Dayforce HCM vs UKG vs Workday comparison

Read 125 UKG reviews

5,984 Views
3,590 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Read 58 Workday reviews

9,682 Views
6,777 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Dayforce HCM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dayforce HCM, UKG, and Workday based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Workday, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud HCM Report (Updated: March 2026).

Cloud HCM

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Helped 885,444 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Dayforce HCM is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 4.9%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 10.5%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Workday	10.5%
UKG	4.9%
Dayforce HCM	2.6%
Other	82.0%

Cloud HCM

Featured Reviews

TracyBritan

Manager, Learning & Development at Ampersand

Frustrating support and difficult customization prevent optimal use of learning system

Customizing the home screen was difficult; I could not remove certain tabs that were irrelevant to our users. The search functionality is poor as there's no way for administrators to tag keywords to training courses, making it hard for people to find content. Additionally, there is no way to send a direct link to training if someone asks about it. The reporting is subpar; you can only report by course and not by person unless you go into specific Dayforce reports, which do not match the fields in the learning module. The support is also terrible, with slow response times and a lack of useful knowledge-based articles.

Read full review

Harish_Mahanta

Works

Streamlined time tracking boosts operational efficiency across multiple regions

The time tracking feature is the most effective for employee management. UKG is used in Europe, the United States, Australia, and East Asian countries for HR activities like payroll. The application is like an ERP, providing comprehensive features for organizations, simplifying their processes, and reducing the need to use multiple software solutions.

Read full review

Eslam Abo Elnaga

Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo

Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support

There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We like being able to hire from the Dayforce recruiting module straight into Dayforce and having the file feeds go to our benefits vendor."

"The solution's payroll portion is very streamlined."

"The product has a pretty clean look."

"Configuring your HR policies and rules is straightforward."

"We used the solution to do a lot of performance management during the review cycle and it helped us alleviate the administrative burden."

"It provides real-time information with great reports."

"We have been able to automate many of our manual processes."

"Dayforce has transformed how we operate by saving us time, paper, accuracy, money, and the employee/supervisor experience."

More Dayforce HCM pros

"Pending pay and retroactive pay are the most valuable features."

"We currently use onboarding, UTA and Core, and the most valuable feature is the promised improvement in customer service with rapid response."

"The most valuable element is the benefits feature."

"We have been able to eliminate many paper forms and have streamlined some of our processes."

"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."

"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force; it saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."

"It allows me to disseminate the information in the way I see fit."

"Customer service is very good and technical support is very good."

More UKG pros

"Workday is highly intuitive from a customer experience perspective. It was effortless for us to understand what to do even though we didn't have any related training. It was easy to use without guidance."

"Workday is a holistic HR solution."

"It is a leading talent management tool, and it has got the largest market share."

"The product is useful for storing employee records."

"The business process framework is excellent."

"Amazing with the support team; their response time is really good."

"Workday is a secure product."

"It helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process."

More Workday pros

Cons

"The solution has a lot of glitches."

"An area for improvement could be a little more testing before implementing hotfixes to make sure they do not interfere with any active customized products."

"One area to be improved is the solution's reporting function, which can be cumbersome."

"I would also like to see some improvement in standard reports. A standard report should be available to pull the required information for Affirmative Action Plans."

"I would like the solution to improve its customer service communication."

"I would like to see more built-in forms, like government issued forms (T2200). This would save a lot of time during the year-end process."

"Our current software program offers a home page with important company documents and a place for company announcements. Unfortunately, Ceridian Dayfoce does not offer this."

"The reporting could be improved."

More Dayforce HCM cons

"We have encountered scalability issues. Only 10 clock transactions are allowed to run at once; not the best for installing 300+ global clocks."

"Customer service is poor; unless we are being the squeaky wheel, we haven't gotten the best service."

"Customer service is okay. In some areas, they really excel, and in others, they have room for improvement."

"Automation, rules for life insurance, etc., are areas with room for improvement."

"The UTM option to have the option to allow a supervisor to approve only the hours worked in their department when an employee has worked in multiple jobs."

"We encountered deployment issues."

"Customer Service: At times it takes days to get a return call. Technical Support: At times it take days to get a return call."

"Pricing is high for a limited license."

More UKG cons

"Workday would be improved with more API connectors."

"The user interface could be better. Everything else was fine."

"It is good that much of the development is based on community input but often that can lead to details being ignored and small, nagging issues are ignored."

"Errors are not very clear in some cases. I've been experiencing some issues within the application that the error messages or what I needed to do were not very easily clear to me."

"I'm not sure they have added this feature yet, but there should be a cellphone version, so we do not need to do it on a laptop. I'd like to log in on a cellphone and have the same features. I'm not sure if that is already available or if it's on the roadmap, but that would be a great feature."

"The dashboard is fine, but the dashboarding and other aspects could be improved."

"There could be a web-based application for making payments to the employees."

"It's possible that the way things are integrated could be improved but if you've used SAP then Workday is actually pretty good."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We paid for the implementation costs in the first year with the money that we saved by switching to Dayforce HCM."

"Ceridian continually enhances Dayforce HCM. Some of these enhancements they charge for and some are just straight enhancements with no extra charge."

"Earlier, the price of the product was reasonable. Under present circumstances, the price or cost of the product has been increased."

"The XOXO program associated with Dayforce allows you to earn credits towards registration and accommodations at their annual Insight Conferences, which can be a real savings to the company when sending employees to the conference."

"In terms of pricing, the product is expensive. However, it is crucial to take into account the manner in which the solution will be utilized and the availability of other alternatives."

"Negotiate for everything you want."

"I rate the solution's pricing a seven on a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive."

"We found the setup costs and pricing to be very reasonable."

