COBRA and Billing Services: 10 Providers Compared

Search for COBRA and billing services and you do not get a buying guide. You get vendor pages, because the phrase is a product name rather than a category label. WEX and several other administrators sell a bundle called exactly that, so the results are mostly service descriptions and participant login portals written for people who already made a decision.

What the phrase actually describes is two jobs sold together. COBRA administration is the compliance work triggered when someone loses coverage: notices on federal deadlines, election tracking, premium collection, carrier updates. Billing services, usually labeled direct bill or retiree billing, is the same premium collection for people off active payroll for other reasons. The mechanics overlap enough that almost nobody sells them separately.

This comparison covers ten providers a US business can realistically buy from, the fee lines that decide your actual bill, what the category costs at 10, 25, and 50 employees, and the question that comes before all of it: whether federal COBRA applies to you at all. For a business under 20 people, frequently it does not, and the answer is a different and cheaper obligation.

What COBRA and billing services actually covers

The bundle contains one legal obligation and one operational convenience, and it is worth knowing which half you are buying. COBRA carries federal deadlines and penalties. Direct billing does not carry an equivalent statutory framework; it is simply the job of collecting money from someone your payroll system no longer deducts from.

Do you have to offer COBRA at all?

This question comes before vendor selection and a surprising number of buying guides skip it. Federal COBRA applies to employers that had 20 or more employees on more than half their typical business days in the previous calendar year, per the U.S. Department of Labor. Below that line you are not subject to it.

The counting rule catches people out. Both full-time and part-time employees count, with each part-timer counted as a fraction equal to their hours divided by full-time hours. A company with 16 full-time staff and eight people at 20 hours a week is at 20 and subject to COBRA. Because the test looks back at the prior calendar year, crossing the line in one year creates the obligation for the next.

Being under 20 employees does not mean no obligation. Around 40 states have mini-COBRA or state continuation laws creating similar rights at smaller employers, with shorter durations and different deadlines. Texas, for example, historically ran a six-month state continuation period against the federal 18. For a company of 5 to 50 people this is often the rule that actually governs, and it is the part most national guides handle worst. Several administrators on this page cover state continuation; at least one does not.

One more distinction worth drawing before you shop. If your real problem is that two people on unpaid leave still owe premiums and nobody is invoicing them, you need billing services and not COBRA administration. That is a materially smaller and cheaper purchase, and buying the full compliance bundle to solve it is overkill.

The fee schedule nobody publishes

Almost every vendor in this category quotes a per-employee-per-month rate and stops there. The PEPM rate is rarely what you pay. At small headcount the monthly minimum sets the price, and the per-event charges set the variance.

10 COBRA and billing providers at a glance

The table covers both groups: dedicated administrators that do this and adjacent compliance work, and payroll platforms that bundle COBRA into a broader package. The columns are the ones that actually differ, since the notice-and-collect workflow is close to identical everywhere.

How we evaluated these providers

Feature lists in this category are nearly interchangeable, because federal law defines the work. We applied four tests instead, weighted toward what a US employer of 5 to 50 employees without a dedicated HR person needs.

Dedicated COBRA and billing administrators

These providers do continuation coverage as a core business, usually alongside pre-tax accounts and other compliance services. If COBRA is your only problem and you do not want it tied to a payroll contract, start here.

CobraHelp was founded in Denver in 1984 as an insurance brokerage and pivoted to COBRA administration when the law took effect in 1986, which makes it close to as old as the obligation itself. It does continuation coverage and nothing else, and the positioning shows: dedicated account managers rather than a call center, notices tailored to your plan structure, and transfer of existing participants from a prior administrator at no added cost.

Two things make it a reasonable default for this audience. The pay-as-you-go option prices the service around events rather than headcount, which suits a company with low turnover and a handful of benefits-eligible staff. And it administers state continuation, including for employers below the federal threshold, which several larger platforms treat as an afterthought. The trade-off is that everything is quoted, and a narrow specialist means one more vendor relationship if you also want pre-tax account administration.

Anuvi is the newest name here and the only one that publishes a rate you can act on: from $1 per employee per month, with no implementation fees and no monthly minimums, and a stated 96 percent of new groups fully operational within one day of contract signature. It is also the administrator running COBRA behind Gusto, so a large number of small businesses already use it without knowing the name.

