Brightpay Alternatives

BrightPay built its reputation on one straightforward proposition: the lowest-cost HMRC-recognised payroll software in the UK market, with a bureau licence that let accountancy practices run unlimited clients for a flat annual fee.

For a significant portion of the UK’s payroll bureaus and SME employers, that proposition was enough.

It is no longer enough for everyone. BrightPay’s desktop product was retired from April 2026.

The replacement cloud product uses a billing model based on the highest employee count recorded in any billing period, not a fixed annual licence.

That change alone has prompted a wave of procurement reviews at practices and employers who built their cost models around the old flat-rate desktop price.

We assessed five alternatives across pricing, UK compliance depth (RTI, auto-enrolment, P11D, CIS, Making Tax Digital), bureau capabilities, and the practical switching costs involved.

The alternatives below are organised by the reason you are leaving BrightPay, not by arbitrary ranking.

Why are buyers looking for BrightPay alternatives right now?

The timing of this search matters. BrightPay was not broken. It was the default choice for a reason: cheap, HMRC-recognised, and reliable for RTI and auto-enrolment.

Three specific changes have pushed buyers to reassess.

First, the desktop product is gone. From April 2026, BrightPay for Windows receives no compliance updates and no support. Any employer still running the desktop version is processing payroll outside current HMRC compliance standards.

That is not a minor inconvenience; it is an audit and penalty risk.

Second, the cloud pricing model is structurally different from what existed before. The old desktop licence charged a flat annual fee regardless of headcount fluctuation.

The cloud product bills on the highest employee count recorded in any month of the billing period. If you take on twelve temporary staff in December, that peak headcount can set your billing tier for the year.

Bureaus and employers with seasonal workforces discovered this mismatch when their first cloud renewal arrived.

Third, BrightPay has never offered a native HR suite, P11D benefits-in-kind reporting, or anything beyond payroll. For buyers who have grown beyond pure payroll and now need absence management, document storage, or benefits reporting, the product ceiling is visible.

Switching now, rather than later, avoids a second migration in twelve months.

When staying on BrightPay cloud still makes sense

We are not arguing everyone should leave. If you run a payroll bureau or accountancy practice, BrightPay cloud bureau pricing remains the most cost-effective multi-client option in the UK market.

Sage and Xero both charge per-seat or per-client at volumes that quickly exceed BrightPay’s flat bureau rate.

If your employee count is stable and predictable, the highest-recorded-count billing model creates no problem. The risk is seasonal or project-based headcount, not steady-state employment.

Which BrightPay alternative fits your switching reason?

The five alternatives below each serve a different reason for leaving BrightPay. Matching the alternative to your situation is more useful than a ranked list.

For accounting integration without a separate payroll tool: Xero Payroll.

Xero Payroll is not a standalone product. It is a payroll module added to a Xero Accounting subscription at £1.50 per person per month.

If you already pay for Xero Grow (£37/month) or above, your accounting, VAT returns, CIS calculations, and payroll run in one environment with automatic journal posting.

There is no CSV export, no manual bank reconciliation of payroll entries.

We assessed this for Xero Grow subscribers running ten employees: payroll adds £15/month to an existing £37 plan. BrightPay cloud for ten employees requires a separate subscription with a calculator-only price.

For Xero users, the question is not whether to switch; it is whether to activate a module you are already paying for.

The limitation: Xero Payroll does not offer a bureau licence structured for multi-client practices.

It works well for single-employer businesses, but an accountancy practice processing fifty client payrolls will find Xero’s model less cost-efficient than BrightPay’s bureau rate.

For native P11D, REST API access, or larger bureau operations: IRIS Staffology.

IRIS Staffology Payroll (the replacement for IRIS Payroll Basics, discontinued April 2026) starts at £43/month base with £2.15 per payslip above nineteen payslips per month.

That cost model is higher than BrightPay at low volumes but aligns more naturally with bureau billing: you pay per payslip processed, not on the worst headcount month of the year.

Three capabilities distinguish IRIS Staffology from BrightPay cloud. P11D benefits-in-kind submission is native. BrightPay requires a separate HMRC tool or third-party service for P11D.

