How we compare HR software
We list 12 HR platforms sold to US small businesses, and a published rate card exists for 7 providers. Where a vendor quotes instead, we show a quote rather than an invented figure, because putting a number against a company that refuses to publish one would be a guess dressed as a fact.
The calculator is driven by headcount, because that is the axis most of this table prices on. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rate at the number of employees you enter. Commission never moves a row, we do not sell prominence, and the cheapest line is whatever the arithmetic says it is.
Prices are what each vendor publishes to a US buyer. The billing basis matters as much as the figure, because some rows are month-to-month and some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment.
One HR software table, four different things you can buy
Settle this before you look at a single price. A cost per employee per month means something different in each group below, and buying across the lines is the expensive mistake here.
A PEO. A Professional Employer Organization enters a co-employment relationship with you. It becomes the employer of record for tax and benefits purposes, pools your staff with its other clients, and takes on payroll and a large share of compliance work. Justworks is the clearest example here, and its row reads Yes. ADP sells one alongside its software, listed as Yes (TotalSource), and Rippling lists Yes. This is a distinctively American structure with no direct equivalent in most other markets.
An HRIS or all-in-one. You stay the employer. The software holds the records, runs onboarding, tracks time off, and in several cases runs payroll. BambooHR states its position plainly as No and Gusto as No. Payroll is native for Gusto at Native (US), and for BambooHR it is an add-on, listed as Native (add-on).
A frontline or shift tool. Scheduling, a time clock and team messaging for hourly workers. Homebase and Connecteam sit here, and the buyer is usually a store or restaurant manager rather than an HR lead. Homebase lists time tracking as Yes, while Connecteam's reads Yes (Operations Hub), which is a meaningful difference when the clock is the thing you came for.
An Employer of Record. A provider that already holds a legal entity in another country and employs someone there on your behalf. Deel, Multiplier, Oyster HR, Papaya Global and Payoneer Workforce Management all operate this way. Several of them do not sell a standalone HR plan at all: Multiplier's per-employee row reads Quote and Payoneer Workforce Management's reads Quote.
Work out which group you are shopping in first. The price columns are not comparable across them.
Co-employment: what a PEO does that ordinary HR software cannot
Co-employment is the mechanism, and it is worth understanding rather than skimming, because it changes who is legally on the hook.
Under a PEO arrangement your employees are reported under the PEO's federal employer identification number. The PEO files employment taxes, sponsors the benefit plans, and carries a defined share of the employment compliance burden. You still hire, manage, direct and fire; the PEO does not run your business. It takes the administrative employer role, which is why the fee is per employee per month and materially larger than a software subscription.
The pooling is the point. A business with a handful of staff buying health coverage on its own is a very small group to an insurance carrier. A PEO presents its whole client book as one much larger group, which is how it reaches rates and plan designs that a small employer cannot access alone. Justworks lists its benefits row as Yes (large-group) and its multi-state position as Yes.
The questions worth asking any PEO before you sign, none of which are answerable from a price column:
What exactly is bundled into the per-employee fee, and what is billed separately. Some functions that read as included in a demo are priced as add-ons. Justworks lists time tracking as Yes (add-on).
Who holds the insurance relationship, and what happens to your people if you leave. Coverage sponsored by the PEO ends when the arrangement ends, so an exit is a benefits event as well as a contract event. Ask what the transition looks like and how much notice it takes.
How long you are committed. Justworks lists Monthly, which is unusual enough in this space to be worth checking against whatever you are quoted.
Whether the arrangement is a PEO or an ASO. An administrative services organization does similar work without co-employment and without the pooled insurance, which is a different product at a different price.
A PEO is generally a poor fit if you already have a benefits broker you are happy with, or if your headcount is small and stable and your people are all in one state. It earns its fee when benefits are your recruiting problem, or when you are spread across several states and nobody in the building wants to own that.
Health coverage and benefits, the job US HR software is really bought for
Employer-sponsored health coverage is the center of the US benefits conversation, and it is the reason this category behaves differently here than anywhere else. What separates the rows is the relationship each product has with the coverage itself, and there are three distinct ones.
Some products give you access to plans they sponsor, which is the PEO model above. Some administer plans you already hold, connecting enrollment, deductions and carrier feeds to payroll without selling you insurance. Gusto's benefits row reads Yes and Rippling's reads Yes. And some do not touch benefits at all: BambooHR lists Yes (add-on), while Homebase lists No and Connecteam No.
That third group is not a failing. A frontline scheduling tool is not trying to be your benefits platform. But if benefits administration is the workload you are trying to remove, a row reading no is a disqualification rather than a shortfall.
