Payroll is sold on two numbers, a monthly base fee and a per-employee fee. Neither one predicts the bill. The platform that charges nothing monthly and bills purely per head is the cheapest way to pay one person in America, and among the dearest by the time you are paying twenty. So this report ignores the advertised prices and runs every US payroll platform we track through the same cost engine that sits behind our comparison table, at five real business sizes.
BY ADVERTISED MONTHLY FEE
BY WHAT 20 EMPLOYEES ACTUALLY COST
Every figure here is read from our own pricing dataset as the page loads, so it describes the market today and not the day this was written. Plans and pricing checked September 2026. Figures reflect each provider's publicly advertised standard pricing. Methodology is at the bottom.
What the numbers show
- 3 providers charge no monthly subscription, billing per employee instead. That is the cheapest shape in the market for one hire and the dearest once there is a team, which is why the table below reorders as headcount rises.
- Among the platforms that do charge a base fee, it runs from $35 to $50, a spread of $15 a month before anyone is paid.
- No platform is cheapest at every size. The order at one employee survives to neither twenty nor five hundred.
- The gap widens with every hire. American payroll is priced per head, so a few dollars of difference at one employee compounds into thousands at five hundred.
- 9 providers publish a monthly figure you can check before speaking to a salesperson. The rest quote per business, and one of the published figures is now historical: see the methodology on QuickBooks.
What payroll actually costs, by headcount
This is the estimate our calculator produces for each platform, using each vendor's own published plans, allowances and minimums.
| Provider | 1 employee | 4 employees | 20 employees | 100 employees | 500 employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $29 | $116 | $580 | $2,900 | $14,500 | |
| $29 | $116 | $580 | $2,900 | $14,500 | |
| $29 | $116 | $580 | $2,900 | $14,500 | |
| $42 | $57 | $137 | $537 | $2,537 | |
| $45 | $63 | $189 | $669 | $3,069 | |
| from $47 | from $83 | from $275 | from $1,235 | from $6,035 | |
| from $55 | from $73 | from $169 | from $649 | from $3,049 | |
| $55 | $73 | $169 | $649 | $3,049 | |
| $56.50 | $76 | $180 | $700 | $3,300 | |
| Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | |
| Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | |
| Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote | Get quote |
Read a row across, not a column down. The per-employee specialists start cheapest and climb in a straight line. The platforms carrying a base fee and a small per-head charge start dearer, then finish well below them.
A figure marked from is a floor. The vendor advertises a starting price and quotes the modules above it, so the real invoice is higher by an amount we will not guess at.
Multi-state payroll is the cost nobody quotes for
The biggest hidden variable in American payroll is not the per-employee rate. It is how many states you file in. Hire one remote worker across a state line and the obligation changes, whether or not the price does.
ADP, Deel, Gusto, OnPay, Papaya Global, Patriot Software, Paychex, QuickBooks Online, Remote and Rippling handle payroll across multiple states, though not all at the price quoted here: Gusto includes multi-state from its Plus plan, not the Simple plan this report costs it on. Homebase states neither way. That gap is how a headline figure can be accurate and still be the wrong number for a distributed team.
Filing coverage separates them again. 9 platforms file both W-2 and 1099 forms. Remote generates and distributes 1099s but does not state that it files W-2s, and two of the global platforms state nothing either way, which starts to matter the moment a business pays contractors alongside staff.
Median platformEach platform we priceRead the top of the ladder as what the rate card says, not as what a large employer would end up paying.
Why three platforms climb so much faster
Deel, Papaya Global and Remote start as the cheapest way to pay one person and finish as the dearest in the table. The reason is what they sell. All three employ and pay staff in countries where the business has no legal entity, so the per-head fee buys local employment compliance, statutory filing and benefits administration in each of those countries. There is no base fee to spread across a team, and the rate does not fall as the team grows.
For a company paying one person abroad, that is the cheapest answer on this page. For twenty people in one state, those platforms are not competing for the work.
Two caveats, and both cut against these three. Their per-head figures are the least firm in the table: Papaya publishes its rate as a starting price, Deel's own page qualifies it, and Remote states that its payroll product also carries an implementation fee and a recurring delivery fee it does not publish, so the real invoice sits above the line here. That is why all three read identically to the cent.
The second caveat covers every figure in the table. These are arithmetic on published rate cards: each vendor's plan price, extended by its own per-head rate. Nobody sells a 500-person payroll off a web page, and every vendor here quotes at that size.
The base fee and the per-employee fee, ranked
The base fee, ranked, with the per-employee charge beside it:
| Provider | Monthly base fee | Per employee |
|---|---|---|
| $35 | From $12/user/mo | |
| $37 | $5/emp/mo | |
| $39 | $6/emp/mo | |
| $49 | $6/emp/mo | |
| $49 | $6/emp/mo | |
| $50 | $6.50/emp/mo |
We have not published a median per-employee fee, and it would be the easiest number in this report to produce. That column mixes domestic payroll software charging a few dollars a head with global platforms charging many times that for a different product, and with at least one platform floor whose own description says the payroll module is priced above it. An average across those describes nothing a buyer could act on. The cost ladder resolves it by pricing each platform on what it actually sells.
Employer of record is priced in dollars, wherever the employer sits
Hiring someone abroad without opening a local entity is a separate product at a separate price:
| Provider | Per employee, per month |
|---|---|
| $199 | |
| $499 | |
| $499 | |
| $599 | |
| $699 |
Those prices do not move when the employer does. Checked from a British connection, the same vendors return the same dollar figures, and the currency selector on their pricing pages changes the symbol without touching the number. Employer of record is one of very few products in this market sold on a single worldwide rate card, which is why our Australian and British editions carry this table converted at 1 USD to USD, captured June 12, 2026 rather than a local one.
Two things separate this table from the rest of the page. It is drawn from our employer-of-record dataset rather than the payroll roster above, so it includes platforms that sell no US domestic payroll at all. And several of these figures are published as a starting price, so read the column as a floor.
The same vendors, different rate cards abroad
The same vendors sell payroll in Australia and Britain at genuinely different prices, not converted ones, because payroll is a local product with local tax filing built into it. We publish a separate edition of this report per market, each reading its own market's live pricing:
Methodology
We list ADP, Deel, Gusto, Homebase, OnPay, Papaya Global, Patriot Software, Paychex, Payoneer Workforce Management, QuickBooks Online, Remote and Rippling in this category.
Every cost here is produced by the same engine that powers our payroll comparison table and its calculator, from each vendor's published plans: plan prices, per-employee charges, bundled allowances, monthly minimums and any published maximum headcount. Where a vendor publishes a ceiling we show a quote above it instead of extending their formula past what they advertise. Where a vendor publishes only a starting price, we label the figure a floor.
Three limits, stated plainly. First, at the largest sizes we extend each vendor's own published rate for its entry plan; vendors routinely move a business that size onto a plan they quote instead of publishing, so treat the top of the ladder as what the rate card says. Second, QuickBooks no longer publishes a standalone base fee for its payroll product, only bundles that include accounting software, so the figure here is the last standalone price it published and should be read as historical. Third, figures carry no sales tax, which varies by state and is not part of a vendor's advertised price.
Plans also change underneath a business as it grows: Homebase moves onto its next plan between four and twenty employees, so the four-employee rate multiplied out will not match the twenty-employee figure.
Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page. We do not take plan ladders from review sites, which cache pricing for years after a vendor has changed it.
Employer taxes, benefits and workers compensation are employment costs, not software costs, and no figure on this page includes them.
