Oleh KemThe prices here are taken from the vendor, not a sales deck, and each carries the date it was checked. The number that misleads is the unit: a login, a person on payroll and a worker you hire abroad are three different meters, and the cheapest rarely sets your bill.
Of the seven systems here, five name a monthly price, entry seats as low as $4, median $14. Four print every tier. The rest thin out: some seal the top plan, others print nothing. That seat figure is the small one, though. Employing a real person is billed per head, and that fee dwarfs any plan here.
Ranked by a transparency score: pricing transparency 60%, user satisfaction 40%. Capability is not scored. It is the condition grid below. Prices are read from vendor pricing pages and re-checked per product on the dates shown. ComparEdge sells no HR software and takes no payment for placement. How the score is built.
Rows sort by disclosure, how open each vendor is about price, ahead of what each one can actually run.
Reading the console
The rank rests on two numbers, and neither is capability. Pricing transparency counts for more: how much of the bill is out in the open before a call. The G2 and Capterra rating fills the rest. That is why a broad, well-liked suite that hides its tiers can sit below a plainer tool that shows its rate, a score about candour, not about which system runs an HR team better. On the price line, a tick is a per-seat or per-employee rate that grows with headcount, and each diamond a flat monthly charge that headcount does not move; a vendor that posts no price gets a row saying so, not a guessed figure. Read a blank feature square as missing from our record on the check date, not as a gap in the product. And read the whole table with one caveat in mind: payroll and employment are regulated separately in every country, so a suite that fits one place can be barred or non-compliant in the next.
Scroll the console sideways to reach the remaining conditions.
The shortlist ranks by what the plan actually costs your team, not by list price. Flat plans are folded into a per-team number so they compare like for like. Only vendors rated 85 and up are eligible.
For 6 seats at $14 per seat, start with these
Ranked by monthly team cost, vendors rated 85 and up · Your ceiling for this team: $84 / mo
Gusto
CE 92The first payroll after a US founder stops cutting checks by hand.
Flat, not per seat. Past 4 seats it undercuts every per-seat plan here.
BambooHR
CE 90The employee record for a company outgrowing spreadsheets but not ready for a payroll project.
Deel
CE 94A contractor in one country and a full employee in another, hired without opening a local entity in either.
Inside each row: the full tier list, the rate card if a vendor prints one, and the day each figure was last verified. Rows run most-open to least, which is not the same as cheapest to dearest. Two of the biggest HR systems sold land at the bottom only because they post no price, not because they do less.
Transparency scorePricing transparency 60%User satisfaction 40%
A contractor in one country and a full employee in another, hired without opening a local entity in either. Deel's price list is a catalog of units, not a set of tiers: a contractor, an employer-of-record employee and a PEO worker are each priced on their own, and the spread between them is an order of magnitude.
Critical gapUsers report recurring payroll synchronization failures when processing multi-country payments in North America.
Deel: expert take
Where Remote sells one flat rate, Deel sells a menu. The same worker is a $49 Contractor Management line, an employer-of-record hire in the hundreds, or a US PEO seat, so its sixteen-row price list is really a catalog of legal relationships, not a plan ladder.
Where Deel holds up
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 6,597 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2019Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor Management | $49 | Not published |
| Contractor of Record | $325 | Not published |
| Find talent | $14 | Not published |
| Managed Payroll: Global | $29 | Not published |
| Managed Payroll: US | $29 | Not published |
| EOR (Employer of Record) Standard | $599 | Not published |
| Enterprise EOR | $899 | Not published |
| US PEO | $125 | Not published |
| Core HR (Add-on) | $5 | Not published |
| Recruit (Add-on) | $14 | Not published |
| Develop (Add-on) | $22 | Not published |
| Recruit & Develop (Add-on) | $30 | Not published |
| Full HR Solution (Add-on) | $56 | Not published |
| IT Starter | $45 | Not published |
| IT Growth | $125 | Not published |
| IT Scale | $133 | Not published |
A startup's first hire in a country where it owns nothing and knows no employment law. Remote runs that hire through legal entities it owns rather than a local partner, and prices the employer-of-record seat as one flat fee each month. Predictable, yes, though for a low-wage country that flat rate can cost more than the salary math would suggest.
