ADP vs Paychex (2026): Which Payroll Desk Fits a Small Team?

Roll by ADP is the cheaper published card once a team passes five people: $39/mo plus $5 per employee, against SurePayroll Full-Service at $29/mo plus $7. ADP RUN and Paychex Flex, the desks an HR lead actually calls, publish no list price. Get both quotes, and use the printed cards only to see what a sibling product costs before the call.

Payroll software calculates gross pay, withholds taxes, and files the returns. A handbook, a hiring tool, or a named specialist sits on a higher package at both companies, so the logo on the demo is not the bill.

Toolradar data: the directory we run tracks 74 payroll tools as of October 17, 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan is $22/mo across the 22 tools that publish one, on the payroll ranking. ADP and Paychex are both in that set. The rates below were read the same day on each vendor's own pages.

At a glance

Product	Who on the people team it fits	Price read on October 17, 2026	What that price leaves out
Roll by ADP	An owner running payday from a phone	$39/mo plus $5 per employee	Same-day deposit, billed per transaction with no fee printed
ADP RUN Essential through HR Pro	A company of 1 to 49 that wants a service desk	No list price. Every package says Get pricing	Time, retirement, health, workers' compensation, and contractor fees
ADP Workforce Now Select, Plus, Premium	The suite after that small-company band	No list price. Every package says Get pricing	Whether benefits or a time clock are on the package you were shown
SurePayroll Full-Service	A Paychex brand with a card you can multiply	$29/mo plus $7 per employee	A second state at $9.99/mo, and year-end forms billed once a year
SurePayroll No Tax Filing	A team that will file its own payroll taxes	$20/mo plus $4 per employee	The deposits and returns, which stay on your desk
Paychex Flex Basic, Foundations, Advanced, Complete	The HCM quote most HR teams are offered	No list price. The compare page asks you to call	Phone support on Basic, and timekeeping on every package

The Roll row and the two SurePayroll rows are bills you can multiply before anyone picks up the phone, while RUN, Workforce Now, and Flex stay quotes. Treat a salesperson's number as high when it clears a sibling product that does less.

What do 10 and 25 people cost on the printed cards?

The monthly bill is the base plus headcount times the per-person fee, for people you pay that month, in one state, with no promotion applied, and the year column is that month times 12. These totals are our multiplication of the printed cards, not an ADP or Paychex order, so carry them into the sales call as a ceiling rather than as the invoice you expect to sign.

Product	5 people / month	10 people / month	10 people / year	25 people / month	25 people / year
Roll by ADP	$64	$89	$1,068	$164	$1,968
SurePayroll Full-Service	$64	$99	$1,188	$204	$2,448
SurePayroll No Tax Filing	$40	$60	$720	$120	$1,440
ADP RUN, any package	Quote	Quote	Quote	Quote	Quote
Paychex Flex, any package	Quote	Quote	Quote	Quote	Quote

Roll's base is $10 higher and its per-person fee is $2 lower, so the gap flips at five people and then widens. Below that crossover, Full-Service costs less if you want taxes filed. Above it, Roll costs less, if the phone app is the desk you need. At 10 people Roll is $10 a month under Full-Service, $120 over a year, and at 25 people the gap is $40 a month, $480 over a year.

No Tax Filing looks cheaper still, at $60 and $120, only because someone on staff files and deposits the taxes. It is not a substitute for Full-Service or for Roll, both of which file, and it is a false saving if nobody owns those deposits.

A second work state breaks the five-person tie the week a hire crosses a state line. SurePayroll includes the first state and charges $9.99/mo for multi-state filing, so five people in two states are $73.99 on Full-Service against $64 on Roll. Roll files in all 50 states with no extra line on its card.

RUN lists multi-jurisdiction payroll on Essential and prints no extra charge, so a second state is a weak reason to buy a higher RUN tier. Flex prints no per-state fee from Basic through Complete, so on that quote a second state is a question for the proposal, not a line you can add tonight.

Year-end forms are a separate SurePayroll bill, so a budget built from the monthly card alone comes up short in December. W-2 and 1099-NEC forms are charged once a year at a $50 base plus $5 per form, the free-month promotion does not cover that fee, and ten W-2s are $100 for the year on top of the monthly card. The compare page also warns that additional charges per payroll may apply.

Accounting software integration at $4.99/mo, local tax filing at another $9.99/mo, and the Stratustime clock at $5/mo plus $3 per employee sit outside the Full-Service sticker. A clock, a local tax, or a bookkeeping sync takes you off the number in the table.

