Payroll software pricing has climbed sharply in recent years. Gusto's Simple plan starts at $40 per month plus $6 per employee. QuickBooks Payroll Core runs $45 per month plus $6 per person. ADP Run charges custom rates that typically land between $60 and $100 per month for a business with five employees. For a solo entrepreneur or a small business with two or three employees, that's a meaningful ongoing expense for software that largely automates a task you could handle yourself with the right tools.
Micro-Payroll exists to serve exactly that segment. It's a free payroll tax calculator that handles federal FICA taxes, federal income tax withholding, and state-specific taxes for Washington, California, Texas, and New York. It generates pay stubs, produces quarterly 941 summaries, and exports the wage CSV the Washington ESD EAMS portal requires for quarterly reporting. No subscription, no per-employee fee, no credit card required.
This comparison breaks down what each platform does well, where the trade-offs are real, and what type of business each one actually fits.
Side-by-Side Feature and Pricing Comparison
Pricing (2026 published rates): Micro-Payroll is free. Gusto Simple is $40/month + $6/employee. QuickBooks Payroll Core is $45/month + $6/employee. ADP Run pricing is custom — typically $59–$109/month for 1–5 employees based on publicly quoted ranges.
Tax calculation coverage: All four products calculate federal FICA (Social Security at 6.2% on wages up to $176,100 and Medicare at 1.45%) and federal income tax withholding. Gusto, QuickBooks, and ADP support all 50 states. Micro-Payroll currently supports four states: Washington (including PFML at 1.13% for 2026, WA Cares at 0.58%, and L&I by class code), California (SDI and PIT), New York (SDI, PFL, and PIT), and Texas (SUI only, as Texas has no state income tax).
Payment and bank integration: Gusto, QuickBooks, and ADP all offer direct deposit to employee bank accounts as a core feature. Micro-Payroll does not — it calculates the numbers and generates payslips, but you initiate payment through your own bank or payroll account.
Tax filing and remittance: Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll both file payroll tax deposits and quarterly 941 forms on your behalf. ADP does the same. Micro-Payroll generates a completed 941 PDF using official IRS form templates, but you file it yourself — either by mail or through IRS EFTPS. This is the most significant functional difference for businesses that want fully hands-off filing.
Data storage and privacy: Gusto, QuickBooks, and ADP store all payroll data — including SSNs and salaries — on their servers. Micro-Payroll is local-first: all data stays in your browser's IndexedDB, and SSNs are AES-256-GCM encrypted before being written to local storage. Nothing is transmitted to Micro-Payroll's servers except your login session.
When Micro-Payroll Is the Right Choice
Micro-Payroll fits best when you have a small, stable employee headcount in one of the four supported states, you're comfortable initiating payment transfers yourself, and you're running the kind of lean operation where a $600 annual software subscription is a line item you'd rather eliminate.
Solo entrepreneurs and 1099 contractors use it to model their own quarterly estimated taxes and keep track of what they've withheld for each payroll run. Small business owners with one to five W-2 employees use it to calculate each pay period's withholdings, generate payslips for their records, and prepare the IRS 941 at the end of each quarter. Some use it alongside a bank's built-in bill pay feature to handle direct deposit manually.
The local-first privacy model also appeals to owners who handle payroll for family members or employees they know personally and feel strongly that employee SSNs should not leave their own device. For that use case, there is no cloud-based alternative — the design decision is categorical.
If your employees expect employer-branded payslips delivered to an employee self-service portal, Micro-Payroll isn't the right fit. If you operate in more than four states, it's also not designed for that. These are genuine limitations, not edge cases.
When Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll Is the Better Choice
Gusto's strongest argument is automatic tax filing. Federal tax deposits (Form 941 payments), state payroll tax deposits, and year-end W-2s are handled without any manual action on your part. For a business owner who has found the compliance side of payroll stressful or who has missed a deposit deadline before, that automation has real value — value that justifies $40 to $80 per month depending on headcount.
QuickBooks Payroll Core integrates directly with QuickBooks accounting, so payroll journal entries flow into your books automatically. If you're already running QuickBooks Online for bookkeeping, the combination is tight and the time savings on reconciliation are real. The same logic applies to payroll-to-accounting integration with any platform — if you're using accounting software that has a native payroll module, that native integration typically beats a standalone calculator.
ADP Run makes more sense for businesses growing toward 10 or 20 employees where HR compliance features — new hire reporting, workers compensation audit support, and multi-state capabilities — start to matter. It's harder to justify at three employees, but that segment isn't really ADP's target anyway.
The short version: if you want automatic tax filing, direct deposit, and W-2 delivery managed for you, Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll are worth their subscription cost. If you're comfortable handling those steps yourself and want to keep data off third-party servers, Micro-Payroll covers the calculation and document generation for free.
A Note on Verified 2026 Tax Rates
One practical advantage of a tool built specifically for the current year is rate accuracy. For 2026, the IRS confirmed the Social Security wage base at $176,100 (Revenue Procedure 2025-43). The Medicare tax has no wage cap. The additional 0.9% Medicare surtax applies to employee wages above $200,000 — withholding begins at that threshold regardless of filing status.
For Washington State specifically, the WA PFML total rate for 2026 is 1.13%, confirmed by the Washington Employment Security Department's November 2025 rate announcement. The employee share is 71.43% of the total premium, which works out to 0.8072% of gross wages. The WA Cares Fund rate remains 0.58% for 2026, unchanged from prior years. WA L&I rates vary by risk class — class 2101 (data processing and IT) runs $0.04 per hour employee and $0.11 per hour employer, but employers should verify their specific class code at lni.wa.gov.
All of these rates are current in Micro-Payroll's calculation engine as of the 2026 update, sourced directly from the IRS and ESD rate notices.
If a free, private, browser-based payroll calculator fits your situation, run your first payroll at micro-payroll.com. No account required to use the tax calculator — sign up only if you want to save employee profiles and payroll history.
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