Picture this: Sarah, an HR director at a growing tech company, just lost her third top performer this quarter. The exit interviews all pointed to one thing — compensation. Despite offering what she thought were competitive packages, her team kept hearing the same feedback: "I found better pay elsewhere."

Sounds familiar? 

While companies believe they offer fair compensation, studies show that only 32% of employees feel they're being paid appropriately. This disconnect isn't just numbers on a spreadsheet – it's real people making real career decisions that impact your business every day.

Modern HR leaders are turning to compensation planning software to bridge this gap. These tools transform how companies approach pay decisions, helping create transparent, data-driven compensation strategies that work for the business and its people. 

Let's explore the best options for 2025.

What is a Compensation Planning Software?

Compensation planning software is a specialized tool designed to help HR teams create and manage employee compensation. It helps businesses automate budget management, salary structuring, bonus allocation, and pay equity planning.

These tools simplify compensation administration and provide transparent, competitive pay to attract and retain talent.

Top 10 Compensation Planning Software for 2025

Before diving deeper, here is a quick comparison of all the compensation planning tools: 

Compport

Compport is a one-stop compensation management software that supports compensation planning, sales incentive management, pay equity analytics, long-term incentives, bonus planning, and total rewards statements. It also offers a dedicated module to help recruiters build competitive job offers.

Trusted by global brands like Cipla, Apollo.io, Wework, Indigo, and Tata AIA, the platform enables businesses to create a compensation modeling system tailored to their needs. It helps organizations build transparent, equitable, performance-driven pay systems, ensuring compliance and employee satisfaction.

Top features

End-to-end compensation planning
At its core, as compensation management software, Compport offers a highly intuitive and customizable interface through which you can design and implement your compensation strategy. The tool lets you plan compensation based on roles, functions, levels, locations, tenure, and other attributes. You can also use its budget builder to instantly generate increment grids for teams, grades, and locations, speeding up your compensation planning process.

‍Long term incentives (LTI)

Everybody loves timely paychecks, but employees are incredibly excited about the prospect of long-term wealth generation. Compport’s LTI module helps employees see the bigger picture by making it easy to track vesting schedules, grants, and exercises. The product also provides an equity simulator that helps employees visualize the potential value of stock portfolios and understand the long-term benefits of their compensation.

Compport’s LTI module helps compensation professionals build dynamic long-term incentive plans. They’ll be able to set rules across the workflow, personalize grants and vesting schedules based on factors like grade, location, and performance, and even build schemes like a performance-based vesting plan. 

Compport’s LTI module offers exciting capabilities and complete control to Rewards professionals. 

‍Total rewards statements
Compport’s Total Rewards Statements provide employees with a comprehensive, easy-to-understand breakdown of their compensation package, both cash and non-cash benefits. This feature enhances transparency and helps employees appreciate the total value of their rewards, including salary, bonuses, benefits, stock options, retirement contributions, and other perks.

Bonus planning
Your employees help you achieve your targets. Incentivizing a bonus is key for aligning employee performance with business goals and keeping morale high. Compport helps reward teams configure every part of bonus planning, including processes, rules, and workflows while allowing for personalization based on currencies, departments, and budgets. This helps businesses create plans for their unique needs, whether they are tracking performance across departments or geographic locations. 

Compport’s bonus planning software also helps decision-makers simulate various scenarios and budgets in minutes, providing instant budget and impact analysis so that they can test everything before taking it live.

 To simplify things, the tool takes the burden off you to communicate with employees by sending personalized pay letters to each employee detailing their bonuses. Imagine sending customized bonus letters to thousands of employees across the globe in minutes.

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Pay range design
Not keeping up with salary trends is one easy way to get employee morale down and lose your best employees. Compport helps you avoid this by correlating internal salary data with external market benchmarks to create competitive and equitable pay ranges. The tool also uses data aging (a predictive modeling system that adjusts data by applying factors like inflation rates or market growth trends) to help you adjust pay ranges for inflation even when the latest data is unavailable.

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Pros:

• End-to-end compensation planning software.
• It has powerful sales incentive planning and LTI modules that are often missing from other compensation planning tools.
• Used by large global organizations, which proves its capability of handling scale.
• Comes with various features like Total Rewards Statements, Pay Equity Management, Automated Pay Letters, HR Analytics, etc.

