One-person HR departments ask the same question every comp cycle: is there an AI compensation planning tool — Aeqium, Pequity, or CompUp — that won’t cost enterprise money and won’t just be marketing dressed up as “AI”? The category is small enough that the honest answer used to be simple. It got more complicated in October 2025, when one of the three vendors in this comparison got bought by a payroll giant.
The stakes are real on both sides. Compensation data is the most sensitive information HR touches — pay bands, individual raises, bonus pools, equity grants. And the status quo for most small teams is a spreadsheet that eats two to three weeks every cycle in version-control errors, email chains, and manager follow-up.
The quick answer: Aeqium is the strongest fit for most small businesses in the roughly 30-200 employee range that have outgrown spreadsheets — a free entry tier, a workflow purpose-built for merit cycles, and a small but consistently positive review base, though its own reviewers say it’s overkill for very small companies with simple annual raises. CompUp is worth evaluating if pay equity is the primary driver and its per-employee pricing structure fits the budget — but its equity methodology needs confirming directly. Pequity’s AI Co-Pilot is genuinely capable, but ADP acquired the company in October 2025 and has said it’s expanding toward mid-size, enterprise, and multinational clients — a real question mark for a small buyer signing a multi-year contract. And before any of that: companies under roughly 50 employees running one simple annual raise cycle may not need any of these tools yet.
This is not legal or compliance advice — pay-equity claims in particular should be verified with counsel before relying on them.
What AI Compensation Planning Software Actually Does
These tools replace the comp-cycle spreadsheet and the email chain that goes with it. That means pay bands, merit and bonus and equity cycle workflows, approval chains that route recommendations up a management hierarchy, and budget modeling that shows the cost impact of a raise pool before it’s finalized.
Merit cycles are downstream of performance reviews. A raise recommendation typically starts with a performance rating, which is why comp tools plug into performance management software rather than standing alone.
None of the three tools in this comparison set salaries or approve raises on their own. Every one of them routes a recommendation to a human manager or approver for sign-off. That distinction matters for how this category should be evaluated: comp planning is admin work — flagging outliers, organizing a cycle, modeling a budget scenario. AI doing admin work is useful. AI making pay decisions is not something any of these three vendors actually claims to do, whatever their marketing implies.
The Elephant in the Room: ADP Just Bought Pequity
ADP announced the acquisition of Pequity on October 28-29, 2025, according to ADP’s own newsroom and a PR Newswire release covering the deal. ADP’s public framing describes the acquisition as expanding its ability to serve “mid-size, enterprise and multinational clients” — language that should give a 30-300 employee buyer pause.
That phrasing is not a claim that the product is being killed or that small businesses are being dropped. Nothing in ADP’s announcement says either of those things. It is a real reason to ask pointed questions before signing a multi-year contract with a company that just changed hands.
A small HR team evaluating Pequity today should ask ADP directly: will pricing or tiers change for existing small-business customers; will the self-serve buying motion survive the integration; who owns the comp data once it sits inside ADP’s systems; and what is ADP’s roadmap commitment for customers under 300 employees. This is a risk to weigh, not a verdict against the product. A lean HR team’s sensitive comp data is not the place to guess.
Aeqium: the Purpose-Built Merit-Cycle Tool With a Free Tier
Aeqium’s “Active AI” flags compa-ratio outliers, runs merit-cycle analysis across a company’s pay bands, and models budget scenarios before a cycle closes. Reported pricing includes a free plan aimed at small teams moving off spreadsheets and an Enterprise plan aimed at organizations above roughly 200 employees — figures reported publicly and worth confirming on Aeqium’s own site before buying.
Aeqium reportedly holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating on G2, though the sample is small — around 12 reviews — which makes it directional rather than definitive. Reviewers reportedly praise quick setup, customizability, and responsive support. They also reportedly flag the product as not ideal for very small companies running simple annual raises without structured pay bands or bonus schemes — a useful data point for where the spreadsheet threshold actually sits, covered later in this piece.
