Patriot Payroll review (2026): pricing, features and who it fits

What the two plans cost at a real crew size

Both plans work the same way. You pay a flat monthly base, then a fee for each worker you paid that month. Basic is $17 a month plus $4 per worker paid. Full Service is $37 a month plus $5 per worker paid. Both figures are current as of August 2026.

Run the numbers for five people. Basic costs $17 plus five times $4, which is $37 a month, or $444 a year. Full Service costs $37 plus five times $5, which is $62 a month, or $744 a year. Ten people cost $57 a month on Basic and $87 on Full Service.

The billing detail that matters for trades is the phrase per worker paid. Patriot bills in arrears and charges the per-worker fee only for people you paid that month. It does not charge for everyone sitting on your roster. Lay off half the crew for the winter and the winter bills drop with them. In a month you run no payroll at all, you pay only the base, $17 or $37. For a landscaper or any shop that shrinks after the busy season, that is money back in the slow months.

Patriot advertises 50% off for the first six months on top of a free trial. Treat that as a discount with a clock, not the price you will pay. The figures above are the standing rates, and those are what the promo drops back to.

Basic or Full Service: who files the taxes

This is the split to get right, because it is the one difference that matters between the plans. On Basic, Patriot runs the payroll and works out the taxes, but you file and deposit them yourself: federal, state and local. On Full Service, Patriot files and deposits all of it, handles the year-end filings at no extra fee, and backs it with a tax filing guarantee.

At five people that is $62 a month for Full Service against $37 for Basic. You are paying about $25 a month, or $300 a year, to never fill out a payroll tax form. For most owners that is worth it. A missed federal deposit deadline racks up penalties fast, and it is the kind of task that slips when you are on a roof instead of at a desk.

This is where the owner reviews line up with the pitch. Patriot draws people who do not want to think about payroll math at all. One owner in consumer services, not an accountant, says the software prepares and tracks everything and that support fields even basic questions without fuss. A single-employee family shop calls it the best value it found, with payroll managed automatically. Basic earns its keep in one situation: you already pay a bookkeeper or accountant who is filing those taxes anyway. In that case, Full Service pays twice for the same job. If nobody in your world files payroll taxes today, do not start now to save $25 a month. Buy Full Service.

Running payroll week to week

Patriot describes a three-step payroll run, and the software works in a phone browser, so you can run it from a truck without a laptop. New customers get free setup help if they want it. Owners back up the easy-setup claim. One co-owner in health care set it up with little help, and the only snag was getting the direct deposit details together in time. That is the wrinkle to plan for. Standard direct deposit clears in four days, and shops that qualify can get two-day deposit. Leave the deposit setup or the payroll run to the last minute and someone gets paid late. Run payroll earlier in the week and that timing stops being a problem.

Direct deposit itself is free, with no extra software charge. You can pay W-2 employees and 1099 subs in the same run, and Patriot gives contractors a free portal for their own records. For a shop that runs a mix of crew and subs, paying both in one place is worth more than any single feature.

Support is free and US-based, by phone, email or chat. The limit is the hours: 9am to 7pm Eastern, Monday to Friday. There are no weekend or evening lines. If a payroll question lands on a Saturday, it waits until Monday.

Where the low price has edges

The cheap headline holds, but a few costs and limits sit outside it. Start with a limit that surprises people. Once you submit a payroll, you cannot edit it. To fix a mistake you delete the whole run and enter it again. That is manageable for a two-person shop and a headache the first time it happens mid-morning on payday.

On Full Service, filing in more than one state costs $12 a month for each extra state. Send a crew across a state line and put someone on payroll there, and a second state adds $144 a year before anyone files a form. A shop working three or four states feels that stack up.

Time tracking is not built in. Patriot sells it as a separate add-on, Time and Attendance, at $6 a month plus $2 per employee. HR Software is priced the same way. For five people, the time add-on is another $16 a month on top of payroll.

Owners raise one more edge that no price page mentions, which is how fast the money moves. An S-corp owner six months in wrote: "I have an S-Corp and I've been on Patriot for about 6 months now. I think it takes way longer to get paid than other payroll services. I also can't find a way to easily contribute to my retirement funds (I have a solo 401k and roth solo 401k)." Funding speed and retirement plan support are both worth confirming with Patriot before you move, especially if your crew is used to being paid two days after you hit submit.

A note on the praise you will read elsewhere, including some of it on this page. Patriot runs a customer referral program that pays the referrer $200 and the new customer $100, and referral links sit openly in the same threads that recommend the software. The owners we quote here posted without one, and we dropped the ones who did. Read Patriot's unusually warm word of mouth with that program in mind.

Two things the vendor pages do not pin down, and we will not guess at them. On Basic, e-filing 1099s for your subs costs a fee Patriot calls only nominal, with no dollar figure, so price that with them first. And Patriot does not say whether starting the 30-day free trial needs a credit card. If that matters, ask support before you sign up.

Who it fits, and who should skip it

The clearest fit is a small trade shop with a handful of W-2 employees and a few 1099 subs, working one or two states. If you want payroll off your plate for the least money, this is it. Full Service at $37 plus $5 a head does that, and the per-worker-paid billing rewards a crew that shrinks in the off season. A shop that already pays a bookkeeper to file taxes can drop to Basic at $17 plus $4 and keep the difference.

Owners who came from bigger providers tend to stay for the same reason. One agency owner, three years in, says it stays out of the way where bigger, clunkier names get in it. Two shops should look elsewhere. If your books already run in QuickBooks Online, a separate payroll login is a small tax you pay every week, and QuickBooks Payroll keeps everything in one file. And if you regularly need help outside weekday business hours, those closed evenings and weekends are a problem worth paying to avoid. A payroll company with round-the-clock support may be worth a higher base fee.

One honest note on the reviews. Patriot rates about 4.8 on Capterra across thousands of reviews, but most are solicited, so the picture there runs rosier than a shop will find in practice. The praise is real and consistent, and we weighed it that way: as evidence the basics work, not proof that nothing goes wrong. Check two numbers before you sign: the base fee and the per-worker fee. Read them on Patriot's own pricing page, because those are the ones that quietly move.

What owners actually say