Payscale Ascent Reviews & Product Details

Pricing for unique jobs and blending roles with hybrid responsibilities is very useful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While the customizability can be a good thing, but turned out to be too much to manage without a dedicated compensation professional on our team. Maintaining a repeatable compensation analysis requires a lot more updating than what would be ideal. Additionally, pricing for Total Cash earnings (base plus bonus or commissioned roles) did not seem accurate, and for sales roles requires upgrading to a higher level package. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the pricing tool in Payscale Ascent (formerly Payfactors) really helpful. It assists in reviewing compensation, allowing us to look at multiple roles or multiple employees within a role simultaneously. This helps ensure fair compensation and makes our decision-making process a lot quicker. It also aids in time management, especially when it comes to reviewing compensation across different roles. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do wish that there was a little less manual input required. Sometimes the templates just seem a little outdated, and I wish I could have information already fed into my jobs directly from the surveys I'm receiving, and not have to plug and play. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform is user friendly and makes compensation data easy to access. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Just the fact we can't find the exactly title we are looking for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like its ease of use. It's very intuitive and easy to learn how to do various things. The way it's been designed is definitely geared towards the user. I also like the built-in survey feature that Payfactors provides its customers, and that's proved a valuable resource for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hopefully, the AI functionality will be made available shortly. I know that it's available on Market Pay right now, which gives us platform that we transitioned from to Payfactors. So I'm just eager to get that rolled out in the Payfactors and start using that in the help basically, help us with completing salary surveys. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We enjoy the ability to send out Total Rewards Statements annually. It is a fairly easy process compared to others. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The amount of manual work required in order to have a fully functional system. The structure mapping, having to input your own geo diff, etc. is a bit cumbersome. Especially considering this information is readily available to PayScale. The option to customize (through structure mapping etc.) should be available, but only if desired. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that I can use the market pay tool to utilize the survey matches for jobs. I also like that Payfactors provides updated data at different months throughout the year, making the data the most up-to-date. The initial setup was great, especially coming from using spreadsheets. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It works well, maybe more university jobs and or adding the difference between an online adjunct vs a campus adjunct to their questioning with universities because there is a difference in the data and it's always misinformed because no one understands that it is different. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like most about Payfactors is how easy it is to search for job descriptions, make updates, and publish changes. Those updates sync directly to our public job catalog, which helps keep our information consistent and up to date. I also appreciate that when job descriptions are edited, prior versions are saved rather than overwritten. Having that historical record supports our documentation needs and helps us maintain compliance.

The Pricing Projects tool provides meaningful insights for our market research by using survey-based compensation data to show how our jobs align with external benchmarks. Even when some roles don’t have exact matches, it still offers a strong foundation for evaluating market alignment and identifying areas that may need adjustment. The ability to customize our market selections, along with AI-supported matching, improves accuracy and reduces the manual effort required to review potential benchmark roles.

We use Payfactors alongside other data sources as part of a comprehensive review process, and the training resources in the Payscale Academy and the Payscale Collective community forum make it easier to deepen our understanding of the platform and connect with other compensation professionals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Because we’re still fairly new to the Payfactors platform, some parts of it aren’t as intuitive as we’d like, and a few of the Pricing Project reports are not as clear or helpful as we expected. There are also a lot of features to learn, which can feel overwhelming, but I imagine this will get easier with more frequent use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find Payfactors visually pleasing and my favorite part of the organization so far is the people. I really appreciated having a Customer Success Manager like Hayden Freitas, who has been amazing. The team has made it easy to learn and use the platform, they are accessible for questions and insight, and they have even supported our efforts to educate leaders on compensation. The initial setup was really easy with the team assigned to us, guiding us through everything. I also like how Payfactors is integrated with our HRIS, UKG. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I would like to have further knowledge of the data reports in the system. This is mainly due to a lack of time to deep dive into training material. They are certainly there to support me when needed. No improvements suggested. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform’s strength lies in its ability to aggregate complex market survey data into a single, actionable library. The workflow for matching internal roles to external benchmarks is intuitive and significantly more efficient than manual tracking. It allows for a data driven approach to pay transparency that is easy to communicate to leadership. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While the tool is excellent for standard benchmarking, it can sometimes feel rigid when handling complex, multi-layered organizational structures. For example, when trying to solve for specific "local" nuances or unique collective agreement designations within a single job profile, the platform doesn't always offer the dynamic visualization capabilities that a custom-built dashboard can provide. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have been using market pay in a few different employer over the past several years. I like that it is easy to pick up and navigate. It is especially helpful when the HR systems are antiquated. I like to use market pay as the system of record for comp work. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We are not updating it often enough. We need to develop more skills internally with managing reports and data. MP is a robust system that we are using only a small portion of the available functionality due to time and resource issues (internally).

In 2026 I would like to see our refresh automated (currently an excel load) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.