Palette vs Trolley
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentTrolley compared with Palette
Palette automates commission calculation from your revenue systems and produces the number. Trolley takes a number someone else produced and delivers it to a recipient in Brazil with a tax statement attached. If your problem is that partner commission is calculated in a spreadsheet, Palette is the fix. If the calculation is fine and paying people is the ordeal, Trolley is.
Choose Palette if
European and North American revenue teams of roughly 10 to 100 payees who want a modern, well-designed commission platform with a predictable flat monthly cost, unlimited free admin seats, and EU data residency, and who are comfortable buying through a short sales conversation rather than a self-serve signup.
Choose Trolley if
Companies paying commission, referral fees or revenue share to people who are not employees, especially across borders, where recipient onboarding, identity verification and tax reporting are as much of the problem as moving the money, and where volume justifies a low four-figure annual platform cost.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Palette | Trolley |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Commissions | Commissions |
| Starting price | $590 per month for up to 15 seats on annual billing ($790 monthly) | $2,399 per year for the Pay module, plus per-transaction fees (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Flat package pricing by seat band rather than per user, with unlimited free admin seats. Twenty percent discount for annual billing. Implementation fees are described as flexible and are quoted separately. | Annual subscription per module, with per-transaction and per-statement fees on top, plus a currency conversion margin. Two plans: a published Standard and a sales-quoted Trolley Plus. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | No | A free trial is offered, with self-serve start on the Standard plan |
| Best for | European and North American revenue teams of roughly 10 to 100 payees who want a modern, well-designed commission platform with a predictable flat monthly cost, unlimited free admin seats, and EU data residency, and who are comfortable buying through a short sales conversation rather than a self-serve signup. | Companies paying commission, referral fees or revenue share to people who are not employees, especially across borders, where recipient onboarding, identity verification and tax reporting are as much of the problem as moving the money, and where volume justifies a low four-figure annual platform cost. |
| Setup time | Weeks rather than months for a standard plan on a native connector. The heavier work is data reconciliation when revenue truth is split across a CRM and a billing system, which is exactly what the Scale package's transformation tool exists to handle. | A first payout run within a week if recipients are cooperative, most of which is waiting for them to complete onboarding and verification rather than anything you do. API and widget integration adds one to three weeks of engineering. |
| Learning curve | Low for reps, who get a dashboard and a statement, and moderate for the admin. Building plans on arbitrary CRM fields is powerful and also means the quality of your CRM hygiene sets the ceiling on how good your commission data can be. | Moderate on the finance side. The payment concepts are straightforward but the tax module requires understanding which reporting regime applies to your recipients, and that determination is not something the software makes for you. |
| Platforms | Web application, Rep and manager dashboards | Web dashboard, REST API and SDKs, Embeddable iframe widget, CSV import, Native ERP integrations |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2 (documentation available on request), GDPR-aligned through EU hosting and documented access controls | SOC 2 certified, IRS reporting for US-sourced payouts, DAC7 for EU sellers, OECD digital platform reporting |
| Founded | 2020 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France | Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with offices in Toronto, Halifax, London, Miami, San Francisco, Singapore and Vilnius |
| Ownership | Venture-backed | Venture-backed and privately held |
Strengths and limitations
Palette
Strengths
- Flat package pricing with unlimited free admin seats, which removes the per-user tax on finance, ops, and management that inflates competitor bills.
- Prices are published, in a category where CaptivateIQ, Everstage, Performio, Visdum, Qobra, and Remuner all require a call before naming a number.
- More than twenty native connectors spanning seven CRMs, seven billing systems, and five warehouse or database sources, including tools like Close, Pipedrive, Pennylane, and Sellsy that European teams actually run.
- A scenario builder that compares plan designs in one click, which converts comp planning from opinion into a costed decision.
Limitations
- Clawbacks, ramps, draws, multi-currency, and release-on-payment are all Scale features, so the real entry price for a plan with any of those is $1,110 a month rather than $590.
- No free trial and no self-serve signup; despite publishing prices, every package requires a sales conversation, which undercuts the transparency somewhat.
- Implementation fees are described only as flexible, so the total first-year cost cannot be determined from public information.
- Data is hosted exclusively on AWS in France with no advertised US region, which is a straightforward blocker for buyers with domestic residency requirements.
Trolley
Strengths
- Published module pricing with a self-serve free trial, which is rare among global payout platforms where the norm is a demo and a quote.
