Best payroll software for startups (2026): What ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini Recommend

Gusto. It was named in 50 of 50 recorded AI answers and named first in 43, across 10 models asked five fixed payroll questions for startups. Rippling (49 of 50) and Deel (42 of 50) sit close behind on presence, but the models put them first only when a question turns to tech teams or remote hiring.

This page ranks the 14 payroll products the models named by how often they named them. It measures visibility in AI answers, not product quality.

TL;DR

• For a US team of about 10 with simple needs, every model converges on Gusto. Start the shortlist there.
• Rippling and Deel appear in almost every answer as the conditional alternative: Rippling for device and app management, Deel for hires outside the US.
• Justworks, QuickBooks Payroll and OnPay form a middle band that is never named first. Each is tied to one situation: a PEO, existing QuickBooks books, or flat multistate pricing.
• Model choice matters most in that middle band. OnPay gets 4 of 5 answers in five models and 0 of 5 in Gemini 3.5 Flash.
• Australian employers should read this list as US-framed. The captured Australian guides rank Single Touch Payroll products the panel does not track.

1. Gusto

Pick Gusto if your first 10 hires are mostly US employees and you want the product every model treats as the default.

Measured: named 50 of 50 (Gusto 100%), first 43 of 50 (Gusto 86%), average position 1.16.

No other product in this category drew this level of agreement. Each of the 10 models had Gusto as its own leader. The answers use it as the starting point and then list the reasons to leave it: more states, IT provisioning, hires abroad. Sonar Reasoning Pro put that structure in one line: “You only need something else if you have special needs like complex multi-state payroll, bundled IT/HR tooling, or imminent international hiring.” Read the entries below in that light. The answers present most of them as exits from Gusto under a named condition, not as rivals to it.

Pros

• Every one of the 10 models named it in all five of its answers
• Opened every answer to the 10-employee question this page is named after
• Base plan includes onboarding, offer letter templates, unlimited payroll runs and tax filing
• Its own site, gusto.com, supplied 105 citations to the recorded answers, more than any other vendor-owned host

Cons

• Scheduling, time tracking and expense management sit outside the base plan
• Account setup help comes only with the Premium package
• Workers’ compensation and employee spending accounts are add-ons

Pricing: from $49 a month plus $6 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: integrated payroll and HR, in Forbes Advisor’s classification.

2. Rippling

Pick Rippling if you want payroll, HR and device management on one employee record, or you expect fast growth across states.

Measured: named 49 of 50 (Rippling 98%), first 4 of 50 (Rippling 8%), average position 2.78.

Rippling is the name the models reach for second. It appears in nearly every answer, usually as the switch away from Gusto for tech-heavy teams. Claude Opus 5 names the difference for tech companies: device provisioning, app access and offboarding tied to the same employee record. GPT-5.6 Sol calls it the best long-term operating system, then notes it generally needs custom pricing and more setup. The counts show the limit of that role. Of the answers it opened, three came from the one question about small tech companies. For a 10-person team with no IT workload, the answers present it as more platform than the job needs.

Pros

• Named in 49 of 50 answers, one short of Gusto
• Nine of the 10 models named it in all five answers
• Holds the best average position after Gusto, at 2.78

Cons

• First in only 4 of 50, a 90-point gap between named and first, the widest in the category
• No public pricing is recorded, and GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude Opus 5 both describe quote-based pricing
• Reviewers cited by Sonar Reasoning Pro call it overkill for a US-only seed-stage startup under 10 employees

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: teams that want payroll, HR and IT on one system, as the recorded answers position it.

3. Deel

Pick Deel if any of your first hires live outside the US and you have no local entity to employ them.

Measured: named 42 of 50 (Deel 84%), first 3 of 50 (Deel 6%), average position 3.86.

Deel rests on one condition. The answers name it for international hiring and employer-of-record work, and they steer US-only teams away from it. GPT-5.6 Sol advises using it only when international employment is a real near-term requirement, not merely a possibility. All three answers it opened came from the remote-team question, where the models first ask where the team lives. Anthropic models name it more often than OpenAI models do: Deel (93.3% of Anthropic answers) compared with Deel (66.7% of OpenAI answers). For a buyer, the gap means the same question can return Deel as a core pick or leave it out, depending on the assistant.

