UK · Payroll & compliance
Employment Hero Payroll Alternatives
Employment Hero Payroll looks attractive on the surface: a genuine free tier, unlimited employees, and full HMRC RTI from day one.
That is why so many UK teams adopt it, and why many come back looking for alternatives twelve months later.
The free tier hides a growth trap.
Reach for a paid feature and Core Payroll is quote-only with a £30/month minimum, while the bundled HR modules lock your employee data into a suite built for an Australian market first.
- Our assessment covers five UK payroll platforms against Employment Hero across cost transparency
- UK compliance depth
- HR bundling risk
- and the switching scenarios that matter most when you have outgrown the free tier
Our view: the free tier is useful, but Core and Managed are where the alternatives win.
Best Employment Hero Payroll Alternatives UK (2026)
Alternatives reviewed April 2026
Why Do UK Businesses Switch Away from Employment Hero Payroll?
The switching trigger matters before you pick a replacement. Employment Hero Payroll works for a specific profile: single-entity UK SME, under 50 employees, willing to live inside an HR-first product to access free payroll.
Outside that profile, the tension shows up in one of four ways, and each one points to a different alternative.
Opaque cost at growth inflection
The free tier is real; the step up is not transparent. Core Payroll is quote-only with a £30/month minimum that kicks in from 2 employees. Managed Payroll adds £12 per employee per month on top.
There is one published per-employee figure in between. Employment Hero lists a Premium payroll tier at £2 per employee per month, adding the Pay Conditions Engine, Multi-PAYE, single sign-on, third-party app integrations, and live webchat support to the free feature set. So the only two flat per-head rates the company prints are £2 (Premium) and £12 (Managed); the Core tier in the middle remains quote-only.
Details last checked: 30 June 2026. Primary source: Employment Hero UK pricing (Premium £2/employee/month) and Employment Hero payroll software (Managed £12/employee/month).
You cannot compare those numbers to Sage or BrightPay from the pricing page alone, and a sales demo is the only way to find out what you will actually pay.
For finance leaders who need a forecastable budget line, that opacity is the first thing that breaks trust.
Sage, BrightPay, and Xero publish per-employee rates on their pricing pages. Employment Hero does not. When your finance team asks for a three-year cost projection, you book a call.
HR bundling lock-in
Employment Hero is not a payroll product with HR on the side. It is an employment operating system where payroll is the entry point.
Once your leave policies, onboarding flows, recruitment pipeline, and performance reviews sit inside the Employment Hero platform, switching payroll alone means losing the unified data model. You either rebuild those workflows in a new HRIS or run two systems in parallel.
That migration cost never appears in the per-employee rate, but it is the real switching cost for any team that adopted the HR modules alongside the free payroll.
UK compliance depth
Employment Hero grew out of KeyPay, acquired in 2019. KeyPay was built for the Australian market first; the UK product is an adaptation rather than native-built payroll.
The friction point most buyers miss is Employment Hero's pricing tier structure. The platform looks affordable at the SMB tier, but the features that matter for payroll compliance (automated HMRC submissions, pension auto-enrolment reporting, and dedicated implementation support) are locked behind the mid-tier and enterprise plans. Buyers switching from BrightPay or Sage Payroll often discover they need a higher Employment Hero tier than they budgeted for to match their existing functionality.
For standard PAYE, RTI, and auto-enrolment, that is fine. The ceiling shows up at the edges: CIS contractor deductions, P11D reporting for benefits in kind, multi-company payroll for group structures, and pay spine management.
On the core HMRC mechanics specifically, Employment Hero is on solid ground: it states that every pay run automatically files a Full Payment Submission via RTI, so PAYE and National Insurance reach HMRC on each cycle. That baseline holds across the tiers; it is the compliance edges above, not the RTI plumbing, that send buyers to Sage or BrightPay.
Details last checked: 30 June 2026. Primary source: Employment Hero payroll software (automatic RTI Full Payment Submission per pay run).
Sage, BrightPay, and IRIS have two decades of UK-specific compliance baked in.
Employment Hero does not.
HRIS integration gap
If you already run HiBob, Personio, or BambooHR, Employment Hero’s bundled HR is not a bonus: it is a duplicated layer. The integration story outside its own suite is thin.
Pento built its positioning around API-first payroll that plugs into modern HRIS tools without replacing them.
For engineering-led HR teams who want payroll as a service rather than a suite, Employment Hero’s architecture pulls the opposite way.
Which Employment Hero Payroll Alternative Fits Each Switching Reason?
