QuickBooks Payroll: Workforce Pricing, Plans and Login 2026
QuickBooks Payroll is sold as QuickBooks Workforce now, and it is sold in bundles with QuickBooks Online. Three bundles are priced on Intuit’s payroll pages: $88, $125 and $203 a month, plus $7, $7 and $13 for every person you pay. The monthly fee is the number on the ad. The per employee fee is the number that grows.
What QuickBooks Payroll costs now
If you went looking for QuickBooks Payroll and found QuickBooks Workforce, you are in the right place. Intuit sells payroll under the Workforce name, and on its payroll pages it sells it bundled with QuickBooks Online. Three bundles carry a price. Each one is a monthly fee plus a fee for every person you pay.
| Bundle | Monthly | First 3 months | Per employee | Users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workforce Payroll + Simple Start | $88 | $8.80 | $7/mo | 1 |
| Workforce Payroll + Essentials | $125 | $12.50 | $7/mo | 3 |
| Workforce Premium + Plus | $203 | $20.30 | $13/mo | 5 |
The Essentials bundle is the one Intuit flags as its favorite. The promo banner reads “SALE EXTENDED 90% OFF QuickBooks for 3 months”, and the discounted column is exactly a tenth of the standing price in all three rows.
Now read the two columns next to each other. The discounted monthly figure sits beside the same per employee fee, $7 or $13, unchanged. Budget the per employee side at full price from your first payroll and the cheap months will not surprise you when they end.
Run it against your headcount
Everyone quotes the monthly fee. Nobody pays it on its own.
| Bundle | 2 staff | 5 staff | 10 staff | 20 staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workforce Payroll + Simple Start | $102 | $123 | $158 | $228 |
| Workforce Payroll + Essentials | $139 | $160 | $195 | $265 |
| Workforce Premium + Plus | $229 | $268 | $333 | $463 |
Take a ten-person shop. The Premium bundle is $333 a month, the Simple Start bundle is $158. The gap is $175. Only $115 of that is the monthly fee. The other $60 is six dollars a head, and that half keeps growing with headcount while the monthly fee sits still. At two staff the same decision is $127. At twenty it is $235.
One more line for the first quarter. Five staff on the Essentials bundle is $12.50 plus $35, so $47.50 a month while the discount runs, then $160.
Deposit speed, seats, and one number nobody will pin down
The Simple Start bundle gives you next-day direct deposit. The Essentials and Plus bundles give you same-day. That is the split worth understanding before you pick, because it is really a deadline, not faster money. Same-day means you can still be fixing timesheets on payday morning. Next-day means the run has to be in the day before.
Seats are the other quiet difference. One user on the Simple Start bundle, three on Essentials, five on Plus. If your bookkeeper and your partner both need to be in the file, the cheapest bundle is already too small.
Then there is tax penalty protection. Intuit’s payroll wording is that “we’ll pay up to $25,000 if you receive a penalty”. That is the figure, and it is worth knowing. What the current payroll pages do not settle is which plan carries it and on what conditions, so do not buy a bundle on the strength of it without asking. Get the answer from Intuit, in writing, tied to the plan you are actually signing up for.
Intuit also says its payroll AI “texts your admin updates”, and that “we help 1.4 million businesses manage payroll and file taxes”.
Standalone payroll exists, and it is not priced where you are looking
You do not have to take the accounting. There is a “Just need payroll?” link on the payroll pages that leads to more plans. Here is the honest part: those plans are not priced on the two main payroll pages, so we are not going to print a number for them. If you want standalone pricing, follow that link or call the sales line and get it from Intuit directly.
Be careful with the numbers floating around for this, ours included until we checked. Older per employee fees of $6.50, $10 and $12 are still quoted in places, including elsewhere on QuickBooks’ own site, and they sit next to plan names that no longer appear on the payroll pages at all. The payroll pages today say $7, $7 and $13, attached to the three bundles above. If a page is quoting you Core, Premium and Elite prices, it is describing a shelf Intuit no longer stocks.
QuickBooks Payroll login, both doors
There are two logins and people walk into the wrong one constantly.
If you own the business, there is no separate payroll login. You sign in to QuickBooks and payroll lives inside the account you already have. Intuit’s own line is to sign in to QuickBooks and add Workforce, or call 1-888-857-3710. Not sure which plan you are actually paying for? If you are the primary admin, go to Settings, then Subscriptions and billing, and the plan name sits in the second box. If you are not the primary admin, you will need whoever is to look for you.
If you are an employee chasing a pay stub or a W-2, your door is workforce.intuit.com or the Workforce app. You cannot sign yourself up. Your employer has to invite you, the invitation arrives from do_not_reply@intuit.com, and finishing setup needs an Intuit ID plus your Social Security Number. That Intuit ID is the same one TurboTax uses, so plenty of people already have one and try to make a second.
QuickBooks Desktop Payroll is the odd one out. Activation runs through a phone call to 800-466-1412 rather than a sign-up screen.
The line on your bill that does not grow with headcount
Payroll runs itself once it is set up. Nothing in Workforce will ask your customer for a Google review. That job still sits on a person at your shop, which means it happens for the memorable jobs and never for the ordinary ones. Trophy Jar does it off the paid invoice, and it starts at $9 a month for your first two months, then $29. On the Premium bundle, the per employee fees for three people cost you more every month than that standard rate, and they keep climbing with every hire while ours does not. 100 texts a month are included on Launch and 1,000 on Growth, sent from your own dedicated local number, and we handle 10DLC registration end to end for US businesses.