Argyle vs Employment Hero Payroll

Argyle

Graded on the REST API. One OpenAPI file covers 91 operations, llms.txt indexes Markdown docs, and a Sandbox with sample users comes with a Console sign-up. Every payroll connection needs the worker to sign in through Link. No prices are published, no idempotency keys were found, and API keys carry no per-key scopes.

Employment Hero Payroll

Five public Swagger 2.0 files describe 660 to 821 operations per region, and any payroll user can generate an API key without a partner review. The key carries its user's whole access, no idempotency keys or API changelog were found, and the only official client is for .NET.

Argyle

1. Send HTTP Basic auth with api_key_id as the username and api_key_secret as the password. Sandbox keys fail with 401 on Production and the reverse
2. Create the user with POST /v2/users and an external_id, then look it up by external_id before retrying. No idempotency key was found
3. Do not read data straight after an account connects. Wait for the account and data webhooks, or for the verification status, before fetching records
4. Follow the full URL in next when paging. Do not build cursor values or fetch pages in parallel. limit defaults to 10 and stops at 200
5. Stay under 50 requests a second. On 429, queue the request and retry later, not at once
6. Treat DELETE /v2/users/{id} as permanent. It removes every resource tied to that user, with no confirmation step

Employment Hero Payroll

1. Send the API key as the Basic auth username with a blank password, for example curl -u {api_key}: https://api.yourpayroll.com.au/api/v2/user
2. Pick the Swagger file for the business's region (swagger-au.json, swagger-nz.json, swagger-uk.json, swagger-sg.json, swagger-my.json). Paths and models differ by region
3. Stay under 5 requests a second per key and IP address. A 429 answered our test with retry-after: 1
4. Page lists with $skip and $top (100 at most). Filter property names are capitalised, unlike the camelCase JSON
5. Read GET /api/v2/business/{businessId}/payrun/{payRunId}/warnings before POST .../finalise. Finalise can lodge with the tax office and publish pay slips in the same call