HR Software Pricing Index 2026: What a 20-Person Company Pays Before a Sales Call

A 20-person US company can build its HR stack for $8,185.95 a year from published prices alone: payroll, an HR add-on, performance reviews, an applicant tracking system, five background checks and a time clock. Eight of the 12 products in this index print a complete dollar price. Three print none, and one prints only a starting rate. Every page was read on October 18, 2026.

HRpresso data: of the 12 HR products in this basket, 8 publish a price you can multiply, 1 publishes a per-employee starting rate with an unpriced base fee, and 3 publish no figure at all. Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 74 payroll tools as of October 17, 2026, and only 16% of them (12 of 74) offer a free tier, on its payroll statistics page. Its HRIS ranking counts 33 HRIS tools as of October 18, 2026, and 10 of them publish a paid price. A free HR stack for 20 people is the exception, not the default.

An HR software pricing index, in this page's sense, is the yearly cost of the tools an HR lead is asked to budget, built only from figures each vendor prints. It is not a ranking. The best HR software page argues fit, and this page stops where the quote form starts.

The 12-product basket

A product counts as published when its own page shows a dollar figure you can multiply for this company. A starting rate with an unstated base fee counts as partial, and "request pricing" counts as unpublished. Intro offers are noted but never used in the year, because they end.

Product	Function	What the page prints	In the printed year?
OnPay	Payroll, HR add-on	Payroll Essentials $49 base + $6/worker; HR add-on $15 base + $2/worker	Yes, payroll and HR lines
Homebase	Time clock, payroll	Essentials $30/location/mo; payroll $49 base + $6 per employee paid after 6 free months	No, beaten on both lines
Rippling	Payroll and HRIS	Starts at $8 per employee per month, plus a monthly base fee it does not print	No, partial
ADP RUN	Payroll	A "Get Pricing" form, no dollar amount	No
Paychex	Payroll	"Request Pricing", no dollar amount	No
BambooHR	HRIS	Core $250/mo flat for 25 or fewer employees; Pro $425; Elite $650	No, the suite path below
Lattice	Performance	Performance $10/seat/mo, billed annually; $4,000 minimum a year	Yes, at the minimum
JazzHR	Applicant tracking	Hero $1,000/yr; Plus $3,480/yr; Pro $5,508/yr, billed annually	Yes, Hero
Workable	Applicant tracking	Standard $3,588/yr for 1 to 20 employees; Premier $7,188/yr	No, the higher ATS path
Greenhouse	Applicant tracking	Core, Plus and Pro plans, pricing customized, no dollar amount	No
GoodHire	Background checks	Basic from $29.99/check; Essential from $59.99; Complete from $94.99	Yes, Basic for 5 hires
Connecteam	Time clock	Operations Basic $29/mo billed yearly for the first 30 users; $35 monthly	Yes

Prices in that table were read on October 18, 2026, on the vendor page each product name links to.

How the printed year is built

The scenario is one US company with 20 employees at one location, paid on one payroll, with every employee in performance reviews, five new hires a year and hourly staff on a time clock. Where a vendor prints a yearly and a monthly rate, the index uses the yearly one. Taxes, payment fees, benefits premiums and intro discounts stay out.

Payroll, $2,028. OnPay's Payroll Essentials is a $49 base plus $6 per worker, so 20 workers make $169 a month and $2,028 a year. The page says workers in as many states as you need are included, and it lists no implementation or integration fees, so a second state does not change this line.

HR records, $660. OnPay's HR add-on is a $15 base plus $2 per worker, which is $55 a month for 20 people. This is the cheapest printed HR line in the basket, and it rides on the payroll account rather than standing alone.

Performance, $4,000. Lattice Performance is $10 per seat a month, so 20 seats come to $2,400 a year. Lattice's FAQ sets a minimum annual agreement above that seat total and bills every contract annually, so the company pays the minimum. The minimum costs this company $1,600 a year in seats it does not have, and it keeps binding up to 33 seats.

Hiring, $1,000. JazzHR Hero is $1,000 a year billed annually, with job postings starting at 3 a month, an applicant tracking system and a LinkedIn Recruiter integration. Five hires a year fit inside that allowance.

Background checks, $149.95. GoodHire's Basic package starts at $29.99 per check, and five hires make $149.95. Basic covers an SSN trace, a sex offender registry search, a global watchlist search and a national criminal search. It does not include the unlimited county criminal search that starts on Essential.

Time clock, $348. Connecteam's Operations Basic plan is $29 a month on yearly billing for the first 30 users, so 20 people cost the same as one. That plan includes GPS clock-in, basic scheduling and payroll integration.

Add the six lines and the printed year is $8,185.95, or $409.30 per employee. That is the published floor, and it buys a payroll-attached HR add-on rather than a standalone HRIS.

Payroll: one printed price, one partial, two forms

OnPay is the only payroll product in this basket whose page lets you multiply the whole bill. Its add-ons are priced the same way: Time Tracking is a $15 base plus $4 per worker, HR plus Time Tracking is a $21 base plus $4, and the bundled HR tiers run $71 plus $1 per worker or $81 plus $4. For this company, OnPay's own time tracking would cost $95 a month, more than three times the Connecteam line, so the index keeps them separate. The full product notes are in the OnPay review.

Homebase prints the same payroll rate as OnPay and adds the first 6 months free plus a $29 monthly rate for teams of up to 5. A 20-person team does not qualify for the small-team rate, and the free months are an intro, so the full-year cost matches OnPay. The Homebase review covers the scheduling side.

Rippling's FAQ says plans start at $8 per employee per month with a monthly base fee. Without the base fee, a Rippling year cannot be added up from the site: 20 employees at the starting rate is a floor that the base fee always lifts. The Rippling pricing page walks through what the quote adds. ADP RUN and Paychex print no figure on their small-business pages and send you to a pricing form, so both stay as quotes. Our payroll cost guide compares the full-service options in more depth.

Gusto and Justworks are outside this basket, and their plans are covered on the Gusto pricing and Justworks pricing pages.

The HRIS line: add-on or suite

BambooHR prints a flat monthly rate for companies with 25 or fewer employees: $250 for Core, $425 for Pro and $650 for Elite. Core for a year is $3,000. Swap it in for the OnPay HR add-on and the printed year rises to $10,525.95, which is what a company pays for a full employee record system, time-off tracking and reporting instead of a payroll-side HR module.

Above 25 employees, BambooHR's FAQ moves to per-employee pricing starting at $10.25 for Core, so a company planning to grow past that line should model the switch. BambooHR also lists payroll, benefits administration and time tracking as add-ons with no printed price, so the suite path still has blank cells. The BambooHR pricing page and the HRIS cost guide price those tiers further.

Performance: the minimum is the price

Lattice's page reads like seat pricing, but the annual minimum decides the bill for any company under 34 seats. Performance is $10 per seat, Goals is $8 and Engagement is $4, with Compensation at $6 more and the career-growth add-on at $4 more per seat. A 20-person company buying Performance and Engagement together pays $3,360 at seat rates, still under the minimum.

So the smart move for a small team is to fill the minimum with the products it would buy later anyway, rather than pay for empty seats. Lattice says performance management carries no extra implementation or change management fees. The fit argument is on the Lattice review and the performance management software ranking.

Hiring: a starter ATS or a full recruiting suite

JazzHR's three plans are all billed annually: Hero as priced above, Plus at $3,480 with up to 200 active jobs and AI candidate matching, and Pro at $5,508 with offers and e-signatures. The page says yearly billing saves up to 24% but prints no monthly rate, so the yearly figure is the one to budget. See the JazzHR review for the plan limits.

Workable's Standard plan prints $299 a month, shown as $3,588 a year for companies with 1 to 20 employees, with a 15-day trial that needs no card. Using it instead of JazzHR adds $2,588 to the printed year. Its add-ons are priced too: texting $89 a month, video interviews $109, assessments $59, and Performance and Engagement $39. The Workable review covers when that premium is worth it, and the applicant tracking systems ranking compares the rest.

Greenhouse sells Core, Plus and Pro, and its page says pricing is customized to your hiring needs, so it enters the budget as a quote. The Greenhouse review is the place to judge whether that quote is worth requesting.