IRIS Staffology exposes a full REST API with webhooks for every payroll event, absent from BrightPay, Xero, and Sage Payroll.

For practices with 50+ clients running bespoke internal systems, this API depth is a material differentiator. And Gender Pay Gap reporting is built in, relevant to employers approaching the 250-employee threshold.

Your procurement team will find IRIS Staffology harder to price at first contact. There is no published headline price for the bureau tier (IRIS PayrollPro bureau is quote-only from approximately £1,500/year plus per-employee fees).

Budget for a longer sales process than BrightPay’s self-serve calculator.

For payroll bundled with an HR suite: Sage Payroll.

Sage Business Cloud Payroll starts from approximately £20/month and scales with employee count.

The headline price is higher than BrightPay at low employee volumes, but you are buying a different product: Sage bundles payroll with leave management, document storage, and an employee self-service portal that BrightPay does not offer.

We assessed Sage for employers who have outgrown BrightPay’s payroll-only scope and face pressure from HR to consolidate systems.

Sage’s UK support team and 40-year domestic presence are meaningful if your Finance or Legal teams need a vendor with enterprise references.

The limitation: Sage Payroll’s pricing is per-employee per-month at scale, which means the cost gap with BrightPay widens as headcount grows. For bureaus, Sage charges per-client or per-seat, not a flat bureau licence.

The economics differ substantially from BrightPay for multi-client operations.

For bundled HR and payroll with a free payroll entry tier: Employment Hero.

Employment Hero Payroll offers a free standalone payroll tier with no employee limit, covering HMRC-compliant RTI and auto-enrolment.

The paid HR platform starts at £4/employee/month (Payroll plan) or £7/employee/month (HR+Payroll), with a minimum £40/month or £70/month respectively.

The bureau angle is notable: Employment Hero offers a flat £1,000/year bureau licence covering unlimited clients and employees. That competes directly with BrightPay cloud’s bureau calculator pricing.

If BrightPay’s cloud bureau rate comes in above £1,000/year for your client volume, which happens at mid-range practice sizes, Employment Hero’s bureau tier is worth a direct comparison.

The limitation: Employment Hero’s payroll product does not carry BrightPay’s depth on CIS or the same breadth of pension provider integrations.

It suits employers and practices prioritising HR consolidation over specialist payroll functionality.

For a cloud-native product with modern UX and no migration burden: Pento.

Pento targets growing businesses that want payroll built for the cloud from day one, not migrated from desktop. The product handles RTI, auto-enrolment, and HMRC submissions without requiring the user to manage compliance updates.

Pricing is not published in a flat table and is typically negotiated based on employee count.

The relevant comparison with BrightPay is UX and ongoing maintenance burden. BrightPay users migrating from desktop to cloud report a transition period with interface and workflow changes.

Pento’s interface was designed for cloud from the start, so the onboarding experience tends to be cleaner.

The limitation: Pento is priced for businesses with growing headcount and HR ambition, not micro-employers or bureaus. If cost per payslip is your primary criterion, Pento will not match BrightPay’s bureau economics.

How do BrightPay and its alternatives compare on cost?

Pricing comparisons for UK payroll software require a like-for-like frame.

We compared five providers on a single-employer basis (twenty employees, stable headcount, no CIS) and a bureau basis (fifty clients, average ten employees each).

Provider	Single employer (20 staff)	Bureau model	P11D native
BrightPay cloud	Calculator-only; desktop was £209/yr for 25	Flat rate via calculator	No
Xero Payroll	£1.50/person/month add-on to Xero plan	No flat bureau licence	No
IRIS Staffology	£43/month base + £2.15/payslip above 19	Quote-only (~£1,500/yr+)	Yes
Sage Payroll	From ~£20/month, scales per employee	Per-client pricing	Yes (50 cloud)
Employment Hero	Free payroll tier; HR from £4/employee/month	£1,000/year flat bureau rate	No
Pento	Quote-based; not published	No bureau tier	Yes

The cost comparison reveals a pattern: BrightPay’s bureau licence pricing is still the most competitive for pure-payroll multi-client operations.

