The product
Capstan is an all-in-one HR platform: an HRIS and HRMS, the core HR system that holds every employee and contractor in one directory, plus all fourteen modules on top. It is one product, not a core with a shelf of paid extras: every plan, the free one included, is the whole platform, with no add-ons, no per-module purchase, and nothing to switch on a piece at a time. It is free for up to twenty active employees; when you grow, a single paid plan lifts the cap at one per-seat price, and changes nothing else.
Jump to the free core, the fourteen modules, or how it connects.
Capstan does not split into a thin free tier and an expensive one that finally does the job. It is one product in two states: the whole platform, all fourteen modules included, free for up to twenty active employees, and the identical platform with the headcount cap lifted the moment you move to a paid plan.
Free, up to 20 active employees
The complete HRIS and all fourteen modules, not a stripped trial: people and org, time off, attendance, onboarding and exits, documents and letters, workflows, self-service, reports, and every module included from the first day. It does not expire, and someone serving notice or already gone does not use up one of the twenty.
What the core runsOne paid plan, one per-seat price
The identical platform, the same core and all fourteen modules you already ran on Free. Moving to a paid plan turns nothing on: it lifts the twenty-employee cap. You pay a per-seat rate on the employees past the first twenty, with no add-ons and nothing bought module by module. The one price is on the pricing page.
See the one priceThe free core
The core is the whole HRIS, free for up to twenty active employees and on every plan. HR, a manager and the employee themselves each open part of it; two more are not places you visit but the engine and the log every surface and every module run on. Where the core stops, a plain boundary names the module that picks the work up, because a limit you learn before buying is a feature.
Opened by HR
Capstan keeps every employee and contractor in one directory with profiles, custom fields, reporting lines and an org chart that is always current, because it is generated from the records rather than drawn by hand.
Opened by every employee, and their approver
Leave management in Capstan handles multiple policies, regional holiday calendars and approval chains, so a team split across Berlin and Bengaluru accrues and books leave under the right rules automatically.
Opened by HR, and each task owner
Onboarding and exit checklists in Capstan assign tasks to the right owners with due dates tied to the start or exit date, so a new joiner’s first day is prepared before it happens rather than reconstructed after.
Opened by every employee, and their manager
Core attendance is a two-tap punch with timesheets and approvals, built for desk-based teams that need presence records without biometric terminals.
Where the core stops
Advanced shifts, rosters, rotation and overtime rules are the Time & Attendance (Advanced) module, one of the fourteen the paid plan includes, and hardware terminals are not in v1. Payroll is partner-integration mode: Capstan compiles every payroll input and hands a clean export to your payroll partner, the statutory maths is theirs, the system of record is ours.
Opened by HR
Capstan stores people documents with expiry tracking and generates letters, offers, addresses, experience, from templates filled with record data, signed and filed against the person automatically.
Opened by every employee, without asking HR
Employees see and manage their own record, profile, leave, documents, requests, from web and mobile, which removes the majority of routine HR tickets by making the answer visible.
Under every surface
The workflow engine routes any request, data changes, letters, custom approvals, through configurable chains with delegation and escalation, and it is the same engine every module uses.
Under every surface
Core reporting covers headcount, leave, attendance and every list you can filter, exportable in open formats, and every change in the workspace lands in a log with the actor and the timestamp on it. The headline numbers are computed once and read the same on every surface.
Where the core stops
Cohort analytics, trends and a custom report builder are the Advanced Analytics module, included on every plan alongside the other thirteen.
Included on every plan
The core is complete on its own. The modules add the depth a larger org grows into: shift rosters and overtime, statutory payroll compiled for your partner, contractor invoicing, compensation bands and equity your people can see, reviews and surveys, cohort analytics, alumni access, and more. Every one is included on every plan at no extra charge, the free one included, there from the start rather than bought a piece at a time.
Hiring, and the hand-off into the record. One module, because there is one job here and we have not invented a second.
Contractors, equity, pay and reimbursements. Every module in this group records money and none of them moves it: you pay out of band, no bank file, no funds resting anywhere in Capstan.
Shifts and rosters, time against projects, and the laptop someone is carrying. Operational records, kept where the people records already are.
Reviews, training and surveys. Performance and Engagement publish the same boundary in their own words: no AI forms a judgment about a person, anywhere in Capstan.
