Put simply, Rippling processes payroll, while Compt administers the stipend and LSA programs that feed into payroll.

This is because payroll and HR systems aren’t designed to manage the full lifecycle of these programs.

Rather than replacing Rippling with Compt, many organizations use Rippling and Compt together: Rippling runs payroll and manages employee records, while Compt powers the design, administration, and IRS compliance of stipends and LSAs. 

• The two systems connect through the Rippling App Shop using a secure API integration that automatically synchronizes employee data from Rippling into Compt. 
• The integration is one-directional from Rippling to Compt, meaning employee data flows into Compt while payroll processing remains in Rippling.

According to Compt’s 2026 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, flexible benefits programs like LSAs continue to expand as companies consolidate smaller stipends into a single program employees can use across multiple categories.

This guide explains how the two systems fit together, when Rippling users typically add a lifestyle benefits platform like Compt, and what the workflow looks like in practice.

Why companies using Rippling add stipend and LSA software

Rippling is an excellent system for managing:

• Payroll
• HRIS and employee data
• Core HR workflows
• IT and identity management
• Benefits administration

But lifestyle benefits, especially increasingly popular programs like LSAs, introduce operational requirements that payroll systems simply aren’t built to handle. 

For example, running a stipend program typically requires: 

• Flexible benefit category design
• Employee reimbursement workflows
• Receipt validation
• Taxable vs. nontaxable categorization 
• HR and/or manager approvals
• Participation and utilization tracking 
• Payroll-ready exports 

When companies try to manage these processes directly inside payroll tools or spreadsheets, the administrative time investment for HR compounds quickly. 

The natural next step is to onboard a dedicated platform for lifestyle benefits while keeping payroll and employee records inside their existing HR system.

Stop overpaying for underused benefits.

Traditional payroll stipends are paid out 100% regardless of actual use.

With Compt, you only pay for the funds employees spend, saving you thousands while increasing benefits engagement.

Calculate your savings

How Rippling and Compt work together

In most organizations, Rippling and Compt serve different roles in your HR benefits tech stack. 

Rippling: system of record for employee data

• Payroll processing
• Tax withholding
• HR and IT infrastructure

Compt: Flexible LSA and stipend program design

• Lifestyle benefit (stipend and LSA) management
• Expense review and approvals
• Built-in IRS compliance support
• Payroll reporting for reimbursements

The workflow between the two HR benefits software systems typically looks like this: 

1. Employee data syncs from Rippling.

Use the Rippling App Shop to integrate Compt and Rippling and synchronize employee roster data automatically. Once connected, employee records such as name, role, department, and eligibility fields can be mapped directly from Rippling into Compt so employees are automatically added to the appropriate stipend or LSA programs.

2. Employers design lifestyle benefits in Compt.

HR teams create flexible, reimbursement-based programs such as:

• Wellness stipends or wellness wallets
• Professional development accounts
• Tuition reimbursement programs
• Remote work reimbursements (e.g., equipment, cell, internet)
• Family care, caregiving, and fertility benefits
• Company swag stores
• All-inclusive LSAs

You customize the categories, budget, funding cadence, and approval workflows for each program you design, with expert guidance from your dedicated Compt Customer Success Manager.  

3. Your employees submit claims in Compt. 

Employees purchase eligible items and submit receipts through Compt.

For example:

• Gym memberships
• Learning courses
• Childcare support
• Commuter costs
• Home office equipment

Program administrators or department managers review and approve submissions directly in the platform.

4. Compt categorizes expenses for payroll.

Compt determines whether expenses are taxable or nontaxable based on IRS guidelines, your company policy, and the benefit category selected during submission. This is critical because many fringe benefits, including most LSAs, are considered taxable compensation.

5. Payroll runs through Rippling.

Compt generates payroll-ready reports showing:

• Approved reimbursements
• Taxable vs non-taxable amounts
• Employee details required for payroll processing

Teams then include this data in their Rippling payroll run.

This approach keeps payroll calculations inside Rippling while ensuring benefits are administered properly upstream.

How the Rippling + Compt integration is set up

Companies connect Rippling and Compt through the Rippling App Shop integration.

The setup process typically looks like this:

1. Install the Compt app from Rippling’s App Shop.
2. Enable the integration inside Compt’s Company Settings.
3. Connect the existing Rippling account and authorize the data access requested.
4. Select which employees should automatically sync to Compt.
5. Confirm the connection to complete the integration.

Once enabled, employee data automatically syncs from Rippling to Compt so HR teams don’t need to manually maintain their employee list inside the benefits platform. New hires, role changes, and employee terminations update automatically as the systems stay synchronized.

To learn more, read our dedicated HelpScout article, “Integrating Rippling with Compt (Company Administrators).” 

Example workflow: Rippling + Compt

After the integration is active, employee information updates automatically when changes occur in Rippling, such as new hires, role changes, or terminations. A typical benefits workflow might look like this:

1. HR creates a quarterly wellness stipend in Compt.
2. Employees submit gym or fitness expenses.
3. Managers approve the reimbursement.
4. Compt categorizes the expense as taxable.
5. Payroll reports are generated for the next pay run.
6. Finance processes payroll in Rippling with the reimbursement included.

This approach keeps payroll centralized while removing the operational work from HR and Finance teams.

Can Rippling manage stipends or Lifestyle Spending Accounts directly?

Rippling can process stipend reimbursements through payroll, but it is not designed to administer the full lifecycle of stipend or Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) programs.

Running flexible benefits programs typically requires tools for:

• Defining eligible expense categories
• Collecting receipts and documentation
• Approving reimbursements
• Categorizing taxable vs. nontaxable benefits
• Tracking participation and utilization
• Generating payroll reports

Because of this, many organizations manage stipend and LSA programs in a dedicated lifestyle benefits platform while continuing to run payroll in Rippling.

Compt manages the program administration, while Rippling processes the reimbursements through payroll.

Want to see how it works? Request a demo of Compt. 

Why many Rippling customers choose a reimbursement model for LSAs and stipends 

Most lifestyle benefits platforms fall into two models:

1. Card-based benefits: Employees receive a prepaid card to spend on eligible purchases.
2. Reimbursement-based benefits: Employees submit receipts and are reimbursed through payroll.

Compt uses a reimbursement-first model for a few key reasons:

Reimbursement is better for IRS compliance.

With reimbursement workflows, employers can ensure purchases meet eligibility guidelines before funds are distributed. This reduces the risk of improper spending or tax compliance issues.

Reimbursement allows for stronger Finance and Payroll alignment.

Because reimbursements flow through payroll, taxable benefits are reported correctly and integrated with existing payroll systems.

Reimbursement supports a streamlined global benefits experience.

Many card-based solutions struggle to support international teams. Compt’s reimbursement model shines here because employees in 75+ countries can purchase from any local vendor and receive reimbursement in their own currency. 

Psst … Read Compt’s expert breakdown of these two models, “Employee Debit Cards vs. Reimbursements: An Honest Comparison for HR Leaders.”

Common lifestyle benefits Rippling customers run through Compt

Companies using Rippling often implement Compt for benefits such as:

Wellness stipends or wellness wallets

Employees receive a monthly or quarterly budget for physical, mental, or financial wellness expenses.

Examples include:

• Gym memberships
• Fitness classes
• Therapy apps
• Massage therapy
• Meditation subscriptions
• Healthy groceries and other essentials
• Weight management, including GLP-1–related care
• Fitness trackers, Oura rings, glucose monitors, and other health-specific wearables
• Sleep optimization products
• Financial wellness tools and budgeting apps 

Professional development stipends

Learning budgets help employees fund:

• Certifications and licensing exams  
• Online courses (Coursera, MasterClass, Udemy)  
• Industry conferences  
• Books and research materials  
• AI productivity tools and learning platforms  
• Coding tools and developer environments  
• Language learning apps 
• Executive coaching or leadership training

Some organizations add manager approval workflows for these programs.

Remote work stipends

Distributed teams often reimburse expenses like:

• Home office equipment
• Coworking memberships
• Internet service
• Ergonomic furniture

Family care benefits

LSAs allow employees to apply funds toward:

• Childcare support
• Fertility services
• Elder care expenses

All-inclusive LSAs

Many organizations consolidate multiple small stipends into a single flexible program, or a Lifestyle Spending Account. Instead of running separate wellness, remote work, and learning benefits, they offer one LSA employees can use across several categories.

Some organizations allow LSAs to support broader well-being and engagement with categories inclusive of lifestyle and personal enrichment purchases, such as: 

• Creative hobbies (art supplies, music lessons)
• Cooking classes
• Sports leagues
• Outdoor recreation gear
• Cultural experiences or museum memberships

Being inclusive in your stipend or LSA design significantly increases participation in the benefit because employees can use it in ways that reflect their real lives.

Psst … check out our guide, “What Are LSA-Eligible Expenses? A Practical Guide for HR and Finance,” by Compt’s VP Finance Megan Dunn.

When Rippling customers typically add Compt

Rippling customers usually adopt a lifestyle benefits platform when one of the following happens:

• They want to launch a LSA or a wellness wallet/stipend. LSAs require structured categories, expense validation, and payroll reporting.
• Manual stipend tracking becomes too complex. Spreadsheet workflows quickly become difficult to maintain as companies scale.
• Finance needs clearer payroll reporting. Benefits teams need a consistent way to track taxable benefits before payroll runs.
• They want employee data to sync automatically from HRIS to lifestyle benefits programs. As teams grow, manually maintaining employee lists inside stipend programs becomes time-consuming. Integrations automate employee eligibility and onboarding.
• Participation in traditional perks is low. Flexible benefits often achieve higher participation because employees can use them for needs that are relevant to their lives. Learn more in our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report. 

Why companies using Rippling choose Compt for stipends and LSAs

Companies that run payroll in Rippling often choose Compt when they want to launch flexible lifestyle benefits such as stipends and all-inclusive LSAs without creating administrative headaches for HR, Finance, or Payroll.

Compt is a reimbursement-first lifestyle benefits platform that helps organizations design and manage stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) while complementing payroll processing inside their existing systems.

With Compt, teams can:

• Launch wellness stipends, professional development budgets, remote work reimbursements, and all-inclusive LSAs.
• Automatically categorize expenses as taxable or nontaxable based on IRS guidance.
• Provide employees with a simple reimbursement experience that works globally in 75+ countries.
• Generate CSVs and reports that plug cleanly into payroll workflows.
• Track participation and utilization to ensure benefits are actually used.

For organizations already using Rippling as their HR and payroll system, Compt provides the infrastructure needed to run modern lifestyle benefits programs without managing spreadsheets, tracking stipend funding and expenses manually, or leaning on guesswork for important IRS compliance decisions. 

Request a demo to see how Compt works with Rippling to power stipends and LSAs for modern teams.

FAQs: Using Compt with Rippling for stipends and LSAs

The post How Compt Works With Rippling for Stipends and LSAs appeared first on COMPT.

Benepass is best known for a card-first experience: employees swipe the card at a point-of-sale register or online, and the platform approves or declines transactions based on merchant rules. For some teams, that convenience is the point. For others, it’s where the friction begins: card declines at the wrong moment, confusion about what is and isn’t eligible, and edge cases that still end up as questions in HR’s inbox. 

This guide walks through the top Benepass alternatives and competitors for LSAs and employee stipend software in 2026 and helps you choose based on decision criteria such as: 

• Spending model: card-first, reimbursement-first, or hybrid
• Employee experience: flexibility vs. “will this card work here?”
• Finance controls: taxable vs. nontaxable handling, audit trail, payroll exports
• Global reality: multicurrency support and cross-border compliance expectations

Before we get started, let’s ground this evaluation in what high-performing lifestyle benefits programs optimize for in 2026: participation and utilization. Among Compt customers in 2025, activation reached 95% and participation among active users reached 93%, according to our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

That data is specific to Compt, but it reinforces the point: the platform model you choose can directly impact whether employees actually use the benefit.