The product is built around the parts of COBRA that go wrong: next-day electronic notification instead of mail-only, mobile-first election and payment for participants, and explicit confirmation of adds, changes, and deletions with the carrier rather than assuming the file landed. It integrates with common small business HR platforms to pull employee data nightly. The honest caveat is track record: it is a younger operation than the administrators that have been doing this since the 1980s, and in a category where the value is proof of compliance over years, that is a real consideration rather than a formality.

Total Administrative Services Corporation was founded in 1975 in Madison, Wisconsin and describes itself as the largest privately held third-party benefits administrator in the country, serving close to 80,000 employers. Continuation services sit on MyTASC alongside more than 50 other benefit account types, which is the pitch: one portal, one app, one card for COBRA, FSA, HSA, ICHRA, and the rest.

Its listed minimum group size of one eligible employee is the most permissive on this page, which matters because several competitors quietly exclude companies this size. TASC also retains the 2 percent administrative surcharge where state law permits, which is standard practice worth knowing. The structural trade-off is commitment: pricing is quoted against a multi-year term with bundling discounts, so the cheapest configuration is the one where you consolidate several services and stay put. That is good value if you want consolidation and expensive optionality if you do not.

WEX is the company whose product naming created this search term, and it is the largest operation on the page. It reports more than 25 years administering COBRA, integrations with over 350 payroll, HRIS, and benefits administration partners and more than 225 insurance carriers, and more than 330 carrier connections using EDI 834 files to update eligibility automatically. Employers work in the LEAP portal; participants get a COBRA and direct bill mobile app with one-time ACH, recurring ACH, check, and card payment options.

The commercially useful detail is what the fee does not include. WEX states that customers pay the PEPM fee or the monthly minimum with no additional charges for implementation, renewal, member paperwork, carrier notifications, or takeover from a prior administrator. In a category where per-event fees are how quotes drift upward, that is a genuine simplification. Two caveats: nothing is published, so the PEPM and the minimum are both unknown until you ask, and WEX has been consolidating acquired brands including Chard Snyder and UnifyHR onto its platform, so employers arriving through those relationships have been going through a migration.

Benefit Resource, usually written BRI, was founded in 1993 in Rochester, New York and has administered COBRA for more than 15 years alongside its pre-tax account business. Employers get a single BRIWEB login covering both, with single sign-on into the COBRA and direct bill management portal, an assigned account manager, and phone support from 8am to 8pm Eastern. Participants get a portal and a mobile app for one-time or recurring premium payments.

Its client range runs from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies, which cuts both ways: the platform is proven at scale, and a 15-person employer is not the center of the product. The clearest reason to pick BRI is consolidation. If you already want tax-advantaged account administration and continuation coverage handled together, running both through one account manager removes a coordination problem that otherwise surfaces every time a participant elects COBRA for a plan tied to an FSA or HRA.

Ameriflex reports more than 20 years in COBRA administration and leads with risk rather than features: it states that employers are held harmless for any negligence on its part, backs the service with an in-house compliance team and an ERISA attorney, and commits to responding to client emails in under six hours. Notices go out the day after it receives employee data, which starts the 60-day election clock as early as possible. It is a named COBRA partner for Aetna and a preferred partner for Humana.

Two limits matter for a small employer. Ameriflex materials state that its COBRA service does not include state continuation, so an employer below the federal 20-employee threshold governed by mini-COBRA is not served by the core product. And its published pricing structure is documented for groups of 20 or more participants. Both restrictions point the same direction: this is a strong option once federal COBRA clearly applies to you, and the wrong shape before that.

BASIC was founded in 1989 in Portage, Michigan, has more than 35 years in benefits administration, and supports over 15,000 employers across FSA, HSA, HRA, COBRA, ACA reporting, ERISA services, and FMLA administration. Its Consumer Driven Accounts platform combines COBRA, state continuation, and retiree billing with active benefit accounts behind a single sign-on, which removes the usual annoyance of switching systems mid-task.