Each trigger points to a different replacement. Our alternatives below are organised by the reason you are leaving, not by ranking. Pick your trigger, read that block.
For transparent pricing: Xero Payroll or BrightPay
Xero Payroll is the cleanest price comparison for businesses frustrated by Employment Hero’s quote-only Core tier.
Xero does not sell payroll standalone: it is bundled into the Grow (£37/month, 1 employee), broad (£59/month, 5 employees), and Ultimate (£72/month, 10 employees) plans, with each additional employee at £1.50/month.
At 25 employees on broad, you pay £89/month.
At 100 employees on Ultimate you pay £207/month. Every number is published. Your finance team can model the next three years without a sales call.
The product covers RTI, auto-enrolment, statutory pay, and P60/P45 production inside the Xero ledger. Hard limits: a 200-employee cap, no native P11D, and no CIS outside the Xero Construction plan.
If you are under 200 headcount without a P11D requirement, Xero’s transparency and ledger-native design make it the default answer for businesses leaving Employment Hero on cost opacity alone.
BrightPay is the alternative for buyers who want the lowest absolute cost and no HR product. The 2025/26 desktop licence runs £139/year up to 10 employees, £209/year up to 25, and £289/year unlimited.
No per-employee ramp, no floor, no demo. Against Employment Hero’s Managed Payroll at £12 per employee per month (£3,600/year for 25 employees), BrightPay desktop at the same scale costs £209/year: a 94% saving.
The 2026 cloud transition moves BrightPay to quote-based cloud pricing, but independent benchmarks suggest per-employee cloud rates stay well below Employment Hero’s managed tier.
For UK compliance depth: Sage Payroll
Sage Payroll is the answer when your compliance requirements exceed what an Australian-origin platform can cover natively.
Sage 50 Payroll (desktop) handles CIS contractor deductions, multi-company payroll for group structures, and native P11D reporting for benefits in kind.
Sage Business Cloud Payroll covers the cloud equivalent for most SME use cases, though CIS is desktop-only.
You are paying more per employee than on BrightPay, but you are buying 20+ years of UK-specific compliance engineering rather than an adapted Australian product.
For a 25-employee business that needs P11D inside the payroll tool, Sage Business Cloud Essentials at £50/month is defensible against Employment Hero’s Core Payroll, where P11D lives on the free tier without a support SLA.
When compliance depth is load-bearing, Sage is the safer floor.
For lean tech companies with an HRIS: Pento
Pento addresses the integration problem that Employment Hero’s HR-first architecture creates. Pento is UK-native, API-first payroll built specifically for fast-moving tech companies that already run a modern HRIS.
- It does not try to sell you HR modules: it integrates with HiBob
- Personio
- BambooHR
- and others
- pulling employee data and pushing payroll journals to Xero or Sage Accounting via live connections
For businesses between 50 and 500 employees with an engineering-led People Ops team, Pento is the direct replacement when Employment Hero’s bundled model feels like a step backwards.
Pricing is quote-only, typically £4 to £6 per active employee per month plus a one-off implementation fee of £1,500 to £3,500.
At 100 employees, £400 to £600 per month in steady state plus the year-one implementation line.
More expensive than BrightPay, similar in total to Employment Hero Managed Payroll, and materially more automated than either.
The case closes when your HRIS is already doing the work Employment Hero’s HR suite tries to duplicate.
For large enterprise: ADP
ADP is the right move when you have outgrown Employment Hero’s SME ceiling.
ADP’s UK payroll products (Workforce Now, iHCM, and the fully managed Celergo for multi-country) are built for organisations above 500 employees with multi-country obligations, union rules, complex shift patterns, and managed-service expectations.
Pricing is quote-only and typically starts at £6 to £10 per employee per month depending on whether you buy software, managed service, or multi-country coverage.
Employment Hero is not built for the ADP use case. It targets SME bands and does not carry the compliance bandwidth, audit trail depth, or managed-service tier large enterprise buyers expect.
Past 500 employees or multi-country, ADP is the logical next platform, not a scaled-up Employment Hero deployment.
How Do Employment Hero Payroll Alternatives Compare on Price?
The pricing comparison below covers Employment Hero’s three published tiers against the five alternatives at common UK SME headcount points.
