Most UK SME buyers who reach the Perkbox vs Reward Gateway question have already worked out they want a perks and recognition platform. The remaining decision is which one — and, increasingly in 2026, whether a perks-only vendor is the right shape of tool at all when ten other people-ops jobs sit unsolved on the same HR director's desk.
This guide does three things. It pulls the ownership and pricing facts from each vendor's own public pages, so you know who you'd actually be paying and how price discovery works. It maps the feature ceiling of a perks-only platform — what's in the box, and what isn't. And it runs the ROI maths for a 50-person UK SME using WagePerks' own ONS-sourced savings methodology, so you can compare like with like.
If you want the head-to-head feature grid first, jump to /compare/perkbox-vs-reward-gateway/. This guide is the longer narrative behind that table.
Ownership in 2026 — who you're actually paying
Both platforms changed hands in the last three years, and both are now part of larger PE or strategic groups. The contracts you sign today live inside those groups' renewal cycles, not the founders' original product roadmaps.
Perkbox was acquired by Great Hill Partners in 2024. Perkbox's own press release confirms the completion of the acquisition on 1 July 2024, describing Great Hill as the new majority owner alongside a merger with Vivup. Crunchbase logs the transaction agreement at March 2024. Industry coverage put the deal at around £130 million.
Reward Gateway was acquired by Edenred in 2023. Reward Gateway's own press release and Edenred's investor deal presentation dated 16 May 2023 confirm the acquisition at £1.15 billion from Abry Partners and Castik Capital. Reward Gateway now sits inside Edenred's Employee Benefits Division.
Pricing — what's published
Perkbox doesn't publish a per-employee rate; you complete a form and wait for a quote. Reward Gateway publishes small-business pricing for teams of up to about 100: £8 per employee per month on a monthly plan, or from £6 on an annual plan, with an optional £1 EAP. Larger organisations get a quote.
Perkbox's UK pricing page does not list any rate card. It says: "We offer flexible packages designed around what you need. Big or small, public or private, we make it easy to build something that works for you and your people." The page directs buyers to "Fill out the form and we'll be in touch with your best-fit options."
Reward Gateway's small-business pricing page lists those rates; above about 100 employees, pricing is by quote.
For a UK SME buyer this matters because a published price lets you compare like for like before you talk to sales. Where a vendor quotes on request, get the quote in writing, with the term and renewal conditions, before you shortlist.
WagePerks publishes its rates on the /pricing/ page: Employee Benefits is £4.50 per employee per month, HR Starter is £0 / month for up to 25 employees, and the Shift Management bolt-on has a published monthly price too — all rolling monthly. You can model your own number in the /savings-calculator/ without speaking to sales.
What's in the box — the perks-only ceiling
Both Perkbox and Reward Gateway are perks and engagement platforms. Both are clear about that on their own pages.
Perkbox's UK homepage describes the product as "a global employee benefits and rewards platform" covering perks, wellbeing support, salary sacrifice benefits, employee rewards, peer-to-peer recognition, and culture and communication tools.
Reward Gateway's UK site groups its EngagementOS into four named pillars: Employee Discounts, Employee Benefits, Reward and Recognition, and Employee Wellbeing — plus internal communications, surveys, a mobile app and a Total Reward Statement.
Neither platform ships HR records, rotas, clock-in, payslips, document storage, onboarding workflows or absence management. They aren't built to. Both integrate with HR systems via API but neither is one. That's the perks-only ceiling, and it's the single most important framing for the buyer.
If you already run a full HRIS — Workday, BambooHR, HiBob — a perks-only platform sits next to it and does one job. If you don't, you'll end up buying a separate HR tool, a separate rota tool and a separate clock-in tool to sit alongside the perks platform. That's three to four vendors, three to four contracts and three to four renewal cycles. WagePerks puts HR, perks and — with the Shift Management bolt-on — rotas and clock-in under one contract. See /features/ for the full list.
Voucher discounts vs points vs codes — the engagement question
Catalogue size is the wrong number to optimise for. Redemption rate is the right one. If your team doesn't use what you bought, the PEPM you paid is dead weight.
The CIPD's reward survey on employee benefits found that 22% of UK organisations have no objectives at all for their benefits package, and even among those that do, a meaningful share never measure whether the benefits actually deliver. The same report flagged a persistent communication gap — employees can't engage with what they don't know they have.
That communication gap interacts badly with the dominant payout mechanic on Perkbox and Reward Gateway, which is discount codes and gift cards at the till. A code only saves the employee money if they remember the platform exists at the moment they shop. Reward Gateway's own platform pages list "discount codes for immediate savings at checkout", "reloadable vouchers and cards" and "discounted gift cards" as the core mechanics. Perkbox's platform page lists "Employee perks — Everyday savings on brands your people know and love". Both are accurate descriptions of what they do; both depend on the employee opting in before every transaction.
