How Much Does Sage Payroll Cost?

Sage Payroll now starts at £10 per month (excluding VAT) for up to five employees on Payroll Essentials, rising to £20 per month on Payroll Standard and £30 per month on Payroll Premium.

At the time of writing, Sage is also advertising a 90% discount for the first six months, which brings those starting prices down to £1, £2 and £3 per month, respectively.

The other pricing detail that matters is headcount. Once you go above five employees, Sage charges extra on a tiered basis, so your per-employee cost falls as your team grows. That makes the headline monthly fee only part of the total cost.

Below, I explain how each Sage Payroll plan is priced, what features you get and which tier offers the best value for different types of UK business. If you want to compare Sage with the wider market, see our guide to the best payroll providers.

Short on time? Here are the Sage Payroll plans at a glance

What Does Each Sage Payroll Plan Cost?

Sage sells Payroll in three tiers and keeps the contract simple: monthly billing, no long-term commitment and the option to upgrade or cancel at any time. All plans include up to five employees, payroll and HR support, and access to Sage’s payroll software for businesses with up to 150 employees.

The part many buyers miss is that Sage’s add-on employee pricing is tiered rather than flat. That means the cost per extra employee drops as your headcount rises:

• One to five employees: Included on all plans
• Six to 10 employees: £2/£4/£6 per employee, per month, on Essentials/Standard/Premium, respectively
• 11 to 25 employees: £1.30/£3.30/£5.30 per employee, per month
• 26 to 150 employees: £1.00/£3.00/£5.00 per employee, per month

That pricing structure helps Sage look better value as teams grow, but Premium still becomes expensive the fastest. Sage also says switching is straightforward via FPS file import, which is useful if you are moving over from another payroll system.

1) Payroll Essentials

• Standard price: £10 per month, excluding VAT
• Current offer: £1 per month for the first six months
• Employees included: One to five
• Extra employees: From £2 per employee per month, dropping at higher employee bands
• Best for: Small businesses that need compliant payroll, plus basic HR admin

What do you get with Payroll Essentials?

Payroll Essentials covers the core jobs most small employers need. You can run payroll in four steps, receive HMRC notices, submit Real Time Information (RTI) to HMRC, auto-enrol eligible staff into pensions, and let employees self-serve their payslips and P60s.

It also includes entry-level HR tools rather than payroll alone. Sage says Essentials includes employee records, essential HR tasks and holiday tracking, so it is more useful than the old “payroll-only” label suggests.

Where does Payroll Essentials fall short?

Essentials is the cheapest Sage tier, but it is also the most basic. You do not get the faster one-step Enhanced Pay Run in Standard, and you miss out on timesheets, overtime management, onboarding workflows, approval automations and shift-planning tools.

For that reason, Essentials makes the most sense for stable headcounts and straightforward monthly payroll. If your team is growing quickly, you may outgrow it sooner than the £10 monthly fee suggests.

Who should choose Payroll Essentials?

Choose Essentials if you want Sage’s core payroll compliance features at the lowest ongoing cost. It is the best fit for very small UK businesses that mainly need accurate pay runs, staff self-service and light people admin in one place.

2) Payroll Standard

• Standard price: £20 per month, excluding VAT
• Current offer: £2 per month for the first six months
• Employees included: One to five
• Extra employees: From £4 per employee, per month, dropping at higher employee bands
• Best for: Growing businesses that want quicker payroll and stronger people admin

What do you get with Payroll Standard?

Payroll Standard adds the features most growing teams will notice day to day. The standout addition is Enhanced Pay Run, which lets you complete a pay run in one step instead of four. That is a meaningful time-saver if you process payroll regularly for a growing team.

Standard also adds online timesheets and overtime management, timesheet status reports, a personalised onboarding portal, an org chart, approval workflows and tracking for all leave and absence types. In other words, it starts to look more like a payroll-and-people-admin system rather than just payroll software.

Where does Payroll Standard fall short?

The main limitation is that it still does not include Premium’s more advanced workforce tools, such as shift scheduling, project-based time logging and mobile expense approval. It also doubles the base monthly fee versus Essentials, so it is only better value if you will use the extra admin tools.