Cons:

• Not suitable for small businesses under 50 employees.
• It does not provide a performance management tool but can integrate with your HRIS and performance management tool. Has one-click integrations with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, Darwinbox, Oracle, and many other popular systems.

Salary.com

Salary.com is known for compensation market data and analytics. Its top features include HR-reported salary insights. The platform helps organizations implement pay equity and performance-driven pay strategies.

Top features

Market data

Powered by 800 million market data points from 24 countries, Salary.com’s CompAnalyst solution is an excellent source of compensation data.

Real-time intelligence

By continuously scanning job boards, company career sites, and other publicly available data, Salary.com delivers real-time insights to help businesses create competitive employee compensation packages.

Compensation planning
The CompXL solution merges the familiarity of Excel with the security and efficiency of cloud-based tools to help you with compensation planning.

Pros:

• User-friendly platform for compensation benchmarking.
• Provides real-time market intelligence to enhance compensation strategies.

Cons:

• It is an upgrade over using spreadsheets but does not have the depth and capabilities of specialized products.
• Steep learning curve reported by users.
• Some users have reported poor customer service quality.

Payfactors

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Payfactors is a compensation management platform from Payscale. The product is designed to help organizations develop competitively fair and transparent pay strategies. With access to a diverse dataset, Payfactors helps HR teams solve modern compensation planning and management challenges.

Top features

Market data

Payfactors is a data-centric solution that drives insights from 40 million salary profiles. Through employer-reported, employee-reported, and peer datasets, this data is powered by its parent company, Payscale.

Fair pay insights

Interactive tools help HR teams conduct detailed pay equity analyses to address compensation gaps across roles, genders, and ethnicities.

Compensation planning

Payfactors supports businesses in managing end-to-end compensation planning by automating budget allocations and streamlining approval processes. It also ensures that all key stakeholders are actively involved in decision-making through a standard dashboard.

Pros:

• Rich dataset powered by 40 million salary profiles.
• Easy fit if you plan to use its parent solution, Payscale.

Cons:

• Much like Salary.com, this is a data-centric solution and does not have the sophistication of dedicated compensation planning tools.
• Limited customizations when compared with other tools.
• Customers have reported poor after-sales support and data inaccuracy.

HRSoft

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HRSoft is a total compensation management solution designed to simplify and enhance all aspects of employee compensation. Trusted by leading organizations across industries like healthcare, financial services, and retail, HRSoft helps businesses retain top talent and align pay strategies with fair practices and regulatory compliance.

Top Features

Salary management
HRSoft helps businesses with a strategic budget allocation that helps them ensure competitive pay and retain talent.

Bonus planning
The tool helps businesses automate complex bonus calculations to match diverse organizational needs and facilitate timely distribution.

Compensation planning
The platform offers tools for budget modeling, salary adjustments, and incentive allocations, ensuring a structured compensation planning and management approach.

‍Pros:

• Complete tools covering salary, bonuses, long-term incentives, and proration rules.
• Interactive dashboards for managing and communicating total rewards and bonuses.
• Specializing in solutions for finance, retail, and healthcare.

‍Cons:

• Customers have reported faulty integrations.
• Complex setup that might require significant training
• Limited integrations with non-HRIS systems.

Paycom 

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Paycom is a human capital management (HCM) platform designed to help businesses with compensation planning and other HR functions. The company offers a unified solution that integrates compensation management directly with payroll and performance management.

Paycom would be a good solution to evaluate if you are in the market for complete HCM software that includes compensation planning and management as part of its package.

Top features

Performance management
Paycom’s performance management tool automatically feeds employee ratings into the compensation budgeting system to reward employees based on their performance.

Compensation budgeting
Paycom's Compensation Budgeting tool allows organizations to build a “merit matrix” encompassing budget, performance, and compa-ratios.

Merit-based pay‍

The product helps businesses implement merit-based pay increases, ensuring that compensation adjustments are based on individual performance and company goals.

Pros:

• End-to-end solution that combines multiple HCM functions into a single platform.
• Provides real-time data insights for talent management and retention.
• It helps organizations create custom strategies tailored to their specific needs and budgets.

Cons:

• Complex setup and learning curve.
• Tackles multiple HCM requirements but does not specialize in compensation planning.
• Several customers have reported poor support.

PayScale MarketPay

Another product from PayScale, MarketPay is a compensation management tool with customizable modeling tools and the ability to automate survey participation. MarketPay is an excellent solution for large-scale enterprises seeking in-depth compensation analytics and pay insights.

