Hourly Review 2026: Payroll With Pay-As-You-Go Workers Comp, Pricing and Verdict

Most payroll apps treat workers' comp as a referral to an insurance partner. Hourly builds its product around it: payroll, time clock and policy share one data set, so the premium you pay each period follows the wages you actually paid. For a contractor whose payroll swings with the season, that matters more than a few dollars per employee on the payroll fee.

HRpresso data: we priced Hourly and four alternatives for a 10-person and a 25-person crew from each vendor's printed list price. Of the four that print a price, Hourly Gold is the most expensive at both sizes, and it is also the one whose entry plan lists GPS time tracking, job costing and workers' comp integration together. Toolradar, the software directory Dupple runs, evaluated 78 payroll tools for its October 2026 ranking, and only 1 of its top 10 has a free plan, so paying a monthly fee for payroll is the norm.

Plan prices and features were read on Hourly's pricing page and workers' comp page on November 4, 2026, and premium mechanics in Hourly's help center. We run no test lab, so the verdicts rest on published prices and the cost scenarios we computed from them.

Hourly is a payroll and workers' compensation platform for small businesses with hourly workers, with construction trades, field services and other crews that clock in at job sites as the clearest fit. It runs full-service payroll (tax payments and filings, W-2s, garnishments and child support), includes an employee app with GPS time tracking and job costing reports, and connects all of that to a workers' comp policy.

Hourly says it is not a PEO. Your workers stay your employees, and the bill separates payroll fees, taxes and insurance premiums instead of bundling them into one rate. You can start with payroll or with workers' comp alone, and Hourly says it handles the payroll transition for you. Coverage comes from carriers rated A+ Superior by A.M. Best, sold through your insurance agent or broker.

Payroll is billed per active user. Hourly counts anyone who records at least one shift or gets paid at least once in the month, so a seasonal worker who did nothing in January costs nothing that month. That rule suits crews that swell in summer and shrink in winter, because you never have to deactivate people to keep the bill down.

Workers' comp is where Hourly differs. A traditional policy asks for a deposit up front, estimates the year's payroll, and settles the difference at an audit that can bring a large bill. Hourly's workers' comp page says it takes no deposit, charges premiums from actual payroll, and gives policies under $5,000 a streamlined audit with minimal paperwork. You can generate a certificate of insurance from your phone.

The premium itself follows the industry formula Hourly prints: payroll per $100, times the class code rate, times your experience modifier, plus state taxes and fees. Only the straight-time part of overtime counts, and tips and severance are excluded, per Hourly's help article. Businesses that report payroll themselves enter it by class code each period in the app and press Pay, and Hourly pays carriers every business day at 10:30 am Pacific time.

We priced two crews on list prices. A 10-person crew pays $200 a month on Gold and $280 on Platinum; a 25-person crew pays $380 on Gold and $520 on Platinum. Over a year that is $2,400 or $3,360 for the smaller crew, our arithmetic before any workers' comp premium, which depends on your state, class codes and claims history.

Hourly prints two of its three plans on its pricing page, verified on November 4, 2026. Gold costs $80 a month plus $12 a month per active employee. Platinum costs $120 a month plus $16 per employee. Platinum+ is sold at exclusive pricing on request. The page lists no annual discount and says there is no obligation and you can cancel anytime; a 90-day money-back guarantee refunds the subscription in full. Workers' comp premiums are separate from these fees and set by the policy.

Platinum is worth it only for specific needs. It costs $40 a month more in base fee and $4 more per employee, so the gap widens with every worker you add. That buys next-day direct deposit, next-day paper check delivery, employee hiring documents, departments and a dedicated customer success team. A crew that pays on a normal cycle and does its own hiring paperwork gets everything it needs on Gold.

Against the alternatives, Hourly costs more for payroll alone. On list prices for 10 employees, OnPay's Payroll, Time Tracking and HR bundle comes to $170 a month, Square Payroll to $95, and Homebase payroll to $109 once its six free months end. At 25 employees, the same order holds. OnPay also offers pay-as-you-go workers' comp through a partner, and Paychex runs a workers' comp payment service for its payroll clients in every state except North Dakota, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming. Hourly's edge is that the insurance link is its core product, not an add-on.

Hourly is the right pick for a construction, landscaping or field-service business with a crew of hourly workers and a workers' comp policy that hurts at audit time. If your payroll swings between seasons, paying premiums from real wages instead of an estimate keeps cash in the business during slow months, and the job costing reports show which jobs ate the labor budget. Our construction time clock ranking covers the clock side of that job.

Gold fits most crews. It already includes GPS time tracking, scheduling, expense reporting and the workers' comp link, which many payroll providers sell separately. Move to Platinum only if you need money in workers' accounts the next day or want a dedicated success team to call.

It is a weaker fit in three cases. An office business with salaried staff and a cheap workers' comp class gains little from the integration and should compare OnPay or Square Payroll. A business that wants HR help on its entry plan will find it only on quote-based Platinum+. And a very small crew may find the base fee heavy: our guide to what payroll costs a small business sets the totals side by side.