HR AI Index

Index › Vendors › Wave Payroll · September 2026 Edition

Wave · 1 category · Named, not ranked

Wave Payroll

13Judge labels

0First choices

5Negative labels

8 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.1, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

5 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Wave Payroll was named 5 times in Payroll software, where Rippling led with 28%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business20 of 34

under the label threshold

Mid-market19 of 43

under the label threshold

Enterprise41 of 51

under the label threshold

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 Wave Payroll 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
Payroll software	Core HR and payroll	0%	19 of 43	20%	5	under 10 labels · led by Rippling at 28%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Wave Payroll yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Wave Payroll across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	1	1	2
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	0	1
Mistral Small	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	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

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative1 labelNone

Budget-constrained6 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative4 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative13 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.

“best if affordability is the top priority and you can accept more limited functionality” Perplexity Sonar · Payroll software · budget prompt · alternative

“Contractors, very small businesses | Limited tax filing availability; fewer HR tools” Grok 4.1 Fast · Payroll software · budget prompt · alternative

“Best for Freelancers transitioning to W-2” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Payroll software · budget prompt · alternative

“Budget-friendly with accounting features” DeepSeek V4 Flash · 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.

“Lower-cost options that trade off some advanced HR/global features for affordability.” Perplexity Sonar · Payroll software · comparative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Wave Payroll, over the 13 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Wave Payroll was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Gusto11 of 134Not in the top three

OnPay11 of 131Not in the top three

Patriot Payroll10 of 136Not in the top three

ADP7 of 130Not in the top three

Rippling6 of 131Not in the top three

QuickBooks Payroll5 of 130Not in the top three

Square Payroll4 of 130Not in the top three

Paychex Flex3 of 130Not in the top three

Payroll4Free3 of 130Not in the top three

BambooHR2 of 131Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. 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 Wave Payroll. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 11 of the 13 answers that named Wave Payroll and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

forbes.com9

cnbc.com7

fitsmallbusiness.com6

pcmag.com5

reddit.com5

technologyadvice.com5

capterra.com4

gusto.com4

learn.g2.com4

peoplemanagingpeople.com4

Fifty-three of the fifty-three domain citations in answers naming Wave Payroll came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-payroll-services9

cnbc.com/select/best-payroll-services-small-business7

pcmag.com/picks/best-payroll-services5

technologyadvice.com/payroll-software5

fitsmallbusiness.com/best-payroll-software-reviews4

learn.g2.com/best-payroll-software4

capterra.com/payroll-software3

forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-cheap-payroll-services3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

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 Wave Payroll'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 Wave Payroll, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at wavepayroll.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.