Sifting through countless of stocks in the Professional Services industry can be tedious, and sometimes two stocks are just too similar to judge which is the better investment. If you’re on the fence about investing in Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze or Inc. because you’re not sure how they measure up, it’s important to compare them on a few factors before making your decision.

Read on to learn how Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. compare based on key financial metrics to determine which better meets your investment needs.

About Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc.

Paylocity Holding Corporation provides cloud-based human capital management, finance, and IT software solutions in the United States. The company offers payroll solutions comprising payroll and tax services, global payroll, on-demand payment, garnishments, and elevate payroll; human resources (HR) solutions consisting of human resources, employee self-service, workflows and documents, HR compliance dashboard, and elevate HR and HR edge; time and labor solutions, including time and attendance, scheduling, and time collection; and talent solutions, such as recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, compensation, and market pay. It also provides benefits solutions comprising benefit enrollment and updates, third-party administrative solutions, and retirement; employee experiences consisting of community, video, employee voice, recognition and rewards, data insights, and reporting; and Paylocity for finance solutions, such as headcount planning, expense management, accounts payable automation, corporate cards, and guided procurement. In addition, the company offers Paylocity for IT which includes access management and identity, and asset management; and implementation and training, client services, and tax and regulatory services. It serves for-profit and non-profit organizations across industries, including business services, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, technology, and others. The company markets and sells its products through sales representatives. Paylocity Holding Corporation was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Braze, Inc. operates a customer engagement platform that provides interactions between consumers and brands worldwide. It offers Braze software development kits that automatically manage data ingestion and deliver mobile and web notifications, in-application/in-browser interstitial messages, and content cards; REST API to import or export data or to trigger workflows between Braze and brands’ existing technology stacks; Partner Data Integrations, that allow brands to sync user cohorts from partners; Data Transformation, in which brands can programmatically sync and transform user data; Braze Cloud Data Ingestion that offers direct connections to cloud services and data warehouses, marketing, product, and growth teams; Braze Currents to stream data in real time; and Snowflake Data Sharing to track and store data. It also provides segmentation that define reusable segments of consumers based upon attributes, events, or predictive propensity scores; segment insights, which allows customers to analyze how segments are performing relative to each other across a set of pre-selected key performance indicators; and predictive suite that allows customers to identify groups of consumers that are of critical business value. In addition, the company offers Canvas, an orchestration tool; campaigns, which allows customers; event and API triggering; marketing pressure management; and reporting and analytics, as well as content generation and quality assurance platform, content management, catalogs, templating language, connected content, and intelligent timing and channel products. Further, it provides decisioning studio; agent console; liquid assistant and AI copywriter; personalized variant; AI item recommendations; and MCP Servers. The company was formerly known as Appboy, Inc. and changed its name to Braze, Inc. in November 2017. Braze, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Latest Professional Services and Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze, Inc. Stock News

As of October 9, 2026, Paylocity Holding Corporation had a $8.2 billion market capitalization, compared to the Professional Services median of $1.1 million. Paylocity Holding Corporation’s stock is up 1% in 2026, up 6.6% in the previous five trading days and down 0.18% in the past year.

Currently, Paylocity Holding Corporation’s price-earnings ratio is 31.3. Paylocity Holding Corporation’s trailing 12-month revenue is $1.8 billion with a 15.2% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was 11.0%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $8.741 per share for the current fiscal year. Paylocity Holding Corporation does not currently pay a dividend.

As of October 9, 2026, Braze, Inc. had a $3.3 billion market cap, putting it in the 62nd percentile of all stocks. Braze, Inc.’s stock is down 15.3% in 2026, up 14.3% in the previous five trading days and up 3.23% in the past year.

Currently, Braze, Inc. does not have a price-earnings ratio. Braze, Inc.’s trailing 12-month revenue is $834.2 million with a -13.6% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was 26.2%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $0.643 per share for the current fiscal year. Braze, Inc. does not currently pay a dividend.

How We Compare Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. Stock Grades

Stock evaluation requires access to huge amounts of data and the knowledge and time to sift through it all, make sense of financial ratios, read income statements and analyze recent stock movements. AAII created A+ Investor, a robust data suite that condenses data research in an actionable and customizable way suitable for investors of all knowledge levels, to help investors streamline and work through such data.

AAII’s proprietary stock grades come with A+ Investor. These offer intuitive A‐F grades for each of five key investing factors: value, growth, momentum, earnings estimate revisions and quality. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc.’s stock grades to see how they measure up against one another.

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Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. Stock Value Grades

Company	Ticker	Value
Paylocity Holding Corporation	PCTY	D
Braze, Inc.	BRZE	F

Successful stock investing involves buying low and selling high, so stock valuation is an important consideration for stock selection.

Buying stocks that are going to go up typically means buying stocks that are undervalued in the first place, although momentum investors may argue that point.

AAII’s A+ Investor Value Grade derives from a stock’s value score. The Value Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of the price-to-sales ratio, price-earnings ratio, enterprise-value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) ratio, shareholder yield, price-to-book-value ratio and price-to-free-cash-flow ratio. The score is variable, meaning it can consider all six ratios or, should any of the six ratios not be valid, the remaining ratios that are valid. To be assigned a Value Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) ratio and corresponding ranking for at least two of the six valuation ratios.