Who should choose Payroll Standard?

For most small and growing businesses, Standard is the strongest middle ground. It gives you faster payroll processing and better day-to-day people management without jumping straight to Premium’s much heavier per-employee pricing.

3) Payroll Premium

• Standard price: £30 per month, excluding VAT
• Current offer: £3 per month for the first six months
• Employees included: One to five
• Extra employees: From £6 per employee per month, dropping at higher employee bands
• Best for: Businesses with more complex scheduling, time logging and expense workflows

What do you get with Payroll Premium?

Payroll Premium includes everything in Standard and adds the most operationally useful extras: you can log time by project or by day, manage shifts in the scheduling planner, make shift scheduling easier for managers and let employees submit and approve expenses over mobile.

Those additions matter most if payroll is tied closely to schedules, overtime, projects or field teams. If that is your setup, Premium can reduce admin by keeping more workforce data inside the same system as payroll.

Where does Payroll Premium fall short?

The trade-off is cost. Premium has the highest base fee and the highest extra-employee pricing, so it becomes the most expensive Sage tier very quickly as headcount rises. If you do not need scheduling and expense tools, Standard is usually the better-value step up.

Who should choose Payroll Premium?

Choose Premium if you want Sage to do more than run payroll. It is the best fit for businesses with more complex workforce management needs, especially where shift planning, project time logging, and expense workflows are part of payroll admin.

Sage Alternatives

Sage is a strong fit for small UK businesses that want transparent monthly pricing, self-serve payroll software and a clear upgrade path from basic payroll to more advanced HR and scheduling tools. However, it is not the only good option.

The right alternative depends on what you want that Sage does not emphasise:

• Choose ADP if you want a more tailored payroll setup or the option to hand off more of the payroll work.
• Choose MHR if you want a broader payroll and HR platform with a stronger focus on real-time payroll visibility.
• Choose Moorepay if you want the choice between running payroll in-house and outsourcing it to a managed service.

ADP Payroll

ADP is the best Sage alternative for businesses that want more flexibility than Sage’s fixed self-serve pricing tiers. While Sage clearly publishes monthly prices and employee limits online, ADP takes a more consultative approach, with pricing based on your requirements and the option to choose how much payroll work you keep in-house.

That matters if your payroll needs are changing quickly. ADP offers payroll services that can scale up or down, plus options for managed payroll, self-service tools and integrations with existing HR, time tracking, and business software. If you want a more bespoke payroll service than Sage’s standard plans, ADP is the stronger option.

The trade-off is that Sage is easier to price upfront. If you want to compare exact monthly costs before speaking to a sales team, Sage is the more transparent provider.

MHR Payroll

MHR Payroll is a better fit than Sage for businesses that want payroll to sit inside a broader HR and workforce platform. MHR’s People First platform puts a lot of emphasis on real-time payroll, continuous calculations, live payslip visibility and reducing the delays caused by traditional payroll cut-off processes.

Compared with Sage, MHR is the more specialised option for employers that want deeper payroll visibility and a wider HR technology environment around it. Sage is simpler to buy and easier to understand at a glance, which will appeal to smaller employers, but MHR may suit businesses with more complex processes or bigger long-term HR ambitions.

In short, Sage is the more straightforward choice for smaller teams watching monthly cost, while MHR is stronger if you want a more expansive payroll and people-management platform.

Moorepay Payroll

Moorepay is the strongest Sage alternative if you are deciding between payroll software and a managed payroll service. Sage mainly sells payroll as software you run yourself, whereas Moorepay lets you either handle payroll in-house through its software or outsource payroll processing to its team, while still using the platform to input data.

That extra flexibility will appeal to businesses that do not want payroll to remain a fully in-house admin task. Moorepay also positions itself as a broader HR, payroll and benefits provider, so it may suit employers looking beyond payroll alone.

Sage still has the edge on transparent starting prices and straightforward plan comparison. But if you would rather have the option to offload payroll work later, Moorepay is a more natural alternative.