Honest Paycor Review 2025: Pros, Cons, Features & Pricing

Paycor Pricing

Paycor offers 4 pricing plans for small businesses with fewer than 50 users and a custom plan for larger businesses. 

Basic <50 users Custom pricing	• Payroll and tax services • Auto-payroll • Basic wage garnishments • Compliance filing and reporting  • Standard reporting • On-demand pay
Essential <50 users Custom pricing	Everything in Basic • HR software • Advanced reporting • Month-end accounting • Recruiting: 3 jobs • Onboarding • Time off manager
Core <50 users Custom pricing	Everything in Essential • Expense management • Engagement tools • Recruiting: 5 jobs
Complete <50 users Custom pricing	Everything in Core • Career management • Compensation planning • Talent development • Recruiting: unlimited jobs
Customized 50-1000+ users Custom pricing	• Customized offering

I like that Paycor has a basic, payroll-only plan for businesses that need its payroll features only. But, I was confused about why none of the plans included time-tracking and scheduling, which are so closely linked to payroll. These were available only as add-ons. 

I also wish the website explained why Paycor’s pricing plans apply to businesses with fewer than 50 users only. 

Unfortunately, there’s no way to see Paycor’s prices without going through the sales process. One website mentions that Paycor previously started at a $99/month flat fee + $6/user/month for its basic plan and a $99/month flat fee + $12/user/month for the core plan. 

Let’s take a look at how Paycor’s leading competitors are priced. 

Team size	Paycor (Core)	Deel (US payroll)	Gusto(Plus)	Connecteam (Advanced)
	View pricing	View pricing	View pricing	View pricing
10 Users	Custom quote	$190/mo	$200/mo	Free for life—All features and dashboards
20 Users	Custom quote	$380/mo	$320/mo	$49/mo
30 Users	Custom quote	$570/mo	$440/mo	$49/mo
50 Users	Custom quote	$950/mo	$680/mo	$79/mo
			Read our full Gusto review	Learn more about Connecteam

If Paycor actually costs approximately $99/month for the platform and $6/user/month, it’s fairly priced—roughly in between Gusto and Deel. 

However, I noted that despite listing non-profit businesses as one of its key sectors, Paycor doesn’t offer any discounts or special prices for non-profits. 

Finally, Paycor doesn’t offer a free trial nor a free plan. This was a big disappointment compared with platforms like Connecteam, which offer both. 

Paycor Usability and Interface

Since Paycor doesn’t offer a free trial or free plan, I couldn’t test the platform first-hand. However, I successfully signed up for a product demo and was granted access to a video and product tour of its key features. This, combined with Paycor’s website, help center, and online user reviews, helped me explore the platform.  

Paycor’s web portal has a modern design, a soft blue and white color theme_, and a clean serif-style font. While I don’t mind the corporate feel, it could feel too formal for startups and small businesses looking for more fun themes.  

Your homepage gives you a glance at everything you need—important alerts and reminders, the latest company news, time and attendance insights, and more. I love that the homepage is fully customizable so that you can opt for the most relevant widgets for your use case. 

Overall, the homepage seems straightforward. But, the learning curve appears much steeper for individual features. 

For example, employee timesheets are super comprehensive, which is great, but they can also feel cluttered and overwhelming. Additionally, it took me a while to make sense of the format, identify symbols and icons, and work out the tool’s best use. 

I also read a few online reviews about the user interface being hard to navigate. One user called the platform “clumsy” and “super clunky.”

Furthermore, Paycor’s website doesn’t explicitly discuss any accessibility features for users with visual, hearing, motor, or other impairments. This is disappointing since other workforce management platforms offer screen reader compatibility. 

Mobile app

Paycor Mobile is available to download on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. I accessed screenshots online. 

The design was clean and modern but felt less corporate than the web portal. The app also seemed straightforward to navigate. You can find key features listed neatly in the bottom bar. 