Roll's missing number is same-day deposit, priced per transaction with no dollar on the fee. Next-day or standard deposit sits inside the printed rate, so a crew that expects to be paid the day hours are approved is not buying the figure in the table. For a wider set of small-business bills, including vendors that do print a full card, read how much payroll costs.

Which vendor wins on support, HR scope, and the contract?

Neither logo wins every row: the printed cards win when you need a budget you can defend this week, and RUN wins on support hours and on a penalty promise that covers every package. Once a company outgrows the RUN menu, that page no longer applies, while Flex's October offer still reaches 250 employees, so a larger company should shop Flex or Workforce Now.

Question	ADP	Paychex	Winner
A price you can multiply today	Roll prints a base and a per-person fee. RUN does not	SurePayroll prints two cards. Flex does not	Tie, and only on the sibling products
Companies past 49 people	RUN's package page stops at that headcount. Workforce Now is the next quote	Flex's free-month offer still covers a new client up to 250 employees	Paychex on a printed size band. ADP only after a Workforce Now quote
Live support	24/7 phone and online support on every RUN package	Phone and email included from Foundations, not on Basic	ADP on hours. Paychex if Foundations is the quote
Garnishment and state unemployment	Both start on Enhanced, not Essential	Garnishment from Foundations. State unemployment from Advanced	Paychex, if you stay off Basic
Handbook and applicant tracking	Handbook on Complete. Tracking on HR Pro, powered by CareerPlug	Handbooks included from Advanced, with no add-on row below that. Tracking included from Advanced	Paychex on tracking, which starts one package before RUN's top tier. Handbooks start on the third package at both
Penalty promise	ADP pays fines if ADP caused the filing error, on every RUN package	SurePayroll Full-Service pays IRS penalties from its own error. Flex does not print that promise	ADP for the desk. SurePayroll for the printed card
Contract on the public page	RUN's FAQ says you do not have to sign a contract	The October free-month offer requires one year. A quote that skips the offer has no term printed	ADP, until a Paychex order says otherwise
Time to a budget number	Roll today, or a RUN quote	SurePayroll today, or a Flex quote	Tie

Where the two vendors disagree

ADP's compare page says that unless you are on Paychex's highest tiers, email and live phone support cost extra. Paychex's own matrix, read the same day, does not say that, so do not let ADP's page describe the quote you are about to sign.

On Flex, Basic includes online chat, and phone and email are an add-on there and included on Foundations and Advanced. A payroll specialist and advisors who know the account are included only on Complete. Foundations is the column Paychex labels Best Value, not the top tier, so ADP's sentence fits Basic and misses the middle columns. Put the support name on the order, because a demo labeled "Paychex" can still be Basic.

ADP marks ZipRecruiter, a job-description wizard, and salary benchmarks as things Paychex does not offer, while Paychex marks applicant tracking on Advanced and Complete and pay benchmarking on Complete, with both available as add-ons below that. Those lines are not the same feature with the same vendor attached. If the open role is why you are switching, ask each proposal to name the job board and the benchmark source. Compare that line with a separate applicant tracking system before you buy a higher payroll tier to get one.

ADP also says it pays 1 in 6 US employees and that more than 900,000 small businesses use it, while Paychex's small-business page titles itself as trusted by about 840,000 clients. Those counts come from each company's own marketing, and neither one tells you which package the quote will land on, so leave them out of the tier decision.

What the HR desk actually includes

RUN Essential already covers payday, direct deposit, tax forms, multi-company payroll, multi-jurisdiction payroll, and background checks. That is enough when the only job is paying people. The electronic Form I-9, ZipRecruiter, garnishment payment, state unemployment management, job costing, and labor-law posters start on Enhanced, so one garnishment or a poster requirement knocks you off Essential even when headcount has not changed.

Complete is the help desk: a handbook wizard, salary benchmarks, HR forms, and HR training, and HR Pro adds applicant tracking, a learning system, harassment-prevention training, and legal assistance from Upnetic. Buy those tiers when managers are already asking for the document or the hiring tool. Time, retirement, workers' compensation, and health insurance are available on every RUN package and priced on none of them, so a clock for hourly staff is a second invoice. Price a dedicated tool in time tracking software before you accept the add-on as the only option.

Payroll fees rise with frequency, including off-cycle runs, and some states set a minimum frequency, so a weekly crew should not reuse a monthly quote even when W-2 headcount stays flat. Contractors are a separate bundle, a monthly base plus a per-contractor fee plus year-end processing, with none of those amounts printed, so a 1099-heavy company cannot read its bill from the W-2 math here. Switching packages means calling sales, and the public page cannot price that jump after you have signed.