Pros

• Four models named it in all five answers: Claude, Claude Opus 5, Gemini 3.5 Flash and Sonar Reasoning Pro
• Contractors and employees can be paid in their preferred currency
• Took all three of its first places in the remote-team question

Cons

• Listed as far more expensive than the other options on the Forbes Advisor list
• ChatGPT and GPT-5.6 Luna named it in only 3 of 5 answers each
• Expense reimbursement is an add-on

Pricing: $29 per person a month, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: Global Payroll, the label Forbes Advisor gives Deel.

4. Justworks

Pick Justworks if you would rather hand HR, compliance and benefits to a PEO than run them in-house.

Measured: named 31 of 50 (Justworks 62%), first 0 of 50 (Justworks 0%), average position 4.42.

The models treat Justworks as a different kind of purchase. ChatGPT’s answer to the small-tech-company question says to choose it if you want a PEO to take on more HR and benefits administration. GPT-5.6 Sol frames it as the hands-off choice. It appears in most answers and never at the top. One reading of that pattern, which the counts cannot confirm: the questions ask about payroll software, and a PEO answers a different question. OpenAI models name it most often.

Pros

• Handles payroll taxes and filings across multiple states or countries at no extra cost
• Justworks (73.3% of OpenAI answers) runs above its overall share in that family
• Multiple pay rates and custom payroll periods are supported

Cons

• Never placed first in any of the 50 answers
• Contractor payments are an add-on
• Off-cycle payments replace unlimited payroll runs
• Three models named it in only 2 of 5 answers: Claude Fable 5, Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro

Pricing: from $50 a month plus $8 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: Compliance, the label Forbes Advisor gives Justworks.

5. QuickBooks Payroll

Pick QuickBooks Payroll if your books already live in QuickBooks Online and you want payroll on the same ledger.

Measured: named 28 of 50 (QuickBooks Payroll 56%), first 0 of 50 (QuickBooks Payroll 0%), average position 3.71.

The recorded answers attach a condition to QuickBooks Payroll. Claude Opus 5 suggests it only for teams already on QuickBooks Online, where the accounting integration is the main draw. Sonar Reasoning Pro gives the same rule: if your accounting is in QuickBooks, pick QuickBooks Payroll. Claude Fable 5 is the outlier. It named the product in every one of its answers and paired it with Gusto as affordable and easy to use for small startups. Its average position is better than Deel’s, so when an answer includes it, it sits near the top of the list. Forbes Advisor says it integrates with over 800 business apps.

Pros

• Claude Fable 5 named it in all five answers, and Claude Opus 5 in four
• Next-day direct deposit is an option
• Intuit Intelligence scans for payroll errors automatically

Cons

• HR features are outsourced to Mineral
• Five models named it in only 2 of 5 answers: GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-5.6 Luna, Claude, Gemini and Gemini 3.5 Flash
• Its count includes any answer that mentions QuickBooks, even as an accounting tool another product connects to

Pricing: from $50 a month plus $6.50 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: Integrations, the label Forbes Advisor gives QuickBooks Payroll.

6. OnPay

Pick OnPay if your team is spread across US states and you want flat pricing without per-state fees.

Measured: named 26 of 50 (OnPay 52%), first 0 of 50 (OnPay 0%), average position 3.5.

No product’s per-model split is wider than OnPay’s. The Anthropic and Perplexity models treat it as the value pick. Claude Opus 5 calls it best if you want predictable, flat pricing. Sonar Reasoning Pro pairs it with Patriot Payroll for price-sensitive teams that still want full-service payroll. When it does appear, its average position of 3.5 is the best of any product never named first. A buyer who asks a Google model will rarely hear of it. A buyer who asks a Claude model will hear of it in most answers.

Pros

• OnPay (80% of Anthropic answers and 80% of Perplexity answers) runs well above its overall share in those families
• Multistate payroll carries no extra fee anywhere in the US
• Free setup and data migration are included

Cons

• Gemini 3.5 Flash never named it, and Gemini and ChatGPT named it once each
• No international payroll, which Forbes Advisor says could limit remote hiring
• Integrations are limited

Pricing: from $49 a month plus $6 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: multistate payroll, in Forbes Advisor’s classification.

7. Patriot Payroll

Pick Patriot Payroll if cost is the binding constraint and you need payroll and nothing else.

