How we compare payroll software
We list 10 payroll platforms available to Australian employers, of which 7 providers publish a price.
Cost is modelled as the base fee plus the per-employee fee at the headcount you enter, because that is how almost every vendor here actually bills. Enter your real headcount rather than reading the per-employee rate: a platform with a monthly minimum is far more expensive per head for a small team than its rate suggests, and the ranking between the cheapest options changes as you grow.
Ranking is arithmetic on published rates. Commission never moves a provider, and we do not sell prominence.
Award interpretation: the payroll software feature that decides it
If your staff are covered by a Modern Award, and in hospitality, retail, care and construction they almost certainly are, this is the feature that matters more than price.
Award interpretation means the software applies the right base rate, penalty rates, overtime, allowances and casual loading automatically from the roster and the hours worked. Without it, somebody in your business is reading the award and doing that arithmetic by hand, every pay run, and carrying the liability when they get it wrong. Underpayment cases in Australia routinely trace back to exactly that.
It is concentrated in the Australian-built platforms and thin or absent in the global ones. That is not a quality judgement about the global platforms; it is that award interpretation is a large, country-specific engine that only pays for itself in one market.
Treat it as a filter rather than a preference. A platform without it is cheaper on the page and more expensive in practice.
Single Touch Payroll Phase 2, and what payroll software must report
Single Touch Payroll is mandatory: every pay run reports to the ATO as it happens rather than at year end. Phase 2 extends what must be itemised, disaggregating gross pay into categories like overtime, bonuses, allowances and paid leave, and adding employment and income type reporting.
Practically, this is table stakes rather than a differentiator. Almost everything in this table does it, and anything that does not is not a candidate for an Australian employer, so it belongs in the check-and-move-on category rather than the comparison.
What does still differ is how much of the categorisation the software does for you against how much you configure yourself, which is a setup cost rather than a monthly one and is worth asking about during a trial.
Standalone payroll software or bundled with your accounting
There are two routes into payroll and they price completely differently.
Bundled with accounting. Xero and QuickBooks both run payroll, and neither will do it without a paid accounting subscription underneath. That makes their real starting cost the accounting plan plus payroll, which is the right answer if you needed the accounting anyway and an expensive route if you did not.
🟠 It also means the base fee shown for those two in this table is the accounting plan payroll requires, not a payroll-only price. That is the honest figure to compare, because it is what you would actually pay.
Standalone. A dedicated payroll platform charges you once for payroll and integrates with whatever accounting you already run. It is the better answer for an employer whose accounting is settled, and particularly for one whose payroll is complicated enough that award interpretation matters more than ledger integration.
A third route exists and is usually a mistake for domestic employers: global payroll platforms built to pay staff in countries where you have no legal entity. They are priced for that job.
What you will actually pay for payroll software
Among the platforms publishing a price: MYOB is $3/emp/mo on a base of $15/mo (Payroll Only, up to 4 emp), QuickBooks $6/emp/mo on $33/mo (Simple Start), and Employment Hero $10/emp/mo (Payroll) subject to $100/mo min.
Xero prices payroll by plan rather than per head: its base is $78/mo (Grow), the accounting plan payroll requires, and the number of people you can pay is set by that plan rather than billed separately.
Deel, Remote and Papaya Global all sit around $41/emp/mo, which is the global-payroll price rather than the Australian one. They earn it when you are paying someone overseas and they are poor value when you are not.
The rest quote. Note that casuals count as employees for billing, which is where casual-heavy employers get their worst surprise: the bill follows headcount, not hours.
Traps to avoid with payroll software
Reading a per-employee rate below the monthly minimum. Under the floor, the rate is not what you pay.
Treating Xero or QuickBooks payroll as a standalone price. The accounting subscription underneath is part of the cost.
Buying a global payroll platform for an Australian team.
Assuming award interpretation is included because payroll is. It is the single biggest feature gap in this table.
Counting only permanent staff.
Forgetting that payroll is the one system you cannot run late. The cheapest platform you have to abandon mid-year is not cheap.