For the team that runs HR rather than for everyone in the company: a case queue instead of a shared inbox, and reporting that runs as the person reading it.
A former employee still needs their own documents. Their access to them does not depend on anyone still working here.
Connect it up
Capstan is the system of record, and a system of record has to meet the rest of your stack. Outbound webhooks are a core developer feature on every plan, including the free one, signed and retried and logged, and Capstan compiles a partner-neutral payroll export any partner that can read a file can consume. The integrations page describes every edge at the level a developer needs, including the one that is not open yet and the places that emit nothing at all.
Integrations and API, in fullOnce you are in
One search finds what you are allowed to see across the whole workspace, opened from anywhere with a keystroke. Inside the product you also get a status board, a dated changelog and a way to reach us at a priority, each a real screen below.
One product. Every plan, the free one included, is the complete platform: the HRIS and all fourteen modules, with no add-ons, no per-module purchase and nothing to switch on a piece at a time. The modules are not a paid tier. The free plan is capped at 20 active employees; a paid plan lifts that cap at one per-seat price on the people past twenty.
Yes. The complete core HRIS, people and org, time off, attendance, onboarding and exits, documents and letters, workflows, self-service and reports, is free for up to 20 active employees, on every plan including the free one. It is not a trial and it does not expire, and there is no subscription behind it, so nothing there can lapse.
One thing: the 20-employee limit goes away. Every plan already runs the identical product, all fourteen modules included, so nothing about the software changes. The paid plan, Growth, charges a per-seat rate on the employees past the first twenty, so 21 people is one billable seat rather than twenty-one.
There are fourteen modules and all of them are included on every plan, the free one included, at no extra charge. Nothing is bought, metered or cancelled module by module: the plan per-seat price is the only charge, and every workspace has the whole platform.
Yes. Every workspace has the entire platform, all fourteen modules, from the moment it is created, so a free workspace is the whole product rather than a stripped core. There is no per-module enablement step, no add-on to buy and no module wall. The only thing that separates a free workspace from a paid one is the 20-active-employee cap.
No. Capstan is partner-integration mode: it compiles every payroll input it already holds, attendance, leave, overtime, compensation, expenses and prorations, into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the partner’s computed results back into the record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula and computes no gross-to-net anywhere.
In one self-contained region, the EU today: data and object storage in Frankfurt (eu-central-1) and compute in Amsterdam (eu-west-1). Each region is an isolated deployment with no cross-region service key, and there is no region chooser; the same stack is built to open in more regions as they come online. A full export in open formats is always available, including on non-payment and on the way out.
No. No AI evaluates people anywhere in Capstan: no attrition scoring, no sentiment analysis, no algorithmic candidate screening. The useful AI is off until a workspace turns it on: an assistant your people can ask, and a few bounded agents that do routine coordination. No agent can rate, rank, promote or terminate anyone (the capability registry is pinned in the database so it cannot), none can run a destructive or money-moving action, and any change to a record needs an explicit human confirmation. The full stance is on the AI page.
Both, now. One login can belong to several workspaces and switch between them without signing in again, and each workspace keeps its own boundary, so switching never widens what you can see. A person can also hold more than one employment at once, a concurrent role or a second contract, as well as a rehire after a gap. Seat counting is by person, not by stint, so someone with two concurrent employments is still one seat.
Yes, on every plan. A workspace admin sets how long a session lasts and when an idle one ends, an optional IP allowlist enforced fail-closed so a request from an address not on the list is refused (and switched on only from an address already on it, so an admin cannot lock themselves out), and how long notifications and the activity log are kept, above the legal floor and never below it. Sign-in stays passwordless, so there is no password policy to set. Single sign-on with SAML is not built yet.
Yes. One search finds what you are allowed to see across the whole workspace, people, contractors, open roles, tickets, assets, your documents, courses, surveys and review cycles, and it returns only records your permissions already let you open. A Cmd or Ctrl-K command palette opens it from anywhere.
Inside the product every workspace gets a live system-status board, a dated what-is-new changelog, and a way to raise a support request to us at a chosen priority, with the first-response and resolution commitment for that priority shown in the thread. Those are in-app surfaces for signed-in users; the public marketing site deliberately publishes no status page, because we do not post an availability number we have not measured.
The complete core is free for up to 20 people. The whole platform is one per-seat plan away.