Figures are based on published pricing where available and third-party benchmarks where pricing is quote-only.
| Provider | 10 employees | 25 employees | 100 employees | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employment Hero (Free) | £0 | £0 | £0 | Free tier, unlimited employees; HR modules extra |
| Employment Hero (Managed) | £120/month est. | £300/month est. | £1,200/month est. | £12 per employee/month, quote-confirmed |
| Xero Payroll | £50.50/month (Grow) | £89/month (broad) | £207/month (Ultimate) | Bundled into accounting plan + £1.50/employee |
| BrightPay (2025/26 desktop) | £139/year | £209/year | £289/year | Annual flat licence; cloud pricing from 2026/27 by quote |
| Sage Business Cloud Payroll | £20/month | £50/month | £200/month | £10/month base + £2/employee beyond 5 |
| Pento | Not available (<50) | Not available (<50) | £400–£600/month est. | Quote-only, £4–£6/employee/month + implementation |
| ADP | Not targeted | Not targeted | £600–£1,000/month est. | Quote-only, £6–£10/employee/month enterprise |
Sources: employmenthero.com/uk pricing, Xero UK pricing, BrightPay 2025/26 price list, Sage Business Cloud Payroll pricing, Pento and ADP indicative pricing via G2/Capterra benchmarks. April 2026.
The cost picture tells a specific story. On the free tier, Employment Hero is unbeatable for single-entity SMEs under 50 employees.
On Managed Payroll at £12 per employee, Employment Hero is the most expensive option in the table for mid-market headcount, priced above Pento and well above Sage or Xero.
The uncomfortable middle case is Core Payroll: quote-only, minimum £30/month, and in practice frequently more expensive than Xero or Sage for the same coverage.
That middle tier is where the switching pressure builds.
What Does It Cost to Switch from Employment Hero Payroll?
Switching payroll mid-year is operationally awkward for a reason. HMRC receives your year-to-date figures with every RTI submission.
When you move to a new system, those figures need to transfer accurately or your employees’ tax records become unreliable.
Most businesses switch at the start of a new tax year (April) to avoid mid-year migration risk.
Payroll data export is straightforward: employee master data, YTD P11 figures, and pension contribution schedules export in standard formats. The complication is the bundled HR data.
If you have adopted Employment Hero’s onboarding, leave, or performance modules, that data does not export cleanly into a non-HR destination like BrightPay or Xero. You either rebuild those workflows in a new HRIS (HiBob, Personio, BambooHR) or accept losing the history.
Plan two to four weeks of HR data audit before cutover.
Pension scheme reconnection is the most commonly underestimated step. Auto-enrolment contributions flow through PensionSync on the Employment Hero platform.
- You will need to re-authorise the new payroll software directly with NEST, The People's Pension, Smart Pension, or your existing provider.
- This requires a software authority letter and a test submission before the first live cycle.
Budget three to five working days.
Pento implementation is £1,500 to £3,500 for migration, HMRC changes, pension reconnection, and training. Xero and Sage are typically self-service or accountant-supported at no extra platform cost.
ADP enterprise implementations run £5,000 to £25,000 depending on complexity and managed-service tier.
Whichapp view
The teams that regret leaving Employment Hero usually underestimated how much their HR workflows had embedded into the platform and how painful the rebuild became on the other side.
The teams that regret staying usually let the free tier carry them past 50 employees and then discovered that Core Payroll’s opaque pricing and UK compliance gaps had quietly become the binding constraint on their operations.
If you are reading this because headcount recently crossed 30, start the evaluation now. The switching cost is real, but it only grows.
How to Choose the Right Employment Hero Payroll Alternative
The decision comes down to three questions, answered in this order.
First: how deep is your Employment Hero HR footprint? If you only use the free payroll tier and nothing else, the switching cost is almost purely a payroll data migration, and any of the five alternatives is viable.
If you have onboarding, leave, performance, and recruitment running inside Employment Hero, you are not choosing a payroll alternative: you are choosing a payroll plus HRIS replacement, and the right comparison is Pento plus HiBob or Sage Payroll plus Personio, not a like-for-like swap.
Second: do you run a separate accounting platform? If you use Xero for accounting, Xero Payroll is the lowest-friction move and the ledger-native integration eliminates the reconciliation step.
If you use Sage Accounting, Sage Payroll is the natural fit for the same reason. If you use QuickBooks or a bespoke finance stack, BrightPay or Pento are the options that do not assume an accounting platform lock.
Third: what is your headcount trajectory over the next two years? Under 15 employees on the free tier with no growth planned, Employment Hero Payroll is genuinely hard to beat on cost and the switch does not pay back.
At 50 to 200 employees, Xero or Sage are the sensible defaults.
