CompTool Review: Salary Survey Management and Squirrel Job-Posting Data
CompTool is market pricing and salary survey management software from Seattle. Founder Justin Hampton built the first version as an Access database while working on corporate comp teams, because the survey managers of the time were too expensive or cumbersome, and later turned it into the current product.
It loads the surveys you buy, such as Radford, Mercer, WTW and Culpepper, lets you market price whole job families at once, and adds Squirrel, a data set of job postings that carry employer-reported pay ranges. The logo strip on its homepage includes AutoZone.
The verdict
CompTool is sometimes filed as a comp planning tool, but what it does is market pricing: survey management, job matching, aging and pay structure modeling. It is a smaller, practitioner-run alternative to Bettercomp, not a merit cycle tool like Pequity or Lattice Compensation.
Squirrel is the feature I would test first. Pay transparency laws have put salary ranges on millions of job postings, and Squirrel collects them, adding 80,000 to 100,000 postings a day and excluding estimated ranges. It is not a survey and CompTool says so, but as a check on whether your survey data has gone stale it is useful, and it uses only public data, which keeps it clear of the non-public data exchange concerns in the Department of Justice's antitrust guidance for HR.
I would recommend it to a comp team of one to five people that buys a few surveys, lives in Excel and wants faster matching without an enterprise contract. A team with a dozen survey subscriptions and WTW participation will find Bettercomp's WTW integration more relevant.
Where CompTool fits
Who it suits
CompTool fits small and mid-sized comp teams, and lean teams at larger employers, that already purchase salary surveys and want a lower-cost tool to load, match, age and report on them. CompTool says it has hundreds of customers, including several Fortune 100 companies, and its fastest implementation was for a company with more than 10,000 employees.
It is not the right starting point for a company with no survey subscriptions and no comp analyst; a data-plus-software product such as Payscale or Ravio gives that team something to price against on day one.
What it does differently
CompTool stands out for being run by compensation practitioners: its site says every account executive has at least 15 years of comp experience. Squirrel is the other distinctive piece, a real-time source of posted pay ranges with each data point visible exactly as advertised, which none of the survey-based tools in this comparison include.
How it gets bought
The sale is direct and small-scale: a free sign-up, a 30-minute demo and a quote. Buyers who need a vendor with formal security certifications or large support teams should ask for documentation early, because the site does not list certifications.
CompTool also runs community resources for comp practitioners, including a compensation job board, a Pay Practitioners Panel, pulse surveys and a list of recommended salary surveys. None of that is software you pay for, but it signals who the company is built around: working comp analysts rather than HR generalists.
CompTool pricing and the free benchmarking tool
No prices are published. The market pricing page offers sign-up for a free compensation benchmarking tool, and the solutions FAQ describes CompTool as probably a whole lot less expensive than competitors, without figures.
Because the free tier's limits are not stated, treat it as a way to try the interface and survey library on your own files, then ask an account executive for the paid scope.
| Plan | Published price | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free compensation benchmarking tool | Free | Not stated |
| CompTool (paid) | Custom quote | Not stated |
Pricing last checked September 25, 2026. View source
What to ask for in a paid quote
Ask whether Squirrel, the Job Description Manager and the HRIS connection are included or priced separately, and whether pricing is based on employees, jobs or users. Implementation, which CompTool says usually takes a couple of days, should be quoted too.
Comparing it with enterprise tools
Survey licences are paid to survey publishers in any case, so the comparison with Bettercomp or Payscale is software price plus analyst time saved. CompTool's multi-match feature, which prices a whole job family from one match, is the main time saver to measure.
CompTool features: survey manager, Squirrel and job descriptions
Market Pricing and Salary Survey Manager
The core product loads surveys from CompTool's survey marketplace or almost any Excel file, then supports blending, aging and side-by-side comparisons across surveys and data cuts.
Survey support. Interactive reports built for Radford, Mercer, WTW and Culpepper surveys.
Geographic differentials. Data cut comparisons help set location differentials for remote and multi-site pay.
Reports. More than 60 interactive reports designed by comp practitioners.
Squirrel real-time pay data
Squirrel collects job postings with employer-reported pay ranges from aggregated and employer job boards. CompTool cites more than 25 million postings in its FAQ and more than 40 million on its homepage.
Cleaning rules. Duplicates, very wide ranges and estimated ranges are excluded; required fields include pay, location, description and company.
