Managed Payroll · Compared
One is the largest payroll technology company in the country. One is a unified HR, IT, and finance platform built around a single employee record. Honest referee breakdown before you pick a login.
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Contender One
ADP is one of the largest payroll technology companies in the world, spanning small-business self-service payroll through enterprise HCM. Its core advantage is scale: one vendor covering payroll, tax filing, time tracking, HR add-ons, and benefits administration, with a service organization sized to match. Companies already running other ADP products often keep payroll on ADP to stay under one login.
Pricing across ADP is quote-gated at every tier, including its small-business RUN product. ADP remains software regardless of tier: your team enters hours, reviews the run, and approves it every pay period. ADP does not run payroll for you.
Source: ADP's small-business payroll page, checked Sept 25, 2026
Contender Two
Rippling positions itself as a single system of record spanning payroll, HR, benefits, IT device management, and finance tools, all built on one employee profile. Rippling's own pricing page advertises a starting rate of $8 a month per user for the required Unity platform. That figure covers the foundation, not a full payroll deployment.
Add the payroll module, plus whichever other modules a company selects, and the real monthly cost becomes a custom quote: Rippling's pricing page asks a few questions and returns a tailored number rather than a combined rate. Independent pricing breakdowns commonly put a full HR-and-payroll deployment in the $20 to $35 per employee per month range once modules stack, though Rippling does not publish that combined figure itself. Rippling remains software either way: your team enters hours, reviews each run, and approves it. Rippling separately sells its own PEO and ASO services, distinct from its self-service HCM plans.
Side by Side
| Factor | ADP | Rippling |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll model | Self-service software, multiple tiers | Self-service software, modular platform |
| Pricing visibility | Quote-gated, no published price list | Advertised $8/user/month platform base, full deployment quote-gated |
| Who runs payroll | You: enter hours, review, approve each cycle | You: enter hours, review, approve each cycle |
| Platform breadth | Payroll, HR, time, benefits, all under ADP | Payroll, HR, IT device management, finance tools, one employee record |
| Ideal company size | Small business through enterprise, tiered | Growing companies wanting IT and finance unified with HR |
| Support model | Centralized service org plus self-service tools | Support tickets plus onboarding specialists |
Based on each company's published model, checked Sept 25, 2026. Both require a sales quote for exact pricing on your company.
How to Actually Decide
Lean ADP. One vendor, one login, connected reporting across payroll, time, and HR tools. Adding Rippling would mean a second vendor relationship, not a consolidated one.
Lean Rippling. The unified employee record driving HR, IT, and finance from one login is the entire premise of the product. Get a modular quote before assuming the advertised $8 rate is your real cost.
Pause before picking either. Both are tools your team operates every cycle: data entry, review, approval. If the goal is to remove that work entirely, you are comparing the wrong category of product.
Comparing other platforms too? See ADP vs Paylocity or ADP vs Paychex.
The Referee's Close
If you want software, ADP and Rippling solve different problems: one is a payroll-and-HR incumbent with decades of scale, one is a modular platform trying to unify HR, IT, and finance under one login. But notice what both have in common. You still enter hours, review every run, and approve every cycle, and Rippling's advertised starting price covers a fraction of what a full deployment costs.
If instead you want payroll run for you, inside your existing system, at a flat rate you can see before you talk to anyone, that is BEG managed payroll: $25-$45 PEPM, all-inclusive, every filing and every W-2 handled. No co-employment, no software login for your team, no quote gate.
See your exact monthly & annual price - no call required
Questions
Neither publishes a full price. ADP is quote-gated across every tier, including its small-business RUN product. Rippling advertises a starting rate of $8 per user per month for its base platform, but that covers the foundation only. Add payroll and any other module and Rippling requires the same kind of custom quote ADP does. The only honest comparison is two quotes on the same census, side by side.
No. That figure is Rippling's starting price for the required Unity platform on its own pricing page. Payroll is a separate module priced on top of it, and the combined cost depends on which other modules a company adds.
Both are software you or your team operate. You enter hours, review the run, and approve it every cycle. Neither ADP nor Rippling takes payroll off your desk the way a fully managed service does.
Rippling's core pitch is a unified system spanning payroll, HR, IT device and app management, and finance tools like expense management and bill pay, all from one employee record. ADP's breadth runs the other direction: payroll, tax filing, time tracking, HR, and benefits, built on decades of scale rather than a single unified data model.
BEG is not a party to either platform. If what you actually want is payroll run for you instead of software you operate, BEG managed payroll is the alternative: a flat $25-$45 PEPM, all-inclusive, inside your existing system. No quote-gated sales process, an instant on-screen estimate instead.
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