Rippling pricing in 2024: Is it worth the cost?

Rippling is our top choice for payroll software. However, it’s better suited for businesses looking for advanced and well-rounded payroll software and are prepared to pay the potentially high price, such as companies with large global teams and complex workforce and payroll management needs.

It’s difficult to assess how expensive Rippling is. It does not publicly list its pricing. You must contact Rippling’s sales team for a direct quote based on business size and needs. While this tailored approach is useful and demonstrates flexibility, it means that, in this Rippling pricing guide, we will delve closer into Rippling’s various suites of features as well as their Unified Workforce Management Platform to understand what it offers. However, you must request pricing information directly from Rippling’s sales team.

Featured payroll software offers

OnPay

Learn More

Via OnPay’s website

Monthly fee

$40 per month plus $6 per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

SurePayroll

Learn More

Via SurePayroll’s website

Monthly fee

$29.99 per month plus $5 per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

Gusto

Learn More

Via Gusto’s website

Monthly fee

Starting at $40 plus $6 per month per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

Rippling

Learn More

Via Rippling’s website

Monthly fee

$35 per month + $8 per user

Direct deposit

Yes

Rippling overview 

Rippling offers three ‘clouds’ of software. Its HR, IT, and Finance software suites each have their own feature lists. For a fully integrated platform, Rippling combines all three using its Unity workplace platform. The price for this Unity platform starts at $8 a month per user. However, the base monthly price depends on your business needs. The following table lays out what’s included in each cloud. 

HR	IT	FINANCE
Payroll: Rippling offers a full-service US and global payroll, with direct deposits; local, state, and federal tax filing; workers’ compensation; garnishments and time-off tracking	Apps: Manage employee apps with single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, team password management, role-based access policies and activity reporting	Expenses: Pay out reimbursements and automate receipt matching and re-duping for global workforces in over 100 countries. Sync reimbursement payments with payroll
Time and attendance: Time tracking integrated with Rippling’s payroll and PTO tracking, with overtime and break policies, approval chains, and time and jobs reporting	Devices: Store, ship, set up, update and manage all employee devices even across the globe	Cards: Manage branded corporate cards for all employees
Flex benefits: Commuter, FSA, and HSA benefits through a pre-tax debit card	Inventory: With remote device retrieval, storage in an off-site warehouse, monitoring of device inventory and shipment tracking
ACA and COBRA: Automate reporting for ACA as well as compliance work for COBRA
Recruiting: Automate the hiring process with a customized and connected recruiting dashboard
Learning management: Automate enrolment in pre-built compliance courses, with progress tracking and alerts
Pulse: Survey employees for feedback and trigger the actions based on responses
HR Help Desk: Contact HR professionals and real-time updates for compliance
PEO: Dedicated HR advisors, one-on-one healthcare guidance and access to Fortune-500-caliber employee benefits
Global employment: Streamlined hiring of employees around the world, with automated compliance and payments in local currencies
Headcount planning: Fully synchronized HR, finance and recruiting on a single-source-of-truth platform
Compensation bands: Manage compensation bands and automate policies and approvals to control spending and ensure fair pay

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Ripping’s Workplace Unity platform offers four plan options, each with progressively more in the way of capabilities and allowances. However, it offers no pricing details. The features you’ll get in each plan include:

CORE	PRO	UNLIMITED	ENTERPRISE
Global employee graph for all workforce data	Everything in the Core plan	Everything in the Pro plan	Everything in the Unlimited plan
Global organization chart for employees and their data	Workflow studio for any employee event	Unlimited custom, conditional workflows	Rippling API to read and access company data
Global workforce analytics with intuitive reporting on every employee data point	Up to 10 custom, conditional workflows	Unlimited advanced reports
Workflows and employee lifecycle automations for over 1,000 day-to-day workflows, such as onboarding	Up to ten formula fields for use in customizing reports and workflows	Unlimited formula fields for reports reports and workflows
Role-based permission, approval and policy management based on attributes such as team, level or location	Up to ten advanced reports to combine data from three or more sources	Webhooks for 3rd party systems via open APIs
Advanced document management, digitization and templatization
Advanced compliance management automations with notifications and remedies for potential issues
Compensation bands across the company with predefined salary and equity ranges
Vacation and leave management
Auto localization for over 150 countries
Workflow studio for onboarding event automations

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Core

The Core plan gives you access to Rippling Unity’s basic features, offering the bulk of its employee data management services with the exception of formula fields and API access. Rippling also offers full employee lifecycle automation services in its Core plan, as well as full global workforce management, advanced document management, advanced policy management and advanced approvals and permissions.