Stocks with a Value Score from 81 to 100 are considered deep value, those with a score between 61 and 80 are a good value and so on.

Paylocity Holding Corporation has a Value Score of 25, which is Expensive. Braze, Inc. has a Value Score of 13, which is Ultra Expensive.

The Value Stock Winner: No Clear Winner

Neither Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze or Inc. has a high enough value grade to be considered a “winner.” Investors who are considering these companies should do additional due diligence and research to see if either could be a good addition to their portfolio. It’s important to look at a wide range of financial metrics in order to determine if Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze or Inc. is the better investment when it comes to value.

Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. Growth Grades

Company	Ticker	Growth
Paylocity Holding Corporation	PCTY	B
Braze, Inc.	BRZE	D

The foundation of growth investing is seeking out stocks of companies exhibiting strong, consistent and prolonged growth that is expected to continue into the future.

In order to compute the growth score and assign it a letter grade, the percentile ranks for each of three components‐consistency of annual sales growth, five-year sales growth rankings adjusted for extreme levels, and consistency of positive annual cash from operations‐must be determined. These three rank figures are added together, and the sum is ranked against the entire stock universe to arrive at a company’s Growth Score to create an equal distribution of grades.

The companies in the bottom 20% of the stock universe receive Growth Grades of F, considered to be very weak, while those in the top 20% receive A grades, which are considered very strong.

Paylocity Holding Corporation has a Growth Score of 69, which is Strong. Braze, Inc. has a Growth Score of 37, which is Weak.

The Growth Grade Winner: Paylocity Holding Corporation

As you can clearly see from the Growth Grade breakdown above, Paylocity Holding Corporation has a more attractive growth grade than Braze, Inc.. For investors who focus solely on how a company is growing relative to other companies in the same industry, Paylocity Holding Corporation could be a good stock to add to their portfolio. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc.’s Quality Grades

Company	Ticker	Quality
Paylocity Holding Corporation	PCTY	A
Braze, Inc.	BRZE	C

Like the Value Grade, AAII’s A+ Investor Quality Grade comes from the percentile rank of key metrics. Specifically, the Quality Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of return on assets (ROA), return on invested capital (ROIC), gross profit relative to assets, buyback yield, change in total liabilities to assets, accruals, Z double prime bankruptcy risk (Z) score and the F-Score.

The score is variable, meaning it can consider all eight measures or, should any of the eight measures not be valid, the remaining measures that are valid. To be assigned a Quality Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) measure and corresponding ranking for at least four of the eight quality measures.

The Quality Score is used to assess the underlying “quality” of a particular stock. A higher-quality stock possesses traits associated with upside potential and reduced downside risk. Backtesting of the Quality Grade shows that stocks with higher grades, on average, outperformed stocks with lower grades over the period of 1998 through 2019.

Stocks receive better grades (higher scores) for having higher scores for the quality subcomponents and worse grades (lower scores) for lower scores for the subcomponents.

Paylocity Holding Corporation has a Quality Score of 87, which is Very Strong. Braze, Inc. has a Quality Score of 50, which is Average.

The Quality Grade Winner: Paylocity Holding Corporation

As you can clearly see from the Quality Grade breakdown above, Paylocity Holding Corporation has a better overall quality grade than Braze, Inc.. For investors who are looking for companies with higher quality than others in the same industry, Paylocity Holding Corporation could be a good stock to add to their portfolios. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

Other Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. Grades

In addition to Value, Growth and Quality, A+ Investor also provides grades for Momentum and Estimate Revisions.

Momentum grades help uncover stocks experiencing anomalously high rates of return; research finds that stocks with high relative levels of momentum tend to outperform, whereas those with low levels of momentum tend to continue underperforming.

Earnings estimate revisions scores take into account the magnitude of a company’s earnings surprise in its last two reported fiscal quarters. Often, surprises beget further surprises‐or at least continued sales growth (the exact opposite is generally true, too).

These 2 key factors, when combined with the above, provide a holistic view into a particular stock. Further, by joining A+ Investor you can see whether Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc. pass any of our 60+ stock screens that have outperformed the market since their creation.

So, Which Is the Better Investment, Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze or Inc. Stock?

Overall, Paylocity Holding Corporation stock has a Value Score of 25, Growth Score of 69 and Quality Score of 87.

Braze, Inc. stock has a Value Score of 13, Growth Score of 37 and Quality Score of 50.

Comparing Paylocity Holding Corporation, Braze and Inc.’s grades, scores and metrics can act as a solid basis to determine whether they may be a good investment or not. You’ll also want to look at your portfolio’s asset allocation as well as your risk tolerance and financial goals to see if either of these stocks would make a good fit for you. AAII can help you figure out which investments align with your individual needs and preferences.

Investors are encouraged to do their own due diligence and research. In this way, individuals can effectively become managers of their own assets‐without having to rely on others for financial independence. You can count on AAII for timeless articles on financial planning and stock-picking, unbiased research and actionable analysis.

A+ Investor adds to our qualitative teaching with a powerful data suite to help you whittle down investment choices to find stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds that meet your needs.

AAII Disclaimer

We make no representations or warranties that any investor will, or is likely to, achieve profits similar to those shown, because past, hypothetical or simulated performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Before making an investment decision, you should consider your circumstances and whether the information on our content is applicable to your situation. This information was prepared in good faith, and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions. The full disclaimer can be read here.