Checks and the time clock

GoodHire's three packages start at $29.99, $59.99 and $94.99 per check. The step from Basic to Essential adds identity verification and unlimited county criminal searches, the two items a Basic check leaves out. At Essential, five hires cost $299.95 instead of the Basic figure. The background check cost guide and the GoodHire review explain what each package searches.

Connecteam's yearly rates are $29, $49 and $99 a month across Basic, Advanced and Expert, each for the first 30 users, with per-user charges above that. Homebase Essentials is $30 per location a month with unlimited employees, so a one-location company pays nearly the same as on Connecteam, but a second location doubles the Homebase line, while Connecteam prices by user count. Homebase's free Basic plan stops at one location and 10 employees, so it does not fit this company. The time clock software ranking and the Connecteam review cover the feature gaps.

What the blank lines do to an HR budget

The printed year covers payroll, an HR module, one performance product, a starter ATS, Basic checks and a time clock. It does not cover benefits premiums, a full HRIS beyond the add-on, or any of the four products that need a quote. If the plan shows only that printed total, every product still waiting on a quote is budgeted at nothing, and the real bill arrives later.

Treat the printed year as the floor of the budget, never the whole of it. Then add one line per unpublished product you are actually considering (Rippling, ADP, Paychex or Greenhouse) and fill it with the range from the quote, not a zero. For a company still choosing, the HR software for startups page and the payroll software ranking narrow the list before any quote is requested.

Methodology

Every figure here comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on October 18, 2026, and nothing was estimated where a vendor prints no number. The basket is 12 products across six functions: five payroll products, one HRIS, one performance product, three applicant tracking systems, one background check service and two time clocks, with Homebase counted under both payroll and time clock. Yearly rates are used where a vendor prints one. The Toolradar counts come from its payroll statistics page (snapshot October 17, 2026) and its HRIS ranking (October 18, 2026). We read pricing pages only and did not run any of these products. Louis Corneloup, who founded Toolradar and Dupple, edited this page. The rating method is on how we rate, and sourcing rules are in the editorial policy.

The next refresh is December 18, 2026, when every page in the basket is read again. A quote-only product joins the total the day its page shows a price that fits this 20-person company.

FAQ

What is the HR software pricing index for 2026?

It is a 12-product basket read on October 18, 2026, in which 8 products publish a complete price. For one US company with 20 employees, the lowest printed lines add to $8,185.95 a year: OnPay payroll at $2,028, the OnPay HR add-on at $660, Lattice at its $4,000 minimum, JazzHR Hero at $1,000, five GoodHire Basic checks at $149.95 and Connecteam Basic at $348.

How much does HR software cost per employee?

In this index the printed floor works out to $409.30 per employee per year for a 20-person company. The figure rises fast when a single product's minimum bites: Lattice's annual minimum alone is $200 per employee at this headcount, and a full BambooHR Core HRIS lifts the stack total to $10,525.95.

Which HR software publishes its price?

OnPay, Homebase, BambooHR, Lattice, JazzHR, Workable, GoodHire and Connecteam print dollar figures you can multiply. Rippling prints a starting rate of $8 per employee per month but not its base fee. ADP RUN, Paychex and Greenhouse print no figure and route buyers to a pricing form or a custom quote.

Is there free HR software for a 20-person company?

Not for this scenario. Homebase's free Basic plan stops at one location and 10 employees, and Toolradar counts a free tier on only 12 of the 74 payroll tools it tracks. The free HR software page covers what free tiers include for smaller teams.

Why does performance software cost more than payroll here?

Because of the minimum. Lattice prices Performance at $10 per seat a month, which is $2,400 a year for 20 people, but its minimum annual agreement is $4,000. Until a company passes 33 seats, the minimum sets the price, so filling it with Goals or Engagement seats costs nothing extra.

How often is this index updated?

Every two months. These figures were read on October 18, 2026, and the next read is December 18, 2026. The Toolradar payroll counts cited here are from its October 17, 2026 snapshot.

Directory pages for the products in the basket: OnPay, Homebase, Rippling, ADP, Paychex, BambooHR, Lattice, JazzHR, Workable, Greenhouse, GoodHire and Connecteam.

Cite this: HRpresso, "HR Software Pricing Index 2026: What a 20-Person Company Pays Before a Sales Call", October 2026. Prices read on vendor pages on October 18, 2026. CC BY 4.0.

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