Aeqium does not appear to ship built-in market or benchmark data, based on competitor comparisons — a company using it would need a separate benchmarking source alongside it. The free tier is the strongest argument for starting here: it lets a lean team test the workflow before committing budget, with the small review count noted as a real caveat rather than glossed over.
Pequity: the AI Co-Pilot Now Owned by ADP
Pequity’s “Co-Pilot” functions as an on-demand comp analyst — it answers questions and builds comp models inside the cycle workflow rather than sitting outside it. The platform also includes a built-in approvals engine and, per Pequity’s own comparison materials, free real-time market and equity data bundled into the product.
That feature set is broader out of the box than Aeqium’s, according to vendor comparisons — the approvals engine, employee-facing total-compensation portals, and built-in benchmark data are all things a company would otherwise need to assemble separately. The acquisition by ADP, which closed in October 2025, is the watch-out. ADP’s stated focus on mid-size, enterprise, and multinational clients deserves real weight against a small company’s size and its plans over the next three years. No small-business-specific pricing has been confirmed publicly post-acquisition; a company evaluating Pequity should contact sales and ask directly rather than assume the pre-acquisition pitch still holds.
None of this is a claim that Pequity’s product is weaker because ADP bought it — the acquisition itself says nothing about product quality. The opinion here is narrower: a small HR team should get ADP’s small-business commitments in writing before signing, not take the sales pitch at face value.
CompUp: Full-Stack Platform With Pay Equity Built Into the Workflow
CompUp positions itself as a full-stack comp platform — benchmarking, merit cycles, bonus planning, and executive appraisals — plus a dedicated Pay Equity feature that flags gaps during budgeting and models the equity impact of a raise before it’s committed.
Reported enterprise pricing starts around $3 per employee per year, though this figure needs confirming directly and current before relying on it. That structure — per-employee-per-year — differs meaningfully from Aeqium’s free-plus-enterprise-quote model and from Pequity’s typical per-employee-per-month or flat-fee approach. CompUp reportedly counts more than 500 startups and enterprises as customers, though that figure is vendor-reported and not independently verified.
“Pay equity” is doing a lot of marketing work in CompUp’s positioning, and it is worth asking the company directly what statistical method powers the equity analysis before assuming it is compliance-grade — the distinction between real equity analysis and benchmarking with a label gets its own section below. Separate from that question, the per-employee-per-year pricing model is a genuine structural advantage for a smaller organization’s budget compared with a flat enterprise quote, and that advantage stands regardless of how the pay-equity claim holds up under scrutiny.
What the “AI” Actually Does (and Doesn’t)
This is the question that matters most, and it deserves a direct answer for each tool.
Aeqium’s Active AI flags compa-ratio outliers, runs merit-cycle analysis, and models budget scenarios. It flags and models. It does not set pay.
Pequity’s Co-Pilot answers comp questions and builds comp models on request. It assists and answers. It does not approve raises.
CompUp’s AI flags pay-equity gaps during budgeting and runs scenario modeling. It flags and simulates. It does not decide.
In all three cases, a human approver still signs off on every raise. None of the three vendors claims otherwise, and any marketing copy that implies “AI decides your comp” should be read skeptically regardless of which tool it comes from. This is the same pattern that shows up in AI bias audit software for hiring — the AI runs a fairness or consistency check, and a person makes the judgment call. Comp planning follows the identical structure.
It’s also worth noting that compa-ratio outlier flags are only as good as the market data feeding them. For a sense of how that underlying benchmark data gets built and where it can go wrong, salary benchmarking data covers the mechanics in more depth — that piece is written for job seekers, but the underlying data quality issues apply just as directly to the employer side.
The position here holds evenly across all three vendors: AI does the admin — flagging, modeling, answering. Humans do the decisions — approving raises. No vendor in this comparison gets a pass on that distinction, and none of them should be given one.
Pay Equity: Real Analysis or Benchmarking With a Label?
