Paylocity: payroll software platform

Paylocity publishes no prices. Checked 16 October 2026, its pricing page is a Get Pricing form with three tabs, HR, Finance and IT, and no figure anywhere. Buy it if you want payroll and HR plus a real finance suite from one vendor, since Airbase is now sold as Paylocity for Finance. Skip it if you need a rate before a sales call.

Rajat GuptaEditorial LeadReviewed 16 October 2026Pricing checked 16 October 2026 against the Paylocity pricing page

Paylocity in brief

Paylocity publishes no prices.

Price: None, quote only · Custom quote by module and employee count
Best for: Mid-market employers consolidating payroll, HR and spend management
Watch out for: You give up price visibility entirely, and the modular model makes that worse rather than better.

The short answer

Buy Paylocity if you want HR and payroll from the same vendor that runs your spend management, because that is now a real option rather than a roadmap promise: Airbase is sold as Paylocity for Finance, and the Finance suite carries expense management, corporate cards, AP automation with two-way and three-way PO matching, guided procurement and headcount planning against live payroll data. The modules are separable, so you can start with payroll and add finance later, or the reverse.

Skip it Skip Paylocity if you need to see a price before you talk to anyone, because the pricing page is a form. Skip it too if you want everything included in one platform fee, since Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning are described as optional add-ons to the HR suite and the Finance and IT modules are quoted separately again. And if your spend management requirement is urgent but your payroll contract has two years left, be clear that you are buying a payroll vendor's finance module.

Where Paylocity fits

Paylocity fits the company that would rather consolidate than integrate, and it has an unusual shape for a payroll vendor: three suites, HR, Finance and IT, sold separately and bought in any combination. Its own pricing FAQ says the modules are customizable and that you can implement one or more and expand later. That is the whole commercial model, and it means your evaluation is really a scoping exercise: decide which suites you want on day one and which you want a price for in advance.

The HR side is a full HCM. Payroll carries automated and custom workflows, 30 or more payroll audits with automatic alerts, tax filings, global payroll support for 100 or more countries, on demand payment options and wage garnishment managed services. Around it sit human resources with a compliance dashboard and document management, workforce management for time collection by mobile, web, kiosk or clock with geofencing and shift rules, talent management with 600 or more pre-built learning classes, benefits management with carrier file feeds and ACA tracking, and an employee experience platform.

The Finance suite is the thing that changes the comparison, and it is the Airbase product. Expense management captures receipts by photo and enforces policy with warning and blocking rules. Corporate cards come virtual and physical with built-in controls, automatic reconciliation and cash back on spend, and you can use existing cards or the Paylocity card program. AP automation does AI-based invoice capture and coding, two-way and three-way PO matching, and scheduled payments by ACH, check, wire or card. Guided procurement adds role-based intake for Finance, Legal, IT and Procurement.

Headcount planning is the join between the two suites and the reason to buy them together. It aligns headcount, budget and hiring plans in one view using real-time payroll and position data, which is work that otherwise happens in a spreadsheet reconciled against an HRIS export. If your FP&A cycle is dominated by arguing about headcount numbers, that integration is the argument for the bundle rather than for two best-of-breed tools.

The IT suite is smaller and more targeted: access management with SSO and MFA tied to HR data, automated software provisioning by role or department, real-time access auditing, and asset management for employee devices including requests at onboarding, replacements, repairs, offboarding returns and restocking through an integrated CDW storefront. It is sold as a way to make joiners and leavers a single process rather than three. For a company with no IT team, that is genuinely useful. For one with an established identity platform, it is overlap.

Size and route to market shape what you are sold. Paylocity splits buyers into small business at 1 to 99 employees, midsize at 100 to 499 and enterprise at 500 or more, and sells through partner channels for accountants, brokers, franchises, HRCs, private equity and tech partners. If you arrive through a broker or a private equity portfolio programme, the packaging and the commercial terms may not be the ones on the public site, so ask what is standard.

Paylocity pricing

Paylocity publishes no prices. Checked on 16 October 2026, the pricing page is a Get Pricing form with three tabs, HR, Finance and IT, listing what each module does and inviting a request. The closest it comes to a figure is a promise that you get the solution that matches your needs and is priced for your budget. No module, suite or bundle carries a rate, no platform minimum is stated and no implementation fee is published. One practical note on the check itself: the first automated pull of paylocity.com returned a bot challenge, and a second pull with full browser headers retrieved the page, which contains no dollar figures.

Four drivers, and the first is structural rather than numerical.