Measured: named 13 of 50 (Patriot Payroll 26%), first 0 of 50 (Patriot Payroll 0%), average position 4.23.

Patriot Payroll is better represented in the sources than in the answers. Its own site, patriotsoftware.com, supplied 44 citations to the recorded answers, second only to gusto.com among vendor-owned hosts. The product appears in about a quarter of answers, all from Anthropic, Google and Perplexity models. Those answers frame it as the low-cost route. Claude Opus 5 lists it as the low-cost leader in its budget options table. Forbes Advisor reaches a similar reading and suggests it for companies that want a payroll service and nothing more.

Pros

• Includes free direct deposit and unlimited, automated payroll
• Claude Fable 5 and Sonar Reasoning Pro named it in 3 of 5 answers each

Cons

• All three OpenAI models named it in 0 of 5 answers
• Time and attendance tracking and HR tools cost extra

Pricing: from $17 a month plus $4 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: a budget payroll service, in Forbes Advisor’s classification.

8. ADP

Pick ADP if you expect to outgrow startup payroll and want one provider from a small team up to a large one.

Measured: named 11 of 50 (ADP 22%), first 0 of 50 (ADP 0%), average position 5.45.

ADP appears mostly as a note about size. Claude Fable 5, which names it most, describes ADP Run as the choice for a team that values an unbounded upgrade path and phone support over transparent pricing, and notes it is quote-based. Claude Opus 5 names ADP only to tell a 10-person team to leave it for later. In both answers it comes after the products suggested for a 10-person team, which matches its low average position.

Pros

• Round-the-clock payroll support comes with Roll by ADP and ADP Run
• HR and time modules can be added as a company grows
• Three of Claude Fable 5’s five answers name it

Cons

• Extra payroll runs are charged on ADP Run
• Sits at an average position of 5.45 when named
• One Claude Opus 5 answer names it only to steer a 10-person team away

Pricing: from $39 a month plus $5 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: scaling businesses, in Forbes Advisor’s classification.

9. Square Payroll

Pick Square Payroll if your team is mostly contractors or your business already takes payments through Square.

Measured: named 5 of 50 (Square Payroll 10%), first 0 of 50 (Square Payroll 0%), average position 5.8.

Square Payroll sits on the edge of the category. The answers that name it attach it to two narrow cases. Claude Fable 5 calls it a simple option for contractor-heavy teams. Sonar Reasoning Pro says it makes the most sense if your point-of-sale or payments already run on Square. No model named it more than once. Forbes Advisor’s case for it rests on contractor pay: many providers make contractor payments an add-on or require a full payroll plan, and Square does not.

Pros

• Five models named it, spread across three families
• Integrates with Square POS for timecard import

Cons

• Lacks HR features
• Cannot pay employees who work in multiple tax jurisdictions

Pricing: from $35 a month plus $6 per person, as listed by Forbes Advisor.

Best for: paying contractors, in Forbes Advisor’s classification.

10. Paychex

Pick Paychex if you are planning for a much larger headcount and want a traditional provider from the start.

Measured: named 4 of 50 (Paychex 8%), first 0 of 50 (Paychex 0%), average position 6.25.

Paychex is an Anthropic-only name in this panel. Claude, Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 account for every mention, and no OpenAI, Google or Perplexity model named it. The Anthropic answers treat it as a later-stage option. Claude Fable 5 groups Paychex with ADP as traditional providers that are more robust but often pricier and less startup-friendly. It also lists Paychex Flex under options for scaling. None of the captured comparison pages covers Paychex, so no pricing or feature claim is recorded here.

Pros

• Two of Claude Fable 5’s five answers name it
• Scalability is the reason Claude Fable 5 gives for listing Paychex Flex

Cons

• No public pricing is recorded, and Claude Fable 5 says it does not list its prices
• Average position of 6.25 puts it near the end of the lists that include it

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: teams that expect to scale well past startup size, as Claude Fable 5 frames it.

11. Remote

Pick Remote if you are hiring abroad from day one and want an employer-of-record platform as your main system.

Measured: named 3 of 50 (Remote 6%), first 0 of 50 (Remote 0%), average position 4.67.

Remote’s count understates how often the answers mention it. The alias list counts forms such as Remote.com and Remote’s, not the plain word, which would also match every mention of remote teams. So answers from Claude, Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5 name Remote in plain text alongside Deel, and none of those mentions is counted. Claude Opus 5 describes Remote as designed for startups hiring internationally from day one. Read its row as a floor. The uncounted answers pair it with Deel for international hiring.