A defensible pay-equity analysis is a specific statistical method — typically a regression that controls for legitimate factors like role, level, tenure, location, and performance. It is not the same thing as “here’s what similar roles pay in the market,” which is benchmarking, not equity analysis.
Some tools in this broader category may market benchmarking with a pay-equity label attached. That is not an accusation against any specific vendor named in this piece — it is a due-diligence question every buyer should ask before assuming the feature does what the name implies. The questions worth asking any vendor directly: what statistical method powers the pay-equity check, has it been reviewed by employment counsel or a compensation consultant, and is it positioned as compliance-grade or as directional-only guidance.
Benchmarking data quality itself varies more than most buyers expect. One member of r/humanresources compared two major benchmarking providers directly: “Payscale is 3X as expensive as Salary.com… Onboarding with Payscale is very helpful, you’re on your own with Salary.com… I found variance in their reports with roles that I knew pretty well.” That variance matters doubly for a tool that layers a pay-equity claim on top of benchmark data — if the underlying data is inconsistent, the equity conclusion inherits that inconsistency.
This is not legal advice. If pay-equity compliance is a real driver — and with multi-state pay-transparency laws expanding, it increasingly is — employment counsel should be looped in before relying on any vendor’s output as a compliance defense.
Integrations: Does It Talk to Your HRIS?
A comp tool that doesn’t sync cleanly with a company’s core HRIS — Rippling, BambooHR, or Gusto just becomes another spreadsheet with extra steps for a one-person HR team. The right question to ask each vendor is specific: what is the exact integration list, and is the sync real-time or a manual CSV import dressed up as an “integration.”
Aeqium is reported to integrate with Paylocity specifically. Current integration partners for all three vendors should be confirmed directly before buying, since integration lists change as vendors expand.
Small HR teams are already anchored to a core HRIS long before they shop for a comp tool, which is what makes integration quality matter so much. One member of r/humanresources described the anchor tool directly: “If you need an easy payroll/HR tool for a small business in the US, Gusto has been great for me. It handles taxes automatically, files W-2/1099s… Way smoother than QuickBooks Payroll or ADP in my experience.” A comp tool that fights with that anchor system creates more work than it removes. For a lean team, integration quality is arguably a bigger differentiator than the AI feature set — the flagging and modeling functions look similar across all three vendors, but a broken sync is a daily tax on a small team’s time.
Do You Even Need This? The Spreadsheet Threshold
The honest reality check belongs here. A company with one simple annual raise cycle and no formal pay bands is genuinely fine on a spreadsheet, or on the comp features already built into its HRIS. This category solves a coordination problem — multiple approvers, complex bands, formal equity checks — that a very small company may not have yet.
Pricing in this category is frustratingly opaque, and small HR teams notice. One member of r/humanresources described the shopping experience bluntly: “It is so frustrating to try to shop — demos are required, and I’ve been doing that, but the call is short once I ask about pricing.” Another gave a real number: a company around 175 employees was quoted “$3-8k per year for 175 people for that type of software usually… 175 people you’re prob looking $250-300 per month” just to manage cycles. A separate merit-and-bonus-only tool ran roughly $10,000 for about 100 employees, according to community reporting.
The pain point that pushes companies to buy is also the pain point that should make some readers pause. One member of r/humanresources put it directly: “our process has been completely manual (excel, email, tons of follow-up)… I’ll have a tough time trying to justify paying $350+ a month for a module we’ll use once a year.” That is the exact calculation a company under the threshold should be running. Aeqium’s own reviewers independently flag the product as not ideal for very small companies with simple raises — real evidence, from two different directions, of where the line sits.
A rough and hedged threshold: once a company has multiple approvers, pay-band or pay-equity complexity, and spreadsheet version-control errors that carry a real cost, the category starts to pay for itself — often somewhere in the 50-100+ employee range, though process complexity matters more than headcount alone. Below that line, the better spend is often cleaning up job architecture and pay bands manually first. Software will not fix a comp structure that doesn’t exist yet.
