Best Wave Payroll Alternatives in 2026

§1Why teams look beyond Wave Payroll

Wave Payroll used to split pricing by state: free self-service filing in 14 states, $35 per month plus $6 per employee for full tax service everywhere else. That changed in April 2025, when Wave partnered with payroll infrastructure provider Check and unified pricing into one plan: $40 per month plus $6 per active employee or contractor paid that month, with automatic tax filing included in all 50 states. There is no more free or self-service tier, including for contractor-only accounts, which used to be free.

Full tax service is no longer a reason to leave Wave, since it is now standard on every account. Teams still look elsewhere for two reasons: they need features Wave lacks (time tracking, PTO management, HR document management, benefits integration), or they have grown past roughly 10 employees and want a platform built for more complex payroll and HR needs. Wave's pricing is also no longer clearly the cheapest option, so cost alone doesn't make the case for staying that it once did.

§2Gusto Simple: best overall upgrade

Gusto Simple at $49 per month plus $6 per person covers single-state payroll, automated tax deposits and basic HR document management. Eligible Simple accounts can purchase next-day direct deposit for $15 monthly plus $3 per person, subject to approval and funding conditions; Plus and Premium include that option and support multi-state payroll. Against the stated Wave subscription of $40 plus $6 per employee, Simple has a $9 base-price difference before optional services, not a $9 upgrade to guaranteed faster funding.

Gusto also integrates with Wave Accounting, so teams already using Wave for bookkeeping can keep that while switching to Gusto for payroll.

§3OnPay: best for agricultural and restaurant payroll

OnPay lists $49 per month plus $6 per paid worker, including contractors; budget for each contractor paid in a month rather than treating contractor payments as free. It covers payroll in all 50 states with full tax service. It is one of the few platforms that explicitly handles agricultural payroll with FUTA agricultural exception handling, and supports tip credits for restaurant payroll.

Customer service reviews for OnPay are consistently better than Wave. For growing businesses that will have compliance questions, having access to reliable support matters.

§4Patriot Payroll: best if cost is paramount

Patriot Full Service lists a standard $37 monthly base plus $5 per worker paid, before temporary promotions and optional services. Ten paid workers therefore cost $87 in base and worker fees, compared with $100 under the stated Wave $40-plus-$6 formula. Patriot charges $12 monthly for each additional filing state; compare the required state coverage and extras before treating the $13 subscription difference as the full saving.

Patriot's interface is no-frills and customer service reviews are more mixed than OnPay, but the core payroll function is reliable.

§5How to choose

If cost is the main driver: compare Patriot with Wave using the actual paid-worker count, filing states and selected extras rather than assuming equal coverage at the headline price. If you need HR features in the same platform: Gusto Simple or Plus. If you are a Wave Accounting user and the automatic journal-entry sync matters more than price: staying on Wave Payroll is reasonable, but budget for the full $40-per-month base plus $6 per employee, since Wave does not offer a discounted bundle for running accounting and payroll together.

See also: Patriot Payroll alternatives for related options.

§6Frequently asked questions

Is Wave Payroll actually free? No. Wave unified its US payroll pricing in April 2025 by teaming up with Check, a backend payroll-processing vendor. Every account now runs a flat $40 monthly base, plus $6 for each person on payroll (employee or 1099 contractor) in a given pay cycle, and tax filing is bundled into that rate. The old free and self-service tiers, including the one that used to cover contractor-only setups, are gone.

Does Wave Payroll cover all 50 states? Yes. Since the April 2025 pricing change, the single plan handles automatic tax deposits and filings nationwide, not just in a subset of states the way the old split pricing did.

Can Wave Payroll and Wave Accounting work together? Yes, and this is the main reason teams stay. Payroll journal entries sync automatically into Wave's own books. Run your bookkeeping somewhere else, and that particular reason to stay goes with it.

What is the easiest payroll system to use? Gusto and OnPay are the two names 2026 buyer guides mention most often for ease of use among small-team payroll tools, and both are the main upgrades from Wave covered above. If staying inside the Wave ecosystem matters more than learning a new interface, sticking with Wave's own payroll product is still straightforward to run; compare its complete subscription with the alternatives for the same workforce and services.

What is better, QuickBooks or Wave? It comes down to what you need outside of payroll. The current standalone QuickBooks Payroll Core rate is $50 monthly plus $7 per employee; selected accounting bundles and protected promotional periods have different terms, and it ties directly into QuickBooks Online's books, which matters if that is where your accounting already lives. Wave charges its own flat base rate (covered above) with no self-service tier left, and its selling point is the same kind of built-in sync, just into Wave's accounting product instead of Intuit's. For a team not locked into either accounting platform yet, the payroll features land close enough that the accounting software you pick first usually decides the payroll answer.

Which is better, Zoho or Wave? Zoho only turned into a real option for US payroll in December 2024, when it rolled out full coverage across all 50 states instead of the narrower version it had before. Between the two now, Wave's pitch is still the native bookkeeping tie-in this page covers above; Zoho Payroll's is a deeper connection into the wider Zoho One lineup (CRM, Books, People) for anyone already living in that suite. Ask Zoho for a current number directly, its US pricing is newer and far less documented anywhere than Wave's published flat rate.