Payroll Watchdog
Best-of guide

Best Ghost Employee Detection Software

Ghost employees, people drawing a paycheck who don't actually work for you, are usually caught one of two ways: verifying that new hires and vendors are real people/entities at onboarding, or running anomaly detection across your existing payroll data to catch one that's already slipped through. Both approaches are covered below.

  1. 01
    Middesk
    Verifies the business is real before you verify the human is
    Editor's Pick

    Stops the vendor-entity version of this fraud at onboarding

    No public price list.8.2/10
  2. 02
    Persona
    Configurable identity verification that doesn't assume you're a bank

    Verifies individual identity at onboarding, including liveness checks against a real person

    Startup and small business track: 500 free verifications a month, then roughly $1 per verification after that.8.0/10
  3. 03
    MindBridge AI
    Reads every transaction in your ledger, not just a sample

    Catches ghost employees already on payroll through transaction-pattern anomaly detection

    No public pricing.8.0/10
  4. 04
    Rippling
    Payroll plus IT and HR in one system of record, with more granular controls than most

    Unified employee record structurally reduces the chance of someone existing in payroll but nowhere else

    Custom-quoted based on modules (payroll, HR, IT/device management) and headcount, no fully public price list.7.8/10
  5. 05
    ADP (RUN)
    The incumbent, with anomaly flags built into the pay run and a quote process built to out-negotiate you

    RUN's payroll preview flags paychecks that don't match history, a cheap ghost-employee tripwire you may already own

    Quote-only.7.6/10