Small business▲+2Since September 2026: 2% → 5%, +2 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
5%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 6 → 5 of 47
1 category · Named, not rankedPayroll4Free
16Judge labels
5First choices
4Negative labels
11 / 14Models named it
1Category
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.7, every buyer segment counted.
Standing
7 labels, too few to rank
A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Payroll4Free was named 7 times in Payroll software, where Rippling led with 20%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business5 of 50
4%9 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market7 of 58
6%7 labels
under the label threshold
Enterprisenot named
0%
No model named it for this buyer.
In payroll software · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Payroll4Free for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payroll software | Core HR and payroll | 6% | 7 of 58 | 29% | 7 | under 10 labels · led by Rippling at 20% | ▲+4Since September 2026: 2% → 6%, +4 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Payroll4Free held within the floor in its one category: no change cleared 13 points.
Best category · Payroll software · by segment
Mid-market▲+4Since September 2026: 2% → 6%, +4 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
6%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 9 → 7 of 55
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payroll software | 2% | 6% | ▲+4Since September 2026: 2% → 6%, +4 points. Inside the 13-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 9 → 7 of 58 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 13 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Payroll4Free across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Payroll4Free across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct0 labelsNone
Paraphrase0 labelsNone
Comparative0 labelsNone
Budget-constrained14 labels5
Scale-constrained0 labelsNone
Negative2 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative16 labels in all, every segment counted; 5 of the 5 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Payroll4Free stands out as one of the best options since it's completely free for up to 25 employees” Grok 4.1 Fast · Payroll software · budget prompt · first choice
“For absolute minimum cost: Payroll4Free” MiniMax M2.5 · Payroll software · budget prompt · first choice
“1. Payroll4Free.com — Best Free Option” Kimi K2 · Payroll software · budget prompt · first choice
“Payroll4Free is a no-cost solution for businesses with fewer than 10 employees” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Payroll software · budget prompt · alternative
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“The user interface is significantly outdated and does not support MacOS natively... the costs quickly end up matching cheap paid software.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Payroll software · budget prompt · soft negative
“Caveat: You must handle tax filings yourself, which can be time-consuming” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Payroll software · budget prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Payroll4Free, over the 16 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Payroll4Free was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Payroll4Free, over the 16 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Payroll4Free was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Payroll4Free. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 16 of the 16 answers that named Payroll4Free and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
forbes.com13
gusto.com7
onpay.com7
tech.co7
business.org5
cnbc.com5
getjobber.com5
technologyadvice.com5
techrepublic.com5
uschamber.com5
Sixty-four of the sixty-four domain citations in answers naming Payroll4Free came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
payroll.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Payroll4Free takes 6% of first choices and Rippling takes 20%.ShowHide
Search and answers
payroll.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Payroll4Free takes 6% of first choices and Rippling takes 20%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “payroll software”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “payroll platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 1,300 a month (“payroll4free”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 49 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 77,060 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 7,909 · 573 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 3,467
- Paid Google search
- 1 searches its ads show for, about 1 clicks and $0 a month (estimate)
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
6%
rank 7 of 58 in payroll software
Segment leader
20%
Rippling
- First choices
- 5 across its categories
- Named in
- 16 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 16 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on payroll.org
9,990
subdomains included
Content
53
counted in the table below
Documentation
50
Product · Integration
0 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glossary or explainer | 37 | undated | |||
| Blog | 9 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 6 | undated | |||
| News or press | 1 | undated |
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page payroll.org exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Payroll4Free
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Payroll4Free; a claim can dispute any of them.
Payroll4Free.com 2
Follow Payroll4Free
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Payroll4Free's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Payroll4Free, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Payroll4Free by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Payroll4Free is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Payroll4Free, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.