Best Payroll Automation Software for UK Scale-Ups in 2026: 5 Platforms Compared

Author

Pac O'Shea

Date

15 September 2026

Reading time

11 min

PayFit, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll, Deel and Round Treasury compared on calculation, execution, current price status and the boundary that decides fit, with a conditional worked example in pounds.

PayFit, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll, Deel and Round Treasury are five names a UK finance team can meet when it searches for payroll software in 2026. They do not all do the same job. PayFit, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll and Deel Global Payroll calculate payroll for an employer's own entity. Round Treasury does not calculate payroll.

Deel has two relevant routes. Global Payroll runs payroll for entities you already own. Employer of Record, or EOR, makes Deel the legal employer where you do not have an entity. They answer different questions.

This guide compares all five on cost, capability and the one boundary that decides fit, with the decision table before the long vendor-by-vendor sections.

TL;DR

PayFit combines UK payroll and HR. Its current official site is quote-based, while a third-party buyer guide records indicative historical price bands that should not be treated as a live quote. PayFit
Bob UK Payroll, the product formerly called Pento, is sold by HiBob and does not publish a standard UK price. HiBob
Xero Payroll has published UK prices: £18, £39, £55 and £70 a month before VAT, with different payroll inclusions by plan. Xero pricing
Deel Global Payroll and Deel EOR should be assessed separately. EOR starts at $599 a month per employee; Deel does not show a UK Global Payroll price on its public pricing page. Deel pricing
Our payroll page describes file upload, approval and execution. Our pricing page currently labels “Payroll Payments” as soon, so confirm release status and the final plan entitlement with us before relying on it. Round payroll Round pricing

Want to see how Salary Payments sits alongside the payroll tool you already run? Book a walkthrough and bring your current payroll export.

Which of these five calculates UK payroll, and which just pays it?

Payroll calculation and payment execution are separate stages, mapped, approved, funded and paid in sequence.

Four services in this comparison can calculate payroll for an employer's own entity: PayFit, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll and Deel Global Payroll. Deel's separate EOR service does something else: it makes Deel the legal employer. Deel Global Payroll Deel EOR

Round Treasury sits outside that list. We do not calculate a payslip. Our payroll product page describes funding and executing a completed payroll file, but our pricing page currently labels Payroll Payments as “soon”. Confirm availability and plan entitlement with us directly before buying or publishing a cost comparison. Round payroll Round pricing

Three questions separate the four calculators worth comparing on price and capability:

Is it HMRC-recognised for Real Time Information submission, and does it also file to your pension provider automatically?
Does a published price exist, or is it quote-only?
Where does it stop, named plainly rather than deferred to a sales call?

How do PayFit, Round Treasury, Pento, Xero Payroll and Deel compare?

The table separates what each service does from what it costs. “Quote-only” means the provider does not publish a standard price. Where a product page and pricing page conflict, the table says so rather than treating the marketing summary as proof of availability.

PayFit, Round Treasury, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll and Deel compared on category, calculation, execution and current published-price status.

Comparison table
Platform or service	Category	Calculates payroll for your entity	What it hands back	Current price or availability status
PayFit	UK payroll plus HR	Yes	Managed payroll, RTI submissions and connected HR records	Quote-based on the official site; historical third-party estimates are not a live provider quote
Round Treasury	Payroll funding and execution, not calculation	No	Product page describes file upload, approval, treasury funding and payment	Pricing page lists Payroll Payments as “soon”; confirm availability and plan entitlement
Bob UK Payroll	UK payroll inside HiBob	Yes	UK payroll workflow inside the HiBob platform	Quote-only
Xero Payroll	Payroll inside Xero accounting	Yes	Payroll within the Xero subscription, with included people varying by plan	£18, £39, £55 or £70 a month before VAT, plus any applicable usage charges
Deel Global Payroll	Global payroll for entities you own	Yes	Payroll processing, calculations, filings and updates	Quote-based; no UK price shown on Deel's public page
Deel EOR	Employer of Record	No, Deel is the employer	Employment, payroll, tax filings and benefits administration	From $599 a month per EOR employee

1. PayFit for full-service payroll bundled with HR

PayFit calculates and files UK payroll and takes on the HR work around it: contracts, leave, onboarding and performance, alongside the run itself. It is HMRC-recognised for RTI, and PayFit's own material says plainly that it 'takes legal responsibility for the payroll we run.'

What it hands back is a reviewed, approved payslip run plus the HR paperwork a small team otherwise keeps in spreadsheets: contracts, leave records and onboarding documents in the same place as pay.

