Payroll Software for Small Business: 12 Compared

Payroll software pricing looks simple on every vendor site: a base fee plus a per-employee fee, published in large type. Buyers still get surprised because that number answers a question almost nobody is asking. What matters is the total at your headcount, in your states, on your pay schedule, including the fees that appear on the second invoice rather than the pricing page. This guide is built around that total.

A concrete example. Gusto Simple and OnPay both cost $49 per month plus $6 per employee. Identical on paper. Hire one person across a state line and Gusto moves you to a tier at $80 plus $12 per employee while OnPay does not change at all. At 25 employees that is $199 versus $380 per month, a gap of more than $2,100 a year created by a single hire.

This comparison covers 12 payroll platforms: nine with published plan pricing, Rippling with a published starting price, and two sold only by quote. For those nine, it models the real monthly cost at 10, 25, and 50 employees and the fee structures that distort those numbers. It also covers setup time for every platform and what payroll software does not do, which is where many small businesses discover a second gap after solving the first one.

How we evaluated these platforms

Every price in this comparison was pulled from the vendor pricing page in September 2026, not from a previous roundup. That matters more than it sounds: Gusto raised its Simple base fee from $40 to $49 during 2025, Intuit raised per-employee pricing across every QuickBooks tier on July 1, 2026, and Wave consolidated its two-tier structure into one plan covering all 50 states in April 2025.

Two changes reset parts of this comparison outright. Paychex has withdrawn its published Flex Essentials price and now quotes every package, and Homebase bills payroll at $49 per month plus $6 per active employee per month rather than per payroll run. Guides that have not been refreshed since are quoting numbers that no longer exist.

What this comparison does not do is rank platforms on feature counts. Every provider here calculates pay correctly, withholds the right amounts, and files federal and state returns. Choosing between them on whether a feature matrix has more checkmarks produces worse decisions than choosing on pricing structure, contract terms, and how the platform behaves in the specific situations described below.

What payroll software does and whether you need it

Payroll software calculates each employee's pay, withholds the right taxes and deductions, moves money by direct deposit, and files the required federal and state returns. On a full-service plan it also deposits the withheld taxes with the IRS and state agencies, which is the step manual payroll gets wrong most often.

How it works is the same everywhere. You enter salaries or approve hours, the platform runs the gross-to-net math from each employee's W-4, applies deductions for benefits, retirement, and garnishments, pays people over ACH, and generates the filings. The core features barely vary across vendors, which is why this guide ranks on pricing structure instead.

Do you need it? With even one W-2 employee, the alternatives are a spreadsheet, an accountant, or handing the whole function to a service. The benefit software buys is not speed, although a run takes minutes. It is that deposit deadlines, filing dates, and rate changes stop depending on your memory, which is where the penalties covered later in this guide originate.

How to choose: the five questions that actually decide it

Five questions about how your business runs decide this far better than any feature list. Payroll gets calculated, taxes get filed, and people get paid on every platform here, so the differences that matter are structural.

12 payroll platforms at a glance

Sorted by starting base fee, with the three platforms that sell by quote at the end: ADP RUN and Paychex publish no rates, and Rippling publishes only starting prices. Every platform below files federal and state payroll taxes on its standard full-service plan.

The 12 best payroll software platforms for small business

Gusto

Gusto is the default recommendation for US small businesses and has been for years, for a straightforward reason: it is the most pleasant of these products to actually use, and it covers payroll and light HR without requiring you to think about either. Simple runs $49 per month plus $6 per employee, after Gusto lifted the base from $40 during 2025.

Onboarding is genuinely better than the category norm, with offer letters, e-signature, and document collection built in. Benefits administration is integrated. The accountant ecosystem is large, so if you have a bookkeeper they probably already know it.

The single-state limit on Simple is the thing to understand before buying. Plus at $80 plus $12 per employee unlocks multi-state along with time tracking, and the jump is steep for a 25- or 50-person team.

Two other things surface in real use. The first is support. Simple comes with basic support, meaning phone and chat during business hours, while faster priority access is an add-on at $30 a month plus $3 per person. That upgrade matters most when something goes wrong close to a pay date.

The second is Gusto's tier structure, which charges extra on Simple for capabilities most buyers assume are standard: time tracking is included only from Plus, and next-day deposit is a $15 monthly add-on plus $3 per person. Priced honestly against what a growing team actually uses, Gusto is a Plus-tier product with a Simple-tier headline.

