Plane

#1 easiest-to-use payroll for startups

plane.com

HQ: San Francisco, CA, USA; Remote

11-50

B2B

Company research

Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals

Updated Jul 29, 2026

Overview

Plane (formerly Pilot) is a San Francisco-based, fully distributed payroll, HR, and compliance platform for startups and fast-growing companies. It focuses on global hiring, payroll, benefits, and compliance automation, with an open API plus MCP/CLI support for agentic workflows.

Primary product

Unified global payroll, HR, and compliance platform

Founded

2017

Headquarters

San Francisco, California, United States

Team size

30-40

Work style

Remote

Industry

Human Resources Services

Sub-industry

Global payroll, HR, and compliance software

Offices

San Francisco, California, United States

Business model

B2B SaaS

usage-based per worker

pay-as-you-go

EOR services

Funding

Stage

seed

Total raised

$6.9M

Latest round

Seed · Jun 2021

Latest amount

$6.7M

Seed

Jun 2021 · Sam Altman and Credo Ventures

$6.7M

Pre-seed

Aug 2017 · Y Combinator

$120K

People & investors

Leadership

Matt Pelc

Founder & CEO

Staszek Kolarzowski

Co-founder

Irene Chao

Head of People / Head of Operations

Head of Product

Head of Finance

Head of Marketing

Lead Engineer

Investors

Credo Ventures

Sam Altman

Y Combinator

Work & culture

Plane presents itself as a small, fully distributed team that values high-agency work, customer empathy, transparent compensation, and building payroll/HR automation as infrastructure. Public content emphasizes open-by-default product philosophy, fast iteration, and reducing administrative busywork for customers.

Work style

Remote

Visa sponsorship

Limited

Compensation

Public signals suggest a hybrid compensation approach that benchmarks roles by department/location, with transparent remote salary data published by Plane. Public job signals also mention competitive salary and equity, and the company’s content cites home-office stipends and location-aware pay practices.

Benefits

Competitive salary and equity

Remote-first environment

Home office stipend

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Unlimited paid vacation

2 months paid parental leave

Product & market

Pricing

Pay-as-you-go per worker: $39 per contractor, $19 per U.S. employee, $499 per EOR hire, and $0 for HRIS; no setup fees or minimums.

Differentiators

—Unified payroll for U.S. employees, global contractors, and EOR hires in one run
—Open API with MCP and CLI support
—Sandbox for testing payroll automations
—Transparent per-worker pricing with no setup fees
—Human support for workers, contractors, and vendors
—Built for agentic/automation workflows
—Global coverage across 240+ countries for contractors and 100+ countries for employees

Technology

React

TypeScript

JavaScript

Ruby on Rails

Ruby

Python

Django

GraphQL

PostgreSQL

Redis

RabbitMQ

GitHub

Slack

Intercom

Google Tag Manager

Customer.io

Segment

Netlify

Figma

MCP

Customers

MatX

MethodData

Remote Hive

Help Scout

Pavago

Formsort

Regrow Ag

AngelList

We Mean Business Coalition

Wren

PadSplit

InEvent

Draft.dev

Pipekit

Northwest Computing

Competitors

Deel

Rippling

Remote

Oyster

Papaya Global

Gusto

Justworks

Multiplier

Scale & contact

Estimated revenue

≈$7M-$12M estimated annual revenue

support@plane.com

Latest news

Workforce Planning: Model your next hires and their real cost inside Plane

Plane blog · Jul 2026

Plane launched Workforce Planning beta, letting admins model future headcount and fully loaded hire costs inside the payroll system.

Plane's had an open API since 2019. Now we’ve added full MCP and CLI support.

Plane LinkedIn · Jul 2026

Plane announced MCP and CLI support so AI tools and terminal workflows can interact directly with payroll data and actions.

Unified Payroll is fully launched

Plane blog · Jun 2026

Plane says Unified Payroll is now generally available for new customers, bringing U.S. and international employees and contractors into one payroll and HR experience.

Why We Built Self-Driving Payroll at Plane

Plane blog · Jun 2026

Plane frames payroll as autonomous infrastructure and describes its real-time compliance and error-resolution approach.

Jobs and careers at Plane

33 jobs at Plane

Principal Engineer, DevOps

On-site

Engineering

India

1w ago

On-site

Full-time