Flex puts more of the everyday desk in the base, then charges once you need a person on the phone or a clock. Unlimited payroll, tax filing, W-2s and 1099s, and employee self-service are included from Basic through Complete. A compliance library and labor-law posters start on Foundations, and a custom handbook is included from Advanced with no add-on below that, so a poster or a handbook is what pushes you up a tier. Applicant tracking, state unemployment service, and job costing are included from Advanced and sold as add-ons underneath: one extra can stay on Foundations, and a stack of them is the case for stepping up.

Time and attendance, and advanced scheduling, are add-ons on all four Flex packages, so hourly staff cost extra on every column. You set the account up yourself on Basic and Foundations, Paychex assists on Advanced, and managed setup, with Paychex leading onboarding, is included on Complete. The compare FAQ says a switch can be live in as few as 48 hours after you sign, including year-to-date balances. Ask for that line on the order if a mid-quarter cutover is why you called, because a FAQ line is not a go-live date.

The same Paychex page sells HR Pro and an HR PEO beside the four packages, neither with a printed price. A PEO usually means the provider becomes a co-employer, so confirm in writing whether you remain the only employer. If that is the real purchase, start with what a PEO costs and the PEO services roundup rather than treating a Flex payroll quote as the answer.

Workforce Now is the ADP suite once you leave the RUN band, and Select, Plus, and Premium are all quote-only. Benefits administration starts on Plus and time and attendance starts on Premium, so a team that needs both is shopping the top suite, still with no public total. Recruiting, access to more than 25,000 job boards plus ZipRecruiter, and a learning library of more than 70,000 courses are on all three, along with payroll and a digital I-9, so none of that is a reason to leave Select.

What do the October 2026 free-month offers actually give you?

All three promotions expire this month, and each one skips a different part of the bill, so read the terms before anyone puts "six months free" into a budget.

ADP's three-month offer is for new RUN clients in the continental United States who sit inside the headcount band the RUN menu is built for. They must sign the sales order and start processing by October 22, 2026, use direct debit of fees, and keep the original bundle and pay frequency for three months. Months 4, 5, and 6 are the free ones, and only for clients in good standing, so the opening quarter is billed and the waiver arrives after that. Pass-through costs, delivery, off-cycle runs, hardware, and penalty and interest fees stay payable, and the offer cannot be combined with another promotion.

Paychex's "do not pay until April 2027" offer runs from October 12, 2026 through October 31, 2026. A new client with 1 to 250 employees, not an add-on to an existing Paychex account, can get up to six free months of payroll by signing a one-year agreement and running a first payroll in that window. Starting earlier in the window means more free months than a signature on the last day. Qualifying bundles are Foundations, Advanced, Complete, and the older names Enterprise, Enterprise+, Pro, and Select.

Basic is not on that list, so the package a demo often opens on does not qualify. The credit covers payroll fees only, and setup, returned-payment fees, delivery, premium processing, 401(k), and time and attendance stay owed, so a clock keeps billing through the free months. Leave before the year is up and Paychex can recover the value of those months, plus whatever the termination clause already allows.

SurePayroll's six-free-months offer runs from October 1, 2026 through October 31, 2026, for a new small-business account that is not a household employer. Credits land in months 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11, and the account has to stay active for 12 consecutive months, so the free months are staggered rather than a block at the start. Year-end fees, multi-state filing, and accounting integration are excluded. The account menu still has a cancel path, so leaving early keeps the months already received and drops the ones not yet credited, a softer exit than Flex, where those months can be clawed back.

RUN's package FAQ says you do not have to sign a contract and that services can be terminated at any time, and that sentence describes the product, not only the October offer. Paychex's free months exist only inside a one-year agreement, and a Flex quote that skips the promotion has no term on the compare page. Ask for the renewal language before you sign: the free months mean a year of Paychex, and an easy exit is the RUN FAQ.

Who should choose ADP, and who should choose Paychex?

Roll fits an owner who will run payday from a phone and does not need a handbook, an applicant tracker, or a specialist. At 10 people the card is $89 a month, and it is the wrong product the week a manager needs a paper offer letter or a Saturday call to a person who knows the account.

SurePayroll Full-Service fits a team under five people that wants taxes filed and a number tonight, or any headcount that would rather see the sticker than wait on Flex. Live help on that card includes evenings and weekends, which is more than Basic Flex shows and less than RUN's 24/7 phone line.