The participant side is unusually well built for this category: a single app covers all BASIC accounts and COBRA plans, and participants can pay premiums from a MyCash balance, by card, or on autopay. The constraint is the entry point. BASIC is listed at a minimum of 20 eligible employees, which excludes a meaningful share of the businesses reading a page like this. If you are above that line and want one vendor covering several compliance obligations rather than four, it is a strong consolidation play.

Payroll platforms that bundle COBRA

The qualifying event that starts COBRA is almost always a termination, and terminations are already recorded in payroll. That adjacency is the entire argument for buying COBRA from your payroll provider: one less file transfer, one less place for a date to be wrong.

Gusto has the cleanest commercial terms in this comparison, which is rare enough to note. If Gusto brokers your health benefits, COBRA administration is included at no additional cost and you are onboarded automatically. If you keep your own broker and use the broker integration, it is $30 per company per month, flat, regardless of headcount. Anuvi does the administration; Gusto syncs employee and eligibility data daily and election notices go out two to three days after a qualifying event.

For a business of 5 to 50 this is frequently the cheapest correct answer, and the flat structure means the cost does not move as you hire. The real cost is elsewhere. COBRA here is a consequence of a payroll and benefits decision, not an independent one: the broker integration itself runs $6 per eligible employee per month on top, and switching payroll later means switching COBRA administrator too. If your benefits administration is going to sit somewhere else, the bundle argument weakens considerably.

Paychex added COBRA administration in 2006 and has run it as a small and mid-sized business service since. It sets up and maintains both federal COBRA and state continuation programs, sends notices, collects participant payments and reimburses the employer twice monthly, and runs a toll-free line that both employers and participants can call. Optionally it will track terminations from payroll and send you a reminder.

The distinguishing feature is packaging rather than product. COBRA is included in HR Pro, HR Partner, and the PEO offering, which means the buying decision is usually about the HR package, with COBRA arriving as one line among many. That is efficient if you want the package and opaque if you do not, because there is no published standalone rate to compare against a dedicated administrator. Paychex does sell it standalone if the underlying group health plan exists.

ADP offers COBRA services alongside its payroll and benefits administration, with event triggers coming from terminations and hours reductions recorded in the platform, model notices, and an audit trail attached to the same employee record. For an organization already standardized on ADP, that continuity is the argument: fewer file transfers, fewer timing errors, one place to look when someone asks what was sent and when.

Two things to check before assuming it is included. ADP is a large portfolio rather than one product, and the COBRA offering varies by which platform and service tier you hold; ADP Insurance Agency states plainly that it does not handle COBRA administration itself and will connect you with a partner. Several third-party administrators, including Benefit Resource, also distribute through ADP Marketplace rather than being native ADP services. Confirm in writing who the actual administrator is, because that determines who is accountable when a notice is late.

What COBRA administration costs at 10, 25, and 50 employees

The table below models monthly administration cost at three small-company sizes. It is deliberately sparse, because most of this category does not publish rates, and a table full of invented numbers would be worse than an honest one full of the word quote.

Two observations. First, the absolute numbers are small relative to the risk being managed: a service in the range of tens of dollars a month sits against penalty exposure measured in hundreds of dollars per day. Second, at 10 to 25 employees the monthly minimum, not the PEPM rate, is what you are buying, which is why the two vendors that publish flat or minimum-free pricing look disproportionately good at this size and unremarkable at 500 employees.

Outsourcing does not move the liability

This is the most important thing on the page and the thing vendor content is least eager to say clearly. Under ERISA, the plan administrator is whoever the plan document designates, and where the document designates nobody, it is the plan sponsor, which is normally you. Contracting a third-party administrator to perform the work does not change who the statute holds responsible. ADP states the same in its own compliance guidance: employers remain responsible for benefits compliance even when using brokers, third-party administrators, or payroll providers.

The last row is the one that should shape your decision. Statutory penalties are capped; a serious claim incurred by someone who should have had coverage is not. What a good administrator buys you is not immunity but evidence: proof of what was mailed, on what date, to what address. Some vendors go further and offer contractual indemnification against their own negligence, which is worth asking about by name, but indemnification is a private contract between you and the vendor and it does not bind the IRS or a court.

The practical implication is that your side of the workflow still matters. The administrator can only act on the qualifying event once you report it, so the gap between someone's last day and the date that reaches your vendor is your exposure, not theirs. That makes a reliable offboarding process part of the compliance chain rather than an administrative nicety.

