BrightPay vs Basic PAYE Tools vs Taxriva: which should a micro-employer use?

If you employ between one and nine people, three very different answers to "what should I run payroll on?" sit in front of you: HMRC's free Basic PAYE Tools, the long-established BrightPay, and Taxriva, our own cloud payroll with native CIS filing. We make one of these three, so let us be upfront about that — and then earn your trust by being genuinely fair to the other two, including telling you when they are the better choice.

What a micro-employer actually needs

Before comparing products, it helps to be precise about the job. An employer with 1–9 staff needs, at minimum: correct PAYE and National Insurance calculations; Real Time Information (RTI) filings — the FPS on or before each payday and an EPS when needed — sent to HMRC on time; payslips for every employee, which is a legal entitlement; and, for almost everyone with qualifying staff, the full set of automatic-enrolment pension duties. Employers in construction add a fifth requirement: Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) verification and the monthly CIS300 return. GOV.UK's guidance on choosing payroll software draws the same distinction — RTI reporting is mandatory in any product, while payslips, pensions and other features are where products genuinely differ.

The useful comparison, then, is not "which has the most features" but "which covers the duties you actually have, without bolting on second products or manual routines". Keep that lens as you read the three profiles below.

The three contenders in brief

HMRC Basic PAYE Tools (BPT)

HMRC's own free desktop software, designed for employers with fewer than 10 employees. It calculates PAYE and National Insurance and files your Full Payment Submission (FPS) and Employer Payment Summary (EPS) — the legal core of running payroll. What it does not do is significant: no automatic-enrolment pension support of any kind (no assessment, contributions, letters or provider files), no CIS, only rudimentary payslips, minimal reporting, manual backups, and it is explicitly not designed for agents. We cover all nine gaps in our full BPT review. Its virtue is simple and real: it is free and authoritative.

BrightPay

A genuinely strong product with a well-earned reputation — its historical user ratings are among the best in UK payroll, and accountants have recommended it for years. But BrightPay is mid-transition, and a buyer in 2026 needs to know three things. First, the desktop version is retiring: Bright has said that starting in the 2026/27 tax year BrightPay will be exclusively cloud-based, and desktop gets no further updates. Second, cloud pricing is not published — it comes from a per-customer calculator, and some existing users have reported paying roughly double their old desktop price (that figure is anecdotal and unconfirmed). Third, CIS is no longer bundled: Bright's own FAQ confirms there is no CIS module in BrightPay cloud, with CIS moved to a separate paid product, BrightCIS, whose pricing is undisclosed. None of this makes BrightPay a bad product — it remains a very good one — but the value calculation has changed, especially for construction employers.

Taxriva

Our product, so read this paragraph with appropriate scepticism. Taxriva is cloud payroll — FPS and EPS filing, payslips, pension calculations with statutory letters and provider files — with the Construction Industry Scheme built into the same product: subcontractor verification, CIS300 filing including nil returns, and deduction statements. No accounting suite required, no separate CIS add-on, and pricing is published on payroll.taxriva.com rather than behind a calculator. The honest counterweight: we are the newest product here by a wide margin. BPT has HMRC behind it and BrightPay has years of reviews; we have neither yet, and if a long public track record is your deciding factor, we are not your pick today.

Head-to-head comparison

Pricing as of July 2026, ex VAT.

	Basic PAYE Tools	BrightPay	Taxriva
Price	Free	Desktop (final year): from £69/yr for up to 3 employees, £119/yr up to 10. Cloud: unpublished, calculator-based	Published flat pricing at payroll.taxriva.com
Cloud or desktop	Desktop application; data and backups on your machine	Desktop until the 2026/27 tax year, then exclusively cloud	Cloud — browser-based, nothing to install
Payslips	Basic payslip output only	Full payslip production	Full payslip production
Auto-enrolment pensions	None — assessment, contributions, letters and provider files are all manual	Yes	Yes — calculations, statutory letters and provider contribution files
CIS	None — separate HMRC CIS online service, filed independently of payroll	Not in cloud — separate paid BrightCIS product (pricing undisclosed)	Native — verification, CIS300 filing and deduction statements included
Agent / multi-client use	Explicitly not designed for agents or bookkeepers	Strong bureau heritage; bureau licensing	Multi-employer support for accountants and bureaus
Migration effort	Usually the starting point, not the destination	Desktop users face a compulsory move to cloud in 2026/27 regardless	Guided imports, including a BrightPay CSV importer and BPT opening balances

The money question, honestly

On the sticker, BPT wins every time: £0 against anything is no contest. But the sticker is not the cost. If BPT leaves you doing pension assessment, contribution calculations, letters and provider files by hand — plus separate CIS filing if you are in construction — the real price is your hours every pay period, and the risk in every manual step. A micro-employer paying themselves for that time at any reasonable rate usually finds the "free" option is the most expensive one on the page.

