Sage Payroll
SimplePay
Comparison
Sage Payroll vs SimplePay
A data-driven, side-by-side comparison for UK businesses. Provider data is verified by our research team and every review is moderated before publishing.
Updated 5 July 2026
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Starting price
£12/mo
Starting price
£5/user/month
At a glance
Who wins, category by category
Category-by-category winners based on verified user ratings, each scored out of 5.
Sage Payroll
SimplePay
Analytics
Ratings, visualised
The four dimensions every reviewer rates, shown two ways — bars for side-by-side magnitude, gauges for the head-to-head on each.
Rating by category
Head to head by category
Sentiment
How reviewers feel
Positive (4 to 5 stars), neutral (3 stars) and negative (1 to 2 stars) sentiment across all verified reviews.
Sage PayrollPositive sentiment
- Positive86%
- Neutral9%
- Negative5%
SimplePayPositive sentiment
- Positive87%
- Neutral10%
- Negative3%
Pricing
Pricing compared
Entry price, free plans and trials at a glance. A lower starting price is not everything, but it is where most UK businesses begin.
Sage Payroll
Free trialUK cloud payroll with a four step pay run, automatic tax and NI calculations, RTI submissions to HMRC, pension auto enrolment, payslips, HR essentials and Sage Copilot on every plan.
- HMRC recognised RTI submissions
- Pension auto enrolment
- Sage Copilot anomaly detection
SimplePay
Free trialStraightforward SA payroll with automatic tax calculations, HMRC filing season exports and a clean interface.
- Automatic tax calculations
- P60 generation
- Accounting integrations
Features
Full feature comparison
Every data point we track for Sage Payroll and SimplePay, side by side.
Head to head
Verified data & user ratings
- HMRC recognised RTI submissions
- Pension auto enrolment
- Sage Copilot anomaly detection
- Automatic tax calculations
- P60 generation
- Accounting integrations
Voices
What real users say
The strongest praise and the most common complaint, pulled from verified reviews of each product.
Sage PayrollKrishnan Iyer
Practice Owner, 2-10 employees
“Never once had an RTI submission fail or go missing in three years, which I cannot say for every product I have used. Auto enrolment assessments are right every time. The price per company is sensible for bureau style use.”
Barry Huckerby
Owner, 11-50 employees
“Entering variable hours for twenty drivers weekly is tedious. Import template is strict and rejects files for formatting quibbles. Support twice suggested things I had already told them I tried. Considering whether a driver focused system suits us better.”
SimplePayFatima Fourie
Financial Manager, 501-1000 employees
“It is genuinely simple to use. I am not a payroll person and I had our staff loaded and paid on day one.”
Priya D.
Office Manager, 501-1000 employees
“The reporting is a bit basic if you want to slice the numbers finely.”
Our verdict
SimplePay leads 3/5Which should you choose?
On the data we track, SimplePay leads in 3 of 5 categories. Weigh that against your budget and the features that matter most to your team.