Pros

• Counted mentions come from two families, through GPT-5.6 Sol, Gemini and Gemini 3.5 Flash
• Places mid-list, at 4.67, when it does appear

Cons

• Never first in 50 answers
• Nothing on its pricing or features appears in the captured pages

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: international hiring without local entities, as the Anthropic answers frame it.

12. Oyster

Pick Oyster if your team is fully remote and global and you want a third employer-of-record option to set against Deel and Remote.

Measured: named 1 of 50 (Oyster 2%), first 0 of 50 (Oyster 0%), average position 4.

Oyster shows the gap between being cited and being named. Its site, oysterhr.com, returned 22 citations across the recorded answers, as many as rippling.com. The cited pages include Oyster’s own guide to payroll services for startups. The product itself appears once, in Sonar Reasoning Pro’s answer to the remote-team question, which lists it as sometimes a strong choice alongside Deel and Remote for global, fully remote teams. A buyer reading those answers sees Oyster’s content far more often than Oyster’s name.

Pros

• Named in the remote-team question, the one where employer-of-record platforms move up
• Its one appearance sits at position 4

Cons

• One answer out of 50 names it
• Absent from every answer outside Sonar Reasoning Pro

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: global, fully remote teams, as Sonar Reasoning Pro frames it.

13. Wave Payroll

Pick Wave Payroll if you are a very small, cost-sensitive business already keeping books in Wave Accounting.

Measured: named 1 of 50 (Wave Payroll 2%), first 0 of 50 (Wave Payroll 0%), average position 5.

Wave Payroll made one appearance, and it came in the answer to this page’s own question. Sonar Reasoning Pro lists it with Patriot Payroll as a lower-cost alternative. It relays a description of Wave Payroll as ideal for small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and for freelancers, tied into Wave’s free accounting product. It adds a condition: the product suits businesses operating where Wave Payroll is supported. None of the captured pages covers it, so the record holds nothing on its features or price beyond that one answer.

Pros

• Appears in the answer to this page’s exact question, as a lower-cost alternative
• Tied to Wave Accounting, which the same answer describes as free

Cons

• Only 1 of 50 answers names it
• Position 5 in its single appearance

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: micro-businesses already on Wave Accounting, as Sonar Reasoning Pro frames it.

14. Zenefits

Pick Zenefits if you want a PEO arrangement and are already comparing TriNet, since the one answer counted here names TriNet rather than Zenefits.

Measured: named 1 of 50 (Zenefits 2%), first 0 of 50 (Zenefits 0%), average position 7.

The Zenefits row is an alias effect worth understanding. The alias list maps TriNet to Zenefits, and Claude Fable 5’s answer to the small-tech-company question lists TriNet as the PEO route. That answer describes TriNet handling payroll, tax filing, certain compliance requirements and benefits administration under a co-employment arrangement. It also warns that small businesses wanting tools without sacrificing control may feel limited by TriNet’s models. The word Zenefits appears in none of the 50 answers.

Pros

• The TriNet PEO route appears in one Claude Fable 5 answer about tech companies
• Counted once, in the question about small tech companies

Cons

• The single count comes from a TriNet mention mapped to Zenefits
• Lowest average position in the table, at 7

Pricing: no public pricing is recorded.

Best for: no use case is recorded for Zenefits itself.

How do the tools compare?

Gusto leads on both measures, and no other product is close on named first. The category mixes three kinds of product. Payroll software runs pay and files payroll taxes: Gusto, OnPay, Patriot Payroll, QuickBooks Payroll, Square Payroll, ADP and Paychex. PEOs take on HR and benefits as well: Justworks, and TriNet under the Zenefits alias. Employer-of-record platforms employ staff abroad: Deel, Remote and Oyster. Rippling straddles all three in the answers. Claude Opus 5 sums up the payroll core this way: almost every major provider files payroll taxes automatically, and the real differences are price, multi-state handling, contractor support and how much HR is bundled.

The pricing-model column follows the Forbes Advisor pricing table, which lists a starting monthly price per user and a starting flat monthly rate for each product it covers.