Here’s how Paycor’s mobile app compares to the web portal: 

Menu Item	App
	Web	Mobile
Core features
Clock in timer	✅	✅
Facial recognition	❌	✅
Manual time tracking	✅	❌
GPS location tracking	❌	✅
Geofencing	❌	✅
Scheduling	✅	✅
Timesheets	✅	❌
Payroll	✅	❌
Time off management	✅	✅
Employee recordkeeping	✅	❌
Benefits administration	✅	✅
Chat	❌	✅
Recognition/announcements	✅	✅
Training	✅	✅
Paycor wallet	❌	✅
Analysis features
Reports	✅	❌
Timecard approvals	✅	✅
Management features
Smart alerts	✅	✅
Teams	✅	✅
Account management	✅	❌
Settings and customizations	✅	❌

Paycor’s mobile app is pretty full-featured. In fact, some tools—facial recognition, team chat, and the Paycor wallet for financial planning—are available only on the mobile app. 

That said, some admin features like reporting, account management, recordkeeping, and payroll aren’t available on the app. 

I read several negative reviews about Paycor’s mobile app freezing or crashing. One Android user wrote: 

“Horrible. The app constantly freezes and crashes. I updated and cleared the cache. The timecard screen constantly grays out, and the loading symbol freezes. Punches sometimes do not take.” 

Another iOS user wrote, “I have actually never seen something fail so consistently at its advertised/main function.”

Finally, Paycor doesn’t work offline without an internet connection. Remote businesses with poor connectivity might be better off exploring other apps. 

Paycor Core Functionalities

Time and attendance tracking 

Paycor offers multiple options for employee time collection. You can choose hardware such as physical time clock devices that employees can tap into using ID cards, badges, fingerprints, or facial recognition. This makes sense when you have multiple employees working from the same location. 

Paycor also allows workers to clock in and out of work from their web browsers or a shared iPad kiosk app with facial recognition for verification. What’s more—Paycor mobile lets workers punch in from anywhere using their smartphones. You can even set geofences and track their geolocations to prevent them from tracking time outside designated work areas. 

You can set custom rules for employee hours, start times, breaks, overtime, and time off—depending on your company’s policies and local regulations. 

For instance, you can set maximum working hours for each employee and opt for overtime alerts when employees cross their hourly limit. I think this is great for preventing burnout, staying compliant, and keeping an eye on labor costs. 

You can also set rules for time off, such as vacation days, sick leaves, or custom days off, such as mental health days. Employees can view their leave balances and accruals and request leave from their apps, and you can approve or deny requests from the time dashboard. 

The time dashboard gives managers and admins a summary of their team’s hours, including scheduled hours, actual hours worked, overtime, and errors like missed punches, lateness, and more. 

You can also view detailed time cards for each employee, including line-by-line entries about their hours, projects worked on, overtime, and more. This is where you can manually add and edit time entries to correct any inaccuracies before approving timesheets for payroll. 

Overall, I found Paycor’s time tracking tools and time dashboard impressive. But I wish there was a way to mark employee hours as billable or non-billable and track them by client, not just project. Connecteam, for instance, offers this, and it’s a huge timesaver when preparing client invoices.  

Payroll

Paycor’s time tracking feature is fully integrated with its payroll solution. Once you’ve approved timesheets, you can head to the payroll feature, which lets you look at pay runs for the next 12 months. 

You can change dates, edit data, and add manual earnings and deductions in advance so you don’t forget. I didn’t see this option with other popular payroll platforms. Further, Paycor lets you create off-cycle pay runs on the fly, so you can run any ad hoc bonuses or payments easily. 

Clicking into a pay run takes you to Paycor’s pay grid, where you can see your employees, their employment statuses, pay rates, hours, and overtime hours and amounts. 

The best part? I could customize the pay grid to fit the fields most important to me. For instance, you can add bonuses, commissions, expenses (which you can also manage on Paycor), PTO, and more. 

You can also click on individual employee names to see their earnings, deductions, taxes, accruals, and gross-to-net pay calculations. 

Once you’ve reviewed and approved pay runs, Paycor: 

• Runs payroll.
• Calculates and deducts taxes, wage garnishments, benefits contributions, etc. 
• Handles filings. 

