How we check prices

Where prices come from

Every price comes from the provider's own website: its pricing page, its help centre, or a dated archived copy of those pages when the live page can't be read automatically. We record the exact wording of each price and the date we checked it, and link to the source on every page. We don't use prices from review sites or blogs. If we can't confirm a price from the provider itself, we don't show it. We list the service as "not verified" instead.

How often we check

Every price is re-checked against the provider's own website at least monthly. Every page shows its date.

Our automatic price check reads the provider's own pages and confirms that every amount in our price tables and calculator for that provider still appears there: each plan's base and per-person fees, and the add-on and yearly fees we include (for a price we add up from published parts, each part). When they all do, the provider's page says "Prices re-confirmed on [provider]'s own page" with that date. When one is missing, nothing changes automatically: we re-verify the prices by hand first, and every change goes into the price change log. A provider whose site doesn't allow automated checks shows "Last checked by hand" and the date of that check.

The automatic check looks for each amount on the page, not at the words around it, so a changed fee can slip past it until the next check by hand if its old amount still appears elsewhere on the page. It doesn't cover plan features and limits, the fine print or current offers. Those are checked by hand, and the list of sources at the bottom of each provider's page shows the date we last read each one.

Our checker identifies itself as PayrollPriceCheckBot and links to this page. It follows each site's robots.txt, including any crawl delay, reads each page at most once a day, and doesn't try to get around a site that turns it away.

How the calculator ranks services

1. For each service, we look at every published plan and drop any that can't serve your team, for example a plan capped below your headcount or limited to one state.
2. We drop plans that lack one of your must-haves. If a plan offers it as a paid add-on, we add the add-on's price instead.
3. Price = base fee + per-employee fee × employees + per-contractor fee × contractors + add-ons, at standard monthly list prices.
4. Each service is shown with its cheapest qualifying plan, and services are sorted by that price, lowest first. Ties are sorted alphabetically.

Whether a service pays us a referral fee plays no part in the order. Services that pay us nothing are included the same way.

What the prices leave out

• Payroll taxes themselves, and benefit or workers' comp premiums
• Fees a provider doesn't publish (for example, some setup or year-end filing fees)
• Limited-time discounts, which we list separately as "current offers"
• Providers that only quote on request: we list them but never price them

What this site is not

We don't sell payroll services, and nothing here is tax, legal or accounting advice. We haven't run payroll on these services ourselves. This site compares published prices and features, not service quality.

Found a price that's out of date? Tell us: hello@payrollpricecheck.com.