Below Gusto the table falls into three bands. Rippling and Deel appear in most answers but open few. Justworks, QuickBooks Payroll and OnPay each appear in roughly half the answers and never open one. From Patriot Payroll down, the names thin out to Oyster, Wave Payroll and Zenefits at 1 of 50 each. Paycor and Papaya Global were tracked and never named. Prices in the entries are Forbes Advisor’s US-dollar starting prices. The full record, with every answer, sits on the startup payroll index.

Why does the name at the top change with the question?

The question decides the leader, and the model barely does. Gusto opened every answer to three of the five questions: the 10-employee question, the seed-stage question and the first-employees question. Every first place it did not take came from the other two. Rippling opened three answers to the small-tech-company question, from Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, and one answer to the remote-team question, from GPT-5.6 Luna. Deel opened three answers to the remote-team question, from GPT-5.6 Sol, Claude and Gemini 3.5 Flash.

The answers explain why. They treat payroll for a small US team as a solved default, then attach alternatives to named conditions. ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Terra) did it in one line: “Choose Rippling instead if IT/device management and workflow automation are core requirements.” When the question itself carries the condition, the alternative moves up. Asked about a remote team, GPT-5.6 Luna opened with: “For most remote startups, Rippling is the best overall choice”.

That changes how to read the table. Rippling’s 49 of 50 does not mean the models prefer it nearly as often as Gusto. It means the models offer it as the standard exit in almost every answer. For a buyer, the practical reading is simple. If your situation matches a condition the models name, the second or third product on this list may be the one they would put first for you.

Where do the models disagree?

The models agree on the leader and disagree on the middle. This is the per-model split: the count of each model’s five answers that named the vendor.

OnPay carries the sharpest split. Claude, Claude Opus 5, Claude Fable 5, Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro each named it in 4 of 5 answers. Gemini 3.5 Flash named it in 0 of 5, and Gemini and ChatGPT in 1 of 5.

Patriot Payroll follows the same line. GPT-5.6 Sol, ChatGPT and GPT-5.6 Luna never named it. Claude Fable 5 and Sonar Reasoning Pro named it in 3 of 5.

QuickBooks Payroll turns on one model. Claude Fable 5 named it in all five answers. Five other models named it in 2 of 5.

Justworks leans the other way, toward OpenAI. ChatGPT and GPT-5.6 Luna named it in 4 of 5, as did Claude and Claude Opus 5. Claude Fable 5, Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro named it in 2 of 5.

Claude Fable 5 has the longest tail. It is the only model that named Zenefits, it named ADP in 3 of 5 and Paychex in 2 of 5, and it is the only model that left Rippling out of an answer. Sonar Reasoning Pro is the only model that named Oyster or Wave Payroll.

How was the sample built?

The sample is 10 models x 5 fixed prompts = 50 recorded answers, one answer per model and question, for edition 2026-09. The five questions, verbatim:

1. What is the best payroll software for a startup with 10 employees? Name specific products.
2. Which payroll provider should a seed-stage US startup use?
3. Compare the top payroll tools for small tech companies.
4. I’m a founder hiring my first employees. What payroll service do you recommend?
5. Best payroll and benefits platform for a remote startup team?

The models come from four families. OpenAI gives 15 answers, from GPT-5.6 Sol, ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Terra) and GPT-5.6 Luna. Anthropic gives 15, from Claude Opus 5, Claude (Claude Sonnet 5) and Claude Fable 5. Google gives 10, from Gemini (Gemini 3.6 Flash) and Gemini 3.5 Flash. Perplexity gives 10, from Perplexity (Sonar Pro) and Sonar Reasoning Pro.

The panel tracked 16 vendors, and 14 were named. A vendor counts as named when one of its aliases appears in an answer. Answer share is the share of the 50 answers that named a product. Named first means it appeared before any other tracked product. The most-cited hosts in the recorded answers were youtube.com (126) and valueaddvc.com (118), neither of them a payroll vendor. The method page sets out how the panel runs and what it counts.

How does this list sit against the payroll guides?

The captured Google results for this question are guides that rank or sell payroll products. This page counts which products AI answers name. The results were captured in Australia, so most of them are written for Australian employers.

