Payroll for startups: which software do AI models recommend?
Gusto was named in all 50 recorded answers and named first in 43. Rippling was named in 49 and first in 4. Every vendor the models named, with counts and splits.
Figure 01 · Edition 2026-09
Payroll for startups
How often each product was named, and how often it appeared first.
- GustoNamed: 100%Named first: 86%
- RipplingNamed: 98%Named first: 8%
- DeelNamed: 84%Named first: 6%
- JustworksNamed: 62%Named first: 0%
- QuickBooks PayrollNamed: 56%Named first: 0%
- OnPayNamed: 52%Named first: 0%
- Patriot PayrollNamed: 26%Named first: 0%
- ADPNamed: 22%Named first: 0%
Top 8 by answer share · 50 answers
10 models · 5 prompts · Memetik Index, 2026-09
Shares use all 50 answers as the denominator. Multiple products can appear in one answer. First position does not measure recommendation strength.
Key findings
Gusto reaches every recorded answer, a 100% answer share, and takes a first position in 43 of 50, an 86% named-first share. The gap between the two measures is 14 points.
All 10 sampled models named Gusto in all 5 of their answers, so the models agree on the leader. The splits sit below it.
Rippling (49 answers) and Deel (42) are named in nearly every answer and first in 4 and 3. Justworks (31), QuickBooks Payroll (28) and OnPay (26) are named in dozens of answers and first in none.
The provider families split below the leader. QuickBooks Payroll was named in 73.3% of Anthropic answers against 46.7% of OpenAI answers, and Justworks in 73.3% of OpenAI answers against 60% of Google answers.
The category tracks 16 vendors and two were never named, Paycor and Papaya Global. Oyster, Wave Payroll and Zenefits were the smallest named results, 1 of 50 answers each (2%).
Vendor-owned sites appear in the citations the answers carry, gusto.com 105 times and patriotsoftware.com 44. Citation counts exclude ChatGPT, whose API returns no citations.
Gusto. Ten models answered the same five buyer questions in September 2026, and all 50 recorded answers named Gusto. It takes a first position in 43 of them. Rippling was named in 49 answers and first in 4. Deel was named in 42 and first in 3. No other tracked vendor takes a first position anywhere in the sample. The counts record where names appear in the answer text, not how well the products work. Our Payroll for startups research carries every figure in this article.
Which payroll vendors did the models name, and how often?
Gusto is named in every answer. Rippling and Deel are named in most answers and first in few. Every vendor the models named carries a row below, with counts and shares.
| Vendor | Named answers | Answer share | Named first | Named-first share | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gusto | 50/50 | 100% | 43/50 | 86% | 1.16 |
| Rippling | 49/50 | 98% | 4/50 | 8% | 2.78 |
| Deel | 42/50 | 84% | 3/50 | 6% | 3.86 |
| Justworks | 31/50 | 62% | 0/50 | 0% | 4.42 |
| QuickBooks Payroll | 28/50 | 56% | 0/50 | 0% | 3.71 |
| OnPay | 26/50 | 52% | 0/50 | 0% | 3.5 |
| Patriot Payroll | 13/50 | 26% | 0/50 | 0% | 4.23 |
| ADP | 11/50 | 22% | 0/50 | 0% | 5.45 |
| Square Payroll | 5/50 | 10% | 0/50 | 0% | 5.8 |
| Paychex | 4/50 | 8% | 0/50 | 0% | 6.25 |
| Remote | 3/50 | 6% | 0/50 | 0% | 4.67 |
| Oyster | 1/50 | 2% | 0/50 | 0% | 4 |
| Wave Payroll | 1/50 | 2% | 0/50 | 0% | 5 |
| Zenefits | 1/50 | 2% | 0/50 | 0% | 7 |
The category tracks 16 vendors. Fourteen were named, so fourteen carry a row. Paycor and Papaya Global were not named in any of the 50 answers and have no figures to report. Gusto was named first in 43 of the 50 answers, Rippling in 4 and Deel in 3. Every other vendor, Justworks included, holds no first position at all.
Average position is the mean position the run records for each vendor among the tracked names. Gusto’s is 1.16, Rippling’s is 2.78 and Deel’s is 3.86.
What do answer share and named first measure?
Answer share measures whether a tracked vendor appears at all. A mention counts when the vendor’s name or a known alias appears in the answer text. Named first records the earliest appearance among all 16 tracked vendors.
The September 2026 edition holds 50 recorded answers from 10 models across 5 fixed English-language buyer questions. One response was collected per question-model pair. The five recorded questions:
- What is the best payroll software for a startup with 10 employees? Name specific products.
- Which payroll provider should a seed-stage US startup use?
- Compare the top payroll tools for small tech companies.
- I’m a founder hiring my first employees. What payroll service do you recommend?
- Best payroll and benefits platform for a remote startup team?
The models are GPT-5.6 Sol, ChatGPT and GPT-5.6 Luna (OpenAI, 15 answers); Claude Opus 5, Claude and Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic, 15 answers); Gemini and Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google, 10 answers); Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro (Perplexity, 10 answers). Each sampled model carries equal weight. Prompts stay fixed between editions, so the next edition measures the same five questions against the same models. Every raw answer and the scored table sit in the committed run data, and the method sets out how the counts are built.
How wide is the gap between being named and being named first?
Widest in the middle of the table. Rippling is named in 98% of answers and first in 8%, a gap of 90 points. Deel is named in 84% and first in 6%, a gap of 78 points.
| Vendor | Named share | Named-first share | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rippling | 98% | 8% | 90 points |
| Deel | 84% | 6% | 78 points |
| Justworks | 62% | 0% | 62 points |
| QuickBooks Payroll | 56% | 0% | 56 points |
| OnPay | 52% | 0% | 52 points |
| Patriot Payroll | 26% | 0% | 26 points |
| ADP | 22% | 0% | 22 points |
| Gusto | 100% | 86% | 14 points |
| Square Payroll | 10% | 0% | 10 points |
| Paychex | 8% | 0% | 8 points |
| Remote | 6% | 0% | 6 points |
| Oyster | 2% | 0% | 2 points |
| Wave Payroll | 2% | 0% | 2 points |
| Zenefits | 2% | 0% | 2 points |
Gusto sits at the other end. Its answer share is 100% and its named-first share is 86%, a gap of 14 points. Further down the table the gaps shrink because the answer shares shrink. Oyster, Wave Payroll and Zenefits sit at 2% and were never named first, so their 2-point gaps carry no first positions. Only Gusto, Rippling and Deel ever took a first position in the sample.
Do the 10 models agree on the same payroll vendors?
On the leader, yes. All 10 models named Gusto in all 5 of their answers, and the run records Gusto as the most-named vendor for every model, at 100%. Below the leader the split is wide. Each cell in the table counts the answers, of the 5 per model, that named the vendor.
| Vendor | GPT-5.6 Sol | ChatGPT | GPT-5.6 Luna | Claude Opus 5 | Claude | Claude Fable 5 | Gemini | Gemini 3.5 Flash | Perplexity | Sonar Reasoning Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gusto | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| Rippling | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| Deel | 4/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 | 4/5 | 5/5 |
| Justworks | 3/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 |
| QuickBooks Payroll | 2/5 | 3/5 | 2/5 | 4/5 | 2/5 | 5/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| OnPay | 2/5 | 1/5 | 2/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Patriot Payroll | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 3/5 |
| ADP | 0/5 | 2/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 3/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 2/5 | 1/5 |
| Square Payroll | 0/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 |
| Paychex | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 2/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 |
| Remote | 1/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 |
| Oyster | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 |
| Wave Payroll | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 |
| Zenefits | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 1/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 |
Claude Fable 5 named QuickBooks Payroll in all 5 of its answers. GPT-5.6 Sol named it in 2. OnPay took 4 of 5 from Claude Opus 5, Claude, Claude Fable 5, Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro, and 0 of 5 from Gemini 3.5 Flash. Patriot Payroll does not appear in any of the three OpenAI models’ answers. ADP drew nothing from GPT-5.6 Sol, Gemini or Gemini 3.5 Flash. Paychex appears only in Anthropic answers.
Remote appears once with GPT-5.6 Sol, once with Gemini and once with Gemini 3.5 Flash. Oyster and Wave Payroll were named once each, both by Sonar Reasoning Pro, and Zenefits was named once, by Claude Fable 5. Square Payroll’s 5 answers spread one each across ChatGPT, Claude Opus 5, Claude Fable 5, Perplexity and Sonar Reasoning Pro.
Do the provider families name different vendors?