OnPay

OnPay is what Gusto looks like without tiers. One plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee, every payroll feature included, tax filing in all 50 states with no multi-state surcharge, and year-end W-2 and 1099 forms in the base price rather than billed separately.

For a business with any multi-state exposure, this pricing model is materially better than the identical headline number at Gusto suggests. An optional HR add-on at $15 base plus $2 per worker layers on onboarding workflows, org charts, e-signature, and document management. Support comes by phone, chat, and email for every client, with extended weekday hours.

OnPay also handles several situations that trip up competitors: agricultural payroll with Form 943, clergy payroll, and restaurant tip reporting are all supported without a specialist tier. The tradeoff for the flat structure is that there is no cheaper entry option. A three-person business pays $67 where Patriot would charge $52, so OnPay becomes the better value as headcount rises rather than at the very bottom.

Patriot Software

Patriot is the cheapest full-service payroll in this comparison once you pass about five employees. Full Service is $37 per month plus $5 per employee and covers federal, state, and most local tax filing, though new hire reporting stays with you. Basic is $17 plus $4 if you are willing to make deposits and file returns yourself.

Patriot has focused on small business payroll and accounting since its 2002 founding, and the product reflects that: no feature sprawl, a plain interface that does payroll and stops. It also sells its own accounting software, which makes it a genuine QuickBooks alternative for a micro business wanting both.

Two caveats. Additional states cost $12 per month each, which erodes the price advantage for multi-state teams. And the standard funding option requires the pay date to sit at least four banking days after you run payroll, with a two-day option reserved for established customers who ask for it and no same-day tier at all.

The deposit timing deserves weight beyond convenience. Several states require final wages within days or even hours of a discharge, and a four-day funding window cannot meet that without cutting a paper check. If you operate somewhere with a strict final paycheck rule, confirm you retain the ability to print checks before choosing on price alone.

Square Payroll

At $35 per month plus $6 per person, Square has the second-lowest published full-service base fee here after SurePayroll. The plan includes federal, state, and some local tax filing, quarterly filings, new hire reports, and unlimited pay runs. Direct deposit comes in four-day and two-day options; when payroll is funded from the Square balance, staff are paid the next business day by direct deposit or instantly through Cash App.

The reason to choose it is ecosystem. If you already run Square point of sale, timecards flow into payroll with no integration work and no manual hour entry, which for a restaurant or retail operation removes the single most error-prone step in the process. A contractor-only plan costs $6 per person with no base fee.

Tip handling is the other reason restaurants land here: Square imports tips recorded at the point of sale and applies them through payroll without a separate reconciliation. Outside the Square ecosystem the calculus changes, because you lose the integration advantage and are comparing a narrower product against Gusto and OnPay at a similar price.

QuickBooks Workforce Payroll

Formerly QuickBooks Online Payroll, renamed but functionally the same product. Workforce Payroll, the entry tier that used to be called Core, is $50 per month plus $7 per employee, Workforce Premium is $88 plus $13, and Workforce Elite is $134 plus $17. Intuit held the base fees and raised every per-employee fee on July 1, 2026.

The case for it is narrow and strong: if your books live in QuickBooks Online, payroll entries reach the general ledger with no export, no CSV, and no reconciliation step. If they do not, this is a mid-priced payroll product with no particular advantage over cheaper competitors, and the entry tier lacks the time tracking and HR support that most buyers end up wanting.

Roll by ADP

Roll is ADP's answer to the question of what payroll looks like if you build it for a phone. The interface is a chat window: you type that you want to run payroll, it asks what it needs, and the run completes in about a minute. Pricing is $39 per month plus $5 per employee with three months free.

It covers all 50 states with unlimited runs, new hire reporting, garnishments, off-cycle payments, and next-day or same-day deposit. What it does not have is depth: no benefits administration, no meaningful HR module, no complex reporting. For a micro business whose owner does payroll from a truck or a job site, that tradeoff is often exactly right.

Homebase Payroll

Homebase is scheduling and time tracking software for hourly teams, with payroll added on. For restaurants, retail, and service businesses where the hard part is building the schedule and capturing hours accurately, starting from that side rather than from payroll makes sense. The base platform has a free tier, and paid plans run per location rather than per employee.