Unlike PayFactors, which is focused on compensation benchmarking and real-time salary comparisons, MarketPay is designed for compensation planning, offering advanced modeling and data integration tools to build competitive pay structures.

Top features

Compensation planning
MarketPay allows organizations to build and understand pay structures, merit modeling, and regressions for easy compensation modeling.

Interactive dashboards
The platform provides instant access to a report library, helping users create customized workforce analytics.

Market data
The platform has a rich database, which includes information from over 1,100 employers and 4,000 job roles.

Pros:

• Excellent for global large-scale enterprises.
• User-friendly, easy-to-navigate platform.
• Excellent reporting tools within the application.
• Suitable for pay scale research.

Cons:

• Not suitable for smaller organizations.
• It does not integrate well with third-party software (including many HR and Finance systems), requiring customers to import items manually.
• Manual data entry is needed more often than desirable.

Beqom 

Beqom is a compensation management platform that helps large-scale enterprises with pay management, equity, transparency, and optimization. The company claims to offer a flexible, scalable solution that adapts to any company's existing infrastructure while automating compensation processes.

Built for global organizations, Beqom offers forecasting and compensation modeling tools to help businesses stay competitive and compliant across multiple countries.

Top Features

Compensation intelligence

The company offers intelligent modeling capabilities that help businesses create compensation strategies aligned with market trends and organizational goals.

Compensation management

Beqom offers total compensation management, including salary and bonus planning, long-term incentives, and sales performance compensation.

Pay equity

Beqom’s pay equity tools allow businesses to close gender, racial, and other pay gaps, promoting fairness and transparency within the workforce.

Pros:

• End-to-end solutions for compensation management.
• Provides performance planning solutions.
• Good reporting and analytics features.

Cons:

• Not ideal for smaller businesses.
• It is expensive compared to other compensation planning tools.
• Complex setup and administration process.
• Some mention that support is often slow and expensive 

CompTrak (Acquired by HRSoft)

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CompTrak is a compensation management platform designed to optimize variable incentives, merit reviews, and equity plans. The platform offers automation, customizable workflows, and global reporting capabilities, eliminating the need for spreadsheets and traditional systems.

CompTrak’s core offerings include Compensation Management, Equity Plan Management, and Total Rewards Statements.

Top Features:

Compensation management
CompTrak automates the entire compensation cycle, eliminating manual compensation planning.

Long-term incentives
The platform simplifies the management of LTIs by helping businesses manage variable deferrals.

Pros:

• Customizable compensation planning and management solution.
• Good platform for long-term incentive and equity planning.

Cons:

• Requires a learning curve.
• Customers have reported UI to be clunky.

Workday

Workday is an all-inclusive HRM product that provides compensation planning and management solutions as part of its HRIS. The product integrates with various HR functions such as payroll, benefits, and administration.

While Workday covers many HR functions, it lacks some of the nuances offered by specialized compensation planning solutions that some businesses require. If you use Workday for other HRM purposes but need a dedicated tool for compensation management, you can integrate a specialized product like Compport with Workday.

Top features

Talent acquisition

The platform offers talent acquisition features like recruitment management, candidate sourcing, and onboarding processes to attract and retain top talent.
Compensation planning
The company provides tools that help with salary adjustments, bonus distributions, and alignment for compensation planning and management.‍

Employee tools
Workday provides various tools to employees for time tracking, rewards management, benefits enrolment, etc.

Pros:

• All-in-one HRM platform that does it all!
• Users find the interface easy to use.
• Supports global large scale operations.
• Integrates well with third-party tools.

Cons:

•  All-in-one HRM platform that does it all. It does too many things and organizations may end up being locked into its ecosystem.
• Unsuitable for smaller organizations.
• Making even minor setting changes requires expensive Workday developers to step in, costing companies in terms of both time and money

CompLogix

CompLogix (formerly Harvest HCM) provides custom-tailored compensation planning and management solutions. The platform aims to replace complex, unconfigurable systems with streamlined automation, saving businesses time and resources.

The product is also highly pluggable and easily integrates with your existing HR framework. 

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Top features

Tailored solutions
CompLogix is ideal for businesses needing customized solutions to address unique HRM requirements.
Compensation management
The platform automates the entire compensation management process, eliminating the need for manual work.