They agree on the leader and split below it. Every OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Perplexity answer named Gusto. The table carries each family’s share of the answers that named a vendor, for the four vendors the run reports across all four families.
| Provider family | Recorded answers | Gusto named | Rippling named | Deel named | QuickBooks Payroll named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | 15 | 100% | 100% | 66.7% | 46.7% |
| Anthropic | 15 | 100% | 93.3% | 93.3% | 73.3% |
| 10 | 100% | 100% | 90% | 40% | |
| Perplexity | 10 | 100% | 100% | 90% | 60% |
Deel’s weakest family is OpenAI at 66.7% and its strongest is Anthropic at 93.3%. QuickBooks Payroll runs 73.3% with Anthropic against 46.7% with OpenAI and 40% with Google. Justworks was named in 73.3% of OpenAI answers and 60% of Google answers. OnPay was named in 80% of both its Anthropic and Perplexity answers.
The sample and the prompts are the same for every family. Which vendor a founder hears about depends on which assistant they ask.
What do the cited sources show?
The run counts the sources the answers cite. Top hosts: youtube.com (126), valueaddvc.com (118), gusto.com (105), patriotsoftware.com (44), johngalt-finance.com (39), hrtechsaas.com (35), warp.co (25) and karllhughes.com (25). Vendor-owned hosts appear in the count as well: gusto.com (105), patriotsoftware.com (44), rippling.com (22), oysterhr.com (22) and adp.com (19).
One limit applies to these numbers. Citation counts exclude ChatGPT, whose API returns no citations. Gemini citation redirects are resolved to real hosts before counting.
What can these counts not tell you about payroll software?
They cannot tell you what to buy. First position records where a product name appears in the answer text, and nothing more. Product quality, purchase suitability and recommendation strength are separate questions. One response was collected per question-model combination, so this is a descriptive snapshot of September 2026. Estimating repeatability, or isolating what the wording does to an answer, would need repeated controlled trials. Alias matching is string-based, API models differ from consumer chat products, and the prompts are English and not localised. The raw answers sit behind the figures in the Index entry, open for you to read.
Use these counts for one decision: how visible each name is in AI answers today. Memetik measures which software products AI models name when buyers ask. More editions sit in the research, and you can subscribe for the next one.
Frequently asked questions
Which payroll software is named in the most AI answers for startups?
Gusto. It appears in all 50 recorded answers, a 100% answer share, and takes a first position in 43, an 86% named-first share. Rippling is next at 49 of 50 answers and Deel at 42. The counts measure how often a name appears in the answers, not how strongly a model recommends it.
How often is Rippling named first in AI answers?
Rippling is named first in 4 of the 50 recorded answers, an 8% named-first share, while appearing in 49 of 50 answers. Deel is named first in 3, a 6% share. Every other named vendor, Justworks and QuickBooks Payroll included, is named first in none of the answers.
Do different AI models name different payroll vendors?
They agree on the leader and split below it. All 10 sampled models named Gusto in all 5 of their answers. QuickBooks Payroll was named in all 5 of Claude Fable 5’s answers and 2 of GPT-5.6 Sol’s. OnPay was named in 4 of Claude Opus 5’s answers and 0 of Gemini 3.5 Flash’s.
Which payroll vendors were never named in this sample?
Two tracked vendors, Paycor and Papaya Global, were not named in any of the 50 answers, and neither carries a figure here. The smallest named results are Oyster, Wave Payroll and Zenefits, 1 of 50 answers each (2%).
Why do the citation counts exclude ChatGPT?
ChatGPT’s API returns no citations, so its answers contribute nothing to the host counts. The counts come from the models that do return their sources. Gemini citation redirects are resolved to real hosts before counting, so a host count points at the page the answer cited.
Does this data show which payroll product a startup should buy?
No. The counts record where names appear in the answer text. They cannot price a product, compare features or judge support. Choosing payroll takes separate evidence about your requirements and the products themselves.
Behind the figures
Method and sources
Edition 2026-09: 5 fixed buyer prompts per category, sent to 10 models through their APIs. Each category contains 50 recorded answers. Answer share is the fraction of answers naming a vendor. Named first records the vendor's position before other tracked vendors, not the strength of a recommendation. This is one dated sample; small differences can reflect answer variation. API responses can differ from consumer chat products. Read the full method.
- Payroll for startups: recorded answers 50 answers · Edition 2026-09
Cite this research
Memetik. Payroll for startups: which software do AI models recommend?. Memetik, 17 September 2026. Data: edition 2026-09. https://www.memetik.ai/research/startup-payroll-according-to-ai
Charts and figures: CC BY 4.0. Credit Memetik Index and link to the source.