Wave Payroll

Wave's accounting software is genuinely free, which is the whole reason Wave Payroll exists on this list. Payroll is $40 per month plus $6 per employee, and since April 2025 that single tier includes automatic tax filing in all 50 states, replacing the older split between tax-service and self-service states.

For a micro business that wants books and payroll from one vendor at the lowest total cost, the combination is hard to beat. The limitations are real: support is chat and email only with no phone line, HR features are minimal, and the integration catalog is small.

SurePayroll

SurePayroll is owned by Paychex and built for the smallest employers, including household employers paying a nanny or caregiver. Its parent's annual report describes it as the Paychex platform for the self-service small business market. The single small business plan is $29 per month plus $7 per employee, with federal and state payroll taxes filed and deposited; year-end W-2 and 1099 forms are billed on top at a $50 base plus $5 per form. The older tier that left tax filing to you is no longer listed.

SurePayroll charges a flat $9.99 per month for additional states regardless of how many, which is one of the better multi-state structures available. Automatic payroll scheduling is included, and the nanny and household plan starts at $39 a month with one employee.

The per-employee fee of $7 is the highest among the budget options, so the value proposition inverts as headcount grows: cheapest at three employees, more expensive than Gusto at fifty.

Paychex Flex

Paychex competes on service rather than software, and it does so at scale. Its fiscal 2026 annual report puts the business at roughly 800,000 payroll clients and about 250 compliance professionals in direct contact with tax agencies and regulators. For a company in a regulated industry or filing across many jurisdictions, that bench is the product.

Pricing is the problem. Paychex publishes no price for any package: the Basic, Foundations, Advanced, and Complete payroll packages, plus HR Pro and HR PEO, all carry a request-pricing button instead of a number. The Flex Essentials tier that once carried a published $39 base has been withdrawn from the lineup, so the entry point that made Paychex comparable on a list like this one is gone.

The commercial terms deserve the same scrutiny. Setup charges, year-end W-2 filing, and early termination fees, where they apply, are written into the individual agreement rather than a rate card, so two businesses of the same size can sign very different contracts. Ask for each of those numbers in writing before the quote becomes an invoice.

ADP RUN

ADP processes payroll for roughly one in six American workers and has the deepest tax compliance engine in the category, along with DataCloud benchmarking against 42 million employee records and AI anomaly detection that flags errors before a run completes.

ADP does not publish RUN pricing. Essential, Enhanced, Complete, and HR Pro all route to a quote, so RUN is left out of the cost model below rather than filled in with third-party guesses. Contract length, renewal, and notice to cancel arrive with that quote as well, so get each of them in writing before you sign.

Where ADP earns its place is complexity that would otherwise cost you specialist time: multi-jurisdiction local tax, wage garnishment payments, and multi-state processing. For a single-state business with salaried staff, none of that applies, and a simpler product with a published price does the job more pleasantly.

Two practical notes. ADP's current new-client offer is three free months, credited to months four to six after three consecutive months of processing rather than up front. And the recurring complaint in reviews is not the platform but post-implementation support, where buyers report a noticeable drop in responsiveness once onboarding finishes.

Rippling

Rippling unifies payroll, HR, and IT provisioning on a single employee record. Hiring someone triggers payroll setup, benefits enrollment, account creation, and laptop configuration from one action. Payroll is one module among many rather than the product itself, and the modules are bought separately.

The architecture is the most ambitious in the category, and the automation is real. The cost is predictability: the pricing page publishes no rates at all and asks what services you need before it will send a quote.

Rippling's small-business page starts payroll plans at $8 per user per month plus a $40 monthly base fee, and its blog cites starting rates per module, but the final cost depends on which other products you add, so the exact figure for your setup comes from a custom quote. For a small business with no IT complexity, that is a lot of platform for a payroll problem.

Real cost at 10, 25, and 50 employees

Most comparison articles publish starting prices and stop. That is the least useful number, because the base fee becomes a rounding error as headcount grows while the per-employee fee compounds. The table below models standard published rates at three headcounts.

Three things fall out of this that starting prices hide.

The per-employee fee is what you are actually buying. At 50 employees, the difference between the lowest and highest per-employee fees in the table, $5 and $7, is $100 per month, or $1,200 a year. The whole spread of published base fees here, from SurePayroll at $29 to QuickBooks at $50, is $21. Optimizing for the base fee is optimizing for the wrong variable.

