UK · Payroll & compliance
Employment Hero Payroll Pricing
Employment Hero Payroll leads with a number that makes finance directors look twice: £0. Unlimited employees.
No trial. No forced upgrade. If you only run payroll and want nothing else, that number is real.
The complication arrives when you want more. Employment Hero is not a payroll company that added HR.
It is an HR platform that includes payroll as one module among many. The moment you add leave management, onboarding workflows, or a managed pay run service, you are buying into a cost structure designed around per-employee HR subscriptions.
The total number looks very different from the headline.
This page works through what Employment Hero Payroll actually costs at different headcounts and configurations, where the pricing is transparent, and where it is deliberately opaque.
If you are weighing Employment Hero against a dedicated payroll tool, the cost comparison is in here.
What you actually pay for Employment Hero Payroll
Free Payroll genuinely costs nothing. Everything else in the Employment Hero line bills per employee and stacks fast once HR or Managed Payroll enter the picture. Here's what surfaces at contract stage.
| Published | Three published payroll options sit alongside the wider HR line. Free Payroll is £0/mo with unlimited employees, no credit card and no trial limit. Core Payroll is an add-on with a per-employee rate of £3; a £30/mo minimum applies. Managed Payroll is £12 per employee per month, with EH staff running the pay runs. HR plans price separately: HR Essentials £4/employee/mo (£40/mo min), HR Engage £7/employee/mo, HR Elite quote-only, Unlimited quote-only and the only HR tier that bundles Managed Payroll. |
|---|---|
| Common extras | The £30/mo Core Payroll floor hits small teams hardest; a 5-employee team pays more in a month than BrightPay's annual desktop licence costs. Rotas and Time and Attendance is £2/employee/mo and Chat is £1/employee/mo, both with unpublished minimum charges. HR plans do not include payroll at any tier below Unlimited, so anyone buying for HR will pay payroll on top. |
| Pass-through | HMRC RTI submissions for PAYE are statutory and pass through at no markup. Pension regulator submissions for auto-enrolment carry no EH uplift. Bank-payment fees (BACS or Faster Payments) remain a third-party charge billed by your bank, not by Employment Hero. |
| Negotiable | Core Payroll's per-employee rate is unpublished, so every contract for that add-on is negotiated rather than priced from a card. Unlimited is the strongest bundle play: it rolls Managed Payroll, Time and Attendance, advisory and EAP into a single quote, and is where multi-product buyers find discount. Annual prepay (where offered) and minimum-charge waivers on Rotas/Chat for larger teams are the other realistic levers. |
What Does Employment Hero Payroll Cost in the UK?
The answer depends entirely on which tier you are on. Employment Hero structures its UK payroll product across three distinct cost levels: free self-serve, paid self-serve (Core Payroll), and fully managed.
Each serves a different buyer and carries a very different monthly bill.
Employment Hero Payroll Pricing Tiers
Three payroll-specific tiers sit within the broader Employment Hero product. These can be used standalone or added to HR platform subscriptions.
| Tier | Cost | Who runs payroll | Minimum charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Payroll | £0/month | You | None |
| Core Payroll (add-on) | £3 per employee/month | You | £30/month |
| Managed Payroll (add-on) | £12 per employee/month | Employment Hero team | Minimum applies (not published) |
Source: Employment Hero UK pricing pages. Prices correct as at April 2026. Subject to change.
The free tier is available independently of any HR subscription. Core Payroll and Managed Payroll are add-ons, either standalone or layered on top of an HR plan.
If you want HR features alongside payroll, you will also pay for the relevant HR plan base cost.
What Is Included at Each Employment Hero Tier
Free Payroll is not a limited demo. We verified the full feature set against Employment Hero’s published product page in April 2026:
- RTI submissions
- PAYE and NI calculations
- auto-enrolment management
- pension contributions
- year-end P60s
- SSP and SMP statutory payments
- employee self-service portal
- accounting integrations (Xero
- QuickBooks
- Sage)
- and mobile access
These features work for unlimited employees at £0.
The platform is HMRC-recognised and RTI-compliant, and it applies tax-code updates automatically, so you are not re-keying HMRC notices into the system by hand. Details last checked: 2026-06-30; primary source: https://employmenthero.com/uk/products/payroll-software/
Core Payroll adds enhanced compliance automation and priority support on top of Free Payroll. Employment Hero does not publish the per-employee rate; you reach it through a demo or sales conversation.
The £30/month minimum means you will pay that floor even with only two or three employees on the plan.