Module selection, which is the entire model. HR, Finance and IT are sold separately and can be bought one at a time, and Paylocity's FAQ says you can implement one or more and expand as you grow. That flexibility is real and it makes quotes hard to compare, because two buyers on the same suite can be on very different bills. Ask for a line-item quote per module per employee per month, plus any platform minimum, so you can drop what you will not use.
Which HR features count as add-ons in your quote. Paylocity names Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning as optional additions to the HR suite, alongside the integrations marketplace. Those are exactly the features a buyer assumes are inside a modern HCM, so confirm in writing which named products are in the base quote and which are billed separately. Elevate Solutions services, global payroll, garnishment managed services, HR consulting and on demand payment are listed as capabilities without prices too.
Company size and sales route. Paylocity splits buyers at 1 to 99, 100 to 499 and 500 or more employees, and runs partner channels for accountants, brokers, franchises and private equity. Both the packaging and the terms can follow the route you arrive by. Ask which band you are quoted in, what happens at a boundary, and whether a partner-sourced quote carries different terms from a direct one.
Payment and spend economics on the Finance side, which sit outside the subscription. Corporate cards earn cash back on spend, AP automation pays by ACH, check, wire or card, and the Paylocity card program has its own commercial terms. Those are contract items, not published ones. A card rebate can offset a meaningful part of the software cost, so ask for the cash-back terms and any per-payment fees alongside the subscription rather than after it.

What costs extra

No add-on price is published. Paylocity names Recruiting, Employee Voice, Learning (LMS) and the integrations marketplace as optional additions to the HR suite.
Elevate Solutions services, global payroll support for 100 or more countries, garnishment managed services, HR consulting and on demand payment are listed as capabilities with no prices attached.
The Finance modules, expense management, corporate cards, AP automation, guided procurement and headcount planning, are bought and priced separately from HR, and the IT modules separately again.
Card and payment economics run alongside the software line. Ask for the cash-back rate on card spend and any per-payment fees for ACH, check, wire and card as separate figures.

Implementation and commercial terms

These rows are what the Paylocity pricing page confirms as of 16 October 2026. Where a row says none published, read it as a question for sales rather than as reassurance.

Published price: None. A Get Pricing form across HR, Finance and IT tabs.
Packaging: Three suites bought separately: Paylocity for HR, for Finance and for IT.
Modularity: You can implement one or more modules and expand later, per Paylocity's FAQ.
Implementation fee: None published. Paylocity says implementation is customized from day one.
Global payroll: Support listed for 100 or more countries, with no price.
Payroll controls: 30 or more payroll audits with automatic alerts, per the HR tab.
Free trial: None listed. A self-guided product tour, a demo request and a Finance ROI calculator instead.
Airbase: Sold as part of Paylocity for Finance; a customer quote on the pricing page refers to Airbase by Paylocity.

Budget Paylocity as three quotes rather than one. Ask for HR, Finance and IT priced separately per module per employee per month, with any platform minimum stated, so the modular story works in your favour instead of obscuring the total. Confirm in writing which HR features are in the base quote, because Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning are called optional add-ons and most buyers assume otherwise. On the Finance side, get the card cash-back terms and the per-payment fees alongside the subscription, since those can move the total more than a software discount will. Ask for the one-time setup cost, the data migration scope and the go-live date as separate lines, and ask what happens to your rate if headcount falls and what the uplift is at renewal. If you are evaluating the finance modules on their own, say so early: Airbase is now sold as Paylocity for Finance, so ask for the finance suite priced without a payroll migration attached and see whether the answer changes.

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

What Paylocity gives up

You give up price visibility entirely, and the modular model makes that worse rather than better. Three suites, optional add-ons inside the HR suite, services listed without rates and card economics set in contract means the number of variables is high and the number of published figures is zero. You cannot tell whether your quote is standard, and you cannot model a growth scenario. Run a competitive process, insist on line items, and get the renewal uplift cap at the same time as the first-year discount.

You give up the assumption that a modern HCM includes recruiting and learning. Paylocity explicitly calls Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning optional add-ons to the HR suite. That is honest packaging and it is a trap for a buyer comparing a Paylocity quote against a competitor's all-in figure. Build your module list before the first call and price the same list from every vendor, or the comparison is meaningless.

You give up best-of-breed depth in exchange for consolidation, and the Finance suite is where that bites hardest. Airbase as a standalone spend platform competed with specialists; as Paylocity for Finance it competes as part of a payroll vendor's bundle. If AP automation is your acute problem and payroll is settled, you should test the suite against a dedicated AP tool rather than assume the bundle wins. Ask specifically what the roadmap is for the finance modules now that they sit inside an HCM business.

You give up a trial. There is no free trial listed. Paylocity offers a self-guided product tour, a demo request and a Finance ROI calculator, and a calculator built by the vendor is a sales tool rather than evidence. Push for a scoped proof of concept on the module that matters most to you, with your own pay rules or your own invoice set, before signing a multi-year term.

You give up some independence on identity and devices if you take the IT suite. Access management ties software provisioning and SSO to HR data, which is the point, and it also means your joiner and leaver process depends on a payroll vendor's platform. For a company with no IT function that is a net gain. For one already running an established identity provider, it is duplication you would be paying for, so price the IT suite separately and be willing to say no to it while keeping the HR and Finance modules.

