Patriot vs. OnPay vs. SurePayroll: The Cheapest Full-Service Payroll for a Micro-Business

A three-person shop can pay anywhere from about 50 dollars to about 67 dollars a month for someone else to calculate, file, and deposit its payroll taxes — the same filings, the same deposits, a 34 percent spread. Get the comparison wrong and you overpay every month for years; get the filing wrong and the IRS failure-to-deposit penalty starts at 2 percent of the unpaid tax and climbs to 15 percent, before any state adds its own. For a micro-business running payroll on thin margins, the cheapest correct option is not a rounding error. It is the whole game.

This guide compares the three budget full-service providers micro-businesses actually shortlist — Patriot Full-Service Payroll, OnPay, and SurePayroll by Paychex — on base price, per-worker fees, tax filing scope, year-end form costs, and multi-state support, with the monthly math worked out at one, five, ten, and twenty-five workers.

What "Full-Service" Actually Buys You​

Payroll vendors use "full-service" to mean they take the compliance work off your desk, not just the arithmetic. Before comparing prices, confirm each plan includes all five of these:

• Tax calculation on every run: federal income withholding, Social Security and Medicare, state income withholding, state unemployment (SUTA), and local taxes where they exist.
• Tax deposits sent to the right agencies on the right schedule, so you never touch an EFTPS deadline yourself.
• Tax filings prepared and submitted: Forms 940 and 941 federally, plus state quarterly returns and local returns.
• Year-end forms: W-2s for employees and 1099s for contractors, filed with the agencies and furnished to workers.
• New-hire reporting to the state, which most states require within about 20 days of hire.

Patriot sells full-service as an upgrade tier; its cheaper Basic plan calculates taxes but leaves filing and deposits to you. OnPay has a single plan that is full-service by default. SurePayroll sells both a self-service plan and a full-service plan, so make sure you are pricing the full-service one when you compare. Every price below is the full-service, taxes-handled option.

The Three Contenders at a Glance​

All three run unlimited payrolls, pay W-2 employees and 1099 contractors by direct deposit, and file federal, state, and local payroll taxes. The differences are price structure, what costs extra, and how much HR comes in the box.

Prices are the vendors' published list prices at the time of writing; all three run frequent introductory discounts, so confirm the current offer before you buy. The per-worker fees apply to workers actually paid in the month, which matters if your headcount fluctuates with seasonal help.

The Monthly Math: Who Is Cheapest at Each Size?​

List prices mislead because a low base with a high per-worker fee crosses over a high base with a low per-worker fee as you grow. Worked out for a single-state employer:

One worker (just you, on salary from your own S corp):

• SurePayroll: 29 plus 7, or 36 dollars
• Patriot: 37 plus 5, or 42 dollars
• OnPay: 49 plus 6, or 55 dollars

SurePayroll wins the solo-owner case by a clear six dollars a month.

Five workers:

• Patriot: 37 plus 25, or 62 dollars
• SurePayroll: 29 plus 35, or 64 dollars
• OnPay: 49 plus 30, or 79 dollars

Patriot takes the lead. Its five-dollar per-worker fee beats SurePayroll's seven-dollar fee by enough to overcome the higher base.

Ten workers:

• Patriot: 37 plus 50, or 87 dollars
• SurePayroll: 29 plus 70, or 99 dollars
• OnPay: 49 plus 60, or 109 dollars

Patriot stretches the lead to twelve dollars a month over SurePayroll.

Twenty-five workers:

• Patriot: 37 plus 125, or 162 dollars
• OnPay: 49 plus 150, or 199 dollars
• SurePayroll: 29 plus 175, or 204 dollars

At twenty-five workers, OnPay's six-dollar per-worker fee finally undercuts SurePayroll's seven dollars, and Patriot remains the cheapest by a wide margin.

The pattern: SurePayroll is cheapest at one worker, Patriot is cheapest from roughly three workers up, and OnPay is never the cheapest on sticker price alone. But sticker price is only the opening bid. The fine print below moves real money.

The Fine Print That Changes the Winner​

Multi-state fees​

Hire one remote worker across the state line and the ranking shifts. Patriot charges 12 dollars per additional state per month. SurePayroll charges a flat 9.99 dollars per month for multi-state, however many extra states you add. OnPay includes all fifty states at no extra charge.

Rework the five-worker example with employees in two states: Patriot rises to 74 dollars, SurePayroll to about 74 dollars, and OnPay stays at 79 dollars. With employees in four states, Patriot climbs to 98 dollars while SurePayroll stays near 74 dollars and OnPay stays at 79 dollars. If your team is scattered across states, SurePayroll's flat fee and OnPay's included coverage erase Patriot's base-price advantage fast.

Year-end form fees​

Patriot and OnPay include W-2 and 1099 preparation and filing in the monthly price. SurePayroll bills year-end forms separately — roughly 5 dollars per form plus a processing fee. Ten workers means about 50 dollars plus the fee every January, which adds roughly five dollars a month to SurePayroll's true cost when you amortize it. It rarely flips the ranking by itself, but it narrows SurePayroll's solo-owner lead and widens its gap behind Patriot at every larger size.

Local taxes​

If you operate where city or county payroll taxes exist, confirm local filing is covered. Patriot and OnPay include local tax filings and deposits in full-service. SurePayroll handles local taxes in many jurisdictions but treats some local filings as add-ons, so price your actual locality rather than assuming coverage.