Managed Payroll at £12/employee/month means Employment Hero’s own payroll professionals process your pay runs. You provide the data; they handle the run, HMRC submissions, RTI, pension enrolment, and the Declaration of Compliance.
If your HR team has no payroll expertise and you want full outsourcing without hiring a bureau, this is the relevant option.
How Employment Hero Payroll Costs Scale with Headcount
Free Payroll does not scale at all in cost terms: it stays at £0 regardless of headcount. Managed Payroll scales linearly at £12 per head.
At 25 employees you are paying £300/month. At 50 employees, £600/month. At 100 employees, £1,200/month annually that is £14,400 for a service that a specialist bureau often delivers for less.
Cost modelling
What Employment Hero Payroll costs at four headcount points
10 employees, Free Payroll: £0/month (£0/year). 25 employees, Managed Payroll: 25 × £12 = £300/month (£3,600/year). 50 employees, Managed Payroll: 50 × £12 = £600/month (£7,200/year).
25 employees, HR Essentials + Core Payroll: HR base £100/month + Core Payroll add-on (rate via quote); minimum £100/month for HR alone before payroll is added.
The Managed Payroll cost at 50+ employees starts to overlap with light EOR service pricing. If you are not using any HR platform features, the value case for Employment Hero narrows significantly at that headcount.
Is Employment Hero Payroll Free for Small Teams?
For payroll-only use, yes. Employment Hero’s Free Payroll tier is genuinely £0 with no employee cap and no time limit.
Employment Hero reports over 300,000 businesses using the platform globally, and they market explicitly to small teams who want compliance without monthly fees.
The practical limitation is not cost. It is scope. The free tier gives you payroll and a basic employee self-service portal.
It does not give you HR workflows, performance management, leave tracking with manager approval flows, or any of the people-management infrastructure that growing teams typically start wanting between 10 and 30 employees.
When you reach the point where you want those HR features, you move onto a paid HR plan and add payroll as a module. That is when the cost conversation changes. A 15-person team on HR Essentials plus Core Payroll is paying a minimum of £60/month for HR alone, before payroll costs are layered in.
That is a significant jump from £0.
For businesses that genuinely only need payroll, with no HR platform, no onboarding workflows, no leave management, Free Payroll remains a suitable option at any headcount.
The question you need to answer is whether you will stay payroll-only, or whether people ops expansion will pull you into the HR tier pricing within 12 to 18 months.
The True Cost of Employment Hero: Payroll Plus HR vs Standalone Payroll
The clearest way to assess Employment Hero’s pricing is to compare like-for-like with what you would pay using a dedicated payroll tool and keeping HR elsewhere.
- We built three scenarios based on published pricing data from Employment Hero
- Xero
- BrightPay
- and Sage as at April 2026
| Scenario | Employment Hero | Standalone alternative | Annual difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 employees, payroll only | £0/year (Free Payroll) | BrightPay desktop £139/year | EH wins by £139/year |
| 25 employees, payroll only (managed) | £3,600/year (Managed Payroll) | Sage Payroll: approx £480-720/year | Standalone saves ~£2,900+/year |
| 25 employees, HR Essentials + payroll | £1,200/year (HR) + Core Payroll add-on | BrightPay ~£200/year + separate HR tool | Depends on HR tool cost |
| 50 employees, payroll only (managed) | £7,200/year (Managed Payroll) | Sage Payroll: approx £800-1,200/year | Standalone saves ~£6,000+/year |
Source: Employment Hero UK pricing pages; Xero UK pricing pages; BrightPay.co.uk; Sage.com/en-gb/. Approximate figures at April 2026. Prices subject to change. Standalone alternatives do not include HR platform cost.
Where Employment Hero earns its cost and where it does not. At zero cost for self-serve payroll, no standalone tool competes on price.
For managed payroll at scale, Employment Hero is expensive: £7,200/year for 50 employees compares poorly with dedicated payroll software at under £1,200/year for the same headcount.
The justification for Employment Hero at that level is the HR platform bundled around it, not the payroll service itself.
Whichapp view
Employment Hero’s pricing architecture is designed to make the free entry point irresistible and the upgrade path gradual enough that cost increases feel incremental.
A 20-person team on Free Payroll that adds HR Essentials and Core Payroll could easily find itself paying £160+ per month before fully modelling what happened.
We would recommend building a 24-month cost model before committing to any HR add-on, because the minimum charges and per-employee rates compound quickly as headcount grows.
