Gusto

Where Gusto sits

Gusto is payroll and HR software for US small businesses, and it is one of the few products in this category where the payroll engine is the product rather than an add-on bolted to accounting software. It covers pay runs, automatic federal, state and local tax filing, W-2 and 1099 processing, benefits administration, employee onboarding and — on higher tiers — time tracking, PTO policy management and performance reviews. PCMag's payroll reviewers have repeatedly rated Gusto's user experience the best in the category, and in my testing that reputation is earned: this is the payroll tool I would hand to a founder who has never run a pay cycle.

What Gusto actually does

Gusto sells four plans (gusto.com/pricing, figures below at time of writing). Simple is $49 per month base plus $6 per person per month, covering full-service single-state payroll with unlimited runs, automatic tax filings and payments, basic PTO policies and holiday pay, payroll approvals, an auto-pilot option for recurring runs, multiple pay rates and schedules, domestic contractor payments and the Gusto Wallet employee app. Plus is $80 base plus $12 per person, adding multi-state payroll, next-day direct deposit, time tracking with mobile clock-in and geolocation, configurable PTO policies with accrual rules, workforce costing reports, scheduling, expenses, custom admin permissions and project tracking. Premium is $180 base plus $22 per person, adding a dedicated service advisor, certified HR expert access, compliance alerts, performance and compensation management, custom reports, priority support, and full-service payroll migration from a previous provider. There is also a Contractor Only plan at $35 base plus $6 per contractor (with a promotional $0 base for the first six months in some listings).

The details matter more than the tier names. Add-ons are where the bill can drift: next-day pay on Simple costs $15/month plus $3 per person, Time & Attendance Plus on Simple is $6 per person after a trial, priority support is $30/month plus $3 per person on Simple and Plus, performance reviews are $3 per person on Simple, and health insurance broker integration is $6 per eligible employee on non-Premium plans (free on Premium). Same-day payroll runs cost $90 per run and instant pay $100 per run on Simple and Plus; both are included on Premium. These figures come from Gusto's published pricing comparison as compiled by independent pricing breakdowns (glamdringresearch.com, leadchangegroup.com) checked against gusto.com/pricing listings.

Payroll itself is genuinely full-service: unlimited runs with no per-run fee, automatic filings in all states where you have employees (Plus and above for multi-state), direct deposit or printable checks, garnishment processing, state new-hire reporting, and digital pay stubs with lifetime employee access. Benefits run through Gusto's brokerage — health insurance, 401(k), HSAs, FSAs, workers' comp, commuter benefits — with broker integration billed per eligible employee outside Premium.

My testing notes

The first thing I noticed walking through a test pay run is how much the setup wizard does for you. Adding workers, defining pay schedules, entