Overview Leaderboard Methodology
Industry Report

Payroll & Payroll Tax Services

Solutions that process employee payroll, withhold and remit payroll taxes, manage benefits deductions, and handle payroll tax reporting and filings.

Brands tracked: 35
Brands analyzed: 35
Last updated: 2026-04-22
Model: OpenAI GPT-5
Prompts: 275
Total responses: 1,400
Top Brand Overall?
Gusto
94/100

Highest overall AI Visibility Score in this industry.

LBA Leader?
Rippling
88

Highest score on the LBA metric in this industry.

Authority Leader?
Gusto
100

Highest score on the Authority metric in this industry.

TOM Leader?
Gusto
100

Highest score on the TOM metric in this industry.

Gusto is the default answer in AI responses for Payroll & Payroll Tax Services

When users ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini about Payroll & Payroll Tax Services, Gusto is the brand that surfaces first - unprompted, consistently, and usually at the top of any list the model generates. ADP is a close second, but the gap between them is meaningful. If you're competing in this space and you're not in the top handful, you're effectively invisible to AI-driven discovery.

Brand Leaderboard All 35 Payroll & Payroll Tax Services brands ranked

Ranked by overall AI Visibility Score (smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority, and TOM with an LBA-based floor on Authority and TOM, see methodology). Click any brand for the full report.

# Brand LBA Authority TOM Overall
1
Gusto
gusto.com
 82
100
100
94
2
ADP
adp.com
 79
54
99
75
3
QuickBooks Time
quickbooks.com
 76
50
83
68
4
QuickBooks Payroll
quickbooks.intuit.com
 77
38
82
62
5
QuickBooks Live
intuit.com
 55
50
83
61
6
OnPay
onpay.com
 69
42
73
60
7
Rippling
rippling.com
 88
26
78
57
8
Paychex
paychex.com
 73
25
81
53
9
Square Appointments
squareup.com
 48
21
48
37
10
UKG
ukg.com
 75
8
14
22
11
Deel
deel.com
 86
9
9
21
12
Papaya Global
papayaglobal.com
 72
7
7
18
13
Paylocity
paylocity.com
 73
7
7
18
14
Remote
remote.com
 74
7
7
18
15
Workday
workday.com
 74
7
7
18
16
Dayforce
dayforce.com
 72
7
7
17
17
Justworks
justworks.com
 68
7
7
17
18
Paycom
paycom.com
 70
7
7
17
19
TriNet
trinet.com
 69
7
7
17
20
Employment Hero
employmenthero.com
 64
6
6
16
21
MYOB
myob.com
 66
7
7
16
22
Paycor
paycor.com
 65
7
7
16
23
PayFit
payfit.com
 66
7
7
16
24
CloudPay
cloudpay.com
 62
6
6
15
25
greytHR
greythr.com
 62
6
6
15
26
IRIS Payroll
iris.co.uk
 59
6
6
15
27
Wagepoint
wagepoint.com
 61
6
6
15
28
BrightPay
brightpay.ie
 56
6
6
14
29
Namely
namely.com
 57
6
6
14
30
isolved
isolvedhcm.com
 51
5
5
13
31
Patriot Software
patriotsoftware.com
 52
5
5
13
32
Ramco
ramco.com
 52
5
5
13
33
SurePayroll
surepayroll.com
 52
5
5
13
34
Neeyamo
neeyamo.com
 43
4
4
11
35
Fingercheck
fingercheck.com
 34
3
3
9

How is this calculated? Methodology

Every brand in this leaderboard is scored against the same set of 275 shared Payroll & Payroll Tax Services prompts. The same prompts, same model, same iterations. So differences in scores reflect actual differences in AI visibility, not differences in measurement.

Overall AI Visibility Score
Smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority and TOM. Authority and TOM are floored at LBA × 0.1 before the geometric mean (the same floor used in the per-metric cards above, so brand cards and the composite tell the same story). Formula: composite = ((LBA + 5)(Authority + 5)(TOM + 5))^(1/3) - 5. The floor keeps brands the model clearly recognises but doesn't yet recommend from collapsing to zero, while a single genuinely weak metric still pulls the composite down. Full methodology.
Shared industry prompts
For Authority and TOM, all brands in the industry are scored against the same 275 category prompts (e.g. "best SEO tools for agencies"). This makes brand-to-brand comparisons valid - everyone faces identical inputs. LBA prompts are per-brand because they ask brand-specific questions.
Latent Brand Association (LBA)
5 brand probes + 1 control prompt, each run 5 times in recall mode (no web search). LBA = quality × meta × stability × share × recognition × 100. Read the full LBA methodology →
LLM Authority
50 organic category prompts (discovery, comparison, problem and transactional intents), each run once in recall mode and once in retrieval mode. Score = frequency × log-decayed prominence × intent weight, then 50/50 averaged across the two modes. Read the full Authority methodology →
Top of Mind (TOM)
15 high-volume discovery prompts (sourced from Keywords Everywhere search-volume data), each run 5 times in pure recall mode (no web). Score = frequency × (0.5 + 0.5 × log-prominence), volume-weighted. Read the full TOM methodology →