The honest alternative framing: if you need HR and payroll in one place and will genuinely use both, Employment Hero’s per-employee pricing is competitive with buying separate tools.
If you only need payroll, Free Payroll is unbeatable on price and the paid tiers are unnecessary.
How Does Employment Hero Pricing Compare Against Alternatives?
We compared Employment Hero against the two most common alternatives buyers consider alongside it: Xero Payroll (for teams already on Xero accounting) and BrightPay (for teams wanting dedicated payroll software).
The comparisons below assume payroll-only use, not HR platform features.
Employment Hero vs Xero Payroll on Price
Xero payroll cannot be purchased standalone. You buy an accounting plan and payroll is either included or available as an add-on depending on the tier.
Xero’s broad plan at £50/month includes 5 employees on payroll, with additional employees at £1.50/head.
At 25 employees that is £80/month (£960/year). Employment Hero Free Payroll for the same 25 employees costs £0. The comparison does not require much arithmetic.
The scenario where Xero wins on total cost is when you are already paying for Xero accounting and want payroll embedded in the same system.
In that case, the marginal payroll cost on broad is £1.50/employee/month, substantially cheaper than Employment Hero’s Managed Payroll at £12/head, and comparable to Employment Hero’s Core Payroll add-on.
If your bookkeeper is already on Xero, switching payroll to Employment Hero Free means maintaining two separate systems without a cost gain on payroll itself.
For a direct cost breakdown on Xero payroll pricing, see our Xero Payroll pricing guide.
Employment Hero vs BrightPay on Price
BrightPay is the pricing contrast that puts Employment Hero’s free tier in sharpest relief. BrightPay’s desktop licence runs approximately £139 to £289 per year for teams from up to 10 employees to unlimited.
That is less than one month of Employment Hero’s Core Payroll minimum charge.
Employment Hero Free Payroll is still cheaper, but BrightPay at that price point is not an expensive alternative; it is a comparable option that some finance directors prefer because it is a standalone desktop tool with no platform dependency.
Where Employment Hero pulls ahead of BrightPay on price is in employee self-service. BrightPay’s desktop version includes basic employee portals but the richer Connect cloud features carry separate costs.
Employment Hero Free Payroll includes a cloud-based employee portal and mobile app access at no extra charge.
For a team where employees need to access payslips and manage their own details, that feature difference has real operational value.
The switching scenario where BrightPay makes clear sense: you have an experienced payroll professional in-house, you want a dedicated UK payroll tool without any HR platform overhead, and your budget is under £200/year.
Employment Hero Free Payroll is the right answer to that same question if you want cloud access and a no-cost employee self-service layer.
Is Employment Hero Payroll Worth the Cost?
The answer runs differently across the three tiers, and it is worth being precise about each.
Free Payroll is worth it for almost any pure payroll buyer. The compliance capability covers RTI, auto-enrolment, PAYE/NI, SSP/SMP, and employee portal, and it is genuinely full-featured at £0 with unlimited employees.
We are not aware of a competitor that matches this at the same price point.
The trade-off is that you are committing to Employment Hero’s ecosystem, and the upgrade path toward paid features is intentionally gradual.
Core Payroll add-on value depends on the unpublished per-employee rate. Because Employment Hero does not display this price, you cannot assess value without a demo call.
The £30/month minimum is the signal: if you have fewer than roughly 6 to 8 employees, you will likely be paying that floor rate regardless of headcount.
That minimum makes Core Payroll poor value for small teams, who are better served staying on the free tier.
Managed Payroll at £12/employee/month is a premium service at a premium price. It makes sense for organisations where the operational cost of managing payroll in-house (staff time, error risk, compliance overhead) exceeds what Employment Hero charges.
A 30-person company paying £360/month for fully managed payroll is replacing a significant slice of a part-time payroll admin role.
That arithmetic works for some teams.
For teams that already have payroll handled efficiently in-house or through an external bureau, it is unlikely to represent savings.
The clearest value case for paying Employment Hero anything is when you need both HR and payroll in one place. At that point, the marginal cost of adding payroll to an HR plan is lower than buying a separate payroll tool and integrating it.
The weakest value case is pure payroll at scale under Managed Payroll, where dedicated bureaux consistently undercut the per-employee rate.
One point worth stress-testing: Employment Hero markets Managed Payroll as a way to take payroll off your plate entirely. That claim is accurate in operational terms. What it does not address is cost trajectory.