TL;DR: The fastest way to choose a lifestyle benefits platform

Choose a Benepass-style platform (card-first with integrated pre-tax accounts) if:

• You want a single wallet experience that consolidates pre-tax accounts (like HSA/FSA) and post-tax lifestyle benefits onto a card.
• You prefer real-time transaction approvals at checkout and are comfortable with merchant-category enforcement.
• You’re looking for deeper integration between lifestyle perks and healthcare savings infrastructure.

Choose a reimbursement-first platform like Compt (vendor-agnostic lifestyle benefits) if:

• You want to offer flexible stipends and LSAs that employees can use with any vendor, without point-of-sale declines.
• You want clear, traceable IRS compliance built right in, including receipt-backed substantiation and clear taxable vs. nontaxable classification before payroll runs.
• You want to avoid prefunding large card balances and instead pay only for approved reimbursements.

Throughout this article, we’ll compare Benepass to four alternatives: Compt, Forma, ThrivePass, and Espresa. 

Full disclosure: Compt is our platform. We’ll present each vendor evenly and be direct about tradeoffs so you can make an informed decision.

What Benepass is, and why some teams start exploring alternatives

Benepass is known for its card-first model that combines pre-tax accounts (such as HSAs, FSAs, and commuter benefits) with post-tax stipends and LSAs into a single wallet experience. Employees receive a physical or virtual card and use it to make purchases at checkout, whether in person or online, and transactions are approved or declined in real time based on merchant category rules and employer eligibility policies. 

For many organizations that choose this path, that simplicity is the appeal: employees get one card, one login, and one consolidated view of all their benefits. Bam. Easy-peasy. 

But the very mechanics that make these card-first programs feel convenient also introduce friction as companies scale and/or expand globally. 

Here are the most common reasons teams begin evaluating Benepass alternatives: 

1. Merchant-category enforcement doesn’t always match real-world purchases.

Card-based systems typically approve transactions at the merchant category code (MCC) level, not the item level. That means a purchase at a grocery store is treated the same whether it’s protein powder or a bottle of wine. When you’re trying to align spend tightly to policy intent or distinguish taxable from nontaxable categories, this limitation means HR and Finance teams likely need to spend time manually reviewing edge cases.

2. Prefunding creates cash exposure. 

Card-first programs require employers to prefund benefit allocations. That capital sits in the program until employees spend it. If you have a large employee headcount or high monthly benefits allocation, that translates into significant working capital tied up in advance, rather than paid out only when expenses are approved and processed.

3. Cards cause point-of-sale friction.

Real-time approvals are fast—until they aren’t. Card declines can happen for merchant-code mismatches, insufficient funds, category restrictions, or fraud checks. Even when card declines are rare, they tend to happen in visible moments, which can create a frustrating employee experience.

4. The global experience is inconsistent and varies by region. 

Card-based and marketplace-driven benefit models often work best in the country in which they’re built. As companies expand globally, nuances like currency conversion timing, local merchant acceptance, affiliate partnerships, and postal-code verification can create noticeable friction for international employees.

In Benepass G2 reviews, users outside the U.S. have noted:

• Currency conversion timing that doesn’t align neatly with reimbursement expectations
• Limited affiliate or discount coverage in certain regions
• Merchant or billing address mismatches when using cards internationally

These aren’t universal problems, but they do surface more often in distributed workforces that rely LSA debit cards.

5. Benepass is expanding into pre-tax and HSA infrastructure. 

In 2025, Benepass expanded its HSA investing experience, including low investment minimums and integrated in-app management. This signals a continued push toward becoming a broader pre-tax and financial wellness infrastructure platform, rather than focusing exclusively on flexible LSAs and lifestyle stipends.

For some organizations, that integrated direction is exactly what they want. For those whose primary goal is running flexible LSAs and stipends cleanly, it introduces additional complexity.

How card-first and reimbursement-first platforms compare in 2026 (complete table)

When you evaluate Benepass alternatives, the most important distinction isn’t the brand, but the architecture. Most lifestyle benefits platforms fall into one of three structural models: 

1. Card-first (wallet model)
2. Reimbursement-first (vendor-agnostic model)
3. Hybrid (card + marketplace + reimbursement)

Here’s how they all compare: 

What this means

• Card-first platforms optimize for checkout convenience and consolidated wallet infrastructure, often including pre-tax accounts like HSAs and FSAs.
• Reimbursement-first platforms optimize for vendor flexibility, receipt-level IRS compliance, and predictable cash exposure. They’re often the best choice for minimizing administrative headaches while providing employees with the most choice in how they use their benefits.  
• Hybrid models attempt to combine both, which increases flexibility (and complexity right along with it). 

In practice, reducing friction (like declines, vendor restrictions, and unclear eligibility) tends to increase participation because employees trust they can use the benefit without surprises.

Quick checklist for choosing a Benepass alternative

Before evaluating individual vendors, clarify what matters most to your HR and Finance team:

• Spending model: Do you prefer card-first spending, reimbursement-first flexibility, or a hybrid approach?
• Vendor freedom: Will employees be limited by merchant codes or curated marketplaces, or can they use any vendor that fits policy?
• Tax handling: Can the platform clearly separate taxable vs. nontaxable categories before payroll runs?
• Cash flow exposure: Are you comfortable prefunding balances, or do you want to pay only for approved expenses?
• Global support: If you operate internationally, does the platform support multicurrency reimbursements and localized administration?
• Admin lift: Can HR and Finance run the program without spreadsheets or manual reconciliation?

Once you’re clear on these priorities, the vendor differences become much easier to evaluate.

Let’s dig in.

Alternative #1: Compt — Reimbursement-first, vendor-agnostic lifestyle benefits

What is Compt best for?

Compt is best for organizations that want to run flexible Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) and stipends without prefunding cards, managing merchant-code restrictions, or manually reconciling taxable vs. nontaxable spend at payroll.

It’s particularly well suited for:

• Distributed or global teams (75+ countries supported)
• HR teams that want minimal monthly admin lift
• Finance teams that require receipt-backed audit trails
• Companies consolidating multiple stipends into one LSA structure
• Employers prioritizing vendor flexibility for their people over marketplace control

Compt does not issue a benefits debit card. Instead, it operates on a reimbursement-first model.

That architectural difference drives the experience for both your people and your HR and Finance team. 

How Compt works

With Compt, your employees can use their lifestyle benefits with any vendor that fits your employer-defined categories. They simply select the appropriate LSA or stipend category, upload their receipt, fill in a few quick details, and submit.

If your employee’s purchase:

• Fits policy
• Falls within their available stipend balance
• Matches your category rules   

Then it moves through approvals and you can easily export it before you run payroll. 

Here’s how it works from the administrative point of view: 

Key differentiators from Benepass

1. No prefunding

As we’ve noted, card-first programs require allocated funds to sit in an account before they’re spent.

Compt does not hold employer funds. You pay only for approved reimbursements when payroll runs. Any unused allocations remain with the employer, which means you actually save money on lifestyle benefits you offer that your employees opt not to use. 

For large teams or large monthly benefits allocations, this materially reduces your working capital exposure. 

2. Receipt-level tax classification 

Each stipend category is configured with tax treatment (taxable or nontaxable). Employees see this classification at submission, which improves their ability to make decisions about their spending rooted in their own personal finances.

An example: With my quarterly Compt LSA, I have 20 categories available, and I always choose “student loan repayment” because it’s nontaxable. There are other dedicated stipends for wellness and office equipment with which I can be reimbursed for purchases in taxable categories, so why increase my taxable income here when I have other options?  

With Compt, because every expense is receipt-backed:

• Taxable vs. nontaxable spend is separated before payroll export.
• Audit trails include timestamps, approvals, and documentation.
• Payroll files are formatted by tax treatment and easily exportable.

This eliminates the need for manual reconciliation at the end of the year. 

3. Global, multicurrency reimbursements

Compt supports employees in 75+ countries. Within the Compt platform, employees see balances in their local currency, reimbursements are processed in their local currency, and Finance still receives centralized reporting. 

Employees are also free to make local purchases from vendors they’re familiar with instead of being locked into a pre-approved vendor list for which there may be no options close to home. 

For distributed teams, this avoids the friction of card acceptance limits, billing address mismatches, and currency conversion timing issues. It’s also simple to create user groups and define currencies and policies by each, so if an employee moves to another country, it’s easy to move them to the related group. 

4. Configurable, flexible stipends and LSAs

Compt admins can create:

• Recurring stipends (monthly, quarterly, annual)
• One-time stipends or spot bonuses
• Consolidated, all-inclusive LSAs
• Role- or location-based eligibility groups

And remember those 20 LSA categories I mentioned above? Your options include, but are not limited to:

• Health and wellness
• Professional development
• Family care
• Remote work
• Commuter benefits
• Charitable giving
• Company swag
• Rewards and recognition
• Employee discounts
• Pets
• A full 28 stipend categories to design into your benefits structure 

And one of the coolest parts? Eligibility syncs with your HRIS integrations to automate new hire inclusion and terminations.

5. Approval and reporting workflow

Compt admins have access to:

• Bulk approval queues
• Status tracking (Open, In Review, Approved, Processed)
• Payroll exports grouped by tax treatment
• Audit-ready reports with receipt documentation
• Real-time dashboards showing participation and utilization

According to our 2025 benchmark data, 99% of submitted expenses on the Compt platform were approved in the first half of the year, which reflects overall category clarity and employee understanding. 

What you trade off by choosing Compt

There’s no way around it: Reimbursement-first models require employees to upload receipts.

For most teams using Compt, this takes minutes and employees don’t mind. That said, we recognize that eliminating receipt submission is a priority for some organizations. We’re not for everyone!

This single tradeoff is the core difference between reimbursement-first and card-first models.

Online ratings

Compt is rated 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2.

When Compt is a strong fit

Choose Compt if:

• You want vendor flexibility without merchant-code restrictions.
• You want clear IRS-aligned reporting before payroll runs.
• You want to avoid prefunding card balances.
• You operate globally and need multicurrency reimbursements.
• You want to consolidate stipends into a single LSA.

If your priority is consolidating pre-tax accounts (HSA/FSA) and post-tax stipends into a single wallet-style debit card, a card-first platform like Benepass may be better aligned.

Alternative #2: Espresa — Engagement platform with built-in lifestyle benefits

What is Espresa best for?

Espresa is ideal for organizations looking to combine Lifestyle Spending Accounts with broader employee engagement tools like challenges and community groups inside a single platform.

Espresa positions itself as a “culture and total well-being” platform that includes LSAs alongside employee resource groups (ERGs), social recognition, well-being challenges, and rewards programs.

Rather than focusing on stipend and reimbursement infrastructure and creating a world-class experience there, Espresa embeds lifestyle benefits within a larger engagement suite. This option is considered a hybrid model because it features an LSA debit card, curated vendor marketplace (with no markups), and reimbursement within a broad engagement ecosystem.

Espresa’s strengths

• Integrated recognition, challenges, and community features
• Marketplace-style redemption options alongside reimbursements
• Consolidated engagement reporting across programs
• Zero-markup marketplace positioning for rewards

For teams that want lifestyle benefits tightly connected to culture programming, this unified structure can simplify your approach and the employee experience. 

Tradeoffs to consider with Espresa

• Broad engagement platforms introduce unnecessary administrative complexity if your primary goal is running LSAs cleanly and at scale.
• Marketplace-driven elements limit vendor flexibility compared to fully vendor-agnostic reimbursement models.
• Card-based components may encounter declines at POS checkout. 
• Teams focused on moving away from spreadsheets to built-in tax classification and payroll automation will likely find the engagement features more expansive than necessary.

