6 Best Salary Comparison Tools for 2023

• Robust database: Its database covers 800 occupations and 400 industries with wage data that follows North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industry codes. Its dataset of standardized job titles and position descriptions also allows you to make apples-to-apples comparison. While job titles on other sites can vary greatly over time, you can use the BLS’s standardized position data, let’s say code 13-1111 for Management Analysts, for year-over-year comparisons.
• Multiple filter options: Unlike Indeed and ZipRecruiter, the BLS has a lot of filter options. Sort data by organization size, part-time and full-time work status, incentive-based and time-based pay, work level, job characteristics, and bargaining status (whether union or non-union). You can also filter by national, regional, state, metropolitan area, and county data to account for regional variations in salary.
• Downloadable reports: Depending on the type of report selected, you can download salary data in PDF and XLS file formats (some reports have an HTML option as well). The BLS even lets you download its survey charts as JPEG and PNG images that you can attach to your own reports. The other salary comparison tools in this guide lack this functionality.
• Application programming interface (API): You can incorporate BLS data into an existing salary research program via API. It offers two versions. Version 1 is for public use but more limited; Version 2, while free, requires registration. It allows users to access more data more frequently, and add calculations and annual averages to requests. This is unique among those on our list.

While the standardized dataset and filters are great, they come at the cost of ease of use. The BLS interface is unwieldy and difficult to navigate. The database may be extensive but is not very granular due to the standardization technique. This means you may not be able to find a precise match for your particular job if it doesn’t match an occupation or industry that the BLS uses. There is no company-specific data either, which makes competitive analysis more difficult.

• Large salary database: With a database of over 700 million salaries, you can easily view jobs that have similar titles or job descriptions to yours. Its database consists of employee- and employer-reported salaries, as well as pay information from job listings posted on its site in the previous 36 months. This is unlike the other providers on our list, which only have employee or employer data or both.
• Robust salary range data: Indeed has a down-drop button that lets you view salaries on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis. Data about the average hourly or salary pay for a specific job title is available, including the pay range for that job title. It also lets you see the salary satisfaction ratings for a position, providing you insight into how competitive your salary range might be. However, Indeed lacks the bonus amounts that many of the providers on our list (except ZipRecruiter and the BLS) have.
• Basic employee benefits details: Information about employee benefits lets you think about whether you should change and improve the benefits part of your compensation package. With Indeed, you can view various types of employee benefits and/or perks for a given company (when available) and the selected position. These can include health insurance, retirement plan, life insurance, paid time off, and stock options.
• Competitor analysis: Since Indeed has a large salary database, chances are pretty good that you’ll see how much competing companies are offering for the same position. Indeed even lists the companies that offer competitive salaries, including how much they pay for the position—data that ZipRecruiter, Salary.com, and the BLS don’t offer.

Indeed is great for getting a high-level view of the appropriate salary for a single position. It would be even better if you could download the data (Indeed’s salary benchmarking tools lack this feature). That would allow users to fine-tune their analysis, such as eliminating outliers or focusing on specific competitor companies. Downloadable data would also enable employers to automate the process when they need to analyze a large number of positions or want to keep a running analysis going.

• Partnership program: PayLab has a unique partnership program. When you join, you get complete access to salary and payroll data for your country. Paylab says its partners often use this information to become subject-matter experts and for articles, research, and speaking engagements. You can also use the data for your own products or to sell to other companies. In return, you give PayLab access to all salary data you collect yourself and provide local customer support for its PayLab product.
• International salaries: You’ll have access to over 390,000 salary profiles in nearly 700 job positions across more than 35 countries. The data is pulled from employee surveys and vetted—PayLab says it rejects about 10% of the data due to bad reporting and 20% due to duplication. It also verifies listings against job advertisements to get the most accurate data set; see PayLab’s methodology. It’s the only one on our list with international salaries except for Payscale.
• Versatile Salary Tool: The Salary Tool lets you compare positions, see an overview of financial and non-financial benefits, and save reports as PDF or CSV. If your employee does tasks from multiple positions or you cannot find a comparable job, you can view the salaries of multiple positions to get a feel for an appropriate pay scale.
• Highly-rated mobile app: PayLab offers a mobile app that is highly rated: 4.4 out of 5 on the App Store, although with a very limited number of reviews (the Android app is not rated yet). Salary.com, BLS, and Payscale do not have mobile apps, while Indeed and ZipRecruiter’s apps are for job hunting.

You will be unable to use PayLab’s free trial to look up a particular job. As of this writing, it only provides you with pay information for economists, laborers, administrative workers, and employees in the education, science, and research fields. However, even if you want that data, you still need to pay for the report. It does not have employer- or government-based information but relies on surveys of employees.

• Extensive database: Given that ZipRecruiter gets most of its salary data from open jobs that employers and recruiters post on its site (with over 7.5 million jobs posted daily), you get a large database of pay details. It has salary data for 35,000 job titles—larger than Payscale’s or Salary.com’s 15,000 job titles. Plus, it uses compensation information from third-party sources, including ADP.
• Salary research summary: ZipRecruiter is the only provider on this list of best salary comparison tools that shows details of its salary research both in graph and report format. These are helpful in translating the numbers into information you can use when checking a position’s salary competitiveness and planning what pay rate to add to offer letters. Other salary research tools, like Salary.com, may offer similar reports, but you have to pay extra.
• Flexible salary views: It may not have multiple data filters like Payscale, Salary.com, and the BLS, but ZipRecruiter has flexible salary view options that let you easily display the position’s hourly, weekly, monthly, and yearly pay data. It also has a “table view” that shows the salary range and average pay for various pay periods.

ZipRecruiter’s online salary comparison tools may include a brief summary report that’s easy to understand, but you can’t download it or its bar graphs that show the average salary and pay ranges. This is unlike BLS, which allows you to save graphs. Having data filters to view salary data based on various factors (like education level and years of work experience) would have been helpful as well. Plus, it doesn’t provide information about bonus payments and benefits or list top competitors like Indeed does.

• Robust dataset: Payscale has a comprehensive database with 55 million salary profiles, 15,000 job titles, 2,500 skill types, and 350 industries. The employee-sourced surveys consist of some 30 questions to get highly accurate and detailed information. Depending on the Payscale product, you are granted access to either employee- or employer-reported salary data. Some, like PayLab, only offer employee-sourced data. Like PayLab, Payscale also surveys internationally, with over 150 countries.
• Multiple filters: While it doesn’t have Salary.com’s performance and management level filters, you can sort data by job title, work experience, region, and industry. It also shows job satisfaction ratings, basic benefits and bonuses, skills that impact salaries, and a gender percentage breakdown for the selected position.
• Feature-rich solution suite: Payscale has a wide range of solutions for building and managing your company’s compensation package and strategies. In addition to salary research tools, it offers compensation management software and an online job description manager to help you store and create job descriptions. This is critical when doing salary comparisons and surveys, as it will help you find perfect matches for your selected jobs. Indeed and ZipRecruiter have job description templates as part of their job posting tools.
• Compensation scenario builder: Included in its Benchmark solution is the capability to create compensation scenarios to help you check market data and pay trends. This makes business and organization planning a little bit easier as it lets you get a holistic view of salary costs in case you have plans to set up a new business venture or enhance your organization structure by adding positions.

Like Salary.com, it can be difficult to understand the differences between Payscale’s products—it has Benchmark, MarketPay, Insight Labs, and other compensation datasets. All appear to be market comparison products. Also, with so many job titles in the database (15,000 choices), matching position titles to your specific roles can be tricky.

• Extensive database: Salary.com has a large database of employer-reported pay and benefits information with 800 million data points and compensation data that covers more than 15,000 unique job titles in over 225 industries. It is US-only; however, check PayLab or Payscale if you need international salaries.
• Unique filters: Apart from location, education, and years of work experience, you can sort salary data by work performance levels, reporting lines, and number of direct reports. The Performance filter applies standardized categories—such as “excellent,” “above expectations,” and “poor”—to each position. This would be most helpful, perhaps not for determining what to offer when hiring employees but in identifying promotion and pay raises during annual performance reviews. On the other hand, the “Reports To” option adds the immediate manager title to filtering capabilities.
• Salary and benefits comparison data: You get a comprehensive salary data range that shows averages and quartile percentages—enabling you to see the selected position’s wage distribution at 10%, median (50%), and up to 90%. Bonuses and benefits data are also provided, and, unlike Indeed, it shows the employer’s expected contribution cost per benefit (such as health insurance, pension, and Social Security). We found the benefits information, even in the free tool, to be the most comprehensive.
• Multiple data sets and survey options: Salary.com allows you to choose between one-off analysis and ongoing searches. You can set up reports to update monthly, such as if you are tracking compensation for existing positions or those you look for often. It also has robust executive-level position information—far better than what you’ll find on Indeed or ZipRecruiter.
• Additional tools: Aside from comprehensive industry wage reports and compensation consulting services, it offers solutions for managing job descriptions and ensuring pay equity across your company. It even has a Job Skills Model tool that lets you build a skills and competency framework, simplify job structure, align compensation with performance, and more. The other services on our list offer one or two of these tools, but Salary.com has the most comprehensive offerings.

Salary.com’s great data set and extensive search tools mean it has a higher learning curve. You can go through multiple drop-down menus before getting the filters you need. Also, its variety of products and services can be a bit confusing to navigate.

The paid plans are very expensive compared to the rest on our list, and the free reports are laden with advertising, from distracting videos to job opening advertisements.