Sage

Sage's entry-level payroll pricing starts from £10/mo (Essentials, 5 emp). Beyond the employees included at that tier, an extra £2/emp/mo applies per additional employee. This tiered structure is predictable for small teams with steady headcount, though the fee scales up as a growing business adds employees.

Yes. Sage is on HMRC's recognised payroll software list and submits Full Payment Submissions (FPS) under Real Time Information (RTI) for every pay run. It also handles auto-enrolment into a workplace pension, syncing with NEST and other major pension providers so contributions are calculated and reported automatically.

Yes. Sage includes CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) support on its Standard plan, handling contractor deductions and monthly HMRC returns for businesses paying subcontractors. This sits alongside standard PAYE payroll, so a construction business can run employee payroll and CIS subcontractor payments from the same subscription.

Sage includes Sage Copilot natively, an AI assistant built into the platform for surfacing payroll insights and answering questions about pay runs. Beyond the native tool, third-party community integrations connect Sage to broader AI and automation workflows via MCP (Model Context Protocol), though this is not an official Sage-built connector.

Sage suits small UK businesses through to around 150 employees that want established, HMRC-recognised payroll alongside broader Sage accounting. Rated 4.1 out of 5 on Capterra from 614 reviews, it is a long-standing name in UK payroll with UK phone and online support, suiting businesses that value a known brand.

Yes. Sage calculates statutory sick pay, statutory maternity and paternity pay, and other statutory leave payments automatically within each pay run, and it issues P60s at year end and P45s when an employee leaves. These are core UK payroll compliance requirements handled as standard, not as paid add-ons.