Before you choose

FirstHR does not administer COBRA. It does not send election notices, collect premiums, or remit to carriers, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise: for continuation coverage you need one of the administrators above or an equivalent. What FirstHR does is the layer that feeds them, as an HR platform for US teams of 5 to 50 covering employee records, offboarding workflows, document management, and e-signature at a flat $98 to $198 per month.

That distinction matters for one specific reader: the employer under 20 people who arrived here assuming they needed a COBRA vendor and discovered they are governed by state continuation instead. If your actual problem is that terminations are tracked in three places and nobody is certain when someone's last day of coverage was, a COBRA administrator does not fix that, because it can only act on what you report to it.

How to choose a COBRA and billing provider

Five questions settle this faster than any feature grid, and the first two eliminate most of the market before you take a call.

A closing note on sequencing: before you sign anything, ask your prospective administrator to walk through a real qualifying event from your last year and tell you exactly which notices would have gone out, on which dates. Vendors that answer that question precisely are the ones you want. It costs nothing and it predicts the relationship better than any feature list.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are COBRA and billing services?

A bundled service combining COBRA continuation administration with premium billing for people not on active payroll. COBRA administration covers notices on federal deadlines, election tracking, premium collection, carrier updates, and termination for non-payment. Billing services, sold as direct bill or retiree billing, is the same collection work for retirees and staff on unpaid leave. Vendors bundle them because the mechanics are nearly identical, and several use the phrase as a product name.

Does my business have to offer COBRA?

Only with 20 or more employees on more than half your typical business days in the previous calendar year. Part-time employees count as fractions of full-time, which catches employers who assume the test means full-time headcount. Below the threshold, around 40 states have mini-COBRA laws creating similar rights with different durations and deadlines, so the answer for a smaller business is usually not federal COBRA but often something.

How much do COBRA administration services cost?

Most charge per benefit-eligible employee per month with a monthly minimum that is what a small employer actually pays. Anuvi publishes rates from $1 per employee monthly with no minimum and no implementation fee. Gusto is free when it brokers your benefits or $30 per company monthly otherwise. Expect possible charges for implementation, per-notice mailings, returned payments, and reinstatements on top of the base rate.

What is the difference between COBRA and direct bill?

COBRA is a federal obligation with fixed deadlines and penalties. Direct bill is an operational service with no equivalent statutory framework. Both collect premiums from someone off active payroll, which is why they are sold together, but only one carries regulatory risk. If your only need is invoicing two people on unpaid leave, you need billing services rather than COBRA administration, and that is a smaller purchase.

What happens if we get COBRA wrong?

Two penalty regimes apply at once: up to $110 per day per participant under ERISA section 502(c)(1), and a $100 per day excise tax per qualified beneficiary under Internal Revenue Code section 4980B, capped at $200 per day where more than one family member is affected. The excise tax generally does not apply to failures corrected within 30 days of discovery. The larger exposure is usually liability for medical claims incurred while someone was wrongly uncovered.

Can our payroll provider handle COBRA?

Often yes, and for a small team it is usually the least painful route, because the qualifying event already lives in payroll. Gusto includes it when it brokers your benefits and charges $30 per company monthly otherwise. Paychex includes it in HR Pro, HR Partner, and PEO packages. ADP offers it alongside its payroll platform. The trade-off is that bundled pricing is hard to compare, and switching payroll later means switching administrators.

What is mini-COBRA and does it apply to us?

Mini-COBRA is the informal name for state continuation laws extending COBRA-like rights at employers too small for the federal rule, and roughly 40 states have one. Duration is often far shorter than the federal 18 months, notice deadlines differ, and some states apply only to fully insured plans. For a business of 5 to 50 people this is frequently the rule that governs, so confirm in writing that your administrator covers your state.

Does outsourcing COBRA remove our legal liability?

No. Unless your plan document designates otherwise, the ERISA plan administrator is the plan sponsor, which is normally the employer, and courts can assess notice penalties against you even where a third party was contracted to do the work. A good administrator reduces the chance of failure and documents what was sent and when. Some offer contractual indemnification against their own negligence, but that is a private contract and does not bind a regulator.