At 100+ with a modern HRIS already in place, Pento’s automation case becomes defensible. At 500+ or multi-country, you should be evaluating ADP, not a scaled-up Employment Hero deployment.
See our ranked shortlist of providers, scored for HMRC submission reliability, statutory-pay handling, and pricing transparency. Updated for 2026.
View the shortlist →Frequently Asked Questions About Employment Hero Payroll Alternatives
Is Employment Hero Payroll’s free tier really free, or is it a trial?
The free tier is genuine, not a trial. It covers unlimited employees, full HMRC RTI, auto-enrolment via PensionSync, P11D submissions, and employee self-service, with no time limit.
The pressure point is not the free payroll itself: it is the HR modules and the paid Core Payroll tier that your team may drift into as workflow needs grow.
If you can maintain discipline about using only the free payroll and nothing else, you can stay on Employment Hero indefinitely at zero platform cost.
Why is Employment Hero’s Core Payroll pricing quote-only?
Employment Hero publishes a £30/month minimum floor for Core Payroll but does not publish the per-employee rate above that.
The model is designed to bundle payroll into a broader HR conversation, which is consistent with its positioning as an employment operating system rather than a standalone payroll tool.
For buyers who need a forecastable budget line, the opacity is a legitimate problem. Sage, Xero, and BrightPay all publish per-employee rates directly on their pricing pages.
Does Employment Hero Payroll handle CIS and P11D natively?
P11D submissions are supported on the free tier. CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) contractor deductions are not a core feature of the Employment Hero Payroll product.
If you run a construction payroll or have any CIS-subcontractor obligations, Sage 50 Payroll or IRIS PayrollPro are the better fit.
Multi-company payroll for group structures is also not a native Employment Hero capability: you would typically run separate instances or switch to Sage, IRIS, or an enterprise option.
Can I switch from Employment Hero Payroll mid-year?
Yes, but it is operationally complex. YTD P11 figures must transfer to preserve employee HMRC records, and pension scheme authority needs to move from PensionSync to your new provider connection.
Most businesses switch at the start of the tax year (April) for a reason.
If you cannot wait, run a parallel payroll for at least one pay period and validate the first RTI submission against Employment Hero’s final figures before cutting over.
Which Employment Hero Payroll alternative is best for a 50-employee UK tech business?
At 50 employees with a modern HRIS already in place, Pento is the most defensible fit:
- UK-native
- API-first
- and specifically designed to integrate with HiBob
- Personio
- and BambooHR without forcing you to replace them
Budget around £2,400 to £3,600 per year in steady state plus a one-off implementation fee.
If HRIS integration is not the binding constraint, Xero Payroll at £89/month on broad is the lower-cost default, assuming you are happy to run accounting inside Xero.
BrightPay is the cheapest paid option at £209/year desktop but does not carry the automation profile a tech team typically wants.
How We Assessed These Employment Hero Payroll Alternatives
Our review covered published pricing pages, product documentation, and HMRC-recognised status for all five alternatives.
- Quote-only pricing (Pento
- ADP
- Employment Hero Core and Managed) is sourced from G2
- Capterra
- and SoftwarePundit benchmarks
- cross-referenced against peer-reviewed figures
Our compliance assessment (RTI, auto-enrolment, P11D, CIS) is based on each provider’s feature documentation as of April 2026. No provider paid for inclusion or placement.
Internal links: Employment Hero Payroll review | Xero Payroll review | Sage Payroll review | BrightPay review | Pento review | ADP review
How We Chose These Alternatives
Whichapp is an independent comparison site for global payroll, EOR, and contractor management platforms. We do not sell these services and do not accept payment for editorial placement or rankings. We may earn a commission if you book a demo or request a quote through links on this page. Rankings reflect the editorial team's independent assessment and were not reviewed or approved by any provider before publication.
Providers Reviewed
- Employment Hero Payroll
- Xero Payroll
- BrightPay
- Sage Payroll
- Pento
- ADP
Data Sources
- Provider pricing pages for all listed platforms (verified April 2026)
- G2 and Capterra reviews for all listed platforms (Jan–Apr 2026)
- Provider help centre documentation and country guides
- Whichapp provider score composite data (see sources & data)
Research Approach
Each provider was assessed against the same criteria: pricing model and total cost transparency, entity model and compliance infrastructure, country coverage depth and quality, platform usability and onboarding experience, customer support model and response standards, and verified user feedback from G2 and Capterra. No provider was engaged for a paid pilot or contract as part of this review. Rankings reflect the editorial team's independent assessment of fit for the category. Last updated April 2026.