At 50 employees paying £600/month, you are spending more on managed payroll than many companies spend on a junior payroll coordinator’s salary component. Before your finance director signs the purchase order, run the headcount growth curve out 18 months.
The per-employee model means every new hire adds £12/month to the line item, and budget owners in procurement meetings will notice that slope.
Frequently Asked Questions About Employment Hero Payroll Pricing
Common questions we receive from buyers evaluating Employment Hero Payroll costs.
Is Employment Hero Payroll really free forever?
Yes, for the Free Payroll tier. Employment Hero states explicitly: no credit card required, no trial period, no forced upgrades.
The free tier covers RTI, PAYE/NI, auto-enrolment, statutory payments, and employee self-service for unlimited employees. You are not downgraded or restricted after a trial window.
One boundary is worth knowing before you commit: Free Payroll includes the PensionSync pension integration but does not support multi-PAYE, so a single legal entity with more than one PAYE reference needs a paid tier. Details last checked: 2026-06-30; primary source: https://help.employmenthero.com/hc/en-gb/articles/12635204896527-What-s-included-in-each-Payroll-plan
The caveat is that payroll-only functionality is what you get; HR features require a paid HR plan.
Can I use Employment Hero for payroll without buying the HR platform?
Yes. Free Payroll and the Core Payroll add-on can be used independently of any HR plan.
Managed Payroll is also available as a standalone add-on. You do not need to subscribe to HR Essentials, HR Engage, or any other HR tier to run payroll through Employment Hero.
The HR plans are separate products that can optionally include payroll as a module.
What is the Employment Hero Core Payroll price per employee?
Employment Hero does not publish the Core Payroll per-employee rate on its pricing page. We confirmed in April 2026 that a minimum charge of £30/month applies.
Managed Payroll carries its own floor: the £12 per employee/month rate sits behind a £120/month minimum, so the same small-team maths applies. Below roughly 10 employees you pay the £120 floor rather than per head. Details last checked: 2026-06-30; primary source: https://employmenthero.com/uk/products/payroll-software/?eh_content=nav-intelligent-payroll
The per-employee rate above that minimum requires a demo or sales conversation. This is a deliberate pricing opacity.
If you need to model costs precisely before committing, request the figure in writing during the demo process.
Does Employment Hero charge extra for auto-enrolment and RTI?
No. Auto-enrolment management, RTI submissions, and pension contributions are included in the Free Payroll tier at no additional cost. These are not add-ons or compliance modules you purchase separately.
- PAYE/NI calculations
- National Minimum Wage checks
- and statutory payments (SSP
- SMP) are also included at the free tier
What does the Employment Hero HR Essentials plan include and does it have payroll?
HR Essentials at £4 per employee/month (minimum £40/month) includes paperless onboarding, leave management, a documents and policies library, applicant tracking, and employee benefits access. Payroll is not included; it is listed as an upgrade you add separately.
If you want payroll with HR Essentials, you pay the HR Essentials base cost plus the Core Payroll or Managed Payroll add-on cost on top.
Is Employment Hero Payroll cheaper than Xero or BrightPay?
For pure payroll use: Employment Hero Free Payroll is cheaper than both. BrightPay desktop starts at approximately £139 per year. Xero payroll requires an accounting subscription starting at £37/month.
Employment Hero Free Payroll is £0.
For managed payroll, the position reverses: Employment Hero Managed Payroll at £12/employee/month is significantly more expensive than running your own payroll through BrightPay or Sage at any headcount above 5 employees.
Methodology and Disclosure
Pricing data on this page was sourced from Employment Hero’s UK pricing pages (employmenthero.com/uk/pricing/) and product feature pages (employmenthero.com/uk/products/free-payroll-software/), verified in April 2026.
Competitor pricing for Xero was sourced from Xero’s published UK pricing pages reflecting September 2025 plan prices.
BrightPay pricing was sourced from brightpay.co.uk. Sage Payroll pricing ranges are based on published UK plan data.
Core Payroll per-employee pricing is now published by Employment Hero at £3 per employee/month (verified 1 July 2026, source: employmenthero.com); the minimum charge of £30/month was confirmed from the pricing page. Unlimited plan pricing was also not published.
We have not independently verified Employment Hero’s claim of 300,000+ businesses using the platform.
For a full assessment of Employment Hero Payroll’s features, compliance handling, and user experience, see our Employment Hero Payroll review.
Whichapp does not have a commercial relationship with Employment Hero that influences editorial coverage. We receive no commission, referral fee, or affiliate revenue from Employment Hero directly.