# Humaans vs Zoho People

> Zoho People and Humaans score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55 (C) and 54.4 (C). Humaans leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do hr employees. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people.md (~2,000 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Zoho People and Humaans score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55 (C) and 54.4 (C). Humaans leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do hr employees.

- Humaans: grade C, 54.4/100, rank #529 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/humaans.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/humaans.json
- Zoho People: grade C, 55/100, rank #523 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-people.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zoho-people.json

## Which one, for what

### Humaans (C)

Good for: An agent working for a company that already runs Humaans and needs to read and update profiles, job roles and compensation, book and approve time away, and attach documents with a token narrowed by scope.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 60 against 48
- Security & auth, 70 against 60
- Maintenance & community, 56 against 48

Watch for: No OpenAPI file or Markdown docs. The reference is one HTML page of about 2 MB

### Zoho People (C)

Good for: An agent working inside a company that already runs Zoho People on a paid plan, for directory reads, leave requests, attendance and timesheet entries at modest volume.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 77 against 70
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 0

Watch for: No OpenAPI spec, official SDK or dated API changelog found. The product What's New page has no API entries for 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Humaans | Zoho People | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 77 | Zoho People +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 44 | 43 | Humaans +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 48 | Humaans +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 60 | Humaans +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 30 | Zoho People +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 48 | Humaans +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 73 | 73 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **54.4 · C** | **55 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Humaans | Zoho People |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Humaans Software UK Ltd | Zoho |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.humaans.io/api` | `https://people.zoho.com/api` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Humaans' Terms of Service | Proprietary service under the Zoho Terms of Service |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | 2026-08-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-06 | 2022-03-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-06 | 2025-12-22 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |

## Verdicts

**Humaans.** API tokens are limited by eight scopes and the creator's role, can expire and can be rotated with a seven-day overlap, and rate limits are published with Retry-After on 429. No OpenAPI file, API changelog, official SDK or idempotency keys were found, and prices are by quote, so an agent needs a paying customer's token.

**Zoho People.** The REST API covers employee forms, leave, attendance, timesheets, files and learning, with per-endpoint rate limits and Markdown docs listed in an llms.txt. No OpenAPI spec, official SDK or dated API changelog was found, the Free plan has no API access, and several scopes come only as ALL.

## Before you call either

### Humaans

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer <token>` to https://app.humaans.io/api. Call `GET /api/token-info` first to read the token's scopes and expiry
2. Expect a role limit as well as scopes. A token made by a user with the User role reads only public company data and that person's own profile
3. Page with `$limit` (maximum 250) and `$skip`, and pass `-g` to curl because parameters use `$` and `[]`
4. On 429 wait the seconds in `Retry-After`. The bucket holds 40 requests and refills at 7 a second per token
5. Check state before retrying a POST. No idempotency key exists, and `DELETE /api/people/:id` cannot be undone

### Zoho People

1. Use the accounts host and API host of the organisation's data centre. Tokens issued in one region fail in another
2. Stay under each page's threshold, often 30 calls a minute. Exceeding it locks that endpoint for five minutes
3. Page form records with `sIndex` and `limit`, at most 200 a call, and use `modifiedtime` to fetch only changes
4. Look up form and field label names with `/api/forms` before writing. `inputData` takes label names, and lookup fields take record IDs
5. Send the refresh token and client secret in the POST body, not the query string, and store the refresh token, which never expires

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Humaans or Zoho People?

Zoho People and Humaans score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55 (C) and 54.4 (C). Humaans leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community.

### Do Humaans and Zoho People need an API key?

Humaans takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Zoho People uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Humaans and Zoho People without installing anything?

Yes. Humaans has a hosted endpoint at https://app.humaans.io/api and Zoho People at https://people.zoho.com/api.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/humaans-vs-zoho-people.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "humaans", "b": "zoho-people"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare humaans zoho-people`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/humaans.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zoho-people.json

## Other comparisons with Humaans or Zoho People

- [BambooHR vs Humaans](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bamboohr-vs-humaans.md)
- [BambooHR vs Zoho People](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bamboohr-vs-zoho-people.md)
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