OnPay: payroll software platform

OnPay publishes the most complete rate card in US payroll: $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, with every add-on priced in the open and no implementation fee. Checked 16 October 2026. Buy it if you want full-service payroll without a sales call. Skip it if you need global payroll, a PEO or enterprise workforce management.

Rajat GuptaEditorial LeadReviewed 16 October 2026Pricing checked 16 October 2026 against the OnPay costs and pricing page

OnPay in brief

OnPay publishes the most complete rate card in US payroll: $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, with every add-on priced in the open and no implementation fee.

Price: $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, shown as $55 per month for one worker · Monthly base fee plus per worker, for the base plan and most add-ons
Best for: US small and mid-sized businesses wanting payroll priced without a sales call
Watch out for: You give up everything outside the United States.

The short answer

Buy OnPay if you run US payroll and want to know the cost before anyone phones you. The base plan is $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, unlimited pay runs and multi-state payroll across all 50 states carry no extra charge, federal, state and local filings plus year-end W-2s and 1099s are included, and OnPay states there are no implementation or integration fees and migrates your prior wage data free.

Skip it if you employ people outside the United States, because this is a US payroll product and global employment is not on the menu. Skip it if you want a professional employer organization arrangement with pooled insurance, since benefits here are plan premiums you pay to carriers. And skip it if you are a five-person business watching every dollar, because a $49 base fee on five workers is a large share of a small bill.

Where OnPay fits

OnPay is a payroll product that priced itself like software, and that decision is most of the reason to shortlist it. The pricing page carries a live calculator, every add-on shows its own base and per-worker figure, and the page states plainly that there are no implementation or integration fees. In a category where the enterprise vendors have no pricing page at all and the mid-market ones route you to a form, being able to build your own quote in a browser removes weeks from an evaluation. It also changes the negotiation: there is nothing to negotiate, which is either a relief or a lost discount depending on your volume.

What is included matters more than what is cheap, and this is where the published list earns attention. Unlimited pay runs with no per-run charge, so bonus and correction runs do not cost extra. Multi-state payroll across all 50 states at no additional cost, with automatic state tax registrations, which is the single most common surprise line on a payroll bill once remote hiring starts. Federal, state and local tax filings and payments, year-end W-2s and 1099s, 941 and 943 filings, all behind an accuracy guarantee. Those four items are exactly where competitors meter, and removing them makes the published figure closer to the real bill than it usually is.

The accounting integration is built for the person who closes the books rather than the person who runs payroll. There is an automated general ledger sync after every pay run, customisable line-item mapping to your own chart of accounts, dedicated outside-collaborator permissions so an accountant or bookkeeper gets access without a full seat, six levels of user permissions, and a custom report designer with 50 or more fields. For a controller the test is whether payroll lands in the ledger coded correctly without a manual journal, and OnPay has built the plumbing for it rather than a CSV export.

Add-ons are modular and that cuts both ways depending on your size. HR is $15 base plus $2 per worker per month and covers PTO workflows, onboarding, equipment tracking, org charts and unlimited eSignature documents. Time Tracking is $15 base plus $4 per worker and includes geolocation and geofencing, custom overtime and break rules, supervisor approvals, an audit log of all timesheet edits and automatic sync of approved hours into payroll. Because each carries its own base fee, a small team switching on several add-ons pays proportionally more in base fees than a large one does, so run the arithmetic at your own headcount rather than reading the per-worker rates.

The ceiling is geographic and structural. OnPay is a US product: there is no global payroll, no employer of record and no co-employment arrangement, and benefits, workers' compensation and 401(k) are integrated plans where you pay the premiums rather than a software fee. Support is stated as an entirely US-based team trained in-house, by phone, chat and email with extended hours of 9am to 8pm on weekdays, and OnPay says there are no support paywalls, so a one-employee client reaches the same team as a hundred-employee one. That is a genuine differentiator in a category where support tiers are often the upsell, and it does not change the fact that one foreign hire sends you looking elsewhere.

OnPay pricing

OnPay publishes a full rate card and sticks to one structure: a monthly base fee plus a per-worker fee, for the base plan and for most add-ons. Checked on 16 October 2026, Payroll Essentials is $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, which the page's own calculator shows as $55 per month for a single worker. Add-ons are priced in the open: HR at $15 base plus $2 per worker, Time Tracking at $15 base plus $4 per worker, Compliance Resources at $10 base, and Live HR Support at $65 base, each per month. Benefits carries no software fee at all: you pay plan premiums only.