Total rewards statements
CompLogix’s personalized statements present a clear breakdown of pay and non-pay benefits in an easy-to-read, graphical format, enabling employees to understand the full value of their compensation package.

Pros

• Highly customized solutions to suit niche requirements.
• Customizable reporting and dashboards.
• Simple and user-friendly UI.

Cons

• Limited HRIS integrations.
• Access is hierarchical and can’t be geographically filtered.

Guide to Picking a Compensation Planning Software

Now that we've analyzed the top compensation planning software options, it's time to choose the best solution for your business. Here are some key factors to consider:

Must connect with your existing tools

Your compensation software shouldn't exist in isolation. Look for platforms that integrate smoothly with your HRIS, performance management tools, and payroll systems. This ensures data flows automatically, saving your team from manual data entry and potential errors.

Free, unlimited, same-day customer support 

Let’s face it: you need consistent support with compensation planning software, especially in the initial days. Opt for a tool that offers free, unlimited, same-day customer support to your team as they navigate across the nitty gritty of compensation management. 

Must guarantee the quick implementation

Go for a compensation planning tool that offers fast implementation. You are getting compensation software with an agenda, and a long waiting time is not in it. Make sure that the vendor has a strong implementation team that guarantees quick implementation within a maximum of 10 to 15 days. 

The compensation planning tool should be crazy flexible 

A compensation planning tool should reflect your organization and its requirements. It should allow you to reshape workflows and set rules to suit your unique needs. For example, you should be able to define how salary increases, bonuses, promotions, and other adjustments are calculated.

Powerful security and compliance features

Decide who can see what by setting up rules and controls for every role, grade, department, and location. With compensation data being highly sensitive, robust security is non-negotiable. Ensure the platform has role-based access controls and audit trails and complies with data protection regulations in your regions of operation.

Easy to use and with a lesser learning curve

Managers are the primary users during compensation cycles. The interface should be intuitive enough that they can jump in with minimal training. Look for clear dashboards, simple approval workflows, and easy budget-tracking features.

Handles your unique pay rules

Every company's compensation structure is different. Your software should flex to your needs - whether it's handling multiple bonus cycles, supporting global currencies, or managing complex promotion rules. The system should adapt to your processes, not the other way around.

Strong reporting and analytics features

Look beyond basic reports. The right tool should help you spot pay gaps, track budget utilization, and model different scenarios. Clear visualizations and real-time analytics help you make better decisions and explain them to stakeholders.

Ready to select your compensation planning software?

Compensation Planning is critical to acquiring and retaining talent. Remember, your employees can make or break your business. Selecting the right solution can significantly enhance your HR team's ability to manage pay structures, align employee performance with business objectives, and ensure regulatory compliance.

When picking a tool:

• Prioritize products that solve your specific requirements even if they do not offer an end-to-end HRM solution.
• Evaluate capabilities and the ability to integrate with your HRIS.
• Thoroughly vet the provider before committing to a purchase.

For growing organizations managing complex compensation needs across multiple locations, Compport stands out with its ability to handle everything from merit cycles to long-term incentives in a single platform. Unlike rigid HRIS modules or data-focused solutions, Compport combines robust functionality with user-friendly interfaces that managers enjoy using. 

Our proven track record with global biotech, technology, and financial services companies, combined with seamless integration capabilities with major HRIS systems and a swift 6-8 week implementation, means you can transform your compensation planning without disrupting your business.

Here’s what our current customers say about Compport: 

Ready to see how Compport in action? 

Book a demo today.

FAQs 

What is a compensation software? 

A digital tool that helps HR teams manage employee pay, bonuses, and benefits while ensuring fair compensation practices and budget compliance across the organization.

What is a compensation planner? 

A specialized tool or professional who designs and manages salary structures, bonus plans, and pay increases to align with company goals and market standards.

How do I create a compensation plan? 

Start by analyzing market data, defining pay ranges, setting performance criteria, establishing bonus structures, and documenting policies while ensuring budget alignment and internal equity.

What is a compensation tool? 

Software that automates salary management, bonus calculations, pay equity analysis, and budget tracking to streamline compensation-related decisions and processes.

What is compensation vs. CTC? 

 Compensation refers to direct pay and benefits, while CTC (Cost to Company) includes all expenses an employer incurs for an employee, including additional costs like insurance and facilities.

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