How Much Does The Work Number Cost?

The Work Number publishes one number. As of September 17, 2026, its pricing page says prices "start at $73.45 for some reports" on the pay-as-you-go plan, which covers organizations running 250 or fewer verifications a year. Above that you are an Enterprise customer and your price is whatever Equifax quotes you.

That is the entire public disclosure. Everything else you have to piece together from lawsuits and from the people paying the invoices.

TL;DR

The published floor is $73.45 per report, pay-as-you-go, 250 applicants a year or fewer. Mortgage lenders suing Equifax in 2024 put individual verifications at $66.45, up from under $20 a decade earlier. You submit a Social Security number, the database returns every employment record it holds for that person, and the report fee covers all of them whether you wanted one employer or eight. If the database has no record, you have paid for the lookup and still need to call the employer. Superunit charges under $5 per manual employment verification and bills only when we return a result.

What Equifax Publishes

"Some reports" is doing a lot of work in that first line. The $73.45 is a floor on a subset, not the price of the report you probably need. Longer employment histories and different report purposes cost more, and Equifax says so without saying how much more.

There is no published Enterprise price at all, which is where every CRA, lender and volume screener actually sits.

How the Billing Actually Works

This is the part that surprises people, and it is not really about the sticker price.

You do not order a verification for one employer. You submit a Social Security number, and the database returns every employment record it holds for that person. The report fee covers the whole set.

A background screening firm walked through the math on its own blog in April 2026, in a post arguing that the fees are worth it:

"Let's say your total fee is $100 for a verification report (just to use a round number). If that report verifies eight employers over a seven-year span, the actual cost per employer verification is only $12.50."

They liked that framing enough to rebuild their invoices around it. Instead of showing a client one $100 line item, 3rd Degree Screening splits it into eight lines at $12.50 each. Same total, easier conversation.

The math only works in one direction, though. It is a bargain if you wanted all eight employers. If you needed one employment history confirmed, you paid $100 for the one you asked for and seven you did not. The per-employer average falls as the candidate's job history gets longer, which is not the same as your cost going down.

And the record count is not something you control. You do not know how many employers are attached to an SSN until after you have ordered and paid.

Then there is the other outcome. The database has nothing for that person, or nothing covering the dates you need. You have paid for the lookup, you have no verification, and somebody still has to call the employer. Coverage skews toward large employers on major payroll platforms, so the misses cluster in small and mid-size employers. We wrote about that case separately in what happens when The Work Number can't verify your applicant.

The Price Has More Than Tripled, and Lenders Are Suing Over It

In June 2024, two mortgage brokerages, Greystone Mortgage of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania and First Financial Lending of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, sued Equifax in Pennsylvania federal court. The complaint alleges five Sherman Antitrust Act violations and seeks damages that could be tripled.

The pricing figures in that filing are the clearest public record anyone has:

The suit argues the increases come from market position rather than a better product. It claims Equifax controls "well over 40% of payroll records" through exclusive agreements with partners including ADP, Intuit QuickBooks, Walmart and Home Depot, and puts it directly: "Equifax has not made its product better, but rather worked with its 'partners' to hamper competition."

Equifax disputes the claims. We are citing the filing as the public record of the prices, not endorsing the antitrust theory.

Even the screening firm arguing in Equifax's favor concedes the direction of travel. "It doesn't seem too long ago when a $20 fee for an employment verification seemed high," they wrote. "Now, that would be considered a bargain compared to current costs."

How Superunit Prices Manual Verification

Superunit charges under $5 per employment verification, and bills only when we return a result.

If we call the employer, work the phone tree, chase the transfer and still cannot get the record, you pay nothing. A failed attempt costs us money and costs you nothing.

You also pay for the verification you asked for. One employer, one price. We are not returning a bundle of records you did not request and averaging the fee across them.

That shape follows from the work. A database charges for the query because the query is the product. Manual outreach charges for the outcome, because if we billed per attempt we would earn the most on the files we handled worst.

On employment verification we complete 70% of files at a 0.82-day average turnaround, and Superunit has completed over 200,000 verifications across all products.

Where Superunit Fits Against The Work Number

The answer is not always us.

If you hire mostly from large employers on major payroll platforms, The Work Number will have your applicant and will answer in seconds. Nothing manual competes with a database that already holds the record, and for that slice the fee buys real speed.

The rest is the problem. Those files do not verify themselves, they are the ones that stall a background check for days, and they are what we do.

Most serious operations run both. The real question is where the handoff sits, and what you are paying on each side of it. If you are looking at replacements or supplements, we keep a current rundown of The Work Number alternatives, and a four-way comparison in Argyle vs Truework vs The Work Number vs Superunit.

The Short Version

$73.45 is the published floor as of September 17, 2026, pay-as-you-go, 250 applicants a year or fewer. Lenders in court put individual verifications at $66.45 in 2024. A decade ago it was under $20.

Whatever your quoted number turns out to be, two things decide what you actually spend: how many records come back that you did not ask for, and how often nothing comes back at all. Ours is under $5, for the verification you requested, charged only when we get you the answer.

New to the category? What employment verification involves covers the mechanics.