- Recipient self-onboarding with white-label communications and an embeddable widget removes the single most tedious part of paying non-employees.
- Tax handling across IRS, DAC7 and OECD digital platform reporting, with more than 1.2 million statements filed across 210 countries as evidence it works at scale.
- Flat per-transaction pricing of roughly one to four euros on local rails, which is dramatically cheaper than percentage-based alternatives at meaningful payout values.
Limitations
- It calculates nothing. No plan designer, no quota, no accelerator, no split, no clawback and no rep statement; the amount owed has to be determined elsewhere.
- The module structure fragments the price, and a realistic configuration of Pay, Tax and Trust approaches 6,000 dollars a year before a single transaction fee.
- The Standard plan covers only one tax jurisdiction, which pushes genuinely international programmes into a sales-quoted tier quickly.
- Annual billing only, with no monthly option, so the commitment is a year regardless of how the trial goes.
Pricing compared
Palette
Flat package pricing by seat band rather than per user, with unlimited free admin seats. Twenty percent discount for annual billing. Implementation fees are described as flexible and are quoted separately.
- Starter$590 per month on annual billing, or $790 billed monthly
- Scale$1,110 per month
- EnterpriseCustom
Palette is the best-value modern product in this category for a team of roughly 15 to 30 earning reps, and the reason is the packaging rather than the sticker. Fifteen seats at $590 is about $39 a seat with every admin free, and thirty seats at $1,110 is about $37, against per-user competitors that charge for admins and add a platform fee on top. You are also getting a genuinely well-built product with a scenario builder, EU hosting, SOC 2 Type 2, and more than twenty native connectors. The two things dragging on the value are the Starter feature gaps, which push most real plans up to Scale, and the unquoted implementation fee, which makes true first-year cost impossible to model from the website. Under ten payees the flat fee is poor value; between fifteen and 60 it is among the best available.
Trolley
Annual subscription per module, with per-transaction and per-statement fees on top, plus a currency conversion margin. Two plans: a published Standard and a sales-quoted Trolley Plus.
- Standard$2,399 per year for Pay, plus optional modules
- Trolley PlusCustom
Trolley is priced for a company with a real payout operation, not for one sending a few partner cheques. Below roughly 50,000 dollars a year in partner payments, the platform fees dominate and Wise Business or Tremendous will be cheaper. Above that, the arithmetic flips hard: flat per-transaction fees of one to four euros beat percentage-based rails, and the value of automated recipient onboarding, identity verification and tax filing is difficult to overstate for anyone who has done it manually. The thing to model carefully is the 2 percent FX margin, which on a genuinely international programme can exceed every subscription line combined. Judged as payout infrastructure it is fairly priced and unusually transparent; judged as anything to do with calculating commission it is not in the running, because it does not attempt it.
Editorial verdict on each
Palette
MomentumPalette is the best-designed commission platform a small European company can actually afford, and the packaging is the reason. A flat $590 a month for up to 15 seats with unlimited free admin seats beats per-user pricing outright once you count the managers, analysts, and finance people who never earn a commission, and the product behind it is modern: real-time calculation, a scenario builder that costs a plan change before you announce it, more than twenty native connectors, and SOC 2 Type 2 with hosting in France. Two things to check before you commit. Clawbacks, ramps, draws, and multi-currency all live in the $1,110 Scale package, so confirm which tier your actual plan needs. And the implementation fee is unpublished, so get it quoted before the transparency of the price list convinces you the total is known. For 15 to 60 earners in Europe, this is the strongest all-round choice here.
Read the full Palette profileTrolley
Trolley is the right tool for a specific and underserved problem: paying variable compensation to people your payroll cannot reach. Recipient self-onboarding, identity verification, tax filing across IRS, DAC7 and OECD regimes, approval workflows and flat per-transaction pricing on local rails add up to something a bank login and a spreadsheet cannot approximate, and the published module pricing plus a self-serve trial is more transparency than this corner of fintech usually offers. Be clear-eyed about the cost shape. The advertised 2,399 dollars covers payments only, a realistic configuration approaches 6,000 dollars a year, the Standard tier is limited to one tax jurisdiction, and the 2 percent FX margin can quietly exceed all of it. And be absolutely clear that Trolley calculates nothing. Pair it with a commission tool that produces the number, and it will get that number to a partner in almost any country with a record you can defend.
Read the full Trolley profilePalette profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Trolley last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.