BrightPay's cost, as of July 2026, needs a footnote in both directions. The retiring desktop product was straightforwardly priced — from £69 a year for up to 3 employees, £119 for up to 10 — and excellent value. The cloud product that replaces it has no published price list: you get a figure from a per-customer calculator, and some migrating users have reported totals around double their desktop cost, though that is anecdotal and unconfirmed. Construction employers must also add BrightCIS, whose price is undisclosed. It may still come out fine — but you cannot know from the website, and you should insist on the full quote before committing.

Taxriva's pricing is published on the website, flat, and includes CIS. We think transparent pricing should be table stakes in this market, and we say so partly because it is one of the few claims a newer product can make that a buyer can verify in thirty seconds.

The pension question decides more than anything else

For most micro-employers, the single fact that settles this comparison is automatic enrolment. Nearly every UK employer has legal duties the moment they take on staff who qualify for a workplace pension: assessing them, enrolling them, calculating contributions, writing to them, and sending files to a provider — see GOV.UK's employer pension guidance. BPT does none of this, so with pension-eligible staff, "free" means doing regulated compliance work by hand every pay period. Both BrightPay and Taxriva handle it in software. If you have even one employee earning enough to trigger enrolment, the free option is rarely the cheap option.

Which should you choose? Six scenarios

• Director-only company, or two employees below pension thresholds, no construction: use BPT. Honestly. It files what HMRC needs, it costs nothing, and your scheme is simple enough that its limitations will not bite. Revisit when you hire.
• Five employees with a workplace pension, no CIS: BPT is out on pension grounds. BrightPay and Taxriva both do the job; BrightPay brings the longer track record, Taxriva brings published pricing and no forced-migration questions. Take both trials and pick the one your bookkeeper prefers.
• Construction contractor paying subcontractors: this is Taxriva's clearest win, and we say that having laid out the alternatives honestly. BPT pushes you to a separate HMRC CIS service with manual statements; BrightPay cloud requires a second paid product (BrightCIS) at undisclosed cost. Taxriva runs payroll and CIS300 filing in one place — see our best CIS payroll software guide for the full market picture.
• Existing BrightPay desktop user, no CIS: you are moving somewhere in 2026/27 whether you like it or not. Get your BrightPay cloud quote, and compare it against published alternatives before renewing on autopilot. Staying may well be the right call — but make it a decision, not a default.
• Existing BrightPay desktop user with CIS: your decision is harder, because your current workflow splits into two products with two prices, one of them unpublished. Price BrightPay cloud plus BrightCIS as a pair, then compare the total against a single product that includes both.
• Accountant or bookkeeper with several small clients: BPT is ruled out by design — HMRC says it is not for agents. Between the other two, weigh BrightPay's established bureau tooling against Taxriva's multi-employer support and per-client economics; desktop-era holdouts should also read our Moneysoft alternatives guide, since the same cloud questions apply.

How to test-drive fairly

All three options can be tried at low risk, and a fair trial looks the same for each: run one real pay period in parallel with your current process. BPT costs nothing to install; BrightPay offers a 60-day trial as of July 2026; Taxriva can be tried from the website. In that parallel run, check four things: that the net pay matches to the penny; what producing and distributing payslips actually involves; how the pension steps work end to end, from assessment to the provider file; and — if you are in construction — how a CIS300 gets filed and what the deduction statements look like. An hour of parallel running tells you more than any comparison article, including this one.

The bottom line

There is no single right answer for every micro-employer, and any comparison that claims one is selling something too hard. BPT is the correct choice for genuinely simple schemes and the wrong one the day pensions or CIS arrive. BrightPay is a fine product navigating an awkward transition — worth shortlisting, but price the cloud version and any CIS needs before committing. Taxriva is the newest of the three and asks you to take a chance on that; in exchange you get payroll, pensions and CIS filing in one cloud product with pricing you can read before you sign up. Whichever way you go, switch at a period boundary, carry your year-to-date figures and payroll IDs across carefully, and keep your old records until after year end.