Price: quote-based. PayFit says the cost depends on business size and support level, and does not publish the tier figures used in this article. PayFit
Historical context only: a third-party buyer guide recorded indicative bands of £29 to £119 a month plus £5 to £7 a person. Do not use those figures as a current PayFit quote.
Boundary: it is a combined payroll and HR service. If you already run a separate HRIS, test the overlap in a provider quote before adding another HR layer.
Legal entity: PayFit Ltd, company number 11623900, active, incorporated 15 October 2018.

2. Round Treasury for funding and executing a payroll you have already calculated

We do not calculate anyone's pay. Our payroll product page describes uploading a completed file, mapping it to funding rules, routing it for approval and paying employees from treasury on pay date across GBP, USD and EUR. Round payroll

Our product page describes a digital audit trail of approvals and a payroll run funded from treasury.

Our public pricing page separately labels Payroll Payments as “soon”. Confirm release status and the plan entitlement with us before treating this as an available service. Round payroll Round pricing

Our plan pages list 10, 50 and 250 payroll payments, with £1, 50p and 25p overage respectively. The same pages label Payroll Payments as “soon”. These are published plan figures, not evidence that payroll execution is available to every customer today. Round pricing
Our pricing page also labels the Payroll Agent as “soon”. Do not rely on an automatic payroll feature until we confirm its release and the applicable plan.
Where the money sits: cash waiting to fund a run can sit in our treasury product, where the underlying money market fund carries capital at risk and no FSCS protection, or in a savings route with FSCS cover up to £120,000 per bank; check the live rate on roundtreasury.com before assuming a figure from anywhere else, including this article.
Regulated as: Round Financial Limited, authorised and regulated by the FCA, FRN 1050315, company number 14609702.
Boundary: we do not calculate salaries or tax. You still need a calculation service, such as PayFit, Bob UK Payroll, Xero Payroll, Deel Global Payroll or an equivalent, before a completed file can be paid.

3. Pento (now Bob UK Payroll) for real-time payroll data on a mid-sized team

HiBob bought Pento in February 2024 and now directs Pento customers to Bob UK Payroll. The current HiBob page confirms the name change, but does not publish a standard UK price. HiBob

For product mechanics such as RTI filing, pension payment and real-time updates, confirm the current Bob UK Payroll scope in the sales process. The public Pento migration page does not substantiate each of those operational claims. HiBob

Price: quote-only. A third-party buyer guide's estimate is not a Bob UK Payroll quote and is not used in the cost scenario below.
Boundary: pricing and the exact payroll-payment workflow require a current quote and scope confirmation from HiBob.
Entity: several UK-registered companies carry the Pento name at Companies House, and this guide could not confirm to the standard it requires which one is the current operating entity for the service now sold as Bob UK Payroll; stated plainly rather than guessed.

4. Xero Payroll for teams already running their books on Xero

Xero Payroll is HMRC-recognised and files RTI automatically after every run. It calculates pay, tax, leave entitlements and pension contributions, and connects directly to Nest and The People's Pension for auto-enrolment.

What it hands back is a payslip run that posts straight into the same Xero ledger your bookkeeping already uses, so nothing has to be re-keyed into a separate accounting system.

Price (checked 15 September 2026): £18, £39, £55 or £70 a month before VAT for Ignite, Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate. Ignite payroll is optional at £1.50 a person; Grow includes one person, Comprehensive five and Ultimate 10. Extra people cost £1.50, except £1 on Ultimate. Xero pricing
Fees: Xero says a limited number of domestic payroll payments are included on Grow, Comprehensive and Ultimate, then £0.20 per additional bank-transfer payment. Keep that separate from payroll calculation pricing. Xero pricing
Boundary: the current Xero public price page does not state an employee cap or a P11D position. Confirm those points with Xero before using them to rule the product in or out.
Legal entity: Xero (UK) Limited, company number 06071722, active, incorporated 29 January 2007.

5. Deel Global Payroll and Employer of Record solve two different jobs

Own-entity payroll sits on one side of the legal-employer line, and Employer of Record sits on the other.

Deel Global Payroll is payroll software for entities you already own. Deel says it can handle calculations, filings and updates for employees, contractors and EOR workers. Deel Global Payroll

Deel EOR is a different service. It makes Deel the legal employer where you do not have an entity in the hiring jurisdiction.

A UK company that hires directly in the UK can use Global Payroll. A UK company hiring in another country without a local entity may use EOR. Deel pricing

Price: Deel publishes EOR from $599 a month per employee and US PEO from $125 a month. Its public page says Global Payroll pricing is based on the services used, rather than listing a UK rate. Deel pricing
Boundary: choose EOR when you need a legal employer in the hiring jurisdiction. Choose Global Payroll when you already employ through your own entity. They should not share one comparison row or one price.