What OnPay publishes

Payroll Essentials (base plan): $49 base plus $6 per worker per month (Monthly, base fee plus per worker. The page's calculator shows $55 per month for one worker.)Full-service payroll for W-2 and 1099 workers by direct deposit, cheque or prepaid debit card. Unlimited pay runs and pay schedules with no per-run charge. Multi-state payroll across all 50 states at no extra cost, with automatic state tax registrations. Federal, state and local filings and payments, year-end W-2s and 1099s, accuracy guarantee. Hiring and onboarding with eSignature for I-9 and W-4, employee self-service and mobile app. Accounting and time tracking integrations, custom report designer with 50 or more fields, general ledger sync after every pay run.
HR add-on: $15 base plus $2 per worker per month (Monthly, on top of Payroll Essentials)PTO requests, approvals and management, custom onboarding workflows and task delegation, equipment provisioning and tracking, org chart and searchable employee directory, unlimited custom eSignature documents with expiry tracking.
Time Tracking add-on: $15 base plus $4 per worker per month (Monthly, on top of Payroll Essentials)Time clocks for any worksite with geolocation and geofencing, custom overtime and break rules, clock in and out or timesheet submission with supervisor approval, an audit log of all timesheet edits, automatic sync of approved hours into payroll.
Compliance Resources add-on: $10 base per month (Monthly base fee, on top of Payroll Essentials)State-specific compliance and labour law alerts, employee handbook guidance, updates on mandatory workplace policies, an HR compliance library, job description builder and benefits document creator.
Live HR Support add-on: $65 base per month (Monthly base fee, on top of Payroll Essentials)On-demand concierge HR support from live, licensed HR experts by phone, chat and email, with unlimited access.
Benefits add-on: Pay plan premiums only (No software fee. You pay the insurance plan premiums.)Group health, dental and vision plans, automated administration and payroll deductions, licensed advisor guidance, self-service open enrolment, life, short and long-term disability, HSA and FSA. Integrated workers' compensation and 401(k) are also premiums only.

Prices as published on the OnPay costs and pricing page and checked on 16 October 2026. OnPay also publishes three discounted bundles: Payroll Essentials with Time Tracking and HR at $70 base plus $10 per worker, Payroll Essentials with HR, Compliance Resources and Live HR Support at $120 base plus $7 per worker, and all five products at $130 base plus $10 per worker, with stated savings of $9 base plus $2 per worker, $19 base plus $1 per worker, and $24 base plus $2 per worker respectively.

Three things decide what you actually pay, and the first one is the one buyers get wrong.

Your headcount against the base fee, because base-plus-per-worker pricing favours larger teams. At $49 base plus $6 per worker per month, the base dominates a five-person payroll and becomes close to irrelevant at a hundred. Compare on total monthly cost at your real headcount rather than on the per-worker rate, and do it again at the headcount you expect in a year, since the shape of the curve is what decides whether this is cheap for you specifically.
The add-on set, since each one carries its own base fee. Switching on HR and Time Tracking adds two more base fees of $15 each as well as per-worker charges of $2 and $4. For a twelve-person business that stacking is a material share of the bill; for a ninety-person business it barely registers. Decide the exact add-on set you need at list price first, then check it against the bundles rather than letting a bundle choose your product set for you.
Whether the bundles are genuinely cheaper for you. The published bundle prices are $70 base plus $10 per worker, $120 base plus $7 per worker and $130 base plus $10 per worker, and the discounts only pay off if you would have bought every product inside them. Note also that the page lists the same three bundles twice with different undiscounted list prices: the Popular Bundles section shows $79 plus $12, $139 plus $8 and $154 plus $12, while the plan recommender lower down shows $79 plus $12, $149 plus $8 and $164 plus $12. The discounted figures are identical in both places, so confirm which list price your order form uses.

What costs extra, and what does not

HR at $15 base plus $2 per worker per month, Time Tracking at $15 base plus $4 per worker, Compliance Resources at $10 base and Live HR Support at $65 base, each per month.
Benefits, integrated workers' compensation and 401(k) are charged as plan premiums only, with no software fee for the administration layer. Get premium quotes from the licensed in-house agents before treating benefits as free on the bill.
Several things other providers meter are explicitly not extra here, and they are the ones worth checking on any competing quote: unlimited pay runs with no per-run charge, multi-state payroll across all 50 states at no additional cost, federal, state and local tax filings, year-end W-2s and 1099s, integrations, and implementation.

Implementation and commercial terms

The rows below come from the pricing page itself as of 16 October 2026. Unusually for this category, most of them are statements rather than absences.

