What payroll software costs, and where the money goes
Across the 10 US domestic payroll and payroll-plus-HR vendors here that publish prices, base fees run from $17 to $228 a month and per-employee fees from $4.00 to $22.00.
Those are published list prices, not a market average — we do not have one and neither does anyone who has not surveyed actual invoices.
Co-employment and international products are priced on a different basis and are not in that range: PEO runs $79 to $124 per employee per month; employer of record runs $599 to $699 per employee per month. They are compared separately.
The two numbers every quote is made of
Almost every payroll product in this market prices the same way: a fixed monthly fee for the account, plus a fee for each person on it. The fixed fee is what makes small teams expensive per head, and it is the part vendors leave out of their headline. Every US plan that publishes both numbers, with the effective figure at three employees, is set out separately.
A worked example
Take Gusto's Simple plan, at $49 a month plus $6.00 per employee (checked 2026-09-06). For ten employees:
This is an example, not a quote. It uses one vendor's published list price on one date and excludes everything in the next section.
Where the rest of the money goes
Published base and per-person fees are a starting point, not a complete invoice. The fee categories below are visible in vendor materials, but we have not measured how often each one applies across real customer invoices. They are listed by type, not ranked by prevalence:
- Filing in more than one state (US). Several vendors charge a monthly fee per additional state. One remote hire in another state can change your bill permanently.
- Year-end forms. W-2 and 1099 preparation and postage are sometimes inside the plan and sometimes billed per form.
- Off-cycle runs — corrections, bonuses, final paychecks outside the normal schedule are chargeable on some plans.
- Contractors counted as employees. Some vendors bill contractors at the full per-person rate, some at a lower one, some not at all.
- The plan tier you actually need. The cheapest tier often excludes the one feature that made you shop — time tracking, multi-state, or benefits administration.
We do not put numbers on any of these, because they vary by vendor and by your situation, and an invented figure would be worse than none. They are the reason the calculator gives you a floor rather than a quote.
What the published price does and does not tell you
| Item | What the published page states | What it does not state |
|---|---|---|
| Per-employee fee on a self-serve plan | A figure that is applied automatically at sign-up | Whether any customer pays a different one |
| Base fee on a self-serve plan | A figure, and in several cases an openly advertised promotional figure alongside it | What the price is after the promotional period, unless the page says |
| Anything on a quote-only plan | No list price; contract terms are set per quote | Whether the quote will be above or below the published prices here |
| Annual vs monthly billing | Some vendors publish both, and the annual figure is lower | Whether an unpublished annual discount exists elsewhere |
| Migration and setup | Several vendors publish that there is no setup fee | What a migration actually involves for your data |
Five questions to ask before you sign
- What is the total monthly figure for exactly my headcount, including every fee, in writing?
- What changes if I hire one person in another state?
- Are year-end forms included, or billed per form?
- What does an off-cycle run cost?
- What is this price after the promotional period ends?
The first one is the only one that matters if you ask nothing else. A vendor that will not put a total in writing for your actual headcount is telling you something.
Do this next
Put your real headcount into the calculator to get the floor for every vendor that publishes prices, then open the two closest on the vendor list and read their own pages. If you want to see how the arithmetic is done before you trust it, the method page has all of it.
Written by Kaz, independent publisher. No commercial relationship with the companies named unless it is listed on the disclosure page.
Page last updated: 2026-09-06. Sources: vendor pricing pages only. Figures checked between 2026-08-20 and 2026-09-06. I have not used these products. Nothing here is a personal test result.
Ranking method and formulas: Method. Listing position on this site is not for sale.
Corrections: contact form.