CompData salary survey pricing, what every Salary.com CompData survey costs a small company
Salary.com prints its CompData prices, and they are lower than most people expect. A single CompData survey costs $995 for one region if you submit your own pay data and $3,495 if you do not. All five regions plus the national cut cost $4,975 for a participant and $17,425 for a non-participant. The base price covers one user, and the price does not change with company size.
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That last point is what matters if you run HR or finance at a company of 40 to 200 people. A 4,000-person employer pays exactly what you pay for the same region. Enterprise compensation software is priced by headcount and sold by quote, so a small buyer rarely gets a straight answer. CompData is the opposite: a fixed price grid on a public store, with the full option set visible before you talk to anyone. Below is that grid as the store returned it in September 2026, what moves the number, and three worked orders for companies your size.
The CompData price grid
Four surveys are sold by region (Midwest, Northeast, South Central, Southeast and West): Benchmark Pro, the general-market survey, plus Healthcare, Manufacturing and Distribution, and Not-for-Profit. Nine more industry surveys are sold as a single product with no region choice. All thirteen share the same three packages.
| Package | One region, or a single-product survey | All regions and national cut |
|---|---|---|
| Participant (you submit data) | $995 | $4,975 |
| Non-participant | $3,495 | $17,425 |
| Consultant (firms of 1 to 5 consultants) | $10,485 | $52,275 |
Two surveys break the pattern. Executive Compensation has no participant rate at all: $3,495 for a company, $10,485 for a consultant. Consumer Goods and Retail costs $1,990 for participants and $6,965 for non-participants. Benefits USA sells at $3,495, with a discounted rate for companies that participate in another CompData survey that Salary.com quotes by contact only.
The nine single-product industry surveys are Accounting Services, Banking and Financial Services, Colleges and Universities, Energy and Utilities, Engineering and Technology Services, Hospitality, Insurance, Legal Services, and Physician and Mid-Level Practitioners. There is no construction survey, which is why contractors end up comparing PAS books and AGC chapter guides instead, all priced on our construction salary survey comparison.
What changes the CompData price
- Participation. The largest lever by far. It cuts a region by $2,500, or 71.5 percent, and the full national set by $12,450. Salary.com says data is collected annually from each participant and asks you to call or chat to learn how submission works.
- Extra users. The base price covers one user. A second user at the same location adds $100 for a participant or $300 for a non-participant. A user at a different location adds $200 or $500.
- The national cut. Adding the national data cut to a single region doubles the price, to $1,990 for a participant or $6,990 for a non-participant.
- More than one survey. Answering yes to "buying multiple surveys" takes 10 percent off, which turns a $3,495 non-participant region into $3,145.50.
- Term. Two to five year subscriptions carry 10 to 40 percent discounts. A three year non-participant region shows as $2,796. The store does not say whether that is per year or for the whole term, so ask before you sign.
- Company size. Nothing. The Manufacturing and Distribution survey lets you filter results by FTEs and gross revenue, but the price is the same for a 40-person shop and a 4,000-person manufacturer.
Three worked orders for a small company
| Company | What they order | Participant | Non-participant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60-person professional services firm, one office in the Southeast | Benchmark Pro, Southeast, one user | $995 | $3,495 |
| 150-person manufacturer, plants in two regions | Manufacturing and Distribution, home region plus national cut, second user at the other plant | $2,190 | $7,490 |
| 120-bed rural hospital's physician group | Physician and Mid-Level Practitioners, one user | $995 | $3,495 |
The manufacturer's order is where the options stack. Region plus national cut is $1,990 as a participant, and the plant controller at the second site counts as a different-location user, another $200. As a non-participant it is $6,990 plus $500. Add the Executive Compensation survey for the owner's own pay and you are paying $3,495 for that alone, or $3,145.50 with the multiple-survey discount, since it has no participant rate. Our manufacturing salary survey page sets that against Mercer, ERI and the regional associations, and medical groups can compare the physician survey with MGMA and AMGA on healthcare compensation surveys.
On payment, the store takes a credit card or an invoice. If your finance team will not pay an invoice without a matching purchase order approval, raise it before you commit, because participation deadlines are not published on the store and a survey ordered late may land after your merit cycle.
How CompData compares with the other published prices
CompData sits near the bottom of the published range for national survey data. Mercer's manufacturing survey costs $2,600 for participants and $7,800 for non-participants, with three users included, so a single CompData region is cheaper at either level but Mercer's seat count narrows the gap if three people need access. ERI publishes no price for its surveys or its Salary Assessor. Salary.com's own CompAnalyst software has no published price either; Vendr, a procurement marketplace, says companies with 500 to 1,500 employees commonly see it in the mid five figures a year, which is a rough outside estimate, not a Salary.com quote. The full list is on salary survey providers, and how ERI sells is covered in ERI salary survey pricing.
When CompData is the right buy, and when it is not
CompData is a good buy when you run one annual pay review, want employer-reported data rather than self-reported, and can submit your own data to get the $995 price. Salary.com says results update quarterly, which is more often than most association surveys. It is also one of the few national surveys that reports shift differentials in its manufacturing edition.
It is a weaker fit in three cases. If you are a contractor, there is no construction edition. If you need more than two or three people working in the data, the per-user add-ons pile up. And if your real problem is putting a defensible range on every job ad you post in a pay transparency state, a once-a-year report is the wrong shape, because the posting happens every month and the survey sits in a folder.
That monthly job is what WageList covers: pick the role and the metro and get a band and a range you can post, built from the federal wage survey, at $99 a month or $948 a year on the pricing page. Many small companies run both, CompData for the annual review and WageList for the postings in between. If you have not built bands yet, start with how to create salary bands.
Sources: Salary.com store pages for each CompData survey and their price options (store.salary.com/compdata, read 28 September 2026); salary.com Compdata and compensation data pages; Vendr Salary.com marketplace page; TrustRadius CompAnalyst pricing page; imercer.com Manufacturing and Operations Survey page. Confirm current pricing with Salary.com directly.