Paylocity vs Workday comparison

Paylocity and Workday are both solutions in the Cloud HCM category. Paylocity is ranked #34, while Workday is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. Paylocity holds a 0.7% mindshare in CHCM, compared to Workday’s 10.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Paylocity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Workday users who would recommend it.

Paylocity

Read 1 Paylocity review

594 Views
350 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Workday

Read 58 Workday reviews

9,682 Views
6,777 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Paylocity

Workday

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Paylocity and Workday based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Workday, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud HCM Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud HCM

March 2026

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Helped 884,797 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Paylocity

Ranking in Benefits Administration

34th

Ranking in Talent Management

48th

Ranking in Cloud HCM

34th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Workday

Ranking in Benefits Administration

1st

Ranking in Talent Management

2nd

Ranking in Cloud HCM

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Talent Acquisition (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Paylocity is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 10.5%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Workday	10.5%
Paylocity	0.7%
Other	88.8%

Cloud HCM

Featured Reviews

Rae Passo

HR Specialist with 201-500 employees

Has a comprehensive and intuitive knowledge base, and time saving payroll administration features

Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust. At present, I can't send attachments, add hyperlinks to videos, or embed questions in videos. Also, the number of notifications regarding benefits needs to be increased so that new employees get reminders more than once.

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Eslam Abo Elnaga

Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo

Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support

There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company with commissions, bonuses, and distribution, it's great to be able to do that. I can upload multiple things. Also, I can upload different sets of commission lists into the same payroll batch and upload the time card imports and overtime imports if I want to and separate them. I can create multiple batches around an individual or one one set of audit backing, and then I can approve them or leave them open. The way that Paylocity has set up their payroll system is really good and saves us a lot of time. It's very specific and helpful."

"I'm happy with the features Workday offers. But in particular, Core HCM is the best."

"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."

"The payroll and benefits engine is the most valuable Workday solution in my opinion. It is also easy to access."

"The solution is extremely stable."

"There is a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the business process framework. It's something that's really seamless. It allows you to have people within the flow. They get assigned a task to complete something to approve, etc. That's a really good piece of functionality that Workday offers. Their out-of-the-box reporting framework is also really powerful in terms of what it provides. These would be two things that I would highlight."

"We use the platform for tasks, including applying for leaves, communication, and adhering to our organization's policies through efficient goal setting and reviews."

"Performance and good usability are the two most valuable features of this solution."

"I would say that we have definitely seen a return on investment."

More Workday pros

Cons

"Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust."

"Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market."

"They could improve the product areas such as enhancing the interview scheduling module to support more flexible online assessments within the platform."

"The expenses and reimbursements module could be improved. Creating expense reports is time consuming and inefficient compared to other expense solutions."

"The UI, UX (user experience) is very bad. It is not very interactive."

"My only suggestion might be to include a brief description of any new fields we introduce, making it easier for people to use them. Perhaps this is something they can consider implementing."

"The solution has to work a lot on financial integrations, material management and CRM modules."

"My opinion is that this solution can improve the overall integrations and add more automation. I think anything that could be on a self-serve basis would work quite well."

"I would be happy if it was faster. Currently, when I try to navigate within the solution itself, it is a bit slow in terms of the page load time. When I click on something, it usually takes time to load. When you click on different icons or areas on the website, it is slow. Even when you navigate between different models, it is a bit slow. I would like to see a bit faster performance and a better user experience."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."

"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."

"You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part."

"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."

"It is on a yearly basis."

"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."

"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."

"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?

Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...

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What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?

If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...

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Comparisons

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

isolved vs Paylocity

Compared 10% of the time

BambooHR vs Paylocity

Compared 9% of the time

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SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday

Compared 23% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 8% of the time

UKG vs Workday

Compared 8% of the time

SAP HCM vs Workday

Compared 7% of the time

Dayforce HCM vs Workday

Compared 5% of the time

More Workday Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud HCM

March 2026

Download Paylocity product report

Buyer's Guide

Workday

February 2026

Download Workday product report

Overview

Our all-in-one software platform gives HR pros a way to easily manage daily tasks in payroll, benefits, talent, and workforce management. But what makes us different is that our technology is backed by a culture that truly cares about our clients’ success.

Providers will merely sell you a product. But a partner actually cares about you and your business. A partner takes the time to get to know you and understand your needs. We work with you to identify the best solutions that will benefit your business today, while paving the way to a better tomorrow. And tomorrow is all about your team.

Everything we do is designed to support you in reaching your goals. Together, we tackle your day-to-day work so you can spend more time building the culture you and your employees crave.

For professionals who crave true partnership, Paylocity is the HR & Payroll company that frees you from the tasks of today, so together, we can spend more time focused on the promise of tomorrow.

Let's go forward together.

Paylocity

The Workday Platform is an AI-powered platform that unifies HR, financial, and operational data, enabling seamless planning, execution, and analysis. It improves decision-making, streamlines cross-team processes, and leverages Workday Illuminate™ for advanced AI insights from vast HR and finance datasets. Workday empowers organizations of all sizes to innovate and optimize performance.

Workday

Sample Customers

POLYWOOD, University Clinical Healthcare, New England Authentic Eats, Revere Plastics, Stonewall Kitchen, Circuit Transit, Powerhouse Retail, Mountainside Fitness, Crafton Tull, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, Gurley Leep Automotive, Taco Johns

AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Workday, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: March 2026.

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