How much of a payroll bill the base fee is
Across the 21 vendor-and-market combinations in this dataset that publish enough to compute a monthly total, the base fee is a median 61% of the bill at 5 employees and 6% at 100. 16 of the 21 charge a base fee at all; the rest bill per person only.
That single number is why a per-employee price quoted on a vendor's own page is not the price a small employer pays. The base fee does not shrink when the team is small — it is simply divided among fewer people.
The median across the dataset
Each vendor is represented once per market by its cheapest plan at 10 employees, so a vendor with many plans does not count many times. A plan that cannot be bought at a given headcount is left out of that column, which is why the count moves. A plan sold as one flat monthly fee with no per-person charge reads as 100%: the whole bill is the base fee, and it is divided among however many people the plan allows.
| Employees | Median base-fee share of the monthly bill | Rows counted |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 61% | 19 |
| 10 | 44% | 21 |
| 25 | 21% | 17 |
| 50 | 11% | 16 |
| 100 | 6% | 16 |
Vendor by vendor
Ordered by how much of the bill the base fee is at 10 employees. A dash means the plan cannot be bought at that headcount.
| Vendor | Market | Plan | Base fee | at 5 | at 10 | at 25 | at 50 | at 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breathe See official pricing | United Kingdom | Micro | £24 | 100% | 100% | — | — | — |
| CharlieHR See official pricing | United Kingdom | Charlie (10-14 employees) | £45 | — | 100% | — | — | — |
| Staffology See official pricing | United Kingdom | 1-19 payslips/month | £43 | 100% | 100% | — | — | — |
| Paycor See official pricing | United States | Basic | $99 | 80% | 66% | 44% | — | — |
| QuickBooks Payroll See official pricing | United States | Workforce Payroll + Simple Start | $88 | 73% | 58% | 35% | 21% | 12% |
| Xero See official pricing | United Kingdom | Ignite (+ Payroll add-on) | £18 | 71% | 55% | 32% | 19% | 11% |
| Sage Payroll See official pricing | United Kingdom | Payroll Essentials | £12 | 100% | 50% | 24% | 14% | 8% |
| Gusto See official pricing | United States | Simple | $49 | 62% | 45% | 25% | 14% | 8% |
| Homebase See official pricing | United States | Basic + Payroll | $49 | 62% | 45% | — | — | — |
| OnPay See official pricing | United States | Payroll Essentials | $49 | 62% | 45% | 25% | 14% | 8% |
| Roll by ADP See official pricing | United States | Roll by ADP | $39 | 61% | 44% | 24% | 13% | 7% |
| Wave Payroll See official pricing | United States | Wave Payroll (US) | $40 | 57% | 40% | 21% | 12% | 6% |
| Zoho Payroll See official pricing | United States | Standard | $39 | 57% | 39% | 21% | 12% | 6% |
| Square Payroll See official pricing | United States | Full-Service Payroll | $35 | 54% | 37% | 19% | 10% | 6% |
| Patriot Software See official pricing | United States | Basic Payroll | $17 | 46% | 30% | 15% | 8% | 4% |
| SurePayroll See official pricing | United States | Small Business Payroll | $29 | 45% | 29% | 14% | 8% | 4% |
| Deel See official pricing | United States | Employer of Record (EOR) | $0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Employment Hero See official pricing | United Kingdom | HR Essentials + Core Payroll | £0 | — | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Justworks See official pricing | United States | PEO Basic | $0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Onfolk See official pricing | United Kingdom | Standard | £0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Remote See official pricing | United States | Employer of Record (EOR) | $0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
What the extremes look like
On QuickBooks Payroll's Workforce Payroll + Simple Start plan, the $88 base fee is 73% of the monthly bill at 5 employees. An employer at that size is mostly paying for the account, not for the people on it. The same plan at 100 employees is 12% base fee.
What this does not show
It does not say a base fee is wrong to charge, and it does not rank vendors. A high share at 5 employees is a fact about the shape of a price, not about the product. It also stops at the published figure: year-end filings, off-cycle runs and multi-state pay are charged on top by some vendors, and what the published figure leaves out lists those.
Every figure on this page is computed from prices the vendors publish themselves, read between 2026-08-20 and 2026-10-03. Nothing here is a rating: we have not used these products and we do not score them. Where a vendor publishes nothing, it is absent rather than estimated.
Related
- What payroll vendors publish about their prices
- Where one vendor becomes cheaper than another
- The dataset itself: CSV, JSON and how to cite it
- How these figures are produced
- The calculator, with your own headcount
- Every vendor, and what each one publishes
Written by Kaz, independent publisher.
Page last updated: 2026-10-03. Sources: vendor pricing pages only. Figures checked between 2026-08-20 and 2026-10-03. 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.