Critical gapThe platform lacks clear operational protocols for managing client-side corporate insolvency.
Remote: expert take
Deel splits global hiring into line items; Remote charges one flat $699 Employer of Record fee per head and owns the legal entities doing the hiring, not a subcontractor. Predictable, but it does not flex down for a cheap country, so the same seat can cost more than the local salary math would suggest.
Where Remote holds up
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 3,887 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2019Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Employer of Record | $699 | Not published |
| Payroll | $29 | Not published |
| Contractor Management (Standard) | $29 | Not published |
| Contractor Management Plus | $99 | Not published |
| Contractor of Record | $325 | Not published |
| Professional Employer Organization (PEO) | $99 | Not published |
| Equity | $39 | Not published |
The first payroll after a US founder stops cutting checks by hand. Gusto is clean and cheap inside the United States, a flat base plus a charge per person. The border rule matters: employees must be in the US, while foreign contractors can be paid for $5 a payment. Its Contractor Only plan runs free for its first six months, then converts to the base fee.
Critical gapSystem architecture frequently destabilizes when user counts exceed 50, resulting in recurring fund withdrawal errors.
Gusto: expert take
Start on Contractor Only and Gusto is free for six months, then it flips to a base fee plus a per-person charge. The real limit is the map, not the meter: clean US payroll from its $49 Simple plan up, employees abroad are out, and foreign contractors cost $5 a payment through an add-on.
Where Gusto holds up
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 10,331 reviewsCapterra 4.6Founded 2011Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | $49 | Not published |
| Plus | $80 | Not published |
| Premium | $180 | Not published |
| Solo | $49 | Not published |
| Contractor Only | $35 | Not published |
The employee record for a company outgrowing spreadsheets but not ready for a payroll project. BambooHR is an easy system of record with light hiring and reviews on top, a seat price shown in full. Payroll is its own quoted add-on, US-only, and very small teams meet a monthly minimum before the per-seat math even starts.
Critical gapThe platform lacks deep configuration for complex edge-case workflows and mobile app feature parity.
BambooHR: expert take
BambooHR is the employee record first; its own payroll is a quoted, US-only add-on rather than a bundled feature. Its $10 Core seat is the cheapest published entry here, though very small teams hit a monthly minimum before the per-seat math starts, and benefits administration is quoted separately too.
Where BambooHR holds up
4.5CE scoreG2 4.4 · 4,927 reviewsCapterra 4.6Founded 2008Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Core | $10 | Not published |
| Pro | $17 | Not published |
| Elite | $25 | Not published |
The performance review cycle for a people team that keeps payroll somewhere else. Lattice is not an HRIS and does not pretend to be; it sells performance and goals as separate modules you assemble, so a light setup is cheap and a full stack is not. Billing terms go unpublished, and its top tier stays a quote.
Lattice: expert take
Lattice is the mirror image of an HRIS like BambooHR: no payroll, no time-off, just performance and goals sold as separate modules. The $4 Engagement and Grow modules are the floor and Performance runs $8, with a full stack pushing per-user cost toward the twenties. Billing terms go unpublished; the page says contact sales.
Where Lattice holds up
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 4,096 reviewsCapterra 4.5Founded 2016Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations | Not published | $11 |
| Performance | Not published | $8 |
| Goals & OKRs | Not published | $8 |
| Engagement | Not published | $4 |
| Grow | Not published | $4 |
| Compensation | Not published | $6 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
The point a growing company decides HR, payroll and IT should sit behind one login and one vendor. Rippling is broad by design, which is also the lock-in, and it prints no price at all: every module is quoted separately, and the full platform is only priced once sales scopes it.