The lowest base is not the lowest bill. SurePayroll has the smallest base here at $29, but its $7 per-employee fee takes it to $379 at 50 employees, $30 above Gusto Simple and OnPay. QuickBooks Workforce Payroll, at $50 plus $7, ends highest in the table at $400. ADP RUN and Paychex cannot be placed on this scale at all, and Rippling's published starting price of $40 plus $8 per user already comes to $440 at 50 employees before any added product.

Identical headline prices are not identical. Gusto Simple and OnPay are both $49 plus $6 and both show $349 at 50 employees. But that Gusto figure only holds for a single-state business. Add one out-of-state employee and the same 50-person payroll runs $680 on Plus.

The fees that are not on the pricing page

Six charges recur often enough that they should be part of every evaluation. None of them are secret; all of them are easy to miss.

The contract terms matter as much as the fees. Gusto, QuickBooks, SurePayroll, Square, Homebase, and Roll each state on their own sites that there is no long-term contract. ADP and Paychex quote every payroll package individually, so the renewal clause and any termination charge are whatever your agreement says, and you will not see them until you read the contract.

For a small business, the practical implication is that a quote from ADP or Paychex cannot be set against a published price until its renewal clause and any exit charge are in writing next to it.

What payroll tax filing actually covers

Every provider on this list advertises full-service tax filing. Buyers reasonably assume that means all payroll tax obligations are handled. It means most of them, and knowing which ones remain yours is the difference between a clean year and a penalty notice.

The forms a full-service provider files for you

Those are the standard dates. Under IRS Publication 15, a due date that falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday moves to the next business day, and that moves the next two sets of dates in the table. The third-quarter 2026 Form 941 is due November 2, 2026, because October 31 is a Saturday.

January 31, 2027 is a Sunday, so the tax-year 2026 filings in that column are due February 1, 2027: the fourth-quarter Form 941, Form 940, Forms W-2 and W-3, and Form 1099-NEC. The 2026 Form W-2 and W-3 instructions give that date. Form 940 can wait until February 10, 2027 when every FUTA deposit was made on time.

One line in that table changed for 2026. The Form 1099-NEC reporting threshold rose from $600 to $2,000 for payments made on or after January 1, 2026, and the IRS instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC carry the new figure. It is indexed for inflation after 2026, and a state may still require reporting at a lower amount.

Another row depends on the plan you buy rather than on the law. Most full-service plans submit the new hire report, but Patriot Full Service leaves that step with you.

Form 944 is worth knowing about because it trips people up. It is an annual substitute for the quarterly 941, built by the IRS for employers whose yearly liability for Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax runs $1,000 or less.

You cannot simply elect Form 944: under the Form 944 instructions you file it only after the IRS notifies you in writing, and until the IRS confirms a request to switch, the quarterly 941 stays due.

What stays your responsibility

Three things sit outside what any payroll provider does, regardless of tier.

Collecting the source documents. Form W-4 from every employee, Form W-9 from every contractor, and Form I-9 for every hire. These are not filed with the IRS; you keep them, and you are responsible for having them. A provider can prompt you but cannot produce a signed document that does not exist.

I-9 documentation comes with its own retention clock. Under 8 CFR 274a.2, you keep each form for three years after the date of hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later.

Registering the tax accounts. A provider files using your state withholding and unemployment account numbers. Obtaining those accounts is your task, and in most states it is two separate registrations with two separate agencies.

Classifying workers correctly. No software decides whether someone is an employee or a contractor. If that call is wrong, the provider will faithfully process the wrong treatment, and the liability lands on the business.

What the penalties actually cost

The failure-to-deposit penalty is tiered by calendar days late, and per the Internal Revenue Service, the tiers do not stack. A deposit 20 days late incurs 10 percent, not 2 plus 5 plus 10.

Late filing of the return itself is a separate penalty from the deposit one. Form 941 filed late runs 5 percent of the unpaid tax per month or part month, capped at 25 percent, and interest accrues from the original due date.

Information return penalties work on a calendar of their own. For returns due in 2027, Revenue Procedure 2025-32 puts a late W-2 or 1099 at $60 per form if you fix it within 30 days, $130 through August 1, and $340 after that or if the form never arrives, the same tiers the IRS schedule shows for 2026.

Intentional disregard of the filing rules is priced separately. For returns due in 2027 it costs the greater of $690 per form or 10 percent of the amounts that should have been reported, with no annual cap in that case.