When Espresa makes sense

Espresa is an option when your priority is building a culture and engagement hub that includes lifestyle benefits as one component of a larger strategy next to wellness challenges and ERG support.

Alternative #3: ThrivePass — Lifecycle benefits platform with LSA capabilities

What is ThrivePass best for?

ThrivePass is a broader benefits administration suite that may be ideal for organizations that want lifestyle spending-style benefits alongside broader benefit administration services, such as COBRA and pre-tax accounts.

ThrivePass positions itself as a “lifecycle benefits” platform. In addition to lifestyle spending accounts and stipends, it supports programs like COBRA administration, commuter benefits, tuition reimbursement, and other compliance-heavy offerings.

ThrivePass’s strengths 

• Benefits suite that goes beyond LSAs
• COBRA administration expertise and transition tools
• Attractive to PEOs and midmarket companies managing complex benefit transitions
• Ability to consolidate multiple adjacent programs into one vendor

If your goal is reducing vendor count across several benefit types, not just lifestyle benefits such as stipends and LSAs, then ThrivePass can simplify procurement and contracting.

Tradeoffs to consider 

• If your primary goal is running flexible LSAs efficiently, then broader suites like ThrivePass introduce complexity.
• The employee experience varies depending on which modules are activated.
• Reimbursement timelines and workflow friction are sometimes cited in online reviews when multiple programs intersect.
• Administrative workflows may require more onboarding compared to stipend-first platforms.

When ThrivePass makes sense

Consider ThrivePass when your organization wants to bundle lifestyle benefits with other compliance-driven programs like COBRA administration.

Alternative #4: Forma — Hybrid global wallet with marketplace and reimbursement options

What is Forma best for?

Forma is typically evaluated by larger or global organizations that want multiple ways for employees to spend benefits, including a debit card, reimbursements, and a curated vendor marketplace, within a single configurable wallet system.

It operates as a hybrid model (card + marketplace + reimbursement), supports employees in 110+ countries, and is often positioned as an enterprise-ready lifestyle benefits platform that also includes pre-tax accounts like HSAs, FSAs, HRAs, and commuter benefits.

Forma’s strengths

• Multiple spending methods (card, marketplace, reimbursement)
• Extensive global coverage (110+ countries)
• Configurable “wallets” and pooled funds
• Support for both pre-tax and post-tax benefit types
• May be attractive to larger enterprises with complex benefit structures

For organizations that want optionality and are comfortable managing several spending paths at once, this flexibility can be appealing.

Tradeoffs to consider

• Card-based components still rely on merchant-category enforcement and may result in checkout declines depending on merchant coding and eligibility rules.
• Marketplace models limit vendor flexibility compared to fully vendor-agnostic reimbursement programs.
• Managing multiple spending methods introduces administrative complexity.
• Employees often need guidance on when to use the card, submit a claim, or shop within the marketplace.

Hybrid models offer flexibility, but they also require extremely clear governance and communication. Your lifestyle benefits can be excellent and still fail if employees can’t figure out how to use them or frequently experience frustration when they try. 

When Forma makes sense

Consider Forma if you want global coverage, a marketplace experience, and multiple spending methods in a single platform, particularly in more complex enterprise environments.

Which Benepass alternative is right for your team?

• Choose Compt if you want vendor-agnostic LSAs, reimbursement-first spending, predictable cash flow, and payroll-ready tax handling without prefunded cards.
• Choose Espresa if you’re looking for a broader culture and engagement platform that includes lifestyle benefits alongside community programs and well-being challenges.
• Choose ThrivePass if your goal is consolidating lifestyle benefits with compliance-heavy programs like COBRA or pre-tax accounts under one vendor.
• Choose Forma if you want multiple spending methods (card, marketplace, and reimbursements) and are comfortable managing a complicated hybrid model across a larger or global workforce.

Why HR and Finance teams choose Compt after evaluating Benepass alternatives

When teams move away from Benepass-style card programs, it’s usually for three reasons: prefunding exposure, merchant-code friction, or tax reconciliation headaches.

Compt solves those issues by removing the card entirely.

With a reimbursement-first model, you:

• Pay only for approved expenses — no prefunded balances.
• Get receipt-backed, payroll-ready tax classification
• Give employees vendor freedom without checkout declines.
• Run LSAs globally with multicurrency reimbursements.
• Manage approvals, reporting, and exports in one streamlined system that can handle stipends, LSAs, recognition and rewards, business expense management, company swag, and even employee discounts. 

Compt is also less expensive and more cost-effective than Benepass, per recent calls our team has had with companies evaluating both Benepass and Compt in 2026. 

Ultimately, the right choice depends on what you’re optimizing for. If your priority is a consolidated wallet that combines pre-tax and post-tax benefits on a debit card, a card-first platform like Benepass may be the right fit. But if you’re focused on simplifying administration, minimizing prefunding exposure, and running reimbursement-first LSAs with clean, payroll-ready tax handling, a more focused stipend-first platform will likely offer a more streamlined experience.

Compt was built by a three-time CFO and a two-time COO specifically for teams looking for flexible, vendor-agnostic lifestyle benefits with predictable cash flow and receipt-backed IRS compliance. 

If you’re evaluating Benepass alternatives, request a Compt demo to see how tax-compliant, reimbursement-first lifestyle benefits work in practice.

FAQ: Benepass alternatives for stipends and LSAs

The post Top 4 Benepass Alternatives for Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Mercer found that most employers are already changing their health plans amid the highest cost increase per-employee since 2010. Even with those changes, costs will still rise 6.5% on average. And “average” is the keyword; we’ve heard far higher numbers from our customers and other organizations.

That leads companies to the benefits that aren’t legally required, like wellness perks.

The problem with slashing these is that when you do, morale dips, retention follows, and backfilling roles costs way more than whatever you would’ve saved. And if you’ve been running stipends through payroll, it’ll feel like a pay cut to employees.

Finance knows this on some level, but they’re rational decision-makers at the end of the day. They need predictable and defensible benefits spend, and fragmented point solutions don’t offer that. Plus, they create hidden cost layers (like minimum seat requirements regardless of usage).

My recommendation is simple: Instead of defending every vendor and line item, consolidate your sprawling, underutilized perks into something lean and flexible. Done right, you come out ahead on job satisfaction while giving Finance the budget predictability they’re begging for.

Today’s guide shows you which budget-friendly employee benefits help you accomplish that, plus the best way to implement them.

Why you can’t slash all your benefits (even if Finance really wants to)

Your benefits strategy matters because it’s directly tied to retention. From a Finance perspective, that impacts the P&L in four areas:

• Time-to-fill
• Cost per hire
• Productivity ramp
• Replacement cost exposure

SHRM estimates the cost of employee turnover at 50% to 200% of their annual salary, so even marginal retention improvements materially change your cost forecast.

But personalization and flexibility are what matter. Most employers know this, which is why so many fall into the trap of offering 10 different benefits for 10 different needs — a gym membership here, a meditation app there, maybe fertility support, pet insurance …

When you do this, you end up with a bunch of underutilized categories. And if you’re not running them on a reimbursement model, you’ve committed the budget upfront to vendors regardless of whether people actually use them.

So the real waste isn’t in the benefits themselves, but in how they’re structured. That’s precisely why consolidation is the right answer.

8 budget-friendly benefits worth offering (or keeping)

First, let’s talk about the high-impact benefits that cost next to nothing but have an outsized impact on your team, culture, and bottom line.

1. Flexible schedules / async work

Cost: $0

Flexible scheduling lets employees shift their work hours to accommodate childcare pickups, avoiding rush hour, medical appointments, and other instances where life gets in the way.

It’s ideal for knowledge workers, creative roles, and anyone not in a customer-facing or coverage-dependent position. It’s harder to implement for retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, though shift flexibility can still apply.

2. Remote or hybrid options

Cost: $0 (potentially negative cost if you downsize office space)

Remote work means employees can do their job from anywhere. Home, a coffee shop, even another country with some policies (though that last one is less common for compliance reasons). Hybrid splits the difference with a set number of in-office days per week.

98% of employees say they’d like to work remotely at least some of the time, and there’s a tremendous financial upside to doing so: the typical company can save more than $11,000 per half-time telecommuter. That’s a whole salary for every seven-or-so employees.

3. Rewards and recognition programs

Cost: Low ($0 if purely nonmonetary/e-thanks; minimal if you add small rewards)

Rewards and recognition programs let employees publicly acknowledge each other’s contributions. Peer-to-peer shoutouts in Slack or Teams are the best starting point, but you might also layer in a points-based system or peer/manager-nominated spot bonuses.

When you have a culture of recognition, everything ties back to a company value. If someone takes ownership, supports a teammate, or pushes the boundaries, affirming it turns those abstract ideals into repeatable behavior.

Recognition is universal, but works especially well in larger orgs where contributions get lost more easily, and in remote environments where visibility is limited.

Pro tip: Eligible Compt lifestyle benefits programs include rewards and recognition, so there’s no extra fee!

4. Office perks with high visibility

Cost: Low to moderate (depends on team size + what you offer)

Certain low-cost employee benefits make the office feel like somewhere people want to be rather than somewhere they have to be. And because people see or use them constantly, the perceived value outweighs their actual cost.

A few examples:

• Free food or a meal stipend
• Quality coffee (not the sad Keurig situation)
• Stocked fridges with grab-and-go options
• Comfy furniture in your lounge area
• Dog-friendly policies

Obviously, this isn’t relevant if your team’s fully remote, but there are plenty of ways to translate office benefits to remote and hybrid employees.

5. Professional development budgets

Cost: Low to moderate (with tax advantages)

According to research from Gallup, companies with development programs see 11% higher profitability and retain employees at 2x the rate of those that don’t. The premise is simple: people stick around when they feel like they’re building toward something.

A few perks in this category:

• Tuition reimbursement or student loan repayment assistance
• Certification reimbursements for job-relevant credentials
• Conference and workshop attendance
• In-house mentorship programs
• Learning platform subscriptions

Some of these don’t sound like “budget-friendly” employee benefits, but remember that you don’t have to cover everything; employees appreciate the contribution even if it’s not 100%.

Plus, job-specific education and tuition/loan repayment are nontaxable up to IRS limits. And only around four in 10 will use it, so in a reimbursement-based model like Compt, your actual spend stays lower than the headline number.

6. Mental health resources / EAP access

Cost: Low (EAPs typically run $12 to $40 per employee per year)

EAPs give your team access to confidential counseling, mental health support, and crisis resources through a third-party provider. Most also cover things like financial counseling, legal advice, and family support services. It’s a broad safety net for relatively little spend.

The ROI here is hard to quantify but real. Mental health issues drive absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover. When someone actually needs support, your EAP can be the difference between them pushing through a rough patch or burning out entirely.

7. Additional PTO

Cost: $0

More time off costs you nothing in direct spend. The real cost is productivity loss, but even that’s (generally) overstated. Burned-out employees aren’t productive, and research indicates that every 10 hours of vacation time used improves year-end performance ratings by 8%.

A few options:

• Adding a few floating holidays per year
• Summer Fridays or half-day Fridays
• Bonus PTO for tenure milestones
• Unlimited PTO (though this backfires if people feel guilty taking it)
• Mental health days with no questions asked

The benefit here is that PTO is universally valued, and it improves your employees’ productivity long-term. Just be careful with unlimited PTO — it generally leads to people taking less.

8. Commuter benefits

Cost: Low (and tax-advantaged)

Commuter benefits allow you to set aside up to $340 per employee per month pre-tax for qualifying commute expenses. Most transit and parking passes cost significantly less than that, but the emotional sting of “paying to go to work” makes it feel bigger than its actual dollar value.

You don’t need to cover Uber or Lyft (it’s expensive and fully taxable anyway). Stick to what the IRS lets you write off: public transit, vanpooling, and qualified parking.

Consolidating your lifestyle benefits with a Lifestyle Spending Account

A Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) is an employer-funded account that employees can use toward a broad range of pre-approved lifestyle expenses.

According to our 2026 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmarking Report, 64% of Compt users now offer one to cover employees’ health and wellness, office equipment, cell and internet, professional development, family care, food, and commuter expenses (and more).

• Finance loves LSAs because: You set the budget up front, and the fixed per-employee cost makes forecasting dead simple. One platform replaces a dozen point-solution contracts and you only pay when employees actually use the benefit.
• Employees prefer them because: Traditional perks favor certain demographics (on-site gym = useless if you’re remote). With the LSA’s flexibility, a 25-year-old can use it for a climbing gym membership while a new parent could put it toward backup childcare.

It’s a budget-friendly employee benefit because $100 to $200 per month is enough to make it meaningful. When someone uses their stipend to cover a $150 certification or fitness membership, that’s real money back in their pocket.

For Payroll, it’s operationally cleaner than taxable payroll stipends and prepaid debit cards because it enforces eligibility and tax logic at the transaction level, logs receipts and metadata in one system, and maps spend directly to the right categories for payroll and GL reporting.

And because you’re collapsing a mess of wellness, learning, and stipend vendors into one predictable budget line, there’s less to reconcile. So back-office admin is faster and costs less.

Finance teams love all that, but they’ll still need to see the hard numbers. Getting an LSA approved ultimately comes down to speaking their language. 

How to get CFO approval for lifestyle stipends

CFOs don’t care that employees “really love” a benefit; they care about cost predictability, risk reduction, and measurable ROI.

Pro tip: Compt typically takes 2 to 4 weeks to implement, with just ~30 minutes per month of ongoing admin.

Which benefits categories see the highest ROI?

Some benefits categories drive consistently high engagement across the board. Others serve valuable purposes, but for a narrower slice of your workforce.

In our benchmarking data, participation skews heavily toward benefits tied to recurring, everyday needs:

• All-inclusive LSAs: 93%
• Cell and internet: 88%
• Wellness: 85%
• Office equipment: 84%

Meanwhile, categories like out-of-state care (14%) and charitable giving (49%) see lower participation because they support specific life circumstances or personal values.

How to identify your highest-leverage categories

The categories that’ll drive the most ROI for your org depend on who actually works there. Four questions to pressure-test:

• What’s your workforce composition? Younger employees might lean toward fitness and student loan help. Parents care about family care and flexibility.
• Where are employees already spending? Survey them asking what they’re paying for out-of-pocket that they wish were covered.
• What’s unused or underutilized right now? If a benefit has <50% participation, that’s a candidate for cutting or folding into a broader LSA.
• What aligns with your EVP? Even if you’re offering an LSA, you can maximize engagement by prioritizing these categories in your benefits communications.

Which metrics help finance prove benefits ROI?

When you’re replacing point-solution perks with a single lifestyle benefits wallet, there are four types of metrics your Finance team will want to see vs. their pre-implementation baseline:

• Utilization and engagement: Overall participation, category-level utilization within the LSA, and claim frequency (one-time use vs. recurring engagement).
• Cost efficiency: Cost per employee, vendor reduction, admin hours saved, taxable vs. nontaxable coding accuracy, and reduction in payroll adjustments or gross-up expenses.
• Employee sentiment: Benefits satisfaction scores (via pulse and annual engagement surveys), eNPS movement, and qualitative feedback from reviews and exit interviews.
• Retention and turnover: Voluntary turnover rate, retention rate among high performers, exit interview mentions of benefits, and offer acceptance rates (if the LSA is a recruiting lever).

Pro tip: Use Compt’s team engagement, LSA usage, and spend details reports to measure the ROI of your LSA.

Implement a budget-friendly employee benefits program with Compt.

We built Compt for exactly this use case. You’ll get:

• One platform, not ten vendors
• Capped, predictable spend
• A reimbursement-based model
• Built-in tax compliance
• Real-time reporting

So if you’re staring down the next budget cycle and trying to figure out how to keep employees happy without overspending, this is what’ll get you there.

Ready to bring budget-friendly employee benefits to your people? Request a Compt demo today.

FAQs: Budget-friendly lifestyle stipends, LSAs, and ROI

The post Budget-Friendly Employee Benefits: What to Keep and What to Consolidate appeared first on COMPT.

Those two realities are reshaping how HR and Finance leaders think about benefits. Company budgets are under pressure, and employees are navigating very real financial strain.

That tension is why so many organizations are reevaluating alternatives to cash stipends. In practice, “cash stipends” often mean gift cards or funds issued through payroll, whether as flat allowances or bonuses. They’re easy to distribute, but they’re hard to measure, difficult to align to benefit goals, and nearly impossible to optimize once they blend into general compensation.

The issue isn’t whether employees value the money. It’s that payroll-issued cash has a fixed ceiling. A $100 payout buys $100 of goods at retail price. It offsets cost, but it doesn’t change the math.

The question for HR and Finance leaders is how to structure or redesign employee financial support so every dollar works harder than its face value.

What are alternatives to cash stipends for employees?

Let’s start with the basics. 

Flexible stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) have become the most common alternative to cash stipends in payroll because they replace unrestricted cash with a defined, reimbursement-first framework. 

In 2025, 64% of employers included in Compt’s benchmark data offered an all-inclusive LSA, up 9% from the prior year.

The appeal goes beyond flexibility and consolidation to accountability. A structured stipend allows employers to define eligible categories, set funding cadence, and measure participation in a way payroll allowances simply can’t. When offered through a flexible stipend platform like Compt, stipends and LSAs also account for all the nuance and complexity required for IRS compliance.

The shift from distributed cash to structured reimbursement is the first real evolution in how employers deliver financial support.

Stop overpaying for underused benefits.

Traditional payroll stipends are paid out 100% regardless of actual use.

With Compt, you only pay for the funds employees spend, saving you thousands while increasing benefits engagement.

Calculate your savings

Are gift cards or cash bonuses effective employee benefits?

Cash and gift cards are rarely unwelcome. But they don’t produce sustained engagement and a measurable outcome beyond “we issued the money.”

What’s interesting is what happens after you introduce structure. Does engagement actually improve? Do employees consistently use the funds that are allocated?

In our 2025 customer data, as reported in the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, engagement on flexible benefits programs is notably high:

• 95% of invited employees activated their benefits.
• 93% of active users participated by submitting at least one expense. 
• All-inclusive LSAs reached 89% utilization, meaning 89% of issued funds were actually spent within program cadence.

That last number matters. Utilization reflects whether allocated funds are actually being spent in the way the program intended. The fact that all-inclusive LSAs approach 90% utilization shows that a well-designed, flexible structure can achieve both broad participation and efficient use of dollars.

That said, even strong utilization has its limits. If purchases are consistently made at full retail price, the purchasing power of your benefit is capped. The structure may perform well, yet the underlying economics stay static.

That’s where the conversation shifts from structure to purchasing power.

How can companies make employee benefits budgets go further?

Once structure and engagement are in place, the next question is economic: can the dollars themselves do more work?

To answer that, it helps to look at how employees are actually spending their benefits. The 2025 benchmark data shows two meaningful patterns:

• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend dollars was spent at grocery retailers. 
• 70% of total stipend spend flowed to local, regional, independent, or niche vendors; the remaining 30% flowed to only 10 distinct vendors, including Amazon and Walmart.

This tells us something important. Employees are not using benefits as occasional perks. They are using them to support recurring expenses. Groceries. Fitness. Internet plans. Childcare costs. Car maintenance. The benefit is landing where real financial pressure exists.

That behavioral shift reframes the opportunity. When stipends are used for essentials, their relevance increases, but their economic effect is still constrained by market pricing. Even a well-designed program can’t stretch dollars beyond what retail allows.

Maximizing a benefits budget, then, isn’t about issuing more money. It’s about increasing the effective value of the money already issued.

If a $100 stipend is used at full price, it offsets $100. If that same purchase includes a 25% discount, the effective purchasing power rises to $125 without increasing employer spend. The allocation stays fixed. The impact expands.

This is where embedded employee discounts become strategically relevant. Not as a standalone perk, and not as a separate portal competing for attention, but as a multiplier layered into an existing reimbursement-first structure.

When discounts are integrated directly into the same benefits hub employees already use, savings become discoverable at the moment of purchase. Employees can redeem a negotiated offer and, when eligible, submit the discounted expense for reimbursement. The savings stack with the stipend rather than replacing it.

For HR and Finance, nothing about the core program becomes more complex. Funding cadence, tax handling, and reporting remain centralized in the same platform. And because Employee Discounts (Compt + PerkSpot) are included with eligible Compt plans, you’re not adding another vendor or line item to the budget. 

The program’s cost stays stable while its purchasing power increases. At that point, the conversation shifts from replacing cash with structure to enhancing structure with purchasing power.

See how it works with Compt stipends and LSAs:

What is the difference between a stipend and a perk marketplace?

Increasing purchasing power within a structured program doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In practice, it often forces a design decision: should value come from restricting where employees can spend, or from expanding what their dollars can accomplish?

That’s where the distinction between reimbursement-first stipends and curated perk marketplaces becomes relevant.

A perk marketplace typically centers around a defined catalog of vendors with pre-negotiated deals. Employees browse within that ecosystem and savings are applied at checkout. The value is visible, and the environment is controlled.

Reimbursement-first stipends operate differently. Instead of limiting employees to a curated list, they allow spending wherever it makes sense within defined stipend categories. You preserve flexibility, and the program adapts to real-life behavior rather than redirecting it.

The 2025 benchmark data illustrates why that distinction matters:

• Employees directed spending across 64,000+ unique vendors globally.
• 78% of total stipend spend was taxable, reflecting high participation across broadly applicable, real-life categories over narrow, tax-advantaged programs

Employees’ needs are not confined to a fixed catalog. They are local, variable, and often highly specific. Grocery stores, independent fitness studios, regional childcare providers, and specialty retailers are not often represented in curated marketplaces, yet they’re where dollars actually flow.

Marketplaces and reimbursement models are often framed as opposites. One offers savings but limits choice. The other offers flexibility but historically lacked a built-in savings layer.

Combining flexibility with embedded savings removes that tradeoff.

When embedded employee discounts are layered into a reimbursement-first platform, employees retain the freedom to spend in alignment with their lives and passions, all while gaining access to negotiated savings when relevant. Discounts become additive, not restrictive, and extend the structure’s efficiency without reshaping it.

The result is a more economically efficient version of the system you already operate.

Why Compt is a smarter alternative to cash stipends

If you’re already running stipends or are actively evaluating alternatives to cash stipends, the real opportunity goes beyond replacing payroll allowances. You can design a program that delivers measurable engagement and greater purchasing power within your existing benefits budget.

Compt combines reimbursement-first flexibility with embedded Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, so employees can stretch their stipends further without being confined to a curated marketplace. Discounts live inside the same benefits hub employees already use, and eligible purchases can still be reimbursed within policy.

Because Employee Discounts are included with eligible Compt plans, you’re consolidating flexible employee stipends and savings in one global platform, with centralized reporting and built-in compliance controls.

Whether you’re replacing payroll-issued stipends or refining an existing LSA program, Compt transforms structured benefits into a real purchasing-power advantage.

Request a demo to see how Compt replaces payroll stipends with structured benefits that deliver more value per dollar.

FAQs: Alternatives to cash stipends

Editor’s note: Compt software supports the categorization and proper reporting of benefits according to IRS guidelines, helping businesses maintain compliance. However, Compt cannot provide tax advice, and users should consult their own tax, legal, and accounting advisors when necessary.

The post Alternatives to Cash Stipends: How to Make $100 in Benefits Go Further appeared first on COMPT.

This list brings together the most important employee stipend statistics from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report and select industry research. The data covers how common employee stipends are, how much companies spend, which benefits programs are most widely offered, and how employees actually use their stipends.

Use these employee stipend statistics to benchmark your employee benefits program, understand current trends in employee perks, and see how other organizations are structuring, funding, and evaluating stipend-based benefits in 2026 and beyond.

2026 employee stipend statistics: key takeaways

• 64% of Compt customers offer an all-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), up from 55% the prior year.
• Average stipend funding is $850 per employee per year, with small companies funding $1,675 on average.
• All-inclusive LSAs see 93% participation and 89% utilization, the highest of any lifestyle benefits structure.
• Quarterly funding delivers the strongest participation-performance balance among Compt customers.
• Health and wellness is the most common stipend category, offered by 37% of companies as a standalone benefit.
• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend transactions are for groceries.
• AI tools account for 20% of professional development spend.
• 70% of stipend dollars are spent with local or independent vendors.

Methodology

The statistics above and throughout this article are drawn primarily from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report (full-year 2025 Compt customer data).

• Dataset: Active Compt customers across industries and company sizes
• Timeframe: Full-year 2025 reimbursement data
• Geography: U.S. and global (62 countries)
• Participation = % of eligible and active employees who submitted at least one reimbursement
• Utilization = % of allocated stipend budget that was reimbursed
• Funding = Employer-allocated annual budget per employee
• Data excludes terminated employees. 
• Company-size and industry benchmarks may be influenced by outliers. Where possible, we report medians; where we report averages, we label them explicitly.

Where noted, additional industry comparisons come from external research sources.

Now, because “employee stipend” can mean different things depending on how a program is designed, we’ll start by clarifying what the term actually covers today.

What are employee stipends? How do they differ from perks?

Employee stipends are employer-funded allowances that employees can use to reimburse eligible expenses across defined categories. Unlike traditional perks, which are typically tied to a specific vendor, product, or service, stipends give employees flexibility in how and where they spend their benefit.

Employee stipend: An employer-funded reimbursement benefit that allows employees to submit eligible expenses within defined categories.

Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA): A multicategory employee stipend structure delivered through reimbursement.

In practice, employee stipends are most often delivered through reimbursement-based programs such as Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs). Employers set the funding amount, eligible categories, and cadence, while employees choose how to use the benefit within those guardrails.

The key difference between stipends and perks is control and flexibility:

• Stipends are employee-directed. Employees submit expenses that align with their needs, timing, and routines.
• Traditionally, perks have been employer-selected. Value depends on whether the offering happens to match an employee’s preferences or life stage.

Because stipends are funded by employers but only paid out when used, they also differ structurally from cash bonuses or raises. Stipends are designed to support specific lifestyle and work-related needs without permanently increasing compensation or adding any complexity to payroll.

Why this definition matters: When people talk about “employee stipends,” they’re often referring to a different, more modern program design. Clarifying this distinction upfront helps explain why some stipend programs drive high participation and relevance and why others behave more like underused perks.

What are the benefits of employee stipends? 

Employee stipends with Compt offer a different value proposition than traditional perks or one-off benefits. Their primary advantage is flexibility, and the benefits extend to both you and your employees. 

For employees, stipends:

• Adapt to different roles, locations, and life stages without requiring separate programs.
• Support both day-to-day needs and fun, discretionary purchases over time.
• Reduce friction by letting employees spend with vendors they already use.

For employers, stipends:

• Provide predictable, capped funding rather than open-ended spend.
• Reduce administrative overhead by consolidating multiple benefits into fewer programs.
• Pay out only when benefits are actually used, avoiding wasted budget tied to unused perks.
• Scale more easily across hybrid, remote, and international teams

Structurally, stipends sit between compensation and traditional benefits. They allow employers to offer real support without locking themselves into permanent payroll increases or managing a growing list of point solutions.

Why this matters: The benefits of employee stipends aren’t just about generosity. They’re about designing benefits that stay relevant, controllable, and defensible as your company budget, employee requests, and work models change.

What percentage of companies offer employee stipends?

Employee stipends are part of a broader shift toward flexible, personalized benefits as employers respond to cost pressures and evolving workplace expectations.

Employee stipend statistics from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report help illustrate how widely stipend-based benefits structures are now used:

• 64% of Compt customers offer an all-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), indicating broad adoption of reimbursement-based, stipend-style benefits as a core program structure.
• All-inclusive LSAs grew from 55% to 64% year over year, highlighting rapid consolidation into stipend-based programs.
• 82% of multicategory LSAs include five or more eligible categories, showing that when companies adopt stipends, they tend to position them for broad use. 
• 20% of employers extend stipends to international employees, reflecting use of stipends as a scalable, global benefits structure.
• Among Compt customers, quarterly funding is the dominant cadence for stipend programs because it balances employee planning with employer budget control.

Why this matters: These benchmarks show that employee stipends are no longer experimental or limited to narrow use cases. Broad, all-inclusive structures like LSAs have become a mainstream way for employers to deliver flexible support. 

Table: Employee stipend adoption and structure (2026)

What employee benefits programs and perks are most commonly offered today?

Once an employer decides to offer employee stipends, the next question becomes which benefits to include. Most organizations focus on a small set of categories that allow space for choice across roles, locations, and life stages.

Data from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows a clear hierarchy in the types of employee perks most commonly offered within stipend programs:

• Health and wellness is the most common stipend category, offered as a standalone stipend by 37% of companies. Wellness is also frequently bundled into broader programs: 71% of Compt customers include it as part of a multicategory stipend or LSA, rather than offering it on its own.
• Office equipment stipends are offered by 25% of employers, reflecting continued support for hybrid and remote work through reimbursements for desks, monitors, and related tools.
• Professional development stipends appear in 20% of programs, with employee spend shifting toward AI tools, productivity software, and online learning instead of traditional conferences or certifications.
• Cell and internet stipends are offered by 15% of companies, often tied to distributed or travel-heavy roles and, in some cases, compliance requirements.
• Commuter benefits are included by 8% of employers, typically as role- or location-specific programs rather than universal perks.
• Food stipends appear in 7% of programs, most often layered into broader benefits structures rather than run as standalone offerings.

Why this matters: The most common employee perks today are designed to support both everyday stability and quality-of-life moments. By prioritizing categories like wellness, work setup, connectivity, and professional development, employers can offer predictable benefits that cover practical needs.

How much do employers spend on employee stipends per year?

Employee stipend budgets vary widely by company size, industry, and program design. That said, employers are becoming more deliberate about how much they allocate by grounding funding decisions in employee usage patterns and budget predictability rather than aspirational perk lists.

Employee stipend funding benchmarks from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report show how much employers typically invest per employee each year:

• Average stipend funding across all companies reached $850 per employee per year.
• Small companies (fewer than 100 employees) funded an average of $1,675, the highest per-employee stipend investment across company sizes.
• Midsize companies (100–1,000 employees) averaged $1,055, often refining existing stipend programs rather than adding new ones.
• Large organizations (1,000+ employees) funded an average of $649, reflecting lower per-employee funding paired with broader access across large workforces.
• Across all company sizes, stipend budgets now cluster between $800–$1,200 per employee annually, reinforcing this level as a common planning benchmark rather than an outlier.

Funding also varies by industry:

• Banking and investment firms average $2,350 per employee annually, the highest among industries in the dataset.
• Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies average $2,060, reflecting higher overall benefits investment.
• Technology companies average $1,400 per employee, often pairing all-inclusive LSAs with targeted categories like wellness and commuter benefits.
• Education ($265) and professional services ($460) represent the lowest average stipend funding levels, highlighting how industry norms shape benefits budgets.
• The full 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report provides averages across 15 different industries. 

Why this matters: Employee stipends are not designed to replace compensation or scale indefinitely. Instead, the data shows employers converging on funding levels that are meaningful enough to support both everyday needs and discretionary use, while remaining predictable, capped, and defensible from a budgeting standpoint. 

Table: Funding benchmarks by company size (2026)

Are companies cutting employee benefits or changing how they are structured?

As budget pressure continues, employers are definitely scrutinizing benefits programs more closely. The data suggests, however, that this scrutiny is focused on structure and efficiency, not eliminating support altogether. Rather than expanding benefits menus or adding new vendors, employers are adjusting how programs are funded, delivered, and evaluated.

Data from the Compt 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report points to a better alternative than broad benefits cuts:

• Average stipend funding per employee declined slightly year over year. This demonstrates that Compt customers modified their budgets without the need for widespread elimination of benefits programs.
• Success is increasingly measured by employee participation rather than maximum utilization, especially for programs designed to act as situational support rather than always-on spending.
• Employers are maintaining “ground cover” benefits with lower participation, while relying on broader programs to absorb everyday needs without expanding their total budget.

Why this matters: Employers are not eliminating support; they are redesigning structure. Consolidation, participation metrics, and predictable funding allow companies to protect lifestyle benefits while maintaining budget discipline.

Which employee benefits programs have the highest participation?

When employers evaluate whether lifestyle benefits programs are “working,” participation speaks volumes. High participation indicates that employees understand the benefit, see it as relevant, and feel comfortable using it.

Participation and utilization data from the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows that benefits tied to recurring, everyday needs consistently see the broadest engagement:

• All-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) have the highest participation rate at 93%. They are the most widely used lifestyle benefits structure.
• Cell and internet benefits show 88% participation. These are most relevant for distributed, remote, and travel-heavy roles, and are a required benefit in some states.
• Wellness benefits have 85% participation, particularly when embedded within a broader stipend or LSA program rather than offered on their own.
• Office equipment stipends see 84% participation. These often support hybrid work and ongoing role-based needs.
• Team recognition benefits reach 82% participation, proving strong engagement even in a category designed for episodic use. (Gratitude always wins! And with Compt, team recognition is included in your lifestyle benefits program.)
• Food benefits see 79% participation, underscoring today’s demand for everyday financial support.
• Professional development programs show lower participation at 47%. This indicates their more intentional, opt-in nature, not a lack of value.

Importantly, participation and utilization are not the same measure — and the data makes that distinction clear.

• All-inclusive LSAs combine high participation (93%) with high utilization (89%), indicating that flexible structures absorb a wide range of employee needs effectively.
• Standalone wellness programs show lower utilization (70%) than wellness delivered within an LSA (86%), even when participation is similar.
• Situational benefits like caregiving and out-of-state care are designed for lower participation and utilization, serving as “ground cover” rather than always-on programs.

One important distinction is that with reimbursement-based stipends and LSAs, you only pay for benefits when your employees actually use them. If an employee is allocated a stipend but only uses part of it, you fund only what is reimbursed — unused dollars are never spent. As a result, lower utilization does NOT translate to wasted budget.

Why this matters: High-performing benefits programs aren’t defined by maximum spend — they’re defined by relevance. The data shows that flexible, consolidated structures drive the strongest participation. Lower utilization in certain categories isn’t a failure; it’s often a sign that a benefit is functioning exactly as designed.

How do employees use their employee stipends?

When employees are given flexibility, their spending behavior tends to be practical first, with room for discretion when it matters. Employees use their stipends to support a mix of priorities, depending on timing, life stage, and personal needs.

Employee spending data from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows clear behavioral patterns in how stipend dollars are actually used:

• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend transactions are for groceries, making food one of the most common real-world uses of flexible benefits (even when grocery spend is not explicitly marketed as a “perk” or part of the program — many Compt users submit grocery receipts under health and wellness.)
• This shift is especially telling when compared to last year: Sam’s Club replaced a national telecom provider in the top 10 merchants. It’s a notable move away from monthly subscription services and toward benefits spending that supports everyday stability.
• Health and wellness remains the single largest spending category, spanning recurring fitness costs, preventive care, mental health support, and everyday health-related expenses that often fall outside standard insurance coverage — not just one-time purchases or gym memberships.
• AI tools now make up a meaningful share of professional development spending, accounting for about 20% of total professional development spend, with online tools and productivity software representing the largest category and the majority of AI-related purchases.
• Roughly 70% of stipend dollars are spent with local or independent vendors, rather than national marketplaces, indicating that employees integrate benefits into existing routines instead of changing behavior to fit a platform.
• Employees rarely concentrate spend in a single category, particularly within all-inclusive LSAs, instead distributing usage across multiple everyday and situational needs over time. 

Why this matters: Employee stipend usage reflects how people actually live and work — not how perks are traditionally packaged. The data shows employees using benefits to cover essentials like groceries and connectivity while also making room for aspirational spending. This mix of practical and personal use is difficult to achieve with fixed perks or vendor-specific programs, and helps explain why flexible, reimbursement-based benefits consistently drive higher relevance in real-world use.

What are the biggest employee benefits trends today?

Across companies and industries, employee benefits programs are converging around a few clear design principles. Rather than adding new perks or expanding budgets, employers are reshaping how benefits are delivered to balance flexibility, predictability, and real-world relevance.

Based on patterns in our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, four trends stand out:

• Vendor reduction through consolidation: Employers are continuing to move away from fragmented, single-purpose perks in favor of centralized stipend structures, with LSAs increasingly serving as the backbone for lifestyle benefits delivery.
• Predictable funding over ad hoc generosity: Funding cadence and program design now emphasize consistency and budget control. The wide range in funding underscores that structure and intent matter more than any single “right” dollar amount.
• Professional development shifting toward practical, AI-driven tools: Learning benefits are being used less for episodic events and more for ongoing skill building, with AI tools and productivity software emerging as a dominant use case.
• Benefits designed to support everyday financial stability: Employees are using benefits to offset recurring, real-life expenses in addition to treating perks as well-earned rewards.

Why this matters: Together, these trends show a shift away from “more perks” and toward better-structured benefits. 

How are companies structuring modern employee benefits programs?

As benefits programs mature, structure has become just as important as funding or category mix. HR teams are increasingly designing benefits with operational simplicity in mind by reducing the number of tools they manage while improving visibility, control, and compliance.

Patterns in Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report show a clear shift in how benefits programs are being built and maintained:

• Centralized administration across HR and Finance: Modern benefits programs are increasingly managed through a single system of record, improving coordination between HR and Finance while simplifying approvals, reporting, and oversight.
• Fewer point solutions, broader coverage: Instead of adding new tools for each emerging need, employers are favoring flexible benefit structures that can absorb new use cases without reengineering the program.
• Clearer guardrails and visibility: Program structure is being used as a form of cost control, with defined funding, eligibility rules, and reporting replacing ad hoc reimbursements and manual workarounds.
• Benefits designed to scale without rework: As teams grow, go hybrid, or expand internationally, employers are prioritizing benefits programs that don’t require constant redesign or vendor changes to keep up.

Why this matters: Modern benefits programs are being structured to work at scale. By consolidating vendors, centralizing administration, and reducing reliance on point solutions, employers can offer flexible benefits that support both everyday needs and discretionary moments — without increasing operational burden. This shift makes benefits easier to manage, easier to justify, and easier to evolve as workforce needs change.

What all this means for employers using Compt

If you’re feeling pressure to simplify benefits without cutting support, the patterns in our employee stipend statistics should feel familiar. Stipends work best when they’re flexible enough to meet real needs and structured enough to stay predictable and easy to manage.

Compt is built for that reality. Our reimbursement-based approach helps you consolidate lifestyle benefits, pay only for what’s actually used, and adapt right along with your employees’ needs — without rebuilding your benefits stack every year.

Ready to see how it works? Request a Compt demo. 

FAQs: Employee stipend statistics

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For years, many HR teams deprioritized traditional discount portals. They were easy to launch and sounded generous on paper, yet usage was inconsistent and the experience often felt disconnected from the benefits employees actually relied on. 

At the same time, reimbursement-based lifestyle benefits like stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) surged in popularity. They met employees where they were by offering freedom to spend on what mattered most, while giving HR and Finance a simpler, more compliant way to deliver support. 

Now, in 2026, those two threads are converging.

According to Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, participation across flexible benefits programs is remarkably high — 93% of active employees used at least one benefit in 2025 — but how employees use those benefits has shifted toward everyday essentials. 

Nearly 1 in 10 stipend dollars is now spent at grocery retailers, and 70% of total spend flows to local, regional, independent, or niche vendors rather than national marketplaces.

That context matters. It reframes the question HR and Finance leaders are asking in 2026:

How do we make the benefits we already fund feel like more?

That’s where an employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison becomes useful — not to crown a single “winner,” but to understand how these models actually work in practice, and where each falls short.

Why 2026 is the year to reevaluate employee discounts

The benchmark data shows a clear pattern: employees are prioritizing benefits that offset real, recurring costs. Food, wellness, connectivity, and household needs consistently rank among the most-used categories, and participation for these benefits remains high.

Employers, at the same time, are consolidating programs instead of adding new ones. In 2025, 64% of Compt customers ran an all-inclusive LSA, up from 55% the year before. The goal for many of our customers was to make their existing benefits and budgets work harder while reducing operational complexity.

The four models in today’s employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

Most platforms HR teams evaluate fall into one of four models. Each reflects a different assumption about how employees engage with benefits.

1. Discount-only marketplaces

Traditional discount marketplaces give employees access to negotiated deals across retail, travel, entertainment, and wellness through a standalone portal.

They can work as a lightweight perk, but the benchmark data helps explain why engagement often fades. Employees don’t organize their lives around portals; they organize spending around their actual needs and wants. When discounts live outside the benefits employees actively use, they’re easy to forget.

These platforms also lack visibility into whether discounts meaningfully support participation, utilization, or financial wellness. Savings may exist, but they’re disconnected from benefits strategy.

2. Marketplace-first LSA platforms (Forma, ThrivePass, Espresa)

Marketplace-first platforms attempt to solve that disconnect by embedding curated catalogs directly into LSAs.

The upside is control; these models deliver hand-selected vendors, predictable spend paths, and a clean user experience. 

The tradeoff is constraint. Curated marketplaces require ongoing maintenance and inevitably exclude edge cases — especially for global teams, local vendors, or employees with specialized needs.

This matters because employee behavior doesn’t align neatly with catalogs. In 2025, employees spent stipend dollars across 64,000+ unique vendors globally, reinforcing that personalization, not curation, drives participation.

3. Open reimbursement-first platforms (Compt, Benepass)

Reimbursement-first platforms prioritize flexibility. Employees spend where it makes sense for them and submit receipts within defined categories.

The data strongly supports this model. All-inclusive LSAs reached 93% participation and 89% utilization in 2025, outperforming narrower, single-purpose stipends. 

• Participation reflects intent: the share of employees who submit at least one expense during the year, indicating how broadly a benefit is actually used across the workforce.
• Utilization reflects effectiveness relative to your goals: the share of issued stipend dollars that employees actually spend, measured within the program’s funding cadence.

Employees consistently direct spend toward what’s most useful in a given moment, whether that’s covering everyday essentials like groceries one month, investing in wellness or professional development the next, or using the benefit for small, meaningful joys that simply make them happy.

Historically, the limitation of open reimbursement models was simple: no built-in savings layer to pair with that unprecedented flexibility.

4. Open reimbursement + embedded discounts (Compt + PerkSpot)

This is where the category has evolved.

With Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, Compt layers a proven discount marketplace into a reimbursement-first platform without turning discounts into a gatekeeper for value.

Employees keep full freedom of choice. Discounts are optional, discoverable, and relevant to how people already spend. HR and Finance teams keep one platform, one system of record, and one consolidated program.

See how it works:

Side-by-side employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

What the data says about participation and why it matters for discounts

One of the most important insights from the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is the distinction between participation and utilization. In a tight budget environment, participation is often a primary success metric: are employees actually using the benefit?

Participation is highest for benefits tied to recurring needs:

• All-inclusive LSAs: 93% participation
• Cell and internet: 88%
• Wellness: 85%
• Food: 79%
• Caregiving and family: 78%

These are exactly the categories where discounts can have the most impact — not by replacing stipends, but by stretching them. Employees apply a discount to a purchase they already planned to make, submit the lower receipt for reimbursement, and get more value from the same benefit budget.

Where employees actually spend — and why marketplaces alone fall short

The benchmark data shows that employee spending is highly distributed:

• 70% of stipend dollars go to local, regional, independent, or niche vendors.
• Employees are not defaulting to large, centralized marketplaces like Amazon.
• Grocery and household retailers now account for a growing share of top vendors, with Sam’s Club replacing a national telecom provider in the top 10.

This behavior explains why marketplace-only approaches struggle. Employees don’t want to change where they shop to use a benefit. They want benefits that adapt to how they already live.

You can see this difference clearly when you compare where employees actually spend stipend dollars versus where they apply optional discounts.

How employees spend (stipends) vs. save (discounts)

When nearly one in 10 stipend dollars goes to groceries, savings matter most where spend is unavoidable. A $100 stipend used at full price covers $100 of expenses. The same stipend paired with meaningful discounts can stretch further — without increasing your benefits budget.

Savings-first benefits, without adding another tool

Because discounts live inside the same Compt platform employees already use to submit expenses and manage stipends, they don’t require new habits. They simply show up when relevant — including through the PerkSpot Chrome extension, which highlights available discounts as employees shop, search, and browse online.

Discounts are offered as a free add-on within an existing program, not a separate tool. There’s no additional vendor, no new workflow, and no separate reporting. HR and Finance maintain a single source of truth while employees experience more value from the benefits they already use.

Freedom plus deals: the real takeaway

For years, benefits conversations framed this as binary: marketplaces or flexibility, discounts or choice.

Turns out, the benefits world has evolved. Employees engage most when benefits reflect real life, adapt to shifting needs, and stay easy to use. Open reimbursement provides the foundation. Embedded discounts extend the value, without limiting choice or adding complexity.

That’s the real conclusion of this employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison.

See how this works in practice with Compt

If you’re evaluating employee discounts, marketplaces, or stipend platforms, the real question isn’t which model to choose — it’s how to design benefits around how employees actually spend.

With Compt, you can run a reimbursement-first lifestyle benefits program and layer in Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, at no additional cost.

Request a demo to see how Compt + PerkSpot help you consolidate stipends and discounts into one flexible platform.

FAQs: Employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

The post Employee Discounts, Marketplaces, and Stipends: A 2026 Employee Benefits Comparison appeared first on COMPT.

Not in theory, and not in a slide deck — but in how lifestyle benefits like stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) are actually used once programs are live and employees begin submitting expenses.

That’s exactly where the Compt 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report comes in.

Available today, the report provides employee benefits benchmarks based on full-year 2025 data from Compt customers across industries, company sizes, and geographies. It shows how employers structured and funded their lifestyle benefits and how employees actually spent and submitted against them.

This isn’t a predictions piece. It’s a snapshot of real decisions and outcomes, offering a practical view of what’s working for HR and Finance leaders at a time when every employee benefit feels expensive.

What does this year’s employee benefits benchmark data reveal?

The defining shift in 2025 was discipline.

That discipline showed up less in what employers offered and more in how lifestyle benefits were structured, funded, and delivered. 

Across the data, Compt customers made pragmatic design decisions: consolidating scattered perks into all-inclusive LSAs, choosing funding cadences aligned to how and when employees actually use their benefits, embedding strong categories like wellness inside broader programs, and anchoring benefits in everyday needs that scale across roles, locations, and worker types.

The result is benefits design that balances employee impact with cost control — without adding complexity.

Our 2026 benchmarks show exactly how that plays out in practice:

• 64% of employers now operate lifestyle benefits through an all-inclusive LSA, confirming consolidation as the default operating model.
• Quarterly funding reached 85% utilization, compared to 52% for monthly and 65% for annual programs, reflecting differences in use patterns rather than performance.
• Wellness stipend utilization reached 86% inside an LSA, compared to 62% as a standalone stipend.
• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend dollars was spent at grocery retailers.
• 20% of professional development expenses were AI-related.

These patterns held across roles, worker types, and locations. Data from hourly and salaried employees on U.S.-based and international teams shows that when benefits are designed around everyday needs and personal choice — including space for small joys — they scale without requiring separate programs or differentiated rules.

Employees are now using lifestyle benefits to manage real life.

In 2025, employees directed stipend spending across 64,000+ unique vendors globally, with 70% of that spend flowing to local, regional, niche, or independent businesses. At the same time, familiar names like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and Kroger remained prominent as grocery and household spending increased in response to economic pressure.

When employees are given flexibility, they direct their benefits toward the expenses that matter most in daily life — where financial pressure and practical support intersect.

As a result, lifestyle benefits are increasingly used to create stability, helping employees cover food, wellness needs, connectivity, work equipment, and other essentials that support their ability to stay grounded and productive, while still leaving room for everyday purchases that make life feel more manageable (and fun). 

For many leaders, this raises a practical planning question: Which everyday expenses are your benefits actually helping employees absorb?

Professional development is evolving into an always-on tool stack.

The report also highlights a clear evolution in professional development. 

We’ve talked a lot about AI stipends in the last year, and in 2025, 20% of all professional development expenses were AI-related. These were primarily online tools and productivity software rather than courses, certifications, or conferences. Employees are learning by doing and experimenting with tools they can apply immediately in their day-to-day work.

This marks a shift away from episodic learning and toward continuous upskilling that fits in naturally as roles (and the world) evolve. 

For organizations reviewing their benefits mix, this invites a broader reflection: Is your professional development program structured for how learning actually happens now?

Go beyond curiosity with real, actionable benchmarks and advice.

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is designed to support real decisions that HR and Finance face every day.

Inside the full report, you’ll find benchmarks and context to help you navigate:

• Program consolidation and simplification
• Funding cadence and utilization expectations
• Participation benchmarks across employee types
• Global parity and international program design
• Taxable and nontaxable benefit strategy
• Benefits for hourly vs. salaried workers

Every insight connects data to practical implications, making it easier to explain not just what you’re proposing, but why it works.

Download the Compt 2026 Employee Benefits Benchmark Report.

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is available now, and it’s free to download.

If you’re benchmarking an existing program, validating decisions already in motion, or planning refinements for the year ahead, these employee benefits benchmarks are designed to help you move forward with clarity and confidence.

Ready to see how your programs compare? Download your copy of the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

If you want help applying these benchmarks to your own lifestyle benefits program goals, request a Compt demo to talk through next steps in real time. 

The post The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report Is Available Now appeared first on COMPT.

With this launch, companies can stretch every lifestyle stipend dollar further without adding another vendor, portal, or login. Employees get immediate savings on large and small purchases across categories like fitness, food, travel, tech, and family life, while HR keeps the flexibility and tax compliance of open-ended stipends.

This is the first integrated solution that combines reimbursement-based lifestyle benefits with an embedded employee discount experience. It gives your teams freedom of choice and valuable deals, all in one platform. And with unprecedented high everyday costs and tight budgets in every household, employees really need benefits that make a real impact right now.

The new Employee Discounts feature lives inside a dedicated “Discounts” page in Compt. Employees can browse featured deals and securely access the full PerkSpot marketplace via SSO.

There are no extra contracts or implementation projects for HR; if you’re already using Compt for Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs), Rewards and Recognition, Professional Development Pro™, or Business Expense Management, you can simply turn Employee Discounts on at no additional cost. 

Employee discounts made simple: save more, with no extra vendors

Traditional employee discount portals often mean yet another link buried in an intranet, another vendor to manage, and another login for employees to remember. Usage generally remains low and the benefit rarely feels connected to the rest of your program.

With Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, savings show up in the same place employees already go to:

• Browse eligible reimbursement categories
• Submit receipts for lifestyle stipends and/or business expenses
• Recognize their peers and redeem recognition rewards
• Buy company swag and branded gear with their swag stipend

PerkSpot’s network powers thousands of curated deals across 25+ categories. Employees can discover offers from brands like Nike, Apple, HelloFresh, AMC, BetterHelp, Samsung, Marriott, Jeep, and more, and in many cases save between 20-60% on everyday purchases. Some deals, like movie tickets and auto care vouchers, can be purchased directly inside Compt thanks to PerkSpot’s embedded in-app offers.

Behind the scenes, Compt keeps everything organized by stipend, budget, and tax treatment. HR and Finance get a single source of truth, now with discounts included, without changing anything about payroll or adding more tools.

Top ways HR teams use Employee Discounts

Employee Discounts is designed to support the same life moments and categories you already fund through stipends — now with extra savings baked in.

Here are a few common use cases:

• Everyday financial wellness: Help employees stretch their paychecks with savings on groceries, apparel, electronics, and more. With nationwide high costs and both personal and organizational budgets looking tight for the year ahead, adding discounts is a visible, tangible form of employee support.
• Health and wellness programs: Pair your wellness stipend with discounts on gym memberships, fitness apps, mental health services, sports equipment, and healthy meal kits. By submitting an already-discounted receipt for reimbursement, employees get more clear value from the benefits they already have.
• Learning and growth: Combine professional development stipends with discounts on online courses, books, and learning subscriptions. Like with wellness above, stipends cover the cost; discounts make them go further.
• Family and lifestyle support: Offer savings on travel, family entertainment, and everyday essentials that matter to caregivers, remote employees, and distributed teams.
• Recognition and spot bonuses: When employees receive a spot bonus or recognition stipend through Compt, they can also discover deals on experiences and items they might use that money on. This turns a single reward into multiple moments of impact.

Because everything runs inside Compt, HR doesn’t have to promote “yet another benefits portal.” Employees can naturally take advantage of discounts when using the platform to access the stipends and rewards they already know about.

What savings actually look like for employees

Savings vary by merchant and category, but here are examples based on typical PerkSpot offers and common stipend scenarios:

• Fitness and wellness: An employee with a $100/month fitness subscription finds a score: 25% off via Employee Discounts! They submit their discounted receipt for reimbursement via their wellness stipend allowance, and rather than using the entire stipend on one purchase, they save $25 to use on other eligible wellness purchases. 
• Family movie night: A family of four sees two movies a month, using discounted tickets that save $5-$10 per ticket. That’s up to $80 per month in savings, and the tickets themselves may still be reimbursable under a family, entertainment, or Treat Yourself stipend category.
• Weekend travel: An avid traveler books a $500 hotel through a travel discount at 20% off. That’s $100 saved on a single trip, on top of any eligible stipend reimbursements.
• Auto care: An employee buys discounted oil changes or service vouchers for 15% off, and then submits receipts against a commuting or Treat Yourself stipend, thereby stacking savings without any additional costs to your benefits program. 

These are the kinds of real-world moments employees remember — and talk about — when they think about your benefits.

Stack even more value with reward points

On top of built-in savings and stipend reimbursements, employees can also earn and redeem reward points on select deals in the Discounts experience. It’s an effortless way to stretch their lifestyle stipend dollars even further.

How reward points work

Employees earn reward points on qualifying purchases through the Discounts portal. Points vary by deal, and balances are automatically tracked inside PerkSpot.

• 100 reward points = $1.00 in savings.
• Points can be redeemed on 240+ brands (including gift cards).
• Redemption works directly in the portal, with no codes or extra accounts required.

Ways employees can use reward points

• Save money and get rewarded. When your employees purchase from participating merchants, they automatically earn points redeemable for future discounts.
• Stack savings even more. Employees can redeem their points for gift cards at their favorite stores and combine those gift cards with an available deal in the Discounts portal.
• Stretch those paychecks. Employees can use reward points to further reduce the cost of purchases they already plan to make. Over time, this becomes a powerful way to turn monthly spending into noticeable savings.

Not every discount includes reward points. But those that do offer an additional boost that helps employees feel the immediate impact of your lifestyle benefits program.

Why this works better than typical employee discount portals

Most employee discount programs force a tradeoff:

• Locked-in marketplaces with limited vendors and rigid catalogs

OR

• Open stipends with flexibility, but no built-in savings

With Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, you don’t have to choose.

• Built in, not bolted on: Discounts live directly inside the Compt platform alongside stipends, Rewards and Recognition, company swag, and Business Expense Management. (Who needs more vendor reviews on their plate? Not you, that’s who.) 
• Freedom first, discounts second: Employees can still spend their stipends at any eligible merchant. Discounts are optional — think of them as a bonus, not a walled garden.
• One program, more value: HR and Finance still see all stipend activity in one place, making it easier to show the ROI of your lifestyle benefits program without fragmenting your tech stack.

This launch reinforces Compt’s reimbursement-first approach while adding curated savings for the brands employees already use, which is a combination most lifestyle benefits providers can’t offer today. Think of it as a marketplace without walls — employees get all the freedom of open reimbursement, plus the convenience of curated deals.

See how Employee Discounts work

Ready to see Employee Discounts in action?

Request a demo to explore how Compt + PerkSpot can help your team:

• Stretch lifestyle stipends and LSAs further.
• Support employees’ financial wellness in a tangible, everyday way.
• Offer 15,000+ unique deals from 1,000+ trusted brands without adding vendors, logins, contracts, workflows, or complexity.

Interested and already a Compt customer? (Thank you!) Talk to your Customer Success Manager about adding Employee Discounts to your existing lifestyle benefits program.

FAQs: Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot

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According to PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer report, workers whose roles are “AI-exposed” saw a 300% productivity increase, as well as a 56% wage premium. On a macro level, industries most exposed to AI had ~3x higher revenue per employee growth.

But while practically all companies are thinking about and investing in AI, McKinsey finds that only 1% believe they’ve reached maturity in AI adoption. Roughly half of those companies’ leaders pinpoint “skills gaps” as the number-one barrier.

Traditional roles are quickly becoming AI-augmented versions of themselves. And because the tech is evolving faster than the talent base, the gap between what people know and what modern roles require is only going to widen.

Addressing it requires a professional development program that focuses specifically on AI tools and training. The easiest-to-implement and lowest-cost place to start is with an AI stipend.

What are AI stipends and how do they work?

AI stipends are fixed, employer-funded budgets that let employees explore AI tools, courses, and workflows within clear financial and compliance guidelines.

They work much like any other stipend:

1. The company sets the allowance.
2. Then defines what qualifies (e.g., subscriptions, training, certifications).
3. Employees submit permitted expenses through a structured process.

But there’s a growing demand for AI, specifically. Our 2025 Midyear Lifestyle Benefits Benchmarking Report found that “AI and emerging tech” was the #2 professional development spend category within our user base. That’s why this is so important.

Ready to kick things off? Check out our guide to getting started with AI stipends.

What an AI stipend covers

An AI stipend covers anything that helps employees learn, test, or apply AI in their day-to-day work.

That includes:

• Tool subscriptions like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Perplexity
• Courses, certifications, and microlearning
• Prompt libraries
• Role-specific software (e.g., an AI note-taker, writing, or design tool)

The premise is simple: give people room to explore the technology while keeping spending aligned with company priorities.

How employees use stipends to build AI literacy

While ChatGPT already writes most of your devs’ code, less than half of front-line and nontechnical staff use AI tools regularly. Competency and adoption levels naturally vary by department, which is why an ‘across the board’ solution like companywide training doesn’t work.

AI stipends give your people a practical way to build the specific skills their roles demand without forcing everyone into the same training track. Some examples:

• A sales rep uses theirs on a note-taking assistant for prospect calls. (My favorite is Granola, for those wondering.)
• A marketer tests out AI research tools and buys access to a prompt library.
• An ops manager invests in automation training.

And because each person is learning in a way that’s totally relevant to their day-to-day work, adoption feels natural rather than forced.

Professional development accounts and LSAs make it easier to offer AI stipends.

A professional development account is the smoothest way to roll out AI stipends because it’s already built for L&D-oriented spending. It’s a recurring budget employees can use for broader learning, tools, and skill-building.

When you fold AI into that structure, it removes a ton of administrative friction. Instead of creating a brand-new program, Finance and HR can define AI as an approved category and let the same reimbursement process handle the rest.

Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) work similarly. Their broader focus on lifestyle benefits, however, can make them less effective at specifically driving AI adoption compared to a dedicated professional development account or AI stipend.

But if you’re working with a lean benefits budget or prefer a single wide-net program, an LSA does the job while also addressing your team’s other benefits priorities.

(Based on our midyear benchmarks, some of our customers offer as much as $8,000 per employee per year on professional development through stipends and LSAs!)

3 companies using AI stipends to drive productivity and companywide adoption

Now without further ado, let’s dive into three real-life examples of how AI stipends work in practice. While we’ve redacted the company names, these are all actual use cases from Compt customers.

1. How a midsize B2B gifting platform rewards employee AI ideas

One midsize B2B gifting platform uses AI stipends as a way to spark internal innovation. Instead of limiting the budget to tools or training, they created two spot bonus stipends that reward employees who submit ideas or projects to the company’s AI Challenge.

It’s a light-touch incentive, but it does two jobs at once:

1. Employees feel recognized for experimenting.
2. Leadership gets a steady stream of practical, employee-driven AI use cases.

It’s a perfect case study in how SaaS companies can use these stipends strategically. It reduces the pressure to “get AI perfect” while encouraging hands-on exploration and surfacing ideas that would’ve never seen the light of day in a traditional top-down rollout.

2. How a small AI automation firm enables daily AI usage

One small AI automation firm takes a straightforward, high-impact approach: giving employees ongoing monthly budgets specifically for the AI tools they rely on daily. They get a $24 stipend for ChatGPT, plus a separate $50 stipend for an AI-powered code editor like GitHub Copilot.

This is exactly what to do if your main goal is to normalize AI use across the company. Engineers get the tools they need to be more productive. Nontechnical employees get their foot in the door and familiarize themselves with conversational AI. Everybody wins. 

3. How a small VR gaming studio uses stipends to fuel AI hackathons

A small VR gaming studio uses Compt stipends to power one of its most energizing culture initiatives: a companywide AI hackathon. Employees prototype new AI tools and game ideas, then the company rewards that effort with $250 spot bonus awards.

Just like with our B2B gifting client, the benefit here goes beyond the prize itself. While other companies force idea development and AI adoption, stipends create a safe space for experimentation. That leads to a culture where AI is something people are excited to explore.

What these three companies have in common

What ties these three very different approaches together is that each company started with a clear business goal, then shaped its stipend strategy around the outcome it wanted. 

One used stipends to encourage bottom-up participation in AI initiatives; another to normalize daily AI usage; another to fuel hands-on experimentation. Different paths, same underlying mechanism.

Four other shared takeaways:

• Flexible for employees, predictable for Finance. Everyone uses the budget differently, but Finance always knows the maximum exposure.
• Clear guardrails facilitate safe exploration. Employees know what qualifies, so they can experiment without compliance risks.
• Adaptable across teams and skill levels. Stipends support nontechnical staff taking their first steps just as effectively as experts refining advanced workflows.
• The same software powers every model. Whether it’s monthly, on the spot, or challenge-based, the stipend system gives you control and visibility.

No matter the use case, stipends are the reason these programs work. Had these companies tried to roll out a single corporate license or a one-size-fits-all training program, they’d have lost the individualized approach needed to get people to participate in the first place.

How to launch an AI stipend at your company

Compt makes AI stipends simple.

Inside the Compt platform, all you have to do is set up a category for AI tools and learning. Then, define the specifics of your program and let employees take it from there.

The platform supports global currencies, so international teams can expense anything and you can pay them out in their home currency. And because Compt runs on reimbursement rather than preloaded funds, you’re never going to lose out on money that’s not spent.

IRS compliance is totally automated, which your back office will love, and employees get the flexibility to choose the tools and training that make sense for their role.

It also fits every approach you’ve seen in this guide: recurring monthly stipends, role-specific allowances, and spot-bonus rewards for challenges or hackathons.

Want to see what professional development and AI stipends could look like at your company? Request a demo today.

FAQs: AI stipends for professional development

The post 3 Ways Real Companies Are Using AI Stipends in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Equity isn’t about giving everyone access to the same exact thing — that’s equality. Rather, equity is about giving each individual what they need to succeed and grow.

On paper, one-size-fits-all professional development programs can look efficient. In practice, they rarely deliver meaningful value for most employees. A single course, platform, or program rolled out across an entire department assumes people start from the same place, have the same goals, and learn in the same way. They don’t.

Employees bring different backgrounds, roles, lived experiences, and constraints to work. Equitable professional development recognizes that reality and takes a more flexible approach, one that allows people to shape their learning around their responsibilities, learning styles, and circumstances.

What are the barriers to equitable professional development?

Designing flexible professional development programs is difficult, even for well-resourced HR teams.

Most programs are built from internal perspective. That’s not because HR leaders want to limit access, but rather because time and budget constraints push teams to design around what they already know. The result is often a generic offering that reflects a narrow slice of the workforce rather than the full range of employee needs.

Uniform professional development programs also struggle because they ignore where employees are starting from. Some employees are early in their careers and need foundational skills. Others are deep specialists who need advanced or role-specific learning. When everyone is pushed through the same program, the result — uneven outcomes, which can unintentionally widen skill gaps — falls short of efficiency.

Designing programs that intentionally account for different starting points, learning needs, and lived experiences takes expertise that many teams don’t have in-house. And external support comes at a cost: HR consulting rates commonly range from about $44 to $300 per hour, which makes deeper program design inaccessible for many organizations.

Time pressure makes this even harder. HR teams are rarely asked to slow down and design thoughtfully. Instead, they’re asked to respond to immediate needs, fix what’s broken, and keep the business moving. In that environment, it’s far easier to deploy a single program that works “well enough” than to pause and build something more equitable, even when leaders know the trade-offs.

Flexibility is the key to equitable professional development.

The common thread across these challenges is control over decision-making.

Traditional professional development programs require HR to anticipate what employees need in advance. That expectation breaks down quickly in modern organizations because roles tend to evolve, teams often scale unevenly, and employees all face different constraints outside of work.

Flexibility changes the design problem. Instead of asking employers to predict every learning need, it gives employees shared power to shape their own development within clear boundaries.

This is why professional development stipends have become more common, especially among growing companies. A stipend creates room for choice while keeping your budget defined and predictable.

But equity requires more than just allocating dollars. Employees also need systems that make it easy to find learning options, request approval, and receive reimbursement without friction.

Our Professional Development Pro™ platform gives employers multiple ways to structure learning programs, depending on how much flexibility and oversight they want to provide. That usually means configuring a program around a few core mechanics:

• Allocate a fixed professional development budget per employee or per team.
• Define eligible spending categories such as courses, certifications, AI tools and programs, coaching, or conferences.
• Review learning requests on a case-by-case basis or automate approvals using policy rules.
• Deliver reimbursements directly through payroll for a consistent employee experience.

For employees, this creates a self-serve environment where learning is something they actively design, not something assigned to them. For HR and finance, it keeps professional development spend visible, auditable, and scalable.

Equitable professional development is an accessibility issue.

Flexibility in professional development is often framed as a matter of preference. In practice, it’s frequently an accessibility issue.

Employees don’t all learn in the same ways. Some people struggle with audio-heavy content and retain information better through reading. Others have difficulty processing dense text and learn more effectively through video or interactive formats. When a program supports only one learning mode, it can unintentionally exclude employees who can’t engage with it effectively.

For employees with disabilities, these barriers have measurable consequences. As of 2024, the employment rate for people with disabilities was 42.8% lower than for people without disabilities. Median annual earnings were also more than $12,000 lower. Limited access to learning environments that support different cognitive and physical needs contributes to those gaps over time.

Equitable professional development helps reduce these barriers by allowing employees to choose learning formats and environments that work for them. That flexibility can directly affect whether employees are able to build skills, advance in their careers, and remain in the workforce.

Importantly, accessibility benefits more than employees who identify as disabled. Many employees experience temporary or situational constraints related to health, caregiving responsibilities, or workload. Programs designed with accessibility in mind tend to serve a much broader population.

Flexible professional development budgets also support leadership growth.

Equitable professional development isn’t only about entry-level or mid-career employees.

Senior leaders often struggle to find value in standardized learning programs. Generic courses rarely reflect the challenges they face, and time constraints limit their ability to engage with long-form training.

A flexible professional development budget allows leaders to invest in learning that fits their roles, such as executive coaching, peer communities, or industry-specific forums. These experiences often deliver more immediate and relevant value than traditional coursework.

This approach works well for Compt customer TEN7, which offers a $3,600 professional coaching stipend for its leadership team. The stipend is funded on each employee’s work anniversary and allows leaders to select coaching aligned with their responsibilities and growth goals.

Professional development works best when flexible benefits work together.

Professional development alone is rarely enough to drive performance.

Sometimes employees struggle because they lack specific skills or training. Other times, performance issues stem from stress, burnout, caregiving demands, or inadequate work environments. Rigid professional development programs do not account for those realities and can unintentionally penalize employees who need additional support.

Flexible benefits help close that gap.

Lifestyle Spending Accounts and similar stipend-based benefits give employees access to resources that support learning indirectly by supporting their overall well-being. Common categories include:

• Wellness support, which helps employees manage stress and maintain the focus needed to learn effectively.
• Family support, which reduces disruptions related to childcare or elder care that may interfere with development opportunities.
• Technology benefits, which remove physical and digital barriers to performance and learning.

Compt helps employers like you offer benefits across these and other categories such as equipment and uniforms, remote-work support, travel expenses, and meal allowances. When employees experience greater stability and support, they are better positioned to engage in professional development and apply what they learn.

Over time, this creates a reinforcing cycle. Better support leads to better learning. Better learning leads to stronger performance and retention. Stronger outcomes increase the return on professional development investment.

How to set up an equitable professional development program with Compt

Equitable professional development doesn’t come from picking the “right” course catalog. It comes from how you structure choice, guardrails, and support.

Here’s a look at how it works with Compt:

Put equitable professional development into practice with Compt.

Equitable professional development is not about offering more programs. It is about offering better ones.

When employees are given both resources and agency, learning becomes more inclusive and more effective. Flexible professional development programs recognize that growth is not linear and that support needs change over time.

The more voice employees have in shaping their development, the more equitable and impactful the outcomes become. Flexibility transforms one-size-fits-all professional development into a system that treats employees as whole people and helps organizations get more value from their investment.

Ready to get started? Explore how Compt helps teams design flexible, compliant professional development programs that meet employees where they are today.

FAQs: Equitable professional development

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