Professional employer organization companies
Professional employer organization companies look far more alike from the outside than they are, because the differences that matter sit inside documents nobody publishes. Three cuts narrow the field quickly, and none of them depends on marketing.
- median advertised base subscription, per month
- $39
- providers with a price they will print
- 2
- states with measured demand and evidenced cover
- 5
Figures on this page come from the price record on this site: 2 providers checked against their own published pages, median advertised base subscription $39 a month among those that publish one.
- 2 provider pages checkedevery figure matched verbatim to the provider's own page
- Quoted and dated, never estimatedlast verification pass 2026-09-09
- 5 states with evidenced coverevidenced by the provider's own live state page
Advertised prices, checked
| Provider | Base price | Per worker | What it covers | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExtensisHR | |||||
| FrankCrum | |||||
| Gusto | |||||
| Insperity | |||||
| Justworks | |||||
| OnPay | |||||
| Patriot Software | |||||
| Paychex | |||||
| Rippling | |||||
| SurePayroll | |||||
| TriNet | |||||
| VensureHR |
The three cuts, in order
- Certified or not. Check the IRS public listing for the legal entity that would contract with you. This is public, takes a minute, and concerns liability for federal employment taxes.
- Generalist or specialist. Some concentrate on trades where workers' compensation classification is difficult. If yours is one of those, a specialist is worth seeking; if not, it usually costs more for nothing.
- Benefits pool. Benefits pricing depends on the pool your staff join, so size genuinely matters here in a way it does not for administration. Judge it on the plan and the employee contribution schedule, not on a client count.
What does not distinguish them
Technology platforms, service promises and years in business are close to uniform in the marketing and highly variable in practice, and nothing on a website separates the two. Awards and badges are largely self-nominated. Review scores are thin and heavily skewed by which clients were asked.
This is not cynicism about the sector; it is a description of what is externally observable. In a market with almost no public information the honest approach is to rely on what is documented and to treat everything else as a hypothesis to be tested in the reference call.
What the record on this site holds
Providers whose own pages were fetched and quoted, with the date, including where the answer was that nothing is published. That produces a shorter list than any directory and a more useful one, because every entry is checkable.
It also produces a finding: among the providers checked, the ones publishing a price are the payroll platforms, and the co-employment providers publish none at all.
Common questions
- How do professional employer organization companies differ?
- Mainly by certification status, by whether they specialise in a trade with difficult workers' compensation classifications, and by the size and health of the benefits pool your staff would join.
- Do bigger PEO companies charge less?
- Not reliably for administration. Scale matters for benefits pricing because it determines the pool, which is a different thing from the administrative fee.
- How do I check a provider's claims?
- Certification on the IRS public listing, state registration where you employ people, and then documents: the benefit schedule, the classification codes and the service agreement.
Get quotes for your payroll
Coverage by state
Cite or embed this figure
The advertised base monthly subscription for a US payroll service in the US payroll and PEO market was $39 in September 2026, across 2 checked provider pricing pages recorded in Payroll Services Quotes Price Record.
Cite as: "Payroll Services Quotes Price Record", updated 2026-09-09, https://payrollservicesquotes.com/professional-employer-organization-companies/.