Published price: Yes, in full: base plan, four priced add-ons, three bundles and a cost calculator.
Billing basis: Monthly base fee plus per worker, for the base plan and most add-ons.
Implementation fee: None. The page states there are no implementation or integration fees.
Setup and migration: Free account setup and free migration of prior wage and employee data, with expert-led configuration before the first pay run.
Pay runs: Unlimited, with no hidden fees or additional charges per pay run.
Multi-state: All 50 states at no additional cost, with automatic state tax registrations.
Free trial: None listed. OnPay advertises a first month free instead, in the page title and site navigation, without publishing the terms.
Support: US-based team by phone, email and chat for all clients, with extended hours of 9am to 8pm on weekdays and no support tiers.

Budget OnPay by doing the one calculation the vendor has made easy: take your worker count, apply $49 base plus $6 per worker, then add the base and per-worker fees for each add-on you will genuinely use. There is no implementation fee, no per-run charge and no per-state charge to layer on, which is why the published figure is unusually close to the real bill. Two things still need asking. Confirm what the first month free offer covers and what happens in month two, since its terms are not published alongside the rate card. And get benefit premiums quoted for your actual census before you treat the benefits layer as free. Then use this page as the benchmark it deserves to be: set it against ADP or Paychex, neither of which publishes anything, and make them justify the gap.

Source: the OnPay costs and pricing page, checked 16 October 2026. Confirm current prices with the vendor before you budget.

What OnPay gives up

You give up everything outside the United States. There is no global payroll, no employer of record and no multi-country compliance layer, so one hire in Canada or Portugal takes you outside the product rather than into a higher tier. That is a clean limitation rather than a weakness, and it has a clean consequence: if your hiring plan includes other countries inside this contract term, price a global platform now instead of migrating in eighteen months.

You give up pooled insurance buying power. Benefits, workers' compensation and 401(k) are integrated plans where you pay the premiums and OnPay administers them at no software charge, with licensed in-house agents guiding plan selection. That is good value for a company that can already get decent group rates. A twenty-person business whose main pain is a brutal health renewal is describing the case for a professional employer organization instead, where the provider pools risk, and should compare that shape directly.

You give up enterprise workforce management. Time Tracking covers clocks, geofencing, overtime and break rules and an audit log, which is solid for hourly teams, and it is not labour forecasting, demand-based scheduling or shift optimisation. A retailer or manufacturer whose payroll cost is driven by scheduling decisions week to week is buying a different class of product, and the gap will not close through add-ons.

You give up negotiating room. Published pricing cuts both ways: it is honest and it is fixed. A business with several hundred workers that would have extracted a discount from a quote-driven vendor gets the list rate here, and the base-plus-per-worker shape means your per-head cost falls as you grow but your total keeps climbing linearly. Model it at your three-year headcount before deciding transparency is automatically the cheaper option.

You give up clarity on one promotional term. The first month free offer appears in the pricing page title and the site navigation, but its terms are not published next to the rate card, so it is unclear whether it covers the base plan only or the add-ons too. Ask, in writing, what is free, what the second month costs, and whether accepting it carries any commitment. Everything else about this vendor's pricing is unusually plain, which makes the one unstated thing worth pinning down.

How OnPay compares

Pricing transparency is the sharpest line in US payroll, and OnPay sits at one end of it. OnPay publishes a base fee, a per-worker fee and every add-on price. Rippling publishes a single starting figure. ADP and Paychex publish nothing and ADP has no pricing page at all. Gusto's site could not be accessed on this check. Every price below comes from that vendor's own pricing page, checked on 16 October 2026, and anything unpublished or unreadable is recorded as such rather than estimated.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
OnPay	US businesses that want full-service payroll priced in the open, with filings and multi-state included	$49 base plus $6 per worker per month	US only, no PEO, and no enterprise workforce management
Gusto	Small US businesses buying payroll, benefits and tax filing as one subscription	Could not be accessed on 16 October 2026	The site returned HTTP 403 to every request, so nothing could be verified
Rippling	Teams wanting payroll, HR and device management from one vendor	From $8 per employee/month plus a base fee	Only the starting figure is published, so the real bill cannot be modelled
Paychex	Small and mid-sized US businesses wanting bundled payroll and HR with a service rep	Not published, quote only	Four named bundles, every one behind a Request Pricing button
ADP	Multi-state and multi-country payroll where compliance work is what you want to outsource	Not published, quote only	No pricing page exists, so every figure comes from a sales conversation

What to test in an OnPay trial

OnPay lists no free trial but advertises a first month free, so you are testing with live data rather than in a sandbox. That raises the stakes on the first pay run and lowers them on everything else, since the price is already known. Use the month to test the parts a rate card cannot tell you about.