Direct deposit, garnishments, and payroll reporting

Three things sit outside the pricing page and decide how a platform feels in month three: how fast pay reaches people, what happens when a court orders a deduction, and what the reporting produces when someone asks for proof. Every provider here does all three, and they differ on speed, on how much of the work they absorb, and on depth.

Direct deposit speed and what it costs

Direct deposit comes with the plan at this end of the market rather than as a paid add-on, so the variable is timing. Standard ACH funding takes two to four business days from approval, which puts the real deadline for a run several days ahead of payday rather than on it.

Faster settlement is where the plans diverge. Roll by ADP lists both next-day and same-day direct deposit on its single plan. Square offers four-day and two-day direct deposit on its full-service plan, and when payroll is funded from the Square balance, direct-deposit staff are paid the next business day and Cash App users instantly.

The other three gate speed differently. QuickBooks reserves same-day for Workforce Premium and Elite. Gusto includes next-day pay in Plus and Premium but sells it on Simple as an add-on at $15 a month plus $3 per person. Patriot runs four banking days as standard, opens a two-day option to established customers who ask, and has no same-day tier at all, which is the tradeoff at the bottom of the price range.

Two operational points matter more than the marketing. Your bank account is debited before the money lands, so the cash has to be there on the debit date rather than on payday, and bank holidays push the whole schedule back. Collect a signed direct deposit authorization from every employee before the first run.

Garnishment handling and what the provider takes over

A garnishment order tells you to withhold part of an employee's pay and send it to a court, an agency, or a creditor. Setting up the deduction is standard on any full-service platform. Remitting the money and answering the order is the part that varies, and it is what a provider means when it sells garnishment services.

The ceilings are federal and not negotiable. Under Title III of the Consumer Credit Protection Act, an ordinary garnishment stops at the lesser of 25 percent of disposable earnings or the amount by which weekly disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage. Support orders run higher.

Two obligations stay with you whichever platform you pick. Title III bars firing someone over a garnishment for any one debt, however many levies arrive to collect it, per the Department of Labor. And when several orders land on one paycheck, priority and the state caps, which are often tighter than the federal ones, remain your call.

Providers differ in how much of the garnishment work they absorb. ADP adds a garnishment payment service from its Enhanced RUN package up, and Roll by ADP carries garnishments on a plan built for micro teams.

At the budget end, assume the platform calculates and withholds while the remittance schedule and the correspondence with the issuing agency stay with you. Confirm that before signing rather than after the first order arrives. The mechanics sit in our guide to wage garnishment.

Payroll reporting: what the software actually produces

Every platform here produces the same core set: a payroll register for each run, a tax liability summary, a general ledger export, and year-to-date wage totals per employee. Depth beyond that set is where reporting claims diverge, and it matters to fewer buyers than the feature matrices suggest.

Three things separate the deeper products. A custom report builder that filters by department, location, or job code. Job costing that splits labor across projects, which construction and agency work depend on. And specialist outputs such as certified payroll for public contracts or a workers compensation audit report.

The test worth running is retrieval rather than the report list. Ask how far back payroll reports stay available, whether you can export them yourself in a usable format, and what happens to them if you cancel. Pulling three years of registers matters on exactly two occasions: an audit and a loan application.

Payroll and accounting software together

Many owners shopping for payroll software are really asking a two-part question: what runs payroll, and how does it reach the books. There are two different answers, and the distinction is worth understanding before you buy.

Native pairing versus integration

Native means the payroll product and the accounting product come from the same vendor and share a data model. Payroll entries appear in the general ledger with no mapping step, no export, and no reconciliation. QuickBooks Payroll into QuickBooks Online, Wave Payroll into Wave Accounting, and Patriot Payroll into Patriot Accounting all work this way.

Integration means a connector pushes data between two vendors. It works, and for most businesses it works fine, but somebody has to map payroll categories to chart-of-accounts codes during setup, and that mapping needs revisiting when either side changes. Gusto, OnPay, Square, and the rest connect to major accounting platforms this way.

The honest guidance is narrower than most comparisons suggest. If your books already live somewhere, native pairing with that platform is worth real time each month and should weight the decision. If you are choosing both from scratch, choose the payroll product on its own merits, because connector integrations to mainstream accounting platforms are mature and the friction is a one-time setup cost rather than an ongoing tax.

Automated payroll and what it does not automate

Automated payroll, sometimes called AutoPayroll or autopilot, runs each cycle without anyone clicking approve. For a business paying the same salaried people the same amount every period, it removes a recurring task entirely.