However, with the Core plan, you’ll miss out on custom workflows entirely and only get custom workflow triggers for onboarding events. However, it does have two custom workflow actions, including sending emails and creating and assigning tasks.

Finally, with regards to global workforce analytics, the Core plan only allows custom report building and visualizing, access to the report recipe library (pre-built reports and templates) and report drill-downs into data points (such as clicking on the total number of new hires to see information on individual hires). You won’t get scheduled reports, advanced reports or reporting formulas (for deriving new data points from your existing data). 

Pro

The Pro plan includes everything mentioned in the Core plan, but adds ten formula fields for employee data management, as well as ten custom workflows and custom workflow triggers for any employee event. Custom workflow actions include sending Slack messages, Teams messages, calendar invites and scheduled reports. You’ll also get up to ten advanced reports, but it still does not provide access to the Rippling API.

Unlimited

Being true to its name, as well as providing everything in the Pro plan, the Unlimited plan includes unlimited formula fields, custom workflows and advanced reports.

Enterprise

The Enterprise plan includes all of the Unlimited features, as well as finally granting access to the Rippling API, which allows you to build integrations with internal systems and applications.

Rippling drawbacks 

Rippling offers a complete package with flexibility to allow you to build your own custom software suite to meet your business needs. Its service is powerful, advanced and likely worth the relatively premium price tag you’ll get once going through the quote process. 

While it might be worth getting a quote for a better idea of how much it’ll cost, in our opinion, it’s likely not the best option for smaller businesses with limited requirements for advanced HR and finance tools or global workforce management needs. And, it likely won’t be suitable for companies on a budget.

If you’re looking for a similar range of features, you might consider Gusto or Homebase as more affordable alternatives; although they do not offer the flexibility and power of Rippling.

If your main requirement is payroll software, Patriot offers a basic payroll plan at $17 a month plus $4 per employee that meets most small-business payroll needs and a $37 per month plan for full service payroll that includes tax filing. 

Rippling alternatives

While Rippling is our number one pick for payroll software, we can recommend some excellent alternatives that are potentially friendlier to the budget sheet.

Patriot

Patriot is our choice for brands on a budget, offering a full-service payroll with plenty of features at an affordable price of $37 a month plus $4 per employee. You’ll get unlimited payroll with free setup, direct deposits, various pay frequencies and excellent customer service, with both HR and time and attendance add-ons available each at $6 a month plus $2 per employee.

Homebase

Homebase is primarily a scheduling tool, making it a fantastic choice for managing hourly workers. Its free basic plan offers a fairly robust set of features, including the ability to add up to 20 employees; scheduling, time tracking and employee management tools; point-of-sale integration; and payroll as an add-on for $39 a month plus $6 per employee.

Gusto

Gusto’s automation is particularly helpful and efficient, but the software is on the more expensive side. Its pricing starts at $40 per month, which gets you unlimited payrolls, bonus payments, off-cycle and multi-state payrolls, automated tax filings for W-2 and 1099 workers, an employee self-serve portal, health and financial benefits, two- or four-day direct deposits and payroll and time-off reporting.

Learn more about Gusto and how it compares to Rippling in our Gusto vs. Rippling comparison guide.

Featured payroll software offers

OnPay

Learn More

Via OnPay’s website

Monthly fee

$40 per month plus $6 per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

SurePayroll

Learn More

Via SurePayroll’s website

Monthly fee

$29.99 per month plus $5 per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

Gusto

Learn More

Via Gusto’s website

Monthly fee

Starting at $40 plus $6 per month per employee

Direct deposit

Yes

Rippling

Learn More

Via Rippling’s website

Monthly fee

$35 per month + $8 per user

Direct deposit

Yes

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)