Critical gapPlatform scaling frequently necessitates specialized support intervention to resolve complex operational tasks.
Rippling: expert take
Where the other broad suites at least print a seat price, Rippling prints nothing: HR, IT and Finance are quoted as separate modules, and the total depends on which you switch on. The breadth is the appeal and the lock-in, and the silence on price is why the platform ranks low here.
Where Rippling holds up
4.9CE scoreG2 4.8 · 12,670 reviewsCapterra 4.9Founded 2016Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Rippling Platform | Contact sales | |
| Rippling HCM | Contact sales | |
| Rippling IT | Contact sales | |
| Rippling Finance (Spend) | Contact sales | |
| Rippling Global | Contact sales | |
The HR system a large enterprise standardizes on when headcount and finance both need one source of truth. Workday is deep and heavily administered, sold on contract with nothing on the public page until you book a call. Note the catalog trap: the pricing you find published is for Adaptive Planning, its finance product, not the HCM suite you would actually buy.
Critical gapThe platform requires dedicated administrative support and presents a cumbersome interface.
Workday: expert take
Like Rippling, Workday names no price, but for a different buyer: the enterprise standard for running HR and finance as one system, sold on contract and scoped over quarters. One trap for shoppers, the pricing pages that surface are Adaptive Planning, its FP&A product, not the HCM suite you mean.
Where Workday holds up
4.2CE scoreG2 4.1 · 1,620 reviewsCapterra 4.4Founded 2005Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Contact sales | |
| Professional | Contact sales | |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
What the records say
For 6 seats, Deel bills $84 / mo and Remote bills $174 / mo, $90 / mo between them.
Deel carries 4 of the 5 capability columns on the record; Remote shows 3.
Users side with Deel: 4.7 on G2 against 4.6 for Remote.
Both publish every tier they sell.
Pick Deel for: A contractor in one country and a full employee in another, hired without opening a local entity in either.
Pick Remote for: A startup's first hire in a country where it owns nothing and knows no employment law.
Deel
CE 94 · G2 4.7Verified July 16, 2026
Remote
CE 93 · G2 4.6Verified July 16, 2026
Both price lists on the category axis
Where they differ
Only Deel has on the record
Only Remote has on the record
—
Every platform here bills a base or a seat fee, then a monthly charge for each person on payroll, so cost follows headcount, not the tier you first picked. A number that looks cheap at five people stops looking cheap at fifty, and each module you enable adds to the per-head rate.
The larger jump is legal, not numeric. Employing a person in a country where you hold no entity means paying an employer of record per head, and that fee dwarfs the software line. Price the plan you will really land on, at the headcount you expect, in the countries you actually hire in.
The first split in this category is not features. It is borders. A US-focused tool keeps domestic payroll and benefits simple and cheap, and it cannot legally pay a contractor in another country. The platforms built for cross-border hiring carry the local compliance a domestic tool never had to touch, and they charge for it.
Sort yourself onto one side of that line before comparing anything else. If everyone you employ sits in one country, a global platform is charging for reach you will not use. If your team is spread across several, a domestic tool cannot do the job at any price.
HR platforms sell modules, not seats: the record, the payroll, the benefits and the reviews each carry their own line, and the public price rarely covers more than the first. Sum the modules you will actually run, then add the per-employee maths and the monthly minimum.
The score rewards published per-seat pricing. In a market this quiet about money, publishing anything at all is most of what a rank measures.
Still weighing it? Answer 5 questions, take a shortlist.
How this review is made. Prices are read from vendor pricing pages and re-checked on the dates shown against each product. Condition columns reflect the feature set recorded on the vendor’s own pages on that date. ComparEdge sells no HR software and takes no vendor payment for placement. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating. Ranking is by transparency score: pricing transparency 60%, user satisfaction 40%. What a product can do is shown in the condition columns and carries no weight in the number.