Voucher and gift-card marketplaces of the kind WagePerks, Perkbox and Reward Gateway all operate share the same mechanic at the back end: the employee buys a discounted voucher or digital gift card from the platform and uses the code at the till. The saving is applied at purchase. There is no wallet that holds cash and no payout to a bank account — that is a different category of product with its own regulatory perimeter that mainstream UK perks platforms do not occupy. The fair comparison between WagePerks and the perks-only platforms is therefore on pricing, contract length and how many modules sit alongside the marketplace, not on a difference in payout mechanic.
ROI maths — a 50-person worked example
The honest answer to "how much will my team save?" is the same regardless of which perks platform you pick, because they all sit on top of broadly similar affiliate and gift-card rails. The difference shows up in what the employer pays.
WagePerks publishes a savings range of £95–£450 per employee per year, built from ONS Family Spending data with a conservative 60% behavioural redemption cap — the full working is at /guides/employee-marketplace-savings-ons-methodology/. For a 50-person SME, the midpoint of around £270 per employee implies roughly £13,500 a year of employee-facing value flowing through the platform.
The employer-side cost is where the platforms diverge. WagePerks Employee Benefits at £4.50 PEPM costs a 50-person SME £2,700 per year (£4.50 × 50 × 12), exc. VAT. If that SME also needs rotas and clock-in for one team, the Shift Management bolt-on adds £49 a month (£588 a year), for £3,288 in total. Reward Gateway's small-business tier is £8 per employee per month on a monthly plan, or from £6 on an annual plan (pricing); Perkbox quotes on request (pricing page). The packages differ, so compare the modules you'd actually use.
When you do, run the comparison on three lines, not one. Line one: PEPM. Line two: contract length and annual uplift. Line three: how many other modules you'll still need to buy elsewhere. A perks-only quote that looks competitive on PEPM can still be the more expensive total stack once you've added HR, rotas and clock-in from three other vendors.
When perks-only fits, when a bundled platform fits
This isn't a one-shape-fits-all market.
A 1,000-person enterprise running Workday for HR, Deputy for rotas and Paychex for payroll already has the rest of the stack covered. For that buyer, a specialist perks-only platform that integrates cleanly with the HRIS is the right shape — Perkbox or Reward Gateway can sit cleanly alongside Workday and do one job well.
A 50-person UK SME without a separate HRIS is a different buyer. They need HR records, holiday tracking, rotas, clock-in, payslips, onboarding, an EAP and perks — and they need them under one contract because they don't have a procurement team to manage four. For that buyer, a bundled platform with published prices — HR, payslips, onboarding and perks per employee, rotas and clock-in as a priced bolt-on — is usually the better fit on both total cost and admin overhead.
The most expensive mistake we see is the second buyer signing for the first buyer's shape of tool, then bolting on three more vendors over the next 18 months because the perks platform doesn't cover what they actually needed.
What WagePerks does differently
WagePerks is a bundled SME platform, not a perks-only specialist. The Employee Benefits plan includes perks, recognition and rewards, alongside HR, payslips, onboarding, e-signatures, document management, absence tracking, performance and surveys. Rotas and clock-in come with the Shift Management bolt-on, and the optional Health & Wellbeing add-on (virtual GP + EAP) is available at +£2 per employee per month. The full module list sits at /features/.
Employee Benefits is £4.50 PEPM, rolling monthly, with your logo and colours on the web portal. Shift Management is £49 a month for the first team and £39 for each additional team. All prices exclude VAT. Savings are applied at purchase through discounted gift cards — no points, no wallet. Full feature parity in any modern browser; App Store and Google Play apps coming soon.
For the head-to-head feature grids, see /compare/vs-perkbox/ and /compare/vs-reward-gateway/. For the side-by-side Perkbox vs Reward Gateway grid, see /compare/perkbox-vs-reward-gateway/.
Sources
- Perkbox press release — acquisition completion by Great Hill Partners, 1 July 2024 — supports ownership claim, verified 2026-09-21.
- Crunchbase acquisition record — Great Hill Partners acquires Perkbox, March 2024 — supports acquisition agreement date, verified 2026-09-21.
- Reward Gateway press release — Edenred acquires Reward Gateway, 16 May 2023 — supports ownership claim, verified 2026-09-21.
- Edenred investor presentation — Reward Gateway acquisition, 16 May 2023, £1.15bn — supports transaction value, verified 2026-09-21.
- Perkbox UK pricing page — supports sales-led pricing claim, no published PEPM, verified 2026-09-21.
- Reward Gateway small-business pricing — £8 PEPM monthly, from £6 PEPM annual, +£1 EAP; verified 2026-10-22.
- Perkbox UK homepage — supports module list (perks, wellbeing, recognition, salary sacrifice, culture and communication), verified 2026-09-21.
- Reward Gateway UK homepage — supports EngagementOS module list (Employee Discounts, Benefits, Reward and Recognition, Wellbeing), verified 2026-09-21.
- CIPD reward survey — focus on employee benefits — supports objectives, measurement and communication-gap claims, verified 2026-09-21.
Sources verified 2026-09-21. We re-verify quarterly.