Two limits are worth stating plainly, because automation marketing tends not to.

Automation works cleanly for salaried employees and awkwardly for hourly ones. An automated run needs to know what to pay. For a salaried person that is a fixed number. For an hourly person it depends on approved timecards, which means the automation is really automating the payment step while the approval step still requires a human before the cutoff. A business with mostly hourly staff gets less from this feature than the marketing implies.

Automation does not automate the exceptions. New hires, terminations, raises, bonuses, garnishments, and benefit changes all require intervention, and those are exactly the cycles where errors happen. Automating the routine ninety percent is useful; it just means the remaining ten percent gets less attention because the process is no longer a habit.

Payroll-only tools and self-service tiers

Not every business wants an HR platform attached. Some want a tool that calculates pay, moves money, and stops. Two categories serve that.

Payroll-only products are full-service but deliberately narrow. Roll by ADP is the clearest example: it files taxes in all 50 states and does essentially nothing else, which is the point. Patriot Full Service and Wave Payroll sit in similar territory, with HR functionality either absent or sold separately.

Self-service tiers are cheaper because you take over the filing. Patriot Basic at $17 plus $4 per employee calculates pay, produces the numbers, and tells you what to remit, leaving deposits and returns to you.

Patriot Basic is also the only published self-service price left among the platforms here. SurePayroll now lists a single full-service plan, so a tier that leaves filing to you has to come out of a sales conversation, if it exists at all.

At ten employees the gap between self-service and full service is $30 at Patriot, $57 against $87. Set against a failure-to-deposit penalty of 2 to 15 percent of the deposit amount plus interest, that is a thin margin to defend. Self-service makes sense when someone else is already doing the filings competently, and rarely otherwise.

Types of payroll systems

Payroll systems fall into four types: cloud software you run yourself, desktop software installed locally, outsourced services where someone else runs payroll for you, and manual in-house processing. Every platform in this comparison is the first type, which is also where nearly all small business buying has moved.

Cloud-based payroll runs in a browser and a mobile app, so it behaves identically on a Mac, a Windows machine, or a phone, and tax tables update without you touching anything. Desktop payroll software installs on one computer, leaves rate updates to you, and has always been a Windows-dominated category, which is another reason Mac owners land on cloud platforms.

In-house payroll means your own team runs it, with software doing the calculation and filing; that is the model this whole comparison assumes. Outsourced payroll means a bureau, an accountant, or a payroll outsourcing service runs it for you, which costs more but removes the work entirely. The self-service tiers above sit between the two: in-house, with the filings on you.

The vendor at the other end of any of these models is what most buyers call a payroll processing provider, a label covering all 12 platforms here plus the bureaus and accounting firms that take the function off your desk. What separates them is who carries the deposit and filing obligation: the provider on a full-service plan, you on a self-service tier.

How long setup actually takes

Anywhere from a few hours to six weeks, depending on the type of provider and on how ready your paperwork is. Setup is also the least-covered part of the buying decision and one of the most consequential, because a payroll platform you cannot run by your next pay date has not solved anything.

The software is rarely the bottleneck. Two things are.

State tax account registration. Before any provider can file on your behalf, you need a state withholding account and a state unemployment insurance account in every state where employees work. These are usually two separate registrations with two separate agencies, and processing times range from same-day to several weeks. Starting registration before you start software setup can cut the calendar time in half.

Employee paperwork. Every employee needs a completed Form I-9, a signed federal W-4, and in many states a state withholding certificate. Chasing those documents after you have configured the software is the most common reason a first payroll run slips.

Switching providers without breaking anything

Most people reading a payroll comparison already have payroll somewhere. Moving is more constrained than choosing for the first time, and the constraint is year-to-date data.

Every W-2 has to reflect a full calendar year of wages and withholding. If you switch mid-year, either the new provider imports complete year-to-date figures from the old one or you end up with two partial-year records and a reconciliation problem in January. Every mainstream provider supports this import; the work is in making sure the figures are complete and correct before the first run on the new system.

A short sequence keeps this predictable. Confirm the new provider files in every state you operate in, and at what cost. Export year-to-date wage and tax totals per employee from the current system. Check the cancellation terms on the old contract, particularly whether it auto-renews and how much notice is required, because that is where the unexpected charges are.