The gap closes or reverses when you add P11D requirements (IRIS wins), HR suite needs (Sage or Employment Hero), or accounting integration (Xero, if you are already on the platform).

What should you check before switching away from BrightPay?

Four questions determine whether a switch is justified and which alternative to choose.

Does your headcount fluctuate seasonally? BrightPay cloud’s highest-recorded-count billing model is the primary driver of cost surprises.

If your employee count peaks in December, that peak sets your tier for the billing period. Alternatives like IRIS Staffology (per-payslip billing) or Xero Payroll (per-person monthly) align cost more directly with actual usage.

You should model your worst headcount month against each provider’s pricing before signing.

Do you need P11D? BrightPay requires you to use HMRC’s separate P11D online service or a third-party tool to file benefits-in-kind returns.

This is a meaningful workflow overhead if you process P11D submissions for multiple clients or have complex benefits arrangements.

IRIS Staffology and Sage Payroll handle P11D natively. This is not a minor compliance gap: it is an annual submission for every employer who provides taxable benefits.

Do you need payroll and HR in one system? BrightPay is a payroll-only product.

If your HR team is asking for leave management, document storage, or an employee self-service portal, you are managing two separate systems today and will continue to do so on BrightPay cloud. Employment Hero, Sage, and Pento all offer combined HR and payroll.

Factor in the operational cost of maintaining two systems when assessing the total price difference.

Are you a bureau with 50+ clients? The economics of bureau alternatives differ sharply from single-employer comparisons.

At 50+ clients, IRIS PayrollPro bureau and Employment Hero’s £1,000/year bureau rate are both worth requesting quotes for.

Xero’s per-client accounting model is designed for accounting practices but adds payroll cost per-person, not per-client.

What does switching from BrightPay actually cost?

Switching payroll software mid-year is disruptive in ways that headline pricing does not capture. We assessed four cost categories that buyers consistently underestimate.

Data migration. UK payroll data includes year-to-date figures for every employee, pension enrolment records, P60 history, and any mid-year employer changes.

All alternatives on this list support importing from BrightPay via CSV or API, but the accuracy of the import depends on the quality of your BrightPay data and whether you are mid tax year.

Switching at the start of the tax year (April) reduces migration complexity significantly.

Mid-year switches require every provider to reconcile year-to-date figures against your previous submissions, which adds setup time.

Staff retraining. BrightPay’s interface, while functional, is distinct from any of the five alternatives. Your payroll team will need onboarding time on a new system.

For bureaus, multiply this by every member of staff who processes client payrolls. IRIS Staffology and Employment Hero both offer onboarding support.

Xero has extensive UK training resources and a certified partner network.

Pension integration re-setup. BrightPay’s direct integrations with NEST, The People’s Pension, and Smart Pension are not automatically transferred.

Each alternative has its own pension integration model.

Verify that your specific pension providers are supported before switching, particularly if you manage auto-enrolment for multiple clients with different pension arrangements.

Timing cost. The best time to switch is April, at the start of the new tax year. Switching between May and March means carrying two systems in parallel during the transition, paying for both, and managing year-to-date data reconciliation manually.

If you are not switching in April, budget for at least two months of parallel running costs.

Frequently asked questions about BrightPay alternatives

How we assessed BrightPay alternatives

We reviewed five UK payroll software providers against BrightPay cloud.

Our assessment used published pricing pages verified in April 2026, provider documentation on HMRC compliance features (RTI, auto-enrolment, P11D, CIS, Making Tax Digital), bureau pricing structures, and user review data from Capterra and G2 where volume was sufficient for statistical confidence.

We did not conduct live product testing; feature claims are drawn from official documentation and, where noted, verified user reports.

We assessed compliance capability against current HMRC standards for the 2026/27 tax year. Providers are evaluated for employment contexts typical of UK SMBs (5–250 employees) and payroll bureaus (10–200+ clients).

Our UK payroll software guide covers the full market, including providers not assessed here.

For detail on auto-enrolment pension requirements, our dedicated guide covers the employer obligations that all providers on this page must meet.

How We Chose These Alternatives