Forbes Advisor is the one US guide in the capture. It discloses that it earns a commission from partner links. It built its ranking from a rubric of 35 metrics, phone and internet research and a focus group of small business decision-makers. It tags Gusto as Most Popular. That tag is calculated from the number of times each affiliate product was selected by Forbes Advisor users over a six-month period. Rippling, second on this page, does not appear in its list. Both Perplexity models cite this Forbes Advisor guide in their answers to the 10-employee question.

e-PayDay publishes an Australian top-10 list on its own site, and its own product, e-PayDay Go, is one of the entries. The page warns that many such lists are built for search and AI visibility and often rank the publishing vendor as best. It says inclusion rests on user ratings and reviews, not payment.

Top10Payroll splits Australian products into a small-business list, led by Easy Business App, and a medium-to-large list, led by Xero. QuickBooks Online is on its list. Its outbound vendor links carry referral tracking tags.

Employment Hero’s page sells its own Australian payroll and presents it as an ATO-recognised platform for STP Phase 2 reporting. Payroller’s page sells its own small-business payroll and features STP reporting compliance.

The gap between the two sets is geographic as much as editorial. ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Terra), GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Luna each set their answer to the 10-employee question in the US before naming a product. Apart from QuickBooks, none of the products on the captured Australian lists is among the 16 vendors this panel tracks. What this page adds is what the guides cannot show: how often each product is named, how often it is named first, how that varies by model, and which question moves a product to the top.

What should a 10-person startup do with this list?

Use the counts to build a short list, then test those products against your own payroll. The answers give a consistent decision order.

If your team is US-only and simple, the models converge on Gusto, with OnPay and Patriot Payroll as the lower-cost comparisons. Claude Opus 5 put the stakes plainly for a seed-stage team: “the decision doesn’t deserve more than an hour of your time.”

If your team needs device and app provisioning tied to payroll, add Rippling. If any early hire lives outside the US, add Deel. If you would rather outsource HR and benefits entirely, add Justworks. If your books are already in QuickBooks Online, add QuickBooks Payroll.

If you employ staff in Australia, this list answers a different market’s question. e-PayDay’s guide judges products on Single Touch Payroll and Fair Work award compliance. Check any shortlisted product for STP Phase 2 reporting before you compare anything else.

What can these counts not tell you?

The counts measure presence in answers. They say nothing about product quality, support, uptime or fit with your stack. Being named is not the same as being recommended. Claude Opus 5 names two products only to say “Skip ADP and Paychex at this size”.

Each model answered each question once, so a single answer can move a low count. The run is one dated snapshot, edition 2026-09. Names are matched by string aliases, which can miss a product (Remote in plain text) or credit the wrong one (TriNet counted as Zenefits, any QuickBooks mention counted as QuickBooks Payroll). The answers came through model APIs, which can differ from the consumer chat apps. The prompts were in English and read by most models as US questions.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best payroll software for startups?

Among AI answers, Gusto is the consistent default for US startups. Every model in this panel named it in every answer, across all five startup payroll questions. The count measures how often models name it, not how well it runs payroll, so treat Gusto as the first product to test. Rippling and Deel are the usual alternatives when a team needs IT provisioning or hires abroad.

What is the most popular payroll software in Australia?

This panel cannot answer that, because its questions were read as US questions and it tracks no Australian payroll product. The captured Australian guides give their own rankings. Top10Payroll puts Easy Business App first for small businesses and Xero first for medium to large businesses. e-PayDay says its list features the most visible payroll products for each market and orders them by user ratings.

What is the most used payroll software?

No captured source publishes usage figures, and answer share is not a usage measure. The closest signal on the captured pages is Forbes Advisor’s Most Popular tag on Gusto. That tag counts how often Forbes Advisor users selected each affiliate product, not how many businesses run it.

Can ChatGPT do payroll?

Not in this record. ChatGPT’s recorded answers recommend payroll products and point to vendor pricing pages. They do not calculate or lodge a pay run. AI is arriving inside payroll products instead. Employment Hero describes AI-assisted workflows that pull in data, calculate earnings and deductions, and help finalise pay runs.

Why is Rippling ranked second if it is rarely named first?

This list ranks by how many answers name a product, not by how many put it first. Rippling appears in 49 of 50 answers, so it ranks second. It opened only 4, because most answers present it as the alternative to Gusto for teams with IT and device needs.

Can a vendor pay to appear or move on this list?

No. Positions are not sold, sponsored or influenced. Vendors cannot pay to appear, be reordered or be removed. The order comes only from the recorded answers for edition 2026-09.