We built a payroll cost calculator because nobody else would show the maths
UK payroll pricing is a maze of per-employee fees, pension add-ons and quote-only vendors. We modelled four providers across team sizes of 1 to 50 and put the maths on the site. Here is what the numbers say.
Ask five vendors what payroll costs for a team of ten and you will receive four different pricing models and one "book a call". BrightPay sells annual licences in employee bands. Xero charges per employee on top of your accounting plan. Sage layers a pension module. ADP would genuinely rather discuss it.
None of this is scandalous — payroll pricing reflects real differences in product philosophy. But it makes the simplest small-business question ("what will this cost me over the three years I will actually keep it?") weirdly hard to answer. So we answered it.
What the calculator models
Enter a team size, toggle auto-enrolment pension handling, and the tool computes first-year and three-year costs for BrightPay, Xero Payroll, Sage Payroll and ADP — with every assumption disclosed underneath. BrightPay sweeps the small end (its flat annual licence is essentially unbeatable up to ~20 staff). Xero wins the ecosystem case. ADP's entry cost is real for small teams and defensible at scale.
The range bars matter as much as the winner. A vendor priced at "£4–£12 per employee" is not being evasive at random — the spread usually maps to service depth. Seeing the shape of each pricing model teaches you what questions to ask before the sales call, which is the actual purpose of a tool like this.
Why publish it free, on the open web?
Because trust is the entire business model. A comparison site that hides its working asks you to believe conclusions on faith; showing the maths means you can argue with us, and mostly you will not need to. If the calculator — or the business bank cost checker that followed it — saves one founder from a mismatched contract, the build time was well spent.
Both tools are linked from the payroll cost calculator page itself. We maintain them as fee tables change — the assumptions block on each tool lists what we modelled and when.