"The platform is not affordable but also not the most expensive."

"The pricing depends on the number of licenses we buy."

"While I am unsure of the licensing cost itself, the total cost of implementation and licensing for a company with over 5000 employees would be around 6,00,000. So, there are additional costs beyond licensing."

"If you're going for the full suite, it can be fairly pricey."

"UKG's pricing and licensing model involves ongoing expenses based on the number of employees paid. The initial implementation cost is low when UKG implements it directly. However, when partners handle the implementation, it becomes more expensive since partners don't receive the monthly recurring fees."

"I wasn't involved in the pricing part. I'm a user, and I believe it is based on the user count. One thing that is nice about Ultimate is that you can learn how to use the system without additional fees. The learning aspect is the life of a product, and the training was a huge reason why we went with Ultimate. We did have some integration costs. They were a part of the implementation because of the integrations to other systems that we included in our implementation."

"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."

"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."

"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."

"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."

"Workday is an expensive solution."

"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."

"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."

"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud HCM solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	48
Midsize Enterprise	43
Large Enterprise	48

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

Customizing the home screen was difficult; I could not remove certain tabs that were irrelevant to our users. The sea...

What is your primary use case for Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

We have used Dayforce HCM for our HR functionalities and for the learning module over the last five years. We actuall...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

The Learning Module add-on to Dayforce HCM was relatively inexpensive per user compared to other LMS’s.

What needs improvement with UKG?

UKG needs more publicity. It is a productive ERP ( /categories/erp ) application, but many people in the IT market ar...

What is your primary use case for UKG?

I worked for a healthcare organization and a university. Most organizations use UKG ( /products/ukg-reviews ) to trac...

What advice do you have for others considering UKG?

Publicity is very important for any software. If people aren't aware of UKG, despite its productivity, they won't use...

What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?

Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customizatio...

What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?

If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add m...

SAP SuccessFactors vs Dayforce HCM

Comparisons

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Oracle HCM Cloud vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 8% of the time

ADP Workforce Now vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 5% of the time

PeopleSoft vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 4% of the time

Cegid vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

SAP HCM vs UKG

Compared 5% of the time

PeopleSoft vs UKG

Compared 3% of the time

Workday Human Capital Management vs UKG

Compared 2% of the time

ADP Workforce Now vs UKG

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 22% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

BambooHR vs Workday

Compared 3% of the time

Cornerstone Learn vs Workday

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Dayforce HCM

Download Dayforce HCM product report

Download UKG product report

Download Workday product report

Also Known As

Ceridian Dayforce HCM, Ascender Talent Management, Ceridian Ideal

UKG Pro, UKG Dimensons, UKG Ready

No data available

Overview

Dayforce HCM is a global, cloud-based human capital management (HCM) software platform for managing the complete employee lifecycle. This solution was designed to improve the employee experience by bringing together data from across the employment cycle to help managers make better decisions at all levels.

Dayforce HCM is an HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management, and talent management platform. The scalable software uses a single, flexible rules engine, as well as real-time updates and calculations, to help you meet complicated regulatory requirements.

Dayforce reduces the burden of disconnected applications by delivering a single application for all of your human capital management needs. All transactions made anywhere within the application flow seamlessly across all functional areas in real time, eliminating the need for repeated data entry, manual workarounds, and batch operations. This is thanks to a single employee record and a single rule engine. Organizations can achieve shorter training time, faster user adoption, and a faster return on investment.

With Dayforce HCM, users can view all HR data in real time in one place.

Here are some key tasks companies can do with the solution:

Hire the right people
Design work/life balance plans
Manage employee development
Handle payments
Administer benefits
Track compliance throughout the employee lifecycle

Dayforce HCM Features

Dayforce HCM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Continuous payroll for staff: Dayforce HCM aids in paying staff accurately and on schedule. Give your payroll staff the ability to access and audit data at any time during the pay cycle.

Personnel management: Empower and engage your frontline employees while keeping labor expenses and compliance under control. Make proactive, data-driven decisions that can help you run your business more efficiently.

Optimized staff benefits: Assist employees in selecting the best benefit plans while streamlining administrative tasks. With the help of analytics, you can maximize the value of your benefits investments and gain a better understanding of your costs.

Streamlined human resources: With a single consolidated, real-time solution, you can eliminate HR information silos. Improve HR productivity by streamlining administrative tasks and gaining access to key HR analytics.

Dayforce HCM Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Dayforce HCM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Dayforce HCM aids in planning, hiring, retaining, and building your team, whether they be full-time employees or hourly workers. Insights based on data can help you see around corners and predict the future.

Dayforce HCM helps you keep track of compliance everywhere in order to reduce risk. Simplify compliance in a global workplace. Keep up with complicated payroll and tax requirements from different regions and countries, as well as internal policies and processes. Dayforce can help you reduce the risk – and the cost – of noncompliance.

Dayforce HCM empowers your workforce by improving your employee experience with always-on technologies like Dayforce Wallet. Transform pay, enable self-service, and assist your employees in developing future skills, no matter where they are or what device they are using.

Dayforce

At UKG, our purpose is people — real people with real challenges, and a simple request. Help me keep my employees productive, connected, and happy. So that’s what we did.

We’ve created an unmatched suite of HR and workforce management solutions, backed by our people who care about yours. Our solutions deliver global workforce experiences that truly reflect the connection between life and work today. That means insights are deeper. Work is easier. And interactions are more meaningful.

The Workday Platform is an AI-powered platform that unifies HR, financial, and operational data, enabling seamless planning, execution, and analysis. It improves decision-making, streamlines cross-team processes, and leverages Workday Illuminate™ for advanced AI insights from vast HR and finance datasets. Workday empowers organizations of all sizes to innovate and optimize performance.