What does adding payroll execution cost, next to a payroll tool you already run?

A £24 execution fee sits on top of the £666 Xero calculation cost, shown separately rather than combined into one price.

Take a UK scale-up paying 12 people a month on Xero Payroll's Grow plan. Xero's published calculation price is £39 a month with one person included, plus £1.50 a head for the other eleven.

This is a calculation-price scenario, not a quote for every payment method. Xero pricing

Xero Payroll (Grow, 12 people): £39 base + (11 × £1.50) = £55.50 a month, or £666 a year, before VAT and any payment fees.
Conditional Round illustration: if Payroll Payments is available on Launch on the published terms, 10 monthly payments are included and two are charged at £1, or £2 a month and £24 a year. Round pricing
Conditional combined illustration: £690 a year before VAT and any Xero payment fees, calculated as £666 plus £24. It is not a confirmed customer quote and is not compared with an estimated Pento price.

This is one worked example, not a universal price. It assumes Xero's standard published rate rather than a new customer's first six months discount, one monthly run with no leavers or starters, and our published Launch allowances. Confirm with us that payroll execution is available on that plan.

It does not use Bob UK Payroll's third-party estimate as a confirmed price. The structural point remains: a payment-execution fee, where the product is available, sits alongside the cost of the service that calculated payroll.

Which of these five should you choose?

Start from what you are short of: a payroll calculator for an entity you already employ through, a way to pay a completed file, or a legal employer in a jurisdiction where you do not have an entity.

Two companies can both need this guide and land on different answers.

Do you already have a payroll calculator you trust, or do you still need one?
Do you have an entity in the country where the person will be employed, or do you need Deel EOR to be the legal employer there?
Is the friction in calculating pay, or in getting the calculated money out the door on time?

Where we would put ourselves: consider Round Treasury when you already trust a payroll calculator and want file funding, approval and audit in one place. Before relying on that use case, confirm with us that Payroll Payments is available and included on your plan, because our payroll page and pricing page currently describe its status differently.

Choose PayFit if you want payroll and HR in one managed service. Choose Xero Payroll if its accounting workflow and published plan structure fit your team. Choose Bob UK Payroll when its quoted UK scope meets your payroll requirements. Choose Deel Global Payroll for entities you own, or Deel EOR when you need a legal employer where you lack an entity.

The case against us is straightforward: we do not calculate salaries, tax or pension contributions, so we are not a standalone payroll calculator. We are also not a published, confirmed substitute for a payroll provider while our public pricing page labels Payroll Payments as “soon”.

About the author

Pac O'Shea is Co-Founder and CEO of Round. His work focuses on how finance teams move from manual, informational tools to controlled, auditable automation.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

No. We do not calculate salaries, tax or pension contributions. Our payroll page describes paying a completed payroll file, while our pricing page labels Payroll Payments as “soon”; confirm availability and plan entitlement with us directly. Round payroll Round pricing

Deel Global Payroll runs payroll for entities you already own. Deel EOR makes Deel the legal employer in the hiring jurisdiction. EOR is useful where you do not have an entity there; it is not the same service as Global Payroll. Deel Global Payroll Deel pricing

PayFit, Pento and Xero Payroll are all HMRC-recognised for Real Time Information submission. We are payment execution rather than payroll software, so HMRC recognition does not apply to us; Deel's Employer of Record service runs payroll from its own entity rather than yours, so the same test does not apply there either.

Our pricing page lists 10, 50 and 250 payroll payments by plan, with £1, 50p and 25p overage respectively, but labels Payroll Payments as “soon”. Confirm both the live service and the applicable entitlement with us before treating those figures as available to you. Round pricing

Not quite. HiBob acquired Pento in February 2024 and now sells it as Bob UK Payroll. It is still HMRC-recognised and UK-focused, but it now sits inside HiBob's wider HR platform rather than standing alone.

Xero publishes four UK plan prices before VAT: £18, £39, £55 and £70 a month. Payroll inclusion rises from optional on Ignite to 10 people on Ultimate; further people and payroll payments can create usage charges. Ask Xero directly about any headcount or P11D requirement not set out on the current public price page. Xero pricing

In whichever of our products you have chosen to hold it: a money market fund route, which carries capital at risk and no FSCS protection, or a savings route with FSCS cover up to £120,000 per bank. Check the live rate on roundtreasury.com before assuming a figure from anywhere else, including this article.

Possibly, but first establish what your provider already executes and whether Round Payroll Payments is available on your plan. A payment layer only solves a distinct problem when your calculator leaves the employer to move a completed payroll file.