Every payroll product HMRC recognises, and which suppliers publish a price
HMRC recognises 177 payroll products from 144 suppliers. It publishes their names and nothing else. We checked every one of those suppliers’ own websites, and 10% publish a price. The rest want you to ask.
HMRC publishes the definitive list of payroll software it recognises, then says it cannot recommend one product over another and tells you to consider which features you need. It gives you a supplier name and a product name to do that with. This site adds the rest.
Start with the question you arrived with
What the list actually contains
A third of HMRC’s list is not what a small employer is shopping for. P11D tools, filing-only software and full HR platforms all sit on the same page as ordinary payroll, under the same heading, with nothing to tell them apart. Here is the breakdown, worked out from what each product calls itself.
| What it is | Products | Share | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payroll for employers | 134 | 76% | What most people mean by payroll software |
| HR system that includes payroll | 16 | 9% | Sold per employee across the whole platform, so payroll is rarely priced alone |
| P11D, expenses and benefits | 12 | 7% | Does not run payroll. Easy to buy by mistake |
| RTI filing only | 9 | 5% | Gets submissions to HMRC. Does not calculate pay |
| For bureaux and agents | 3 | 2% | Built to run many clients, not one employer |
| Umbrella and contractor | 2 | 1% | A different job with different rules |
The free six
If you employ fewer than ten people, HMRC recognises six products that cost nothing, and one of them is HMRC’s own Basic PAYE Tools. Every other comparison page treats free software as a footnote. It is the first thing a small employer should see.
| Product | Supplier | Pricing | Their page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primo Payroll | Accentra Technologies Ltd | Price published | Pricing |
| Enrolpay Small Payroll | Enrolpay Ltd | No pricing found | Supplier |
| RTI Lite | Hartigan Software Design Ltd | No pricing found | Supplier |
| Basic PAYE Tools | HMRC | No pricing found | Supplier |
| 1 A Simple Payroll | IT Contractors Ltd (1 A Simple Payroll) | No pricing found | Supplier |
| Stansoft Linux | Stansoft | No pricing found | Supplier |
How open the market is about pricing
This is the part no other comparison site reports, because it does not flatter anybody. Of the 177 products on HMRC’s list, 17 come from suppliers who publish a price on their own site. 48 ask you to request a quote or book a demo instead. For 104 we read the site and found neither. A further 8 declined our automated request, which tells you about their bot policy and nothing about their product.
The full transparency report has the method, the counts and the download.
Source: HMRC’s list of payroll software recognised for PAYE, used under the Open Government Licence, plus each supplier’s own published pages. We report what is published. We are not accountants and nothing here is advice about which product suits your business.