How Paylocity compares

Paylocity's closest peers in US mid-market HCM publish nothing either, so the comparison is about packaging and reach rather than rate. Paylocity, Paycom and Paycor are all quote-only. BambooHR publishes per-employee list prices and OnPay publishes a full rate card including add-ons, which makes them the only checkable anchors in the group. Every figure below comes from that vendor's own pricing page, checked on 16 October 2026.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
Paylocity	Buyers who want HR, Finance and IT suites from one vendor, bought one at a time	Not published, quote only	Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning are optional add-ons, and card economics sit in contract
Paycom	Single-database HCM where employees approve their own paychecks	Not published, quote only	No best-of-breed integration story, and the implementation fee is unpublished
Paycor	Mid-market HCM with unlimited monthly payroll runs and optional managed payroll	Not published, quote only	Being acquired by Paychex, so the roadmap question is open
BambooHR	Smaller HR teams that want a published per-employee rate	$10.25, $17.50 or $25 per employee/month	Payroll and benefits administration are unpriced add-ons and US-only
OnPay	Small teams that want the whole bill visible before a sales call	$49 base plus $6 per worker/month	No finance suite, no corporate cards and lighter enterprise HCM depth

What to test in a Paylocity demo

No free trial is listed, so this is a demo plus a scoping and pricing exercise. The two questions that matter most are which modules you actually need and what each one costs on its own.

Scope the suites before the first call. Write down which of HR, Finance and IT you want now and which you might want in two years, then ask for each priced separately per employee per month with any platform minimum. The modular model only helps you if you force it to produce line items.
Run your own payroll edge cases. Bring multi-state employees, shift rules, geofenced clock-in if you have deskless staff, a garnishment and an on demand payment request. Paylocity lists 30 or more payroll audits with automatic alerts, so ask to see what those audits actually catch and what an alert looks like before a run is committed.
Test the finance modules as if they were a standalone product, because they used to be one. Load a real invoice set and check AI-based capture and coding, two-way and three-way PO matching, and approval routing that mirrors your org structure. Then ask about the card program: cash-back terms, virtual card controls, reconciliation, and per-payment fees for ACH, check, wire and card.
Exercise headcount planning against your own numbers. This is the join between the suites and the reason to buy both, so ask to see a plan built on live payroll and position data, with a forecast variance, approval workflow and notifications. If it cannot replace the spreadsheet your FP&A team actually uses, the bundle argument weakens.
Settle the add-on question in writing. Confirm whether Recruiting, Employee Voice, Learning and the integrations marketplace are in your base quote or billed separately, and get the same answer for global payroll, garnishment managed services, HR consulting and Elevate Solutions. Then ask for implementation cost, data migration scope, go-live date, renewal uplift cap and data export rights on exit as separate lines.

Frequently asked questions about Paylocity

How much does Paylocity cost?

Paylocity publishes no price. Checked 16 October 2026, its pricing page is a Get Pricing request form covering HR, Finance and IT modules, so cost depends on which modules you buy, your employee count and optional add-ons such as Recruiting or Learning. No platform minimum is published either.

How expensive is Paylocity per employee?

No per-employee rate is published anywhere on the pricing page. Because HR, Finance and IT are sold separately, ask for a line-item quote per module per employee per month plus any platform minimum. That is the only way to compare a Paylocity quote against a vendor that prints its rates.

Can you buy only part of Paylocity?

Yes. Paylocity's pricing FAQ says the HR, Finance and IT modules are customizable and that you can implement one or more and expand later. Each module is quoted, and none carries a published price as of 16 October 2026, so get each one priced on its own line.

Is Paylocity used for payroll?

Yes, payroll is the core of the HR suite: automated and custom payroll workflows, 30 or more payroll audits with automatic alerts, tax filings, on demand payment options, wage garnishment managed services and global payroll support for 100 or more countries. HR, time and labor, talent and benefits sit around it.

Is Airbase now Paylocity?

Airbase is sold as part of Paylocity for Finance, and a customer quote on Paylocity's own pricing page refers to Airbase by Paylocity. If you shortlisted Airbase for spend management, you are now buying a payroll vendor's finance suite, so ask for it priced separately from HR and payroll.

What is in Paylocity for Finance?

Expense management with receipt capture and policy controls, virtual and physical corporate cards with cash back on spend, AP automation with AI-based invoice capture and two-way and three-way PO matching, guided procurement with role-based intake, and headcount planning against real-time payroll and position data.

What are the downsides of Paylocity?

No published price at any level, so every figure needs a sales call. Recruiting, Employee Voice and Learning are optional add-ons rather than included features. Finance and IT are quoted again separately, and the card and payment economics are set in contract rather than published, which makes quotes hard to compare.

Does Paylocity charge for implementation?

No fee is published. Paylocity says implementation is customized and that personalized service continues after go-live. Ask for the one-time setup cost, the data migration scope and the go-live date as separate lines in the quote, checked 16 October 2026.

Does Paylocity connect HR and IT access?

That is what the IT suite does. Access management syncs HR and IT directories, automates software provisioning by role or department, replaces passwords with SSO and MFA, and keeps access aligned with employee lifecycle changes, with real-time access auditing. Asset management tracks devices from onboarding through offboarding returns.

Does Paylocity offer a free trial?

No free trial is listed as of 16 October 2026. Paylocity offers a self-guided product tour, a demo request and a Finance ROI calculator. A vendor-built calculator is a sales tool, so ask for a scoped proof of concept on the module that matters most to you.