For the cutover itself, run the first cycle on the new system in parallel if the provider allows it. Then confirm the old provider has actually filed the final quarter rather than assuming it.

Which one fits your situation

Rather than a single winner, here is the honest routing by circumstance.

Fit by industry and business type

Industry changes which features matter more than headcount does. A fifteen-person restaurant and a fifteen-person agency have almost nothing in common as payroll problems.

Restaurants, cafes, and bars

The hard parts are tip handling, variable schedules, high turnover, and hourly staff whose timecards must be approved before every run. Square wins when the point of sale is already Square, because timecards flow in without manual entry.

Homebase is strong on the scheduling side, though its per-location platform pricing needs modeling against the number of sites you run. Square and Homebase both handle the frequent-onboarding pattern that high turnover creates better than platforms built for stable salaried teams.

Construction, trades, and field services

Here the hard parts are crews across multiple job sites, prevailing wage on public work, certified payroll reporting, and sometimes multiple states or municipalities within one week. ADP builds automatic certified payroll reports into Workforce Now for Construction, a separate platform from RUN, so confirm which product a quote covers.

OnPay covers multi-state with no surcharge, which matters when crews cross state lines. Gusto Simple is a poor fit here specifically because of the single-state limit.

Professional services and agencies

Mostly salaried, mostly stable, often with contractors alongside employees and sometimes remote staff in several states. This is the profile Gusto is built for, and where automated payroll delivers the most value because pay does not change cycle to cycle. Contractor payments matter: Square, Gusto, and Wave all handle 1099 workers without a separate subscription.

Retail and multi-location

Per-location pricing becomes the deciding variable. Homebase charges per location, which is efficient with many staff at few sites and expensive with few staff at many sites. Square scales per employee regardless of location count. Model both against your actual footprint rather than assuming one is cheaper.

Startups

Distinct enough to warrant separate treatment. Startups typically hire across state lines from the beginning, mix employees with contractors, grow headcount unpredictably, and need the payroll system to survive a Series A rather than being replaced at twenty people.

That argues for a provider with no multi-state penalty and room to grow, which points to OnPay or Gusto Plus rather than Gusto Simple. It also argues for month-to-month billing over annual contracts: headcount and requirements change faster than a contract term, and the cost of guessing wrong is then one month rather than a termination fee.

Rippling is the common recommendation for venture-backed startups specifically because of IT provisioning, though for a small startup with no device fleet that is paying for capability you will not use for two years.

Household employers

Families paying a nanny, caregiver, or house manager are legally employers with the same obligations and none of the infrastructure. SurePayroll maintains a dedicated household plan for exactly this case, and it is the only provider on this list that treats it as a first-class product rather than an edge case.

Nonprofits

Payroll mechanics are the same, with two wrinkles. Some nonprofits are exempt from FUTA, and some elect to reimburse state unemployment rather than pay contributions, which requires the provider to support that election. Confirm both before signing rather than after the first 940 is filed incorrectly.

Mid-size companies outgrowing an entry plan

Mid-size company payroll is decided by the per-employee fee and the upgrade path rather than the base price. ADP RUN and Paychex hold up here because their packages step up in service depth as headcount grows, though their per-employee rate only surfaces in a quote. Rippling scales into mid-market on the same employee record. The budget picks, Patriot, Wave, and SurePayroll, strain at that scale.

Before you choose

FirstHR does not process payroll, file payroll taxes, or administer benefits. Every platform above does something we do not, and if calculating and remitting pay is the problem in front of you, one of them is your answer. Pick from the list.

The reason this section exists is that a meaningful share of businesses buy payroll software, solve payroll, and discover the actual bottleneck was upstream. Offer letters chased over email. I-9s completed on day three instead of day one. New hires missing from the first run because their paperwork never came back. Training assigned in a spreadsheet nobody updates. Employee records spread across a drive, an inbox, and someone's memory.

That is the layer we handle: onboarding workflows, e-signature on offer letters and I-9s, employee records, document management, and training with completion tracking, for US small businesses at a flat $98 to $198 per month. It sits alongside whichever payroll platform you choose rather than replacing it. If the description above sounds like your situation rather than a payroll calculation problem, that is the gap we built for.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does payroll software cost for a small business?