Contractors​

All three pay 1099 contractors and file 1099s, but the economics differ if contractors are most of your payables. Patriot and OnPay count contractors as paid workers at the same per-worker rate. If you pay contractors only and have no W-2 employees at all, none of these three is the cheapest answer — several vendors sell contractor-only plans with no base fee — but among the three, Patriot's five-dollar per-worker rate is the lowest per-contractor cost.

HR, benefits, and time tracking​

This is where OnPay earns back its higher sticker price. OnPay bundles HR tools, offer-letter templates, PTO tracking, benefits administration, 401(k) integrations, and pay-as-you-go workers' comp into its one plan. Patriot charges separately for HR software and time tracking, at six dollars base plus two dollars per employee each per month. SurePayroll sits in between, with modest built-in HR support plus a dedicated household-employer plan that neither competitor matches. If you were going to buy even one HR add-on from Patriot, OnPay's all-in price is suddenly competitive: Patriot full-service plus HR for five workers runs about 78 dollars, essentially tied with OnPay's 79 dollars — and OnPay throws in benefits admin and PTO on top.

Which One Fits Your Micro-Business?​

Solo owner-operator paying only yourself. SurePayroll full-service is the cheapest compliant option at about 36 dollars a month. Just remember the January form bill, and confirm your state has no local-tax surprise.

Two to ten workers in one state. Patriot full-service wins on price and includes year-end forms and local filings. It is the default answer for the classic single-location micro-business: the coffee shop, the dental office, the five-person agency.

Workers in three or more states. Price it three ways before you commit. SurePayroll's flat 9.99-dollar multi-state fee usually wins on cost, OnPay's included multi-state plus bundled HR often wins on value, and Patriot's per-state fee compounds against it with every state you add.

A household employer (nanny, caregiver, housekeeper). SurePayroll's dedicated household plan is purpose-built for this and is the reason many families land there. Neither Patriot nor OnPay targets household payroll specifically.

A team that also needs HR, PTO, or benefits help. OnPay's single plan bundles what the other two charge extra for or lack. Compare OnPay's all-in number against Patriot-plus-add-ons, not against Patriot's bare base, and the gap mostly disappears.

Contractors only, no employees. Reconsider whether you need full-service employee payroll at all. A contractor-only plan from another vendor typically costs less than any of these three; if you stay in this trio, Patriot's per-worker rate is lowest.

Booking Payroll in Your Own Ledger​

Whichever provider you pick, its monthly debit to your bank account is not one expense. It bundles gross wages, the employer share of payroll taxes, withheld taxes you merely pass through to agencies, and the provider's own fee — and your books should show each piece separately, or your profit-and-loss statement will understate labor cost and your liabilities will never reconcile.

A typical month-end payroll entry in plain-text accounting looks like this:

2026-10-31 * "October payroll" "Pay period 10/16-10/31"
  Expenses:Payroll:Wages            8,400.00 USD
  Expenses:Payroll:Employer-Taxes     642.60 USD
  Liabilities:Payroll:Withholding  -1,680.00 USD
  Liabilities:Payroll:Employer-Tax   -642.60 USD
  Assets:Checking:Operating        -6,720.00 USD

Gross wages and the employer tax share hit expense accounts; the withheld income tax and both halves of FICA sit in liability accounts until the provider remits them; the net pay leaves checking. Book the provider's monthly fee separately as an administrative expense so you can see what payroll processing itself costs you per year. If you are new to double-entry payroll booking, the documentation walks through account setup and reconciliation step by step.

Reconcile the provider's report against your bank debit every pay run, not just at year-end. The most common small-business payroll mess is a provider debit that nobody matched to a pay stub for eleven months, discovered only when the W-3 totals refuse to tie out in January.

Five Mistakes That Cost More Than the Subscription​

Shopping on base price alone. The base is the smaller half of the bill for almost every employer. Multiply the per-worker fee by your headcount, add multi-state and year-end fees, then compare. A 29-dollar base with a seven-dollar per-worker fee costs more than a 37-dollar base with a five-dollar fee at any headcount above four.

Forgetting the January bill. Year-end form fees arrive once a year and get left out of every monthly comparison. Amortize them — about five dollars a form for SurePayroll — before declaring a winner.

Misclassifying workers to dodge the per-worker fee. Leaving a worker off payroll to save five dollars a month risks back taxes, penalties, and interest that dwarf a decade of subscription fees. If someone looks like an employee under your state's test, put them on payroll.

Assuming your state is covered. All three file in all fifty states, but local-tax coverage and new-account setup times vary. Confirm your specific state and local registrations before your first pay date, not after.

Never reconciling. The provider files your taxes; it does not keep your books. Match each pay run to the bank debit and clear the withholding liabilities monthly, so December holds no surprises.

Your Next Step​

Count your W-2 workers and 1099 contractors, list the states they work in, and price all three vendors against those two numbers — base plus per-worker times headcount, plus the multi-state and year-end add-ons that apply to you. For most single-state micro-businesses with two or more workers that math points to Patriot; solo owners usually land on SurePayroll; scattered teams and anyone who needs HR bundled in should price OnPay's all-in plan before deciding. Run the numbers with your actual headcount, confirm local-tax coverage for your locality, and start the free trial a full pay cycle before you need the first deposit made.