You can also set up auto payroll to schedule payments for your chosen pay period—weekly, bi-weekly, fortnightly, or monthly—without having to log in. Employees can easily view their pay stubs from their own dashboards. 

That said, a major drawback for me was Paycor’s inability to run non-US payroll. This is a huge miss in a world that’s increasingly remote and globalized. 

Scheduling

Paycor lets you build schedules from scratch. The scheduling tool is laid out in a weekly format with the dates at the top and employee names on the left side. You can click the plus sign on any date and employee box to create and assign a shift—or use the autofill feature, where the system automatically assigns employees to empty shifts based on their job, location, costs, and availability. 

You can also add notes, set break rules, assign shifts to departments or jobs, and set them to repeat daily or weekly. Unfortunately, the repeat setting doesn’t let you pick custom slots—for example, you can’t set shifts to repeat every 3 days. You can also edit, drag and drop, and copy shifts across the schedule and save schedules in templates for future use. 

I was most impressed by the labor cost guide, which shows you the total labor cost for your schedule even while it’s in draft mode. You can make adjustments and ensure you’re within budget before publishing it. 

Employees can see their shifts on their web portals or smartphones. They can also use self-service tools to share their availability and pick up open shifts or trade shifts—all of which go to a manager for approval. 

While this is great for maintaining oversight, I wish you could turn off the need for approval on open shifts and shift swaps like you can with Connecteam. Empowering employees to deal with last-minute changes without manager intervention helps reduce gaps in coverage. 

HR management

Paycor lets you collect employee records as early as the electronic onboarding process. New hires and existing employees complete compliance forms, e-sign policies, choose their benefits programs, and input key information—such as tax information and documents and I-9 information. 

My only complaint? HR—specifically, tax and compliance—features are limited to US employees.  

You can also track licenses and certifications, attach relevant documents, and add expiration dates to ensure they’re updated in time—keeping you compliant. 

While I’ve seen document management in other apps, Paycor’s employee profile also lets you track company assets in employees’ possession, detailed information about any employee relation cases such as disciplinary or grievance issues, and their position history, which shows you start dates, pay increases, transfers, promotions, or any other key historical events. This is similar to the neat timeline feature I’ve used in Connecteam. 

Recruitment and employee engagement

I was pleased to see that Paycor offers several additional features, including: 

• An applicant tracking system that lets you source, engage, and hire employees for your open roles. 
• Pulse surveys that you can build from scratch or with ready templates that help you gather employee feedback. 
• A learning management system that lets you create and publish self-paced training modules employees can complete from their desktops or mobile phones. 
• A talent management feature where you can set employee objectives, track performance, offer recognition, and record feedback from 1-to-1 sessions. 

Unfortunately, there were no video demos for these features. 

Integrations

Paycor offers 300+ third-party integrations in its marketplace, including apps for accounting, benefits, learning management, and collaboration.  

Unfortunately, there weren’t integrations for project management—and Paycor lacks project management features. 

It also lacked integrations with major communications platforms like Slack or MS Teams and productivity apps like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. I’m unsure it’s a good fit for large companies that need unified systems. 

Paycor Security Features

Here are Paycor’s key security features. 

• Paycor is SOC type 2 certified, which is the gold standard for data security.
• Role-based permissions make sure only authorized personnel can access and manage sensitive data. 
• Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring additional verification, such as a code sent to users’ phones, email addresses, or the Google Authenticator app.
• A dedicated risk assessment team frequently updates and tests the platform’s security measures to prevent data breaches. 
• End-to-end data encryption ensures data can’t be decoded by unsolicited parties in transit or at rest. 
• Company-controlled laptops ensure that users can access sensitive data only on company-approved secure devices. 

While these security features are good, I was less impressed by its privacy features. 

Paycor’s US-focused platform doesn’t necessarily need GDPR compliance. However, it’s advertised as a solution for healthcare businesses, so I was appalled to see no mention of HIPAA compliance, as I’ve seen with platforms like Connecteam. 

Paycor Reporting & Analytics

Paycor provides you with a personal dashboard that you can customize with your choice of widgets, such as headcount analysis, diversity and inclusion data, labor costs, vacation hours, turnover and resignation trends, and so on. Impressively, Paycor also offers benchmark data to help companies understand where they stand. 