Use case. Validate survey data and see current market movement between survey releases.
Job Description Manager and pay structures
The Job Description Manager uses ChatGPT to draft descriptions from customizable templates, keeps prior versions, and routes drafts to project teams for approval. Pay structure modeling shows KPIs for a proposed structure.
Versioning. Historical versions are kept so you can see a job description as of any period.
HRIS. Most HRIS systems can connect to update jobs and employees weekly.
CompTool pros and cons
Strengths
Market prices whole job families at once
Multi-match finds a survey match for one job, such as Accountant I, and applies it across the family up to VP level and across labor markets.
Squirrel posted-pay data included
Squirrel adds 80,000 to 100,000 job postings with employer-reported ranges daily, removes duplicates and wide or estimated ranges, and lets users drop outliers.
Fast implementation
CompTool says most clients deploy within a couple of days, and its fastest took under 24 hours for a 10,000+ employee company.
Built-in survey submissions and aging
It packages your matches into submissions for survey providers and ages survey data to your effective dates with lead, lag or lead/lag policies.
Limitations
No comp cycle workflow
CompTool models pay structures but does not run merit budgets, manager worksheets or approvals. A planning tool is still needed.
Little published detail on pricing and security
There is no pricing page, the free tier's limits are not stated, and security certifications are not listed on the site.
Squirrel is a sample of postings
CompTool itself says Squirrel does not capture every posting and should not replace salary surveys. Posted ranges also show intended pay, not what hires accepted.
CompTool was built by comp practitioners for comp practitioners. If your team owns salary survey data and spends too much time in spreadsheets, it is worth a free account trial before paying for an enterprise platform.
- Start with the free tier if you own salary survey data.
- Test the AI job description writer against your existing job architecture.
- Validate merit cycle worksheet functionality for your review cadence.
- Confirm data coverage for your specific roles before upgrading.
From free sign-up to demo: evaluating CompTool
Unlike most vendors in this comparison, CompTool lets you start before speaking to sales. Use the free sign-up first, then take a short demo.
- Sign up for the free benchmarking tool and load one of your own survey files, because survey loading and matching speed is the core of what you would pay for.
- Run Squirrel queries for five roles you recently hired, because comparing posted ranges with your actual offers shows how useful the data is for your market.
- Ask which HRIS connector applies to your system and how often data refreshes, since CompTool describes weekly updates for most HRIS systems.
- Request security documentation early if your company requires SOC 2 or similar evidence, because the site does not list certifications.
Frequently asked questions about CompTool
What is CompTool?
CompTool is market pricing and salary survey management software founded by compensation analyst Justin Hampton, based in Seattle.
Is CompTool free?
CompTool offers a free compensation benchmarking tool sign-up. Paid plans are quoted; prices are not published.
What is Squirrel?
Squirrel is CompTool's data set of public job postings that include employer-reported pay ranges, growing by 80,000 to 100,000 postings a day.
Which surveys work with CompTool?
CompTool has reports built for Radford, Mercer, WTW and Culpepper and says its survey library works with almost any Excel file.
Does CompTool run merit cycles?
No. It handles market pricing, survey management, job descriptions and pay structure modeling, not merit or bonus cycle workflows.
Has CompTool been acquired or renamed?
No acquisition or rename was found. The product also appears as Compensation Tool, and the app login sits at ct.compensationtool.com, while comptool.com remains the main site.
Alternatives worth comparing
CompTool's alternatives are other market pricing tools and data providers.
| Product | Pricing model | Free trial | Why buyers shortlist it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carta | Flat fee / tiered annual | Not stated | Equity and total compensation management platform for private companies managing cap tables, pay bands, and total rewards. |
| Compa | Quote-based | Not stated | Compa targets enterprise comp teams with live offer and incumbent pay data pooled from customer systems, and supplies numbers rather than organizing your surveys. |
| Pave | Per employee per month | Yes | Real-time compensation benchmarking and merit cycle management platform with AI job matching across 8,700+ companies. |
| CaptivateIQ | Per seat per year | Not stated | Sales incentive compensation management platform that automates commission calculations and gives reps real-time earnings visibility. |
| Ravio | Quote-based | Not stated | Ravio is a London-based compensation platform for tech companies, centred on salary benchmarks that update through live connections to more than 100 HR systems. |
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