PayHero pricing in NZ, explained properly

The short version: PayHero prices in NZD, as at the 22 September 2026 check of its own pricing page: Origin from $4 a month per employee plus a $24 monthly base fee, Super at $6 plus $39, and Universe at $7 plus $59, all excluding GST. Origin caps out at 10 employees; Super and Universe are uncapped. The real tier boundary is depth of reporting and API access, not payroll itself, since payday filing and Xero integration are included from Origin.

The three tiers, decoded

Plan	Price, NZD per month	Built for
Origin	$4 a employee, plus $24 base fee	Up to 10 employees; payroll, timesheets, leave requests, automated payday filing, same-day payments, branded payslips, employee mobile app, Xero integration.
Super	$6 a employee, plus $39 base fee	Unlimited employees; everything in Origin, plus insights reporting, GPS clock-in, timesheet approvals and import, rest and meal break calculations.
Universe	$7 a employee, plus $59 base fee	Everything in Super, plus a Claude AI connector, pay insights and benchmarking, onboarding workflows, document management, audit reports, pay cycle admins, expenses, API access.

All three tiers are priced in NZD, excluding GST, and stack a per-employee rate on top of a flat monthly base fee, so the base fee dominates the bill for a very small team and the per-employee rate dominates once headcount climbs. Larger organisations get custom enterprise pricing rather than the Universe rate. Source: payhero.co.nz/pricing, checked 22 September 2026.

Where the tier boundary actually bites

Origin already runs full payroll: automated payday filing, same-day payments and Xero integration are all included from the entry tier, not held back for Super or Universe. The real wall is headcount and admin depth: Origin caps out at 10 employees, and GPS clock-in, timesheet approvals, insights reporting and API access only arrive on Super or above. PayHero itself has no built-in roster or shift-planning tool; that's sold separately through Droppah, a companion product from the same FlexiTime team, with its own pricing not published on the PayHero pricing page.

Who this suits, and who it doesn't

It suits a small New Zealand employer who wants compliant PAYE, payday filing and payslips handled properly without hiring a payroll clerk, starting from a single low base fee. It doesn't suit a firm that also wants rostering and shift planning bundled into the same product, since that sits in a separate Droppah subscription, or one already past 10 employees hoping to stay on the cheapest Origin tier. How it compares side by side with Smartly and Employment Hero is worked through in PayHero vs Smartly vs Employment Hero.

Or build the roster on what you already pay for

For a firm already on Microsoft 365, a roster, timesheet and leave register can be built directly on the licence already paid for: on Dataverse at NZ$32.40 a user a month, or on SharePoint lists and Teams Shifts where the licence already includes them, with Power BI Pro at NZ$22.60 for the two or three people who need the report. A build like that runs $8,000 to $18,000. It does not run payroll: PAYE, KiwiSaver, holiday pay under the Holidays Act and payday filing stay in a compliant payroll product like PayHero. What it covers is the roster, the time capture, leave requests and approvals, and the reporting that feeds PayHero rather than replacing it. The full picture is in Power Platform pricing in NZ.

Common questions

Get a number for your own crew

Book a free 30-minute call. Bring your employee count and pay cycle and I'll tell you where PayHero sits against building the roster yourself.