module flag and a permission name, never a calculation and never a payslip. If payroll is the thing you are buying, Growee is the wrong tool.
Factorial
Yes, and it is a headline product: "Payroll software that simplifies and centralizes processes", which will "Simplify calculation and distribution of employee wages, taxes, and benefits", "Send payslips in bulk to your team" and "Calculate and compensate overtime". It also offers "a directory of certified consultancies" so you can "Get payroll calculated, reviewed and validated by a consultant", and integrations with the payroll program you already run. No country or market list appears on the pages checked. Factorial wins this row.Source: factorialhr.com/payroll, 19 September 2026

Benefits

Growee
Records, not administration. A benefits catalogue and a link to the employee. No carriers, no eligibility rules, no enrolment.
Factorial
Not stated as a product on the pages checked. Benefits appear twice: as a payroll line, "Simplify calculation and distribution of employee wages, taxes, and benefits", and as a "Benefits" category in the integration marketplace, which points at partner apps rather than a Factorial module.Source: factorialhr.com/payroll and /apps, 19 September 2026

E-signature

Growee
Two systems, on the paid plan. An in-app drawn signature embedded in the document PDF with a hash, the IP address and the user agent, and Yousign certified signing for CRM offers, CRM agreement templates and holiday requests.
Factorial
Yes, in every plan. "Legal E-signature" is part of Factorial Core, and the digital signature page adds "We are compliant with the eIDAS safety standard", "Request the signature of one or more employees for each document", "Documents automatically saved once signed", and signing of employee timesheets.Source: factorialhr.com/pricing and /digital-signature, 19 September 2026

Platform and access

SSO, SAML and SCIM

Growee
None. No SAML, no SCIM, no Okta or Azure AD connector. Microsoft and Apple sign-in exist and are not the same thing.
Factorial
Single sign-on is named once, on the document management page: "Secure sign-in", "Add an extra layer of protection with added single sign-on security." No SAML, no SCIM and no identity provider is named on the pages checked, and no plan is attached to it.Source: factorialhr.com/document-management, 19 September 2026

REST API

Growee
Yes, on the paid plan. 138 paths and 265 operations across 24 tags, bearer authentication, 60 requests a minute per API key and 180 a minute per user.
Factorial
Yes, with public developer documentation. "Factorial API" is linked from the site footer, and its documentation covers API keys and OAuth 2 with scopes, dated API versions from v2025-10-01 to v2026-10-01, SDKs, pagination, and a webhook subscription surface that Growee does not have at all. No path count, operation count or rate limit is published on the pages checked.Source: factorialhr.com and apidoc.factorialhr.com/docs/getting-started, 19 September 2026

Native MCP server for AI assistants

Growee
Yes, first party, and on the free plan. OAuth 2.1 with discovery and Dynamic Client Registration, or a personal access token, one scope, and 1,000 successful MCP tool calls a month free on fully free workspaces with the meter off on any paid plan. The tools reach the whole API surface through one execute-operation tool, bounded by the acting user’s permissions.
Factorial
Yes, first party and hosted, at "https://mcp.factorialhr.com" over "Streamable HTTP" with "OAuth 2.0 (with Dynamic Client Registration)". Its direct tools cover attendance, tasks, time off and employee lookup, and a bridge hands wider questions to Factorial One, which "consumes Factorial One credits" and "is only available if your plan includes access to Factorial One". Factorial notes it is not yet listed in the assistant connector directories, so the server is added by URL. Every action "runs as you" and "Your Factorial permissions are enforced".Source: apidoc.factorialhr.com/docs/mcp-server, 19 September 2026

Mobile apps

Growee
iPhone only, and partial. One iOS app with a timer widget, covering the assistant, the dashboard, leave, the team and time. No Android app, and no projects, invoicing or documents inside it.
Factorial
A mobile app across the product. "Stay connected wherever you are with our mobile app", HR documents reachable "from anywhere, even from your mobile app", time off requested and approved "via desktop or mobile app", and a time tracking app where you "Clock in and out with one tap". No app-store, iOS or Android wording appears on the pages checked, so the platforms are not stated. Factorial wins this row.Source: factorialhr.com, /document-management, /features and /time-attendance-signing, 19 September 2026

Growee vs Factorial

Two questions decide this one, and neither of them is the feature count.

Growee vs Factorial on project profitability: what is actually different?

Both products report project margin, so the difference is not whether profitability exists. Factorial publishes "Real-time profitability", phase-by-phase margins and billing rates set "by role, seniority, or phase", and it quotes projects before they start. Growee attaches the pair of rates to the timesheet row itself, and it names six billing models, retainer, fixed price, time and materials, PPC passthrough, revenue share and internal, each choosing the revenue basis the margin is measured against. Then it carries the client invoice on the same project record, with lines, recorded payments and reminder emails, which the Factorial pages we read do not describe. If you want a quote and a rota, that is Factorial. If you want the invoice and the billing model on the same record as the hour, that is Growee.

