# Zoho People (slim)

> Cloud HR system from Zoho covering employee records, leave, attendance, timesheets, onboarding, performance and learning. Agents reach it through a REST API with OAuth 2.0, available on paid plans.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-people.md (~8,000 tokens) · this version ~1,780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-people.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-people
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

**C · 55/100 · rank #523 of 722 · #6 in HR & employee operations · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: 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.

## Facts

- Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Zoho · category: HR & employee operations · legal entity: Zoho Corporation Private Limited · provenance 95/100
- Endpoint: `https://people.zoho.com/api` (HTTP)
- Auth: OAuth · pricing: Paid · x402: no · licence: Proprietary service under the Zoho Terms of Service
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- API: REST over HTTPS at https://people.zoho.com (US) in three styles. Form endpoints under `/people/api/forms/`, a v2 leave endpoint, and v3 endpoints under `/api/v3/` for leave, attendance, files, shifts, organisation structure, performance and variables. JSON or XML responses
- Coverage: 339 reference pages in the docs index. Forms and employee records, leave, attendance, shifts, timesheets and time tracking (44 pages), files, announcements, cases, onboarding, organisation structure, performance, compensation and the learning system (110 pages). 89 pages are v3
- Credentials: OAuth 2.0 authorisation code grant, or a self client for one organisation. Grant token two minutes, access token one hour, refresh token until revoked. At most 10 access tokens per refresh token in 10 minutes
- Auth scopes: `ZOHOPEOPLE.<area>.<operation>`. forms (ALL, CREATE, READ, UPDATE), leave (ALL, READ, CREATE, UPDATE), and employee, dashboard, automation, timetracker and attendance (ALL). Reference pages also name `ZOHOPEOPLE.leave.DELETE`, `ZOHOPEOPLE.attendance.READ` and `ZOHOPEOPLE.orgstructure.CREATE`
- Rate limits: Daily. Essential HR 250 calls a user licence, at most 5,000. Professional at most 10,000. Premium at most 15,000. Enterprise 500 a licence, at most 25,000. Per endpoint, a threshold of 30 to 400 calls a minute with a five-minute lock period
- Pagination: Form records by `sIndex` and `limit`, at most 200 a call. v3 lists by `offset` and `limit`, with `sort` on leave. `modifiedtime` returns records added or changed after a timestamp
- Filtering: `searchParams` with a field, an operator (Is, Contains, Between, Last_30_Days and about 40 more) and AND or OR. v3 leave filters by date range, employee, department, location, leave type and approval status
- Errors: Form endpoints return numeric codes (7011 invalid form name, 7038 permission denied to add records, 7052 missing mandatory fields) with a published list. v3 and learning endpoints return a named code, a message and the field. 429 for the daily or concurrency limit
- Webhooks: Listed as an automation on every plan in the plan comparison, the Free plan included. Not covered in the API reference
- Data centres: Accounts hosts for US, EU, India, Australia, Japan and China. The token response returns `api_domain`
- SDKs: None found. Reference pages carry samples in Java, JavaScript, Python, curl and Deluge
- Free tier and trial: Free plan for five users without API access. 30-day trial of any paid plan, after which the account moves to Free
- Prices: Essential HR $1.25 per seat per month; Professional $2 per seat per month; Premium $3 per seat per month; Enterprise $4.50 per seat per month

- Scores: Reliability 77, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 43, Agent ergonomics 48, Security & auth 60, Payments & pricing 30, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 48, Transparency & trust 73 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, Graded on the REST API, read as a hosted service. · Schema & documentation, No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract was found in the docs or under Zoho's GitHub organisation (0). · Agent ergonomics, Graded on the REST API. · Security & auth, OAuth 2.0 with scopes by area and operation, one-hour access tokens and refresh tokens that last until revoked (30). · Payments & pricing, No x402, MPP or L402 (0). · Maintenance & community, Closed service, read from the product's What's New page, which is dated by month. · Transparency & trust, Closed service under the Zoho Terms of Service, last updated 2 March 2022 (15 of 30).
- Sources: 31, open questions: 13, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.onboarding, hr.documents
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zoho-people.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/zoho-people.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-people from a page on zoho.com or one of its subdomains, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.

## Before you call it

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

## Connect

```bash
curl --location 'https://people.zoho.com/api/forms' \
  --header "Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken $ZOHO_ACCESS_TOKEN"
```
Full config and headless snippets are in the full page. Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/zoho-people

## Similar tools

| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Deel | B | 69.1 | hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.onboarding, hr.documents | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deel.min.md |
| BambooHR | C | 61.7 | hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.onboarding, hr.documents | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bamboohr.min.md |
| Rippling | C | 60.8 | hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.onboarding, hr.documents | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/rippling.min.md |
| HiBob | C | 57 | hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.onboarding, hr.documents | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hibob.min.md |
| Humaans | C | 54.4 | hr.employees, hr.time-off, hr.org, hr.documents, hr.onboarding | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/humaans.min.md |


## Panel reviews (0, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)