Our Verdict: Which Small HR Team Should Pick Which
Pick Aeqium if the company sits in the 30-200 employee range, wants off spreadsheets without a large financial commitment, and wants to test the free tier before deciding on anything bigger.
Pick CompUp if pay equity or compliance is the primary driver, the per-employee-per-year pricing model fits the budget better than a flat enterprise quote, and the equity-analysis methodology has been confirmed directly with the vendor.
Consider Pequity if its Co-Pilot and approvals-engine feature set is truly the best match for the company’s workflow — but get ADP’s small-business commitments in writing before signing anything.
Consider none of them yet if the company is under roughly 50 employees with a single simple annual raise cycle. Revisit once the comp process actually breaks, not before.
Companies that do buy into this category typically pair comp planning with employee engagement software to catch retention risk before a comp cycle even starts — the two problems are related, and solving one without the other leaves a gap.
The Bottom Line
Aeqium is the strongest starting point for most companies in the 30-200 employee range, largely because of the free tier and its merit-cycle focus. CompUp is worth a serious look if pay equity is the actual driver behind the search. Pequity’s product is capable, but the ADP acquisition adds a real due-diligence step that shouldn’t be skipped. Companies under roughly 50 employees with one simple raise cycle may not need any of these three yet.
Before demoing any of them, write down the actual employee count, how many approvers touch a comp cycle, and whether a formal pay-equity check is actually needed. Then ask each vendor the specific questions raised in this piece — what the AI actually does, what statistical method powers the pay-equity claim, how the integration with the existing HRIS actually works, and for Pequity specifically, what ADP is committing to in writing for small-business customers.
The AI in all three tools flags, models, and answers questions. It doesn’t approve a single raise. Keep it that way, and pick the tool that fits the headcount, not the one with the loudest AI marketing.
FAQ
What’s the actual difference between Aeqium, Pequity, and CompUp?
Aeqium is a purpose-built merit-cycle tool with a free entry tier, best suited to companies moving off spreadsheets for the first time. Pequity offers a broader out-of-the-box feature set — an approvals engine, employee portals, built-in market data — but now sits under ADP ownership. CompUp is a full-stack platform with a dedicated pay-equity feature and a per-employee-per-year pricing structure. All three assist with comp cycles; none approve raises automatically.
Does ADP’s acquisition of Pequity mean it will get more expensive or be discontinued for small businesses?
There is no public evidence of either outcome. ADP’s own announcement frames the deal as expanding toward mid-size, enterprise, and multinational clients, which is a reason to ask direct questions about pricing and roadmap commitments before signing — not a confirmed change in either direction.
Is Aeqium really free?
Aeqium reportedly offers a free plan aimed at small teams, with an Enterprise tier for organizations above roughly 200 employees. Pricing details and current terms should be confirmed directly on Aeqium’s site, since free-tier limits and feature gates can change.
How much does compensation planning software typically cost for a 50-200 employee company?
Community reporting from r/humanresources puts a 175-employee company’s cost around $3,000 to $8,000 per year, or roughly $250-300 per month, for a full comp-cycle tool. A merit-and-bonus-only module has been reported at around $10,000 for about 100 employees. These figures are directional and should be confirmed against current vendor quotes.
Is the pay-equity analysis in these tools legally defensible?
That depends on the specific statistical method behind the analysis and whether it has been reviewed by employment counsel or a compensation consultant — neither of which is guaranteed by a “pay equity” label on a product page. This is not legal advice; companies relying on a pay-equity check for compliance purposes should confirm the methodology and involve counsel directly.
Will these tools integrate with my HRIS or payroll platform?
Aeqium is reported to integrate with Paylocity specifically. Integration lists for all three vendors should be confirmed directly, and it’s worth asking explicitly whether a listed “integration” is a real-time sync or a manual CSV import, since the two are often marketed identically but function very differently in daily use.