Growee vs Factorial on payroll and compliance: which one carries it?

Factorial, without argument. It runs payroll, distributes payslips, compensates overtime and keeps a directory of certified consultancies to validate the calculation. Growee runs no payroll at all, holds no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and has no SAML SSO or SCIM. Growee is an EU company hosting in the European Union with a DPA on request and an independent penetration test, which clears most European security reviews but is not the same as a certification. If payroll or enterprise identity is a requirement, Factorial is the answer and this page will not pretend otherwise.

What you gain moving to Growee

Four things a service business bills from, none of which the Factorial pages we read on 19 September 2026 describe in this shape.

The client invoice on the project record

Invoices with lines, recorded payments, history, a tax field, late marking and reminder emails, plus Romanian e-Factura filing, sitting on the same project as the hours that justify them. On the paid plan.

See projects and profitability

Six billing models, not one

Retainer, fixed price, time and materials, PPC passthrough, revenue share and internal. The revenue basis follows the model, so a retainer is not measured as though it were billed by the hour, and an internal project returns no revenue at all.

See how profitability is calculated

Two rates on the timesheet row

Every row carries a billed hourly rate and an internal cost hourly rate, and every project member carries a billed rate, a cost type and a per-project internal cost. That pair is what turns logged hours into a margin instead of a total.

See the agency setup

Signing, two ways

An in-app drawn signature embedded in the document PDF with a hash, the IP address and the user agent, and Yousign certified signing for CRM offers, agreement templates and holiday requests. On the paid plan.

See e-signature

Who should stay on Factorial

Four cases where switching is the wrong call. We would rather you read them here than find them in week three.

You are buying payroll

Factorial calculates and distributes wages, taxes and benefits, sends payslips in bulk and compensates overtime, with certified consultancies behind the calculation. Growee runs no payroll and issues no payslips. Nothing else on this page outweighs that if payroll is the requirement.

You run shifts, not projects

Factorial ships Shift Management as its own module, with "Automated Shifts", "Shifts in bulk" and "Rotating Shifts", and its time tracking adds geofencing and QR clock-in for teams away from a desk. Growee has timers and weekly timesheets, no rota and no shift scheduling.

You need the wider platform

Device management, IT inventory, SaaS management, procurement, training, recruitment and engagement are all Factorial modules, alongside an integration marketplace. Growee has a fixed integration list and no marketplace: Slack, Google Calendar, Gmail, Jira, GitHub, Stripe, Yousign, SES, a HubSpot import, and Microsoft and Apple sign-in.

Your buyer is HR, not the founder

Factorial is an HR suite that reaches into finance. Growee is a company OS for a service business, where the reason to adopt it is that the hour, the cost, the margin and the client invoice live on one record. If nobody in the room cares about project margin, the delta this page is built on does not apply to you.

Module and plan details in this section are quoted from factorialhr.com/pricing, 19 September 2026 and factorialhr.com/time-attendance-signing, 19 September 2026.

Pricing

One side publishes a plan you can read without talking to anyone. The other assembles a quote around the modules you pick. That difference matters more than any single figure.

Growee

Free for up to 3 employees, with HR, leave, documents, performance reviews, time tracking, timesheet approval, projects and the MCP server on that free plan. Above 3 employees the base plan is charged per employee, with no seat minimum and no platform fee. Client invoicing, expenses, project profitability, e-signature and the REST API sit on the paid plan. The current figure, monthly and annual, is on the pricing page.

See Growee pricing

Factorial

A published floor and then a conversation. The pricing page states "Factorial starts at $8 per month, per user" and "We have plans for all businesses and budgets. Just tell us what you need, and we'll tailor one to you", with "Request a tailored quote" where a plan grid would be. All plans include "Factorial Core", listed as the employee directory, onboarding and offboarding, payslip distribution, bulk document sending, legal e-signature, custom notifications and fillable PDFs. Everything else, from time off and time tracking to performance, shifts, recruitment, projects, expenses, procurement and the IT modules, is chosen per company.

No free plan and no trial length is stated on that page, and the price is shown in US dollars with no other currency published on it.

Source: factorialhr.com/pricing, 19 September 2026

Factorial's figure is shown in the US dollars its own pricing page publishes, with no conversion applied. Growee's own figure lives on the pricing page.

Where the data lives, and what we do not claim

Growee is an EU company. Customer data is hosted and processed on AWS infrastructure inside the European Union, and a Data Processing Agreement is available on request.

Growee does not currently hold a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and we will not claim otherwise.

Both sentences are quoted from our own security page rather than written for this comparison, and the same page carries the subprocessor list, the independent penetration test and the DPA request path. Growee also has no SAML SSO and no SCIM. If your procurement process needs a certification, that is a real reason to stay where you are. Read the security and data protection page.

