How to Get Your Pay Stub From Costco

Current employees

Employee Self-Service (ESS): https://ess.costco.com/

If you no longer work there

Former employees use the SAME portal as current employees - ess.costco.com - but must re-establish a login first. Costco's Employee Website page carries a separate "Former Employee Login" button that points to the identical URL (https://ess.costco.com/), plus this instruction verbatim: "In order to access ESS, former employees (alumni) must re-register for MyCostco Account. Former employees have access to ESS for 25 months after separation date." So the steps are: (1) re-register for a MyCostco Account at https://mycostcoaccount.costco.com/register; (2) log in at https://ess.costco.com/ (Chrome required from outside the Costco network); (3) open the Payroll section to view/print past pay stubs and W-2s. The 25-month window runs from the separation date. Past that window, self-service is gone and the stub must be requested from Costco payroll - Costco's own ESS brochure directs employees to "Contact your payroll clerk for assistance on any Employee Self-Service activity."

https://ess.costco.com/

Addresses that no longer work

• "Costco Employees portal" / employees.costco.com — Does not resolve at all - NXDOMAIN, confirmed independently against three public resolvers (8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1, 9.9.9.9). It also has ZERO snapshots in the Internet Archive (archive.org/wayback/available returns {} and the CDX API returns an empty array), which indicates this hostname was never a real Costco portal - it appears to be an invented URL that pay-stub content sites repeat. The correct host is ess.costco.com.
• Lookalike third-party domains: costcoess.com and costcoemployee.com — NOT owned or operated by Costco, despite the names. Both resolve to non-Costco Linode address space and share an IP: costcoess.com -> 139.162.181.76 / 139.162.174.209 and costcoemployee.com -> 139.162.181.76. GET https://costcoess.com/ -> 200 serving only an interstitial whose <title> is "Checking your browser..." - a parking/cloaking page, not a login. WHOIS: costcoess.com created 2015-03-06, registrar Above.com Pty Ltd (a domain-monetisation registrar); costcoemployee.com created 2013-10-25, registrar GoDaddy. No Costco branding or payroll function. These should never be published as a way to reach a pay stub.

Current employees: ESS at ess.costco.com

Costco's payroll self-service system is called Employee Self-Service, usually shortened to ESS. The live address is https://ess.costco.com/. You do not have to guess at it — Costco's public Employee Website page at https://www.costco.com/employee-website.html carries a "Current Employee Login" button that points at exactly that URL, and the login hands off to Costco's own single sign-on before landing you in the portal. The steps: 1. Open https://ess.costco.com/ in Google Chrome. Costco's employee page states that employees must use Chrome when they are not on the Costco network. Other browsers can stall at the sign-on gateway with an unhelpful error. 2. Sign in with your MyCostco Account credentials and complete the multi-factor prompt. 3. Open the Payroll section. Costco's published ESS guide describes this as where you review your pay stub, check vacation and sick balances, view time cards if you are hourly, update your W-4 withholdings, and opt in to electronic delivery of your W-2. On timing, Costco's own ESS brochure says stubs appear ahead of payday: "Pay stubs are displayed on the Wednesday prior to payday Friday." Costco does not publish a single companywide pay interval anywhere we could verify, so ignore the third-party pages that flatly assert weekly or biweekly — some of them contradict themselves in the same paragraph. Your own stub history in ESS is the only reliable answer for your location and classification.

Former employees: same portal, 25-month window

This is the part most pages skip. Costco does not run a separate alumni pay portal. Former employees go to the same https://ess.costco.com/ — Costco's Employee Website page has a "Former Employee Login" button, and it points at the identical URL. What changes is the account. Costco's instruction to former employees is that they must re-register for a MyCostco Account before ESS will let them in, and that access lasts for 25 months after the separation date. So: 1. Re-register for a MyCostco Account at https://mycostcoaccount.costco.com/register. 2. Log in at https://ess.costco.com/ (Chrome, since you will be off the Costco network). 3. Open Payroll and view or print the stubs and W-2s you need. Count the 25 months from your separation date, not from your last paycheck or the end of the tax year. If you left more than two years ago, self-service is closed to you and the request has to go to Costco payroll instead — see below.

URLs that will not get you a Costco pay stub

Several addresses circulate widely on pay-stub blogs and answer sites. None of them will produce a stub, and two of them are not Costco at all. employees.costco.com — does not exist. It returns NXDOMAIN on Google, Cloudflare and Quad9 public resolvers, and it has zero snapshots in the Internet Archive, meaning no crawler ever recorded a page there. In other words this was never a real Costco portal; it is an invented hostname that content sites copy from each other. The working host is ess.costco.com. costcoess.com and costcoemployee.com — not owned or operated by Costco, despite the names. Both point into Linode address space and share an IP address (139.162.181.76). costcoess.com serves only an interstitial page titled "Checking your browser..." — a parking or cloaking page, with no Costco branding and no login. The domains were registered in 2015 and 2013 through a domain-monetisation registrar and GoDaddy respectively. Never enter your Costco credentials on either one. As a rule for Costco: if the hostname does not end in costco.com, it is not Costco's payroll system.

Locked out, wrong password, or MFA not working

There are three routes, and they escalate in that order. Username or password. Costco links self-recovery from its Employee Website page under "Login Issues": https://mycostcoaccount.costco.com/retrieve handles retrieving a username and resetting a password. This is the same MyCostco Account whether you currently work there or are re-registering as a former employee. Multi-factor problems. Costco uses PingID for MFA. The PingID Dock at https://desktop.pingone.com/costco-production is linked from the same Costco page and hands off to Costco's identity provider at login.costco.com. Use it when your device changed, your authenticator was wiped, or the push prompt never arrives. A human. Costco routes ESS and pay stub issues to the payroll clerk at your warehouse rather than to a public call centre — its own ESS guide tells employees to contact their payroll clerk for help with any Employee Self-Service activity, and specifically for problems printing a stub. There is no public Costco payroll phone number to call, so be sceptical of any page that hands you one. If you no longer work there and cannot reach a clerk directly, call the warehouse where you worked and ask for payroll.

If the stub is gone for good

Past the 25-month mark, ESS will not show you anything, and no third party can reissue a Costco pay stub — the record exists in Costco's payroll system and only Costco payroll can produce a copy. Ask the payroll clerk at your former warehouse, in writing where you can, and give them the pay periods and your dates of employment. For income verification specifically, a past W-2 or an IRS wage transcript is often accepted in place of individual stubs, and both are easier to obtain years later. A pay stub generator solves a different problem: it is for people who are the ones issuing pay, not receiving it — self-employed workers, contractors and small business owners who need to produce accurate stubs for themselves or their staff from real payroll figures. It is not a way to recreate a document from a former employer, and it should never be used to produce something presented as issued by Costco. If Costco paid you, only Costco can reissue the record of it.