QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Payroll uses transparent pricing: a monthly base fee plus a per-employee fee of $6/emp/mo on the entry Core plan, with Premium and Elite tiers adding faster direct deposit, time tracking, and more support for higher fees. QuickBooks often runs a 50% discount for the first three months. The comparison table on this page shows the current base and per-employee fees, and the calculator above estimates your monthly cost on your own headcount.

Yes. QuickBooks Payroll is full-service across its plans, calculating, filing, and paying your federal, state, and local payroll taxes, and e-filing W-2s and 1099s. It also handles new-hire reporting. On the higher tiers it adds a tax penalty guarantee, where QuickBooks covers penalties if a filing it handled is late or incorrect.

You can run QuickBooks Payroll as a standalone product, but its biggest advantage is for businesses already using QuickBooks Online accounting, where payroll and books live in one platform and reconcile automatically. If you do not use QuickBooks for accounting, standalone payroll providers such as Gusto or OnPay are worth comparing on this page, since they integrate with multiple accounting tools.

Direct deposit timing depends on the plan: the entry Core plan offers next-day direct deposit, while Premium and Elite add same-day direct deposit so you can run payroll closer to payday. Faster funding keeps more cash in your account for longer, which matters for businesses managing tight cash flow.

QuickBooks includes Intuit Assist, a native AI assistant that answers questions and surfaces insights across QuickBooks. Intuit has also begun an early-preview Model Context Protocol (MCP) connection, which lets you query QuickBooks data inside an AI assistant such as Claude. It is the only provider in this comparison with a native MCP path, though it remains in early preview, so confirm the current scope before relying on it.