Factorial alternative: frequently asked questions

What is a Factorial alternative with project profitability for a service business?

Growee. It covers the same HR ground you would use Factorial for, employees, leave with policies and balances, documents with expiry dates and templates, and performance reviews you define, and it adds the parts a service business bills from: a billed hourly rate and an internal cost hourly rate on every timesheet row, project profitability across six billing models, and client invoicing with payments and reminders on the same project record. Factorial reports project profitability too, and says so on its own project management page (factorialhr.com/hr-project-management-software, 19 September 2026); the honest difference is the named billing models and the client invoice, which the Factorial pages we read do not describe. HR, time tracking, timesheet approval and projects are on the free plan for up to 3 employees; invoicing, expenses, profitability, e-signature and the REST API are on the paid plan. See the full agency setup.

Growee vs Factorial for a 35-person agency: which fits?

It turns on two questions. Do you need payroll run inside the tool, and do you bill clients from the hours you track? If payroll is in scope, Factorial fits and Growee does not: Growee runs no payroll and issues no payslips. If the daily pain is that time, cost rates, project margin and the client invoice live in three systems, Growee fits, because they live on one record and the margin is measured against the billing model you chose rather than an assumed hourly rate. A 35-person agency is above the free tier either way, so the comparison is a paid-plan comparison: Growee publishes a per-employee price on its pricing page, while Factorial publishes "Factorial starts at $8 per month, per user" and asks you to "Request a tailored quote" (factorialhr.com/pricing, 19 September 2026). One more constraint decides some rooms on the spot: Growee has no SAML SSO and no SCIM, and holds no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification. See Growee pricing.

Does Growee handle payroll like Factorial?

No. Payroll in Growee is a module flag and a permission name, never a calculation and never a payslip, and no page here will claim otherwise. Factorial does run payroll, describing software that will "Simplify calculation and distribution of employee wages, taxes, and benefits" and "Send payslips in bulk to your team", with a directory of certified consultancies behind the numbers (factorialhr.com/payroll, 19 September 2026). What Growee holds is the layer next to payroll: the employee record, leave balances, contracts and documents, timesheets with cost rates, and the project margin those hours produce. Agencies typically keep a payroll provider or an accountant and use Growee for everything up to the point the wage is paid. See projects and profitability.

Source notes

Every Factorial claim on this page comes from a page on Factorial's own sites, fetched on 19 September 2026 with a browser user agent and returning HTTP 200. Nothing here comes from a listicle, a review site or recalled knowledge, and no Factorial capability is written that those pages did not show.

  • factorialhr.com/pricing read 19 September 2026. Source for the starting price, the tailored-quote model, the Factorial Core list, the module catalogue, and the feature bullets quoted for time off, time tracking, performance, shifts, expenses and procurement.
  • factorialhr.com/hr-project-management-software read 19 September 2026. Source for real-time profitability, phase-by-phase margins, live budget consumption, flexible billing rates by role, seniority or phase, quoting, and the finance-team framing of costs, margins and billing.
  • factorialhr.com/payroll read 19 September 2026. Source for payroll calculation and distribution, payslips in bulk, overtime compensation, the certified-consultancy directory and the payroll integrations.
  • factorialhr.com/holidays-leaves-software and /time-attendance-signing read 19 September 2026. Source for the time-off calendar, approval routing, location and contract-type policies, and for geofencing, QR clock-in and the time tracking app.
  • factorialhr.com/document-management and /digital-signature read 19 September 2026. Source for the cloud document manager, automatic form filling, the single sign-on sentence, and the eIDAS signature wording.
  • apidoc.factorialhr.com/docs/mcp-server read 19 September 2026. Source for the MCP endpoint, its transport and OAuth profile, the direct tools, the Factorial One bridge and its credit rule, and the connector-directory note. The same documentation site is the source for the API versions, authentication methods and the webhook subscription surface.
  • factorialhr.com/features, /integrations, /apps and the home page read 19 September 2026. Source for the mobile-app wording, the integration marketplace and its categories, and the product navigation used to check which modules exist.

Where a cell reads "Not stated on the pages checked", no wording for that capability was found on those pages on that date. It is a statement about the documentation we could read, not a claim that Factorial ships nothing: Factorial's help centre, its localised sites and its sales collateral were not part of this check. Factorial did not block automated fetches, so every cell here carries today's date rather than an archived snapshot.

Growee's own cells come from the product itself, from the shipped configuration and from the pricing page, which is where the free and paid split in every Growee cell is set. The free tier covers up to 3 employees. No Growee price appears on this page on purpose: the pricing page is the single place that figure lives, so this comparison cannot drift from it.

The hour, the cost and the client invoice on one record

The hour, the cost rate, the margin and the client invoice on one record. Start free for up to 3 people.

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