Compare Payroll Software in the United States

How we compare payroll software

We list 12 payroll platforms sold to US employers, and a published rate card exists for 9 providers. Where a vendor quotes instead of publishing, the table says so. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page.

The calculator takes your headcount and applies each vendor's published base fee and per-employee rate at that size, picking the plan that covers it where a vendor sells several. Enter what you pay today and it shows the difference. Commission does not change the order.

Base fee plus per employee: the two halves of a payroll software bill

Most published rate cards here charge in two parts: a fixed monthly fee and a charge for each person on the run. A few charge per person only. The two halves swap places as you grow: on a team of five the base fee is often most of the bill, at a hundred people the per-employee rate is the whole negotiation.

A base fee of zero is not the same as cheap: on this table the rows with no base fee charge more per head, so compare the total at your own headcount. Modules are where a headline figure stops predicting an invoice: if time tracking or benefits administration is the reason you are shopping, price the tier that carries it.

At a couple of hundred employees the published rate is an opening position anyway, so get the per-head figure and every module quoted as one annual number.

Quote-only payroll software: what to ask ADP and Paychex

ADP and Paychex do not publish a rate card for small business payroll, so any price quoted for either on a third-party site is somebody's old deal. What you can do is make their quote comparable to the published side of this table.

Ask for the per-employee rate at your actual headcount. Not a range, and not the rate at a size you might reach later.

Ask whether the quote is per pay period or per month. A weekly payroll runs more than twice as many cycles a year as a semi-monthly one.

Ask about year-end form fees. Some agreements price W-2 and 1099 production per form on top of the monthly fee.

Ask for the setup fee and the renewal price. An introductory rate that steps up at renewal is normal here; compare the second-year number.

Multi-state payroll software and the cost of one remote hire

There is no national payroll scheme. Each state sets its own withholding rules and runs its own unemployment insurance program, with its own employer account and a contribution rate assigned to your business, and some allow city or county taxes underneath. So hiring one remote employee in a new state is a registration, not a payroll change: you generally need a withholding account and an unemployment insurance account there before the first check clears, and the obligation attaches to where the employee works.

Where a row names a plan, your first out-of-state hire is a plan upgrade rather than a checkbox. Ask whether an additional state adds a recurring monthly charge, a line often absent from the pricing page and present on the invoice, and whether the provider registers you in the new state or only files once you have obtained the account numbers yourself.

W-2, 1099-NEC, 940 and 941: which forms your payroll software files

Payroll filing in the US is a calendar. Form 941 is the quarterly federal return for wages, withheld income tax and both halves of FICA. Form 940 is the annual federal unemployment tax return. W-2s go to each employee and to the Social Security Administration after year end. 1099-NEC goes to each unincorporated contractor you paid above the reporting threshold. State withholding returns and unemployment insurance wage reports sit on top.

Full-service filing means the provider submits those and remits the money rather than handing you the numbers. On a self-file tier you get correct numbers and every deadline stays yours, penalties included.

Ask whether the provider carries a tax penalty guarantee and what it covers. One that pays only when the provider itself made the error is a narrower promise than it sounds.

Workers' compensation through payroll software

Coverage requirements are set state by state, so confirm your own state's rule with a licensed broker rather than a software vendor's summary. What the payroll connection changes is the mechanism: a conventional policy is priced up front from projected payroll and audited at the end of the term, which is how an employer gets an unexpected bill in a year it grew, while pay-as-you-go calculates the premium from actual wages each run, so the year-end adjustment tends to be small.

Before you treat that row as settled, ask whether the vendor is the broker or an integration with an insurer you already have, who assigns the classification codes, and whether the policy is portable if you switch payroll later.

Contractors and the Employer of Record option in payroll software

Paying someone as a contractor means no withholding and a 1099-NEC at year end rather than a W-2, and the classification test is a legal question, not a preference. On the billing side, ask whether contractors count as chargeable heads on your plan and whether their year-end filing is included.

If you are paying someone who lives and works in another country, you are usually not buying US payroll software at all. An Employer of Record hires the person through its own local entity, handles that country's payroll and tax, and bills you per employee per month.

Read those platforms in the other direction too: Payoneer Workforce Management lists full-service filing as No (EOR only) and multi-state payroll as No, so it is not a substitute for domestic payroll. If everyone you pay works in the United States, you do not need any of this yet.