Run one real pay cycle in parallel with your current provider, including the cases that break payroll: a mid-period hire, a termination with final-pay rules, a bonus run and a correction. Unlimited pay runs carry no per-run charge here, so use that during the trial deliberately and watch what each correction does to filings and employee-facing pay stubs.
Test the ledger path, not the payroll screen. Map line items to your own chart of accounts, let the automated general ledger sync run after a pay run, then reconcile the resulting entries in your accounting system yourself. Give your accountant the dedicated outside-collaborator access and ask them to find the problem before you commit, because that is the test a finance team actually cares about.
Prove the multi-state claim with your own states. Add a worker in a state where you are not yet registered and watch the automatic state tax registration flow, then confirm local withholding calculations for a jurisdiction that has them. Multi-state at no additional cost is one of the strongest things on the rate card, so make it demonstrate itself rather than taking it on trust.
Price the add-on stack honestly before the month ends. Build your exact set at list, $15 base plus $2 per worker for HR, $15 base plus $4 per worker for Time Tracking, $10 base for Compliance Resources, $65 base for Live HR Support, then compare it against the published bundles at $70 plus $10, $120 plus $7 and $130 plus $10. If a bundle wins only because it includes something you would not have bought, it has not won.
Settle the two unpublished items. Ask what the first month free covers and what month two costs, and get benefit premiums quoted for your real census by the licensed in-house agents, separately from the software. In the same conversation, test support by raising a genuine filing question during the 9am to 8pm weekday window and see what comes back.

Frequently asked questions about OnPay

How much does OnPay cost?

As of 16 October 2026 OnPay publishes $49 base plus $6 per worker per month for Payroll Essentials, which its own calculator shows as $55 per month for a single worker. Add-ons are priced separately, from $10 base per month for Compliance Resources up to $65 base for Live HR Support.

How does OnPay's base plus per-worker pricing work?

You pay one monthly company fee and one fee per paid worker: $49 base plus $6 per worker per month. That shape favours larger teams, since the base dominates a five-person payroll and barely registers at a hundred. Compare vendors on total monthly cost at your headcount, not on the per-worker rate.

What does OnPay charge extra for?

Four priced add-ons: HR at $15 base plus $2 per worker, Time Tracking at $15 base plus $4 per worker, Compliance Resources at $10 base and Live HR Support at $65 base, each per month. Benefits, workers' compensation and 401(k) are charged as plan premiums only, with no software fee.

Does OnPay charge per pay run or per state?

No. OnPay states that pay runs are unlimited with no hidden fees or additional charges per run, and that multi-state payroll across all 50 states carries no additional cost, with automatic state tax registrations. Federal, state and local filings and year-end W-2s and 1099s are included.

Does OnPay charge an implementation fee?

No, and it says so plainly: there are no implementation or integration fees. Account setup is free, migration of prior wage and employee data is free, and OnPay runs expert-led configuration before your first pay run with dedicated onboarding support included.

Does OnPay have a free trial?

No trial is listed. OnPay advertises a first month free instead, in its pricing page title and site navigation, but the terms are not published beside the rate card. Ask whether it covers the base plan only or the add-ons too, and what month two costs.

Are OnPay's bundles cheaper than buying add-ons separately?

Only if you would have bought everything inside them. The three published bundles are $70 base plus $10 per worker, $120 base plus $7 per worker and $130 base plus $10 per worker. Price your exact add-on set at list first, then compare, rather than letting a bundle pick your products.

Which is better, Gusto or OnPay?

OnPay's advantage today is verifiability: its full rate card, add-on prices and no-fee statements were readable on 16 October 2026, while gusto.com returned HTTP 403 to every request so nothing could be checked. Read Gusto's page yourself and compare total monthly cost at your headcount.

Is OnPay a prepaid card?

No. OnPay is US payroll software, and prepaid debit card is one of its payment methods alongside direct deposit and cheque. The name collides with unrelated payment brands, so when researching, search for OnPay payroll rather than the bare word to avoid mixing the two.

Does OnPay sync with accounting software?

Yes, and at no extra charge: integrations carry no added fee. There is an automated general ledger sync after every pay run, customisable line-item mapping to your chart of accounts, and dedicated outside-collaborator permissions so an accountant or bookkeeper gets access without a full user seat.