At 10 employees, rates published in September 2026 run from about $87 per month for Patriot Full Service to $120 for QuickBooks Workforce Payroll, with most options between $89 and $109. At 50 employees the same plans range from about $287 to $400. ADP RUN and Paychex cannot be placed on that scale at all, since they sell every package by quote, and Rippling publishes only starting prices, with payroll from $40 plus $8 per user, already $440 at 50 employees. The per-employee fee matters far more than the base fee as you grow.

What is the best payroll software for a small business?

Gusto for a small single-state team wanting payroll and HR together. OnPay if multi-state is possible. Patriot for the lowest full-service bill from about five employees up. Square for Square POS businesses. QuickBooks if your books are already there. ADP RUN or Paychex when compliance depth or named support matters more than a published price.

What is the difference between full-service and self-service payroll?

Full service calculates pay, deposits taxes, files returns, and produces year-end forms. Self service calculates pay and tells you what to remit, leaving deposits and filings to you. At ten employees the gap runs about $30 at Patriot, $57 against $87, which for most businesses is worth paying to remove penalty exposure.

Do I need payroll software with HR features?

Only if the HR functions you need are the ones payroll platforms include, which typically means document storage and basic checklists. Structured onboarding, e-signature, training delivery, and org charts are generally weak or absent. If your gap is what happens before someone reaches a payroll run, that is a different category of tool.

Can payroll software file taxes in multiple states?

All full-service providers can, but pricing differs sharply. OnPay includes every state free. SurePayroll charges a flat $9.99 per month for all states. Patriot charges $12 per state per month. Gusto Simple covers one state and forces an upgrade to Plus. Price the multi-state scenario before signing.

What hidden fees should I watch for in payroll software?

Setup and early termination terms that quote-only providers such as Paychex set per contract instead of publishing, year-end W-2 and 1099 filing billed on top at $50 plus $5 per form at SurePayroll, per-state surcharges from nothing to $12 a month, paper form mailing at $3 each, and the per-location platform fee at Homebase. Contract renewal terms matter as much as any single fee.

How long does it take to set up payroll software?

Self-serve platforms run a first payroll in hours to a week. Guided implementations at ADP and Paychex take one to three weeks, and a full-stack Rippling deployment takes two to six. The delay is usually state tax account registration and collecting employee paperwork rather than the software itself.

What do I need before running my first payroll?

A federal EIN, state withholding and unemployment accounts in every state where employees work, a completed Form I-9 for each employee, signed federal and state withholding certificates, and a compliant pay frequency. Missing state withholding certificates are the most common cause of incorrect first-run withholding.

Is there free payroll software for small business?

Not for full-service payroll in the US. The cheapest legitimate option is Patriot Basic at $17 plus $4, which leaves filing to you, while Wave pairs paid payroll with genuinely free accounting. Advertised free tiers elsewhere are usually free scheduling with payroll sold separately.

What payroll tax forms does the software file for me?

Form 941 quarterly, Form 940 annually, W-2 and W-3 by January 31 (February 1, 2027 for tax-year 2026, a weekend shift), 1099-NEC for contractors, state withholding and unemployment returns, and, on most plans, new hire reports. You retain responsibility for collecting Form W-4, W-9, and I-9, for registering state tax accounts, and for classifying workers correctly.

What happens if payroll taxes are filed late?

Failure-to-deposit penalties run 2 percent at 1 to 5 days late, 5 percent at 6 to 15 days, 10 percent beyond that, and 15 percent more than 10 days after an IRS notice, without stacking. Late return filing adds 5 percent per month up to 25 percent. Late W-2 or 1099 filing runs $60 to $340 per form depending on timing.

Should I use accounting software with payroll built in?

Only if your books already live there. QuickBooks, Wave, and Patriot each pair payroll natively with their own accounting product, removing the export step. If you are choosing both fresh, pick payroll on its merits, since connector integrations are mature and mapping is a one-time setup cost.

Can payroll run automatically without me approving it?

For salaried staff, yes. SurePayroll, Patriot, Gusto, and Square all offer automatic runs. Hourly staff still require approved timecards before the cutoff, and exceptions such as new hires, raises, bonuses, and garnishments always need intervention, so automation covers the routine majority rather than the whole process.

Should I choose payroll software or a payroll service?

The distinction has largely collapsed since every provider here is software with full-service filing. What differs is the support model: Paychex and ADP sell service-heavy packages by quote, while Gusto, OnPay, Square, and Patriot publish prices and run self-serve. A PEO such as Justworks is genuinely different, offering co-employment and large-group benefits pricing from $79 per employee monthly.