No Tax Filing fits only when someone on staff already owns the deposits and the returns. The lower base is what you pay for keeping that work, and the row stops making sense the week that person leaves.

RUN Essential fits a company still on the small-company menu that wants the penalty promise and multi-state payroll and can wait for a quote. Move to Enhanced when a garnishment, state unemployment, or ZipRecruiter is already real, because those items are not in the entry package, and move to Complete or HR Pro when managers need the help desk, a handbook, or applicant tracking. Workforce Now is the conversation once you outgrow that menu, and none of its three packages shows a price.

Foundations is the first Flex package with phone and email included, and the first one eligible for the October free months. Basic fits a team that will live in chat, so skip it when you need a phone line or that promotion. Advanced adds a handbook, applicant tracking, and state unemployment, and Complete is where the specialist and the managed setup sit. If the demo never names one of those four, you do not yet know what you are pricing.

The product write-ups are the ADP review and the Paychex review. Package math for the rest of ADP's stack is in ADP pricing. If the alternative you are actually holding is a published Gusto card, read Gusto versus ADP, the Gusto review, and Gusto pricing.

For the wider shelf, see payroll software. A company still choosing a category, rather than these two logos, should start with HR software for startups.

How we compared

On October 17, 2026 we read ADP's RUN package page, its Roll comparison, its Paychex comparison, its three-month offer terms, and the Workforce Now package page. The same day we read Paychex's package comparison and small-business payroll page, plus SurePayroll's plan comparison, pricing page, and promotion disclaimer. Headcount totals multiply those printed rates. They leave out tax, Roll's same-day fee, SurePayroll's per-payroll charges, and every add-on the pages mark but do not price. Louis Corneloup, founder of Toolradar and Dupple, edited the verdict. The about page, the editorial policy, and how we rate describe how this site handles a quote-only vendor. Re-check both order forms before anyone signs, and expect the prices to be re-read about every 60 days.

Cite this: HRpresso, "ADP vs Paychex (2026): Which Payroll Desk Fits a Small Team?", October 2026.

FAQ

Is ADP or Paychex cheaper in 2026?

On the cards a buyer can read, they tie at five people and Roll is cheaper after that. Full-Service is the lower bill below five people because its base is smaller, even though each employee costs more. RUN and Flex publish no price, so neither desk can be called cheaper until both quotes are in writing. Use the printed siblings as a ceiling, not as the invoice.

How much does Paychex Flex cost?

Flex Basic, Foundations, Advanced, and Complete do not publish a list price, and the compare page routes each one to a conversation. The only Paychex brands you can multiply tonight are the SurePayroll cards: Full-Service is a monthly base plus a per-employee fee with tax filing included, and No Tax Filing is a lower base because you file. The October promotion can wipe payroll fees for several months and still leave setup, timekeeping, and a one-year term on the order.

How much does ADP RUN cost?

RUN Essential, Enhanced, Complete, and HR Pro do not publish a list price. Roll, the phone app, does: a monthly base plus a per-employee fee, with same-day pay extra and no dollar printed on that fee. RUN's own FAQ says the bill rises with how often you run payroll, and that contractors are a separate base plus a per-contractor fee, with neither amount printed. The three free months in the October offer apply to months 4 through 6, after three paid months, and only if you start by October 22, 2026.

Which has better customer support, ADP or Paychex?

Every RUN package includes 24/7 phone and online support, so ADP wins on hours when Saturday questions are part of the job. Paychex includes phone and email from Foundations upward and a specialist on Complete, while Basic stays on chat unless you buy the phone line. ADP's compare page calls that phone line an extra except on the highest tiers, which matches Basic and misses Foundations. SurePayroll Full-Service includes evenings and weekends, wider than Basic and shorter than the RUN line.

Does ADP or Paychex require a long-term contract?

RUN's package page says you do not have to sign a contract and that you can end services at any time. Paychex's free-month offer, open through October 31, 2026, requires a one-year agreement, and leaving early lets Paychex recover the free months. A Flex proposal that skips that offer does not show a term on the public page. Ask for the renewal and any price-increase language, then set that clause next to the RUN FAQ before you treat either sales call as the contract.

Which is better above 50 employees?

Paychex's October offer still covers a new client up to 250 employees, on Foundations or above, inside a one-year term. RUN's package page is built for 1 to 49, so a company past that band is looking at Workforce Now, where Select, Plus, and Premium all say Get pricing. Benefits administration starts on Plus and the time clock starts on Premium, so needing both puts you on the top suite. Neither side has a public total at that headcount, which is why the printed math on this page stops at Roll and SurePayroll.

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