OnPay Review 2026

OnPay sells one payroll plan and lets you bolt on the rest, which makes it easy to price and easy to overbuy. The base plan covers what an accountant cares about: federal, state and local filings, W-2s and 1099s, multi-state payroll and a general ledger sync after every run.

Our view: buy the base plan alone unless you have hourly staff or no HR person. The bundles are good value only when you would otherwise buy two or more add-ons, and OnPay's plan quiz recommends a bundle as soon as you add hourly or salaried staff.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 78 payroll tools as of November 4, 2026, and only 13 of them (17%) offer a free tier, per the Toolradar payroll statistics. Paid payroll is the norm, so the comparison that matters is base fee plus per-worker fee, not free versus paid.

How we compared: OnPay's pricing and sign-up pages, Square Payroll's pricing page, Wave's payroll page, Roll by ADP's pricing page and QuickBooks' payroll pricing page, all read on November 4, 2026. Annual and per-team totals are our arithmetic on those printed prices.

OnPay is a US online payroll service for small and mid-size businesses, with HR, time tracking and benefits sold around a single payroll plan called Payroll Essentials. It pays W-2 employees and 1099 contractors by direct deposit, check or prepaid debit card, and runs unlimited pay runs, including off-cycle runs for bonuses and commissions.

The base plan is broader than its price suggests. It includes multi-state payroll in all 50 states with automatic state tax registrations and local withholding, Form 941 and 943 filings, year-end W-2s and 1099s, an accuracy guarantee, state new-hire reporting, offer letters with eSignature for I-9s and W-4s, and an employee mobile app.

For the finance side, an outside accountant or bookkeeper gets dedicated collaborator access, and payroll posts to the general ledger after every run with line-item mapping to your chart of accounts. A custom report designer works with more than 50 fields. Our QuickBooks Online pricing guide and Xero review cover the ledgers that sync sits on.

Benefits administration is in the base plan too: OnPay's licensed agents help pick group health, dental and vision plans, and you pay only the plan premiums. Workers' comp and 401(k) plans integrate the same way.

Setup is done for you. OnPay's team configures the account and migrates employee and prior wage data before your first pay run, at no charge, and its pricing page lists no implementation or integration fees. That matters most mid-year, when year-to-date wages must carry over for W-2s to come out right.

Each payday you review hours and pay, approve the run, and OnPay calculates withholding, pays the taxes and files the returns. You can edit or cancel a run, and adding a state for a remote hire costs nothing extra on the base plan.

The add-ons change the per-worker math. HR adds onboarding workflows, PTO approvals, an org chart and unlimited eSignature documents for $15 a month plus $2 per worker. Time Tracking adds time clocks, overtime and break rules and syncs approved hours into payroll for $15 plus $4 per worker. Compliance Resources and Live HR Support are flat monthly fees with no per-worker charge.

Support is by phone, email and chat for every client, with extended hours from 9am to 8pm on weekdays. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and six levels of user permissions are included, which helps when an owner, a manager and an outside bookkeeper all log in.

USD prices were read on November 4, 2026 on OnPay's pricing page and sign-up page, Square Payroll pricing, Wave payroll, Roll by ADP pricing and QuickBooks payroll pricing.

Ten workers on payroll alone, for a year (our arithmetic on printed prices): Square Payroll full service $1,140, Wave $1,200, OnPay $1,308, Roll by ADP $1,548, and QuickBooks Workforce Payroll with Simple Start accounting $1,836 at list price. Square and Wave share OnPay's per-person fee, so their lead is the base fee and stays the same at 5 or 50 workers.

Add-ons move OnPay quickly. Payroll plus Time Tracking bought separately is $64 a month plus $10 per worker; the hourly bundle adds HR to that for $70 plus $10 per worker, so adding HR inside the bundle costs $72 a year (our arithmetic). For 10 hourly workers that bundle is $170 a month, or $2,040 a year.

The salaried bundle (payroll, HR, Compliance Resources and Live HR Support) is $120 plus $7 per worker, and the full bundle adds Time Tracking at the price in the table. Bought one by one, those same products cost $139 plus $8 and $154 plus $12 (our arithmetic on the add-on prices), so the bundle cards' savings of $19 base plus $1 per worker and $24 base plus $2 per worker are real but only if you need every piece.

Promotions are not list prices. OnPay offers your first month free, Roll advertises three months free with terms, and QuickBooks takes 50% off the base fee for three months. Treat each as a one-time saving, not as the yearly cost. For QuickBooks' payroll-only options, see our QuickBooks Payroll pricing breakdown.

OnPay fits a small or mid-size business with employees in more than one state, an outside accountant who wants clean ledger entries, and an owner who would rather pay a little more for phone support and a done-for-you migration. The flat price across states is the deciding feature: a company adding remote hires in new states never changes plans.

It also fits salaried teams that will add benefits later, since administration is included and only premiums are paid, and accounting firms that run payroll for clients through its accountant access.

Skip it if the lowest bill is the goal. Square Payroll costs less every month for the same per-person fee and suits a business already on Square, and Wave does the same for a business already on its accounting. Both are covered in our Square Payroll review and Wave review.

Skip the bundles if you have one HR task. A team that only needs PTO approvals can get time tracking with PTO management from the Time Tracking add-on and skip HR entirely. And if you hire outside the US, an employer of record is the tool for those workers.