For customers with multiple locations, departments, or teams, Paycor provides a heat map that points out areas of the business that require your attention.

You can change the date range and filter any time you want. You can also download these analytics into a PowerPoint deck or PDF to share them with stakeholders. 

Unfortunately, both the website and the demo focused only on the analytics tool. I couldn’t see if Paycor lets you pull custom reports on time and attendance, labor costs, and more. 

Paycor Customer Support

I wasn’t a fan of Paycor’s customer support. 

Existing and potential customers can contact Paycor by phone call only, Monday-Friday, 8:00 am-8:00 pm EST. 

While there’s a live chat on the website, the chatbot didn’t answer open-ended questions, and live chat isn’t available 24/7.

I could see some helpful FAQs on the website, but getting answers to other questions proved difficult. I shared some questions and requested a consultation with support. While the sales team reached out within a day to schedule a call to discuss my requirements, they didn’t offer any answers. I think this is frustrating for prospective customers who just want quick answers. 

Additionally, while Paycor has a knowledge center, it’s available within the web portal only, so prospective customers can’t access it. 

Finally, I’m not alone in my disappointment. In a recent online review, one customer mentioned, “The lack of knowledgeable customer support is appalling.” Another wrote, “The only two dislikes of Paycor are customer support and implementation.”

What Are Paycor Review Ratings from Review Sites?

(As of February 2025)

Capterra: 4.4/5
G2: 3.9/5
TrustRadius: 7.4/10
Software Advice: 4.4/5
GetApp: 4.4/5
Google Play Store: 4.1/5
iOS App Store: 4.6/5

Paycor App Review

Paycor is an HR, payroll, and workforce management solution. I was impressed by the range and functionality of its key features, especially its customizable time dashboard, scheduling tools, and HR management platform. 

That said, some reviewers have expressed concerns about the interface, mobile app, and customer service. 

Paycor also lacks integrations with project management tools and popular communication and productivity apps, and its workforce management tools are available as add-ons only, so it might not be the best platform for those who want a unified work management system. 

Connecteam: The Better Paycor Alternative

Connecteam is the best Paycor alternative. It has a user-friendly design, mobile app, handy customer service, and a great set of features. Here’s what Connecteam has to offer. 

Time tracking and payroll

Workers can punch in and out of their jobs from their desktops, smartphones, or a shared kiosk with Connecteam’s employee time clock. Like Paycor, Connecteam also enables users to clock in with ID cards. I like that users and admins can add time manually when they need to add, edit, or remove entries. 

Connecteam also lets you track employees’ GPS locations, add geofences, and set overtime limits to prevent time theft and buddy punching. 

You can review, adjust, and approve timesheets from your admin dashboard before integrating these with payroll providers like Gusto, Xero, Paychex, QuickBooks Online, and more—some which support international payroll, unlike Paycor. 

Smart scheduling

With Connecteam’s smart staff scheduling tools, you can create and assign shifts based on employees’ preferences, availability, location, and qualifications or use my favorite feature—the auto-scheduler—to do all of this for you. Additionally, Connecteam lets you create open shifts, and, unlike Paycor, it lets employees swap shifts with or without your approval. 

Time off management 

With the time off management tools, you can set time off rules for different leave types and even create custom leave types. Employees can view their leave balances and request time off on the app, while you can review and respond to requests in real time from your dashboard. 

Document management, employee engagement, and more

Like Paycor, Connecteam offers great features to manage team documents, build and publish surveys, and provide online training. But, according to me, Connecteam takes things up a notch by offering reward features, org chart tools, an in-app chat and newsfeed, digital forms and checklists, and so much more. 

Affordable pricing and a small business plan 

Connecteam starts at just $29/month for up to 30 users and even has a free plan for small businesses. There are also no add-ons required. 

Try Connecteam for free today.

FAQs

Does Paycor offer a free trial?

No, Paycor doesn’t offer a free trial or a free plan. 

Is Paycor HIPAA compliant?

Paycor’s website doesn’t explicitly mention HIPAA compliance.