12 Best Payroll Services For Small Business Of 2026 – Forbes Advisor

Our research found that Square Payroll is the best payroll provider for paying contractors, earning a 4.8-star rating from our research team. It costs just $6 per contractor per month and includes 1099s at the end of the year.

The list of payroll and HR features Square Payroll provides rivals the higher-priced offerings of competing vendors. Square Payroll includes automatic payroll runs, employee self-onboarding, labor-cost reporting and multistate tax filings and payments.

It took me less than 30 minutes to create a Square Payroll account once I entered information about the company and a payment method. You start by designating and linking your bank account, then you add team members, set your pay schedule and sign up for benefits, if you wish. Time-tracking options include when your workweek starts, clock in/clock out preferences, and break and overtime settings.

Getting started with Square Payroll takes only a few minutes, including your company information, team members, payroll settings and mobile app download.

Square’s reputation for affordable and easy-to-use POS systems carries over to its payroll services that works with its Shifts time-tracking and scheduling app, Team Communication collaboration tool and Advanced Access security app to create a complete workplace management system. Unfortunately, each of the four components is priced separately.

Learn more: Read our full Square Payroll review.

We found that Homebase is the best payroll provider for retail and restaurant businesses, earning a 4.7-star rating from our research team. After you build a schedule, employees can clock in and out for their shifts, and this time is automatically added into payroll.

Homebase can sync their hours, breaks, PTO and overtime into their time sheet, along with multiple wage rates for each employee. There are even options to integrate your POS so you can automatically add tips into payroll without any complicated math on your end.

You can view all of your team’s hours, overtime and PTO before submitting payroll.

In addition, perks like unlimited payroll runs, multiple locations in one payroll run and bonus and commission payments are all really useful and not included in every payroll software. The one downside is that to get some of these perks, including the tip manager and next-day pay, you have to upgrade to Homebase’s highest-tier plan or pay for the add-on, which can get pricey.

Learn more: Read our full Homebase review.

Our research found that Justworks is the best payroll provider for professional employer organization (PEO) services, earning a 4.6-star rating from our research team. While many PEO vendors charge $200 or more per employee each month, Justworks’s PEO Basic and PEO Plus are priced at $79 and $109 per employee each month, respectively, and come with all the features of the base payroll plan, plus a lot extra.

Set third-party permissions for accessing payroll data in Justworks’s PEO settings.

When you outsource your payroll operations to Justworks PEO, you can give your accountant and other third parties access to your payroll data and set the permissions each will have for accessing your payroll data. The options include managing expenses, making payments, processing timecards, and handling invoices and reports. Both the PEO Basic and PEO Plus products come with 24/7 support and access to the company’s HR experts. Only PEO Plus has a full range of health benefits and advanced payroll and HR analytics.

Learn more: Read our full Justworks review.

Our research found that OnPay is the best payroll provider for multistate payroll, earning a 4.6-star rating from our research team. You can pay employees anywhere in the U.S. all for $49 a month plus $6 per employee, with no extra fees for additional states.

It calculates all of your federal, state and local taxes automatically for each payroll run. While OnPay doesn’t handle state tax registration for you directly, it does partner with Middesk if you need help. Middesk costs $199 for an account, and you’ll pay additional fees if you need Secretary of State registrations.

I like the looks of OnPay’s payroll run dashboard.

I really like how simple OnPay’s pricing is—there’s just one plan to choose from, and you don’t have to pay for upgrades or add-ons. Included in that pricing is wage garnishments, multiple pay rates and schedules and custom and prebuilt payroll reports. However, things like performance management and recruiting are missing, meaning OnPay might not work as you start to scale.

Learn more: Read our full OnPay review.

Our research found that QuickBooks Payroll is the best payroll provider for payment and expense management integrations, earning a 4.5-star rating from our research team. Beyond easy QuickBooks integration, there are hundreds of third-party integrations available for QuickBooks Payroll, including payment and expense-management tools as well as dozens of non-QuickBooks accounting apps.

For example, companies that pay wages to employees and commissions to sales staff can link QuickBooks Payroll to one of 16 different commission management apps to combine their compensation payments. If you’re switching to QuickBooks Payroll from ADP, Paychex or Gusto, you can migrate your employee information and payroll history directly to QuickBooks Payroll. The import wizard runs gives you the option to upload your employee earning record and employee journal report from your previous payroll service.

Import your previous payroll and employee information when switching to QuickBooks Payroll in just a few steps.

Other QuickBooks Payroll integrations link your payroll operations with time-tracking apps, such as ClockShark and Timesheets.com, and sync with ADP RUN, Square Payroll, Paychex and dozens of other payroll apps. The product’s employee benefits integrations include Gusto, GoBenefits and Vestwell.

Learn more: Read our full QuickBooks Payroll review.

Our research found that Remote is the best payroll provider for global payroll management, earning a 4.4-star rating from our research team. Remote manages tax and regulatory compliance for operations in nearly 200 countries, including support from local experts in each jurisdiction.

Remote’s integrated payroll processing gives managers a clear view of their international operations, allowing them to check the status of payroll runs in all countries and the pay of all workers in a single window. The status of employee onboarding, expense reimbursements, work schedules and time-off requests are a click away. Managers can see at a glance which payroll runs are scheduled, in progress or awaiting approval.

Multinational companies get a single view of the pay records for all employees in a single window.

Companies gain deeper insights into their international payroll through Remote’s reports that cover year-to-date payroll costs, gross-to-net breakdowns, expense reimbursements and PTO for workers in all localities. Remote’s international compliance includes the IP Guard service that protects your business’s intellectual property by establishing a local entity to which IP rights are transferred and then passed back to your company. You also receive automatic compliance updates to your international payroll through the Remote Watchtower service that monitors regulatory changes and automatically updates your payroll system to maintain compliance.

Learn more: Read our full Remote review.

Our research found that Deel is the best payroll provider for scaling, earning a 4.4-star rating from our research team. It has different packages available for very small businesses of up to 20 people, all the way up to businesses with over 2,000 people.

Deel offers employer of record and contractor of record services, contractor management, and both U.S. and global payroll services, meaning you can also use it if you plan to expand across the country or globally. It even provides full PEO services for $95 a month if you want extra help managing your HR load as you grow.

Deel lets you manage payroll by entity, which is good if you’re spread across the globe.

With its standard U.S. payroll, you get registration support in all 50 states, which is something a lot of other payroll providers for small business make you figure out on your own. You’ll also benefit from automated tax filings, compliance support and integrations with over 68 HR, finance and productivity tools. Upgrading to global payroll adds exchange rate management and multicurrency support.

Learn more: Read our fullDeel review.