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Head to head · Payroll run · October 2026 research run

Check vs Employment Hero Payroll

Check scores 67.5 (B) on agent readiness against Employment Hero Payroll's 50.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Employment Hero Payroll leads on payments & pricing. Both do payroll run.

CheckCheck Technologies, Inc. · HTTP API B67.5/100#208 of 722 Employment Hero PayrollEmployment Hero Pty Ltd · HTTP API D50.4/100#591 of 722

Which one, for what

Check B

Good for A software platform that wants to sell US payroll inside its own product and can sign a partnership, with Check handling tax calculation, money movement and filings.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 65
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 51
  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 53
  • Security & auth, 74 against 46

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No public price and no self-serve signup. The documentation says to request an API key through Check's sales contact

Employment Hero Payroll D

Good for An agent acting for an employer or bureau already on Employment Hero Payroll in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore or Malaysia, and white label partners who create businesses through the brand endpoints.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 10 against 5

Watch for

An API key carries the whole access of the user who generated it. No per-key scopes were found

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCheckEmployment Hero PayrollEdge
Reliability16%208065Check +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27851Check +27
Agent ergonomics13%16.28353Check +30
Security & auth14%17.57446Check +28
Payments & pricing10%12.5510Employment Hero Payroll +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87268Check +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86260Check +2
Negative events≤1500
Total67.5 · B50.4 · D

Facts side by side

FactCheckEmployment Hero Payroll
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCheck Technologies, Inc.Employment Hero Pty Ltd
Hosted endpointhttps://api.checkhq.comno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Check's terms of service and partner agreement. The MCP server and CLI on GitHub are MITProprietary service under Employment Hero's General Terms. The KeyPayV2 .NET client is MIT
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-072026-10-08
Terms last updated2021-09-03no date given
Privacy policy last updated2024-04-18no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textnot found in the text
Popularity18 stars6 stars

Verdicts

Check

Graded as embedded payroll through a partner API key, not access to an existing employer's payroll account. The API has idempotency keys on writes, a required preview before approval and queryable request logs. No price is public, a sandbox key comes through Check's sales team, and one API key carries the whole partner account.

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.

Before you call either

Check

  1. Use https://sandbox.checkhq.com with the sandbox key and https://api.checkhq.com with the production key. A key is not valid across environments
  2. Preview a payroll before approving it, then pass preview_started_at to POST /payrolls/{id}/approve so a stale preview fails with 409
  3. Send X-Idempotency-Key on every write. Keys expire after 24 hours, so list the resource before retrying later than that
  4. On 429 wait for Retry-After. The limit is 10 requests a second in sandbox and for partners paying fewer than 1,000 payees a month, with 100 concurrent requests
  5. Connect the MCP server with ?read_only=true or X-MCP-Readonly: true unless writes are intended. In production, approving a payroll moves money

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

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Check or Employment Hero Payroll?

Check scores 67.5 (B) on agent readiness against Employment Hero Payroll's 50.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Employment Hero Payroll leads on payments & pricing.

Do Check and Employment Hero Payroll need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Check and Employment Hero Payroll without installing anything?

Check has a hosted endpoint at https://api.checkhq.com. No hosted endpoint is listed for Employment Hero Payroll.

Other comparisons with Check or Employment Hero Payroll

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