Two things to confirm with any vendor whose row reads yes. First, whether the product is acting as a broker earning commission on the plans it places, or purely as administration software; that changes whose interests are represented when plan selection comes around. Second, whether your existing carriers are supported, because a benefits module that cannot connect to the plan you already run means dual entry every enrollment period.
ACA, I-9 and fifty state rulebooks your HR software has to keep straight
American employment rules are not one code. They are a federal layer with fifty state layers on top, plus city and county rules in places, which is why US HR software leans so hard on compliance features.
ACA reporting. Once you become an applicable large employer, forms 1094-C and 1095-C are an annual obligation with real filing mechanics behind them. Gusto lists Yes, Rippling Yes and ADP Yes. BambooHR's row reads Yes (add-on), so the capability follows the payroll add-on rather than the core product. The rows for Homebase and Connecteam both read Not stated, which is a fair reflection of what those products are for.
I-9 and E-Verify. Every new hire needs work authorization verified on a Form I-9, and E-Verify participation is mandatory for some employers and some states and voluntary for others. BambooHR lists Yes, Rippling Yes and Deel Yes. Homebase draws a distinction worth reading closely, at I-9 only.
Multi-state. At-will employment is the default across most of the country, but paid sick leave, vacation payout, final paycheck timing, meal and rest breaks and notice requirements all vary by state, and an employee who moves house can change which rules apply to them. Rippling lists Yes, Gusto Yes and ADP Yes.
None of that makes any product compliant on your behalf, and nothing here is legal advice. What these rows tell you is where the work sits. Ask each vendor which of these obligations it performs, which it merely tracks, and which it hands back to you with a reminder email.
Per employee, per location or per hub: the axis your HR software bills on
Three billing shapes run through this table, and knowing which one a vendor uses tells you more about your future bill than the headline figure does.
Per employee, sometimes over a base fee. Gusto charges a base of $49/mo plus $6/emp/mo. Deel lists a base of $0 with $5/emp/mo, and Rippling lists $35/mo with From $12/user/mo. Read the word modules there as a warning that the entry figure is a starting point, not a total.
Per location. Homebase charges $30/mo and $0/emp/mo, which inverts the usual behavior: hiring does not move the bill, opening a second door does. For a restaurant with high turnover and one address, that is a genuinely different cost curve.
Per hub with a user block. Connecteam charges $29/mo (Basic), then $0.50/user/mo above 30. Note the word hub: the time clock lives in a separate subscription, so a business buying this for scheduling and for HR records is buying more than one line.
Then there are the minimums and the free tiers, which are where entry pricing stops meaning what it appears to mean. Homebase lists a free plan as Yes (1 location, up to 10 employees) and Connecteam as Yes (up to 10 employees). Both caps describe a small single-site business, which is exactly the business those products are built for, so treat the free rung as a real on-ramp rather than a trial.
Finally, check the term. Contracts here run from No at one end to Annual and Annual at the other, and an annual commitment changes what a bad first quarter costs you.
Hiring abroad without an entity, and why EOR rates sit in an HR software table
An Employer of Record is in this comparison because buyers arrive searching for HR software and leave having discovered they cannot legally pay the developer they just hired in another country. The mechanism is simple to state: the EOR already holds a legal entity there, employs the person under local law, and invoices you.
The published rates are per employee per month on top of that person's salary and local employer costs, and they are quoted for a different job than a per-employee HR fee. Deel lists $599/emp/mo, Papaya Global $499/emp/mo (from), Oyster HR $699/emp/mo, Multiplier $499/emp/mo (from) and Payoneer Workforce Management $199/emp/mo (from). Country coverage differs. Deel lists Yes (150+ countries), Oyster HR Yes (EOR in 120+ countries, contractors in 180+) and Papaya Global Yes (160+ countries).
What to check before treating a headline EOR rate as your cost:
Whether the country you need is covered, and at that rate. Country counts are marketing numbers, and a starting rate can be higher where statutory costs are heavier.
What deposit or prepayment is required. Some Employer of Record providers ask for a refundable deposit before the first employee starts. Ask each provider before you sign, and check the Contract row in the table for commitment terms, which are a separate question from a deposit.
Whether the same vendor can do your domestic payroll. Some can and some deliberately do not: Payoneer Workforce Management lists Via EOR, and Multiplier lists No (global payroll only, by quote). If you were hoping to consolidate onto a single vendor, that row decides it.
Whether the person should be an employee at all. Contractor engagement is cheaper and faster, and it is also where misclassification exposure lives, in the US and in the other country at the same time. That is a question for counsel rather than a comparison table.
For most small US employers the honest answer is that you probably do not need this yet. It becomes relevant the moment you want to keep someone who has moved abroad, and at that point the rate competes with the cost of standing up a foreign entity, not with a per-employee software fee.