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Comparison

Capstan and Employment Hero

Employment Hero is a serious product, and this page is not a scorecard. It sets out how each of the two is built, taking each side from how it is publicly positioned, and then gives you the questions worth putting to any vendor in this market, us included. Where Employment Hero is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.

What each one is built to be

Start here rather than with a feature list. Most of the difference between two HR products is decided before either one ships a feature, by what business the company is in.

Employment Hero, as publicly positioned, September 2026

Employment Hero presents itself as an all-in-one HR, payroll and hiring platform, Australian-born and strongest in Australia and New Zealand, extending into the United Kingdom and South East Asia. It describes itself as an employment operating system that brings recruitment, HR, payroll and employee benefits together in one place. The published shape is one platform that carries the employment end to end: a native payroll engine, an employee benefits layer, and, through its Global Teams offering, an employer-of-record service for hiring across borders.

Capstan, published on this site

Capstan is an HR system of record for companies that employ their own people. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and the workflows around them, with the module suite included on every plan for the rest. It is not an employer of record, it computes no payroll, and it runs as a self-contained stack in one EU region live today, data in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam.

Set out in full on the product page, with the residency model on security and every figure on pricing.

Three structural differences

One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what Employment Hero does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.

  1. Who holds the employment

    Employment Hero, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    Employment Hero publishes an employer-of-record service, Global Teams, alongside its HR platform: where you have no legal entity in a country, a legal employer is arranged there, and the contracts, local payroll, statutory benefits and in-country compliance that come with employing someone are taken on with it.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan employs nobody. It is a system of record for employment you already hold in your own entity: you are the employer, and Capstan is where that employment is written down. It is not an employer of record and never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster.

  2. Who computes payroll

    Employment Hero, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    Payroll is a native engine inside the platform. In its home markets it computes pay, interprets modern awards, handles superannuation and reports to the tax authority, and the statutory content behind that is maintained by the vendor as the rules change.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan compiles the inputs and hands a documented export to your payroll partner, then files their computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula anywhere, moves no money, and files nothing with any authority. Where you need payroll run, you engage someone who runs it.

  3. How wide the bundle reaches

    Employment Hero, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    The published offer reaches past HR and payroll into employee financial benefits: earned wage access, a spending account and a perks marketplace are bundled into the same app employees already use, presented as one subscription that carries the whole set.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan stays an HR system of record with its module suite included on every plan, the free one included: people, employment, leave, attendance, documents, workflows, onboarding, self-service, reporting and the fourteen modules around them. It administers no benefits, runs no spending account and moves no money, so financial products for your staff are somebody else's system to provide.

The six questions to ask any vendor, including us

Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: Employment Hero’s answers are theirs to give, and a comparison page that fills them in has stopped being a comparison. Ask them the same six, and set what you are told beside ours.

  1. Who employs our people, and who carries the liability?

    It decides who is on the contract of employment, who answers a labour authority, and what you are actually buying: a service that takes the employment on, or a system that records it.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    You do. Capstan is not an employer of record, never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster, and moves no payroll money. If you need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is a different kind of vendor.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  2. Who computes payroll, and whose name is on the filing?

    Computation and filing are where liability sits. A vendor that calculates and files is taking that on. A vendor that prepares inputs is not, and you need the second half of the arrangement in place before you rely on either.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    Not Capstan, by design. It compiles joiners and leavers, pay structures, leave, attendance and adjustments into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula, and files nothing with any authority.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  3. Where does our data live, and who inside the vendor can reach it?

    Residency is a property of where the database is, not of a promise in a policy. Support access is the same question from the other end: not whether staff would look, but whether the system lets them without you switching it on.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    One isolated region, the EU today: data in Frankfurt, compute in Amsterdam. It is a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, so there is no runtime path out of the region. Staff hold no tenant of their own, and access exists only while you have granted a time-boxed consent, masked by default and audited on both sides.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  4. What do we get on the plan we start on, and what changes as we grow?

    This is what growing costs you. If capability moves between tiers, the upgrade you eventually buy is largely software you were already being shown.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Paying lifts the cap and includes all fourteen modules at no extra charge, billed month to month with no annual contract and no lock-in. Every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  5. What happens to our data the day we leave, or the day a payment fails?

    Export is the price of leaving. Either it is written down before you join, or it gets decided at the moment you have the least leverage you will ever have.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    An owner can take a full export at any time: one archive of JSON and CSV, in open formats, with a documented manifest. Export deliberately sits outside the suspension check, so a workspace held for non-payment can still be exported. Deletion is cryptographic erasure followed by hard deletion, with a residue scan.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  6. Does any software judge our people, and can the person see why?

    Whether software scores, ranks or screens people decides who is accountable for the judgement, and whether the person it was made about can be shown the reason.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    No AI scores, ranks or screens your people, and that is architectural rather than a promise: nothing of the kind is built, and the analytics engine can only ever narrow who sees what, with small groups suppressed. There is one optional assistant a workspace can turn on. When it is on, it answers from aggregate figures a caller could already see, such as headcount by department, which it sends to our one AI sub-processor, OpenAI, listed on the sub-processor register and not used to train on the data. No per-person or sensitive record is ever sent to an outside model or used to train one.

    Employment Hero’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

If an answer of ours turns out to be wrong, it is a bug and we will fix the page. The same standard applies to anything here about Employment Hero: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose Employment Hero if

This is the part of the page that makes the rest of it worth reading. If one of these describes you, the honest answer is that Employment Hero is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You are hiring in Australia or New Zealand and want one vendor to run local payroll end to end, award interpretation, superannuation and statutory reporting inside the same system that holds the record. Employment Hero publishes that as its core, and Capstan hands computation to a payroll partner permanently, so one vendor for both is the shorter path here.
  • You want to put people to work in countries where you hold no legal entity, and you would rather one company became the legal employer there than set up entities yourself. Employment Hero publishes an employer-of-record service for exactly that, and Capstan does not offer one at any price or on any plan.
  • Employee benefits are part of what you are buying rather than something you arrange separately: earned wage access, a spending account and a perks marketplace inside the same app your staff already use. That bundle is real, and Capstan is deliberately narrower.

The part that costs us the sale

Where Capstan is the wrong choice

Not a softened version of the section above. These are requirements Capstan does not meet and is not going to meet, written down so you can rule us out in a minute rather than in a quarter. If one of them is true of you, nothing else on this page matters.

  1. You want one vendor to become the legal employer of people you hire abroad. Capstan is not an employer of record and will not become one, now or later.

  2. You want your HR software to compute pay, interpret awards and file with the tax authority. Capstan does none of that, in any country, by design: it prepares inputs for a payroll partner and holds no statutory rate, slab or formula.

  3. Benefits administration, earned wage access or a staff spending account is a requirement. Capstan is an HR system of record, administers no benefits and moves no money.

That is the list as we understand it today. If you hit a limit that is not on it, tell us: a disqualifier we did not know about belongs here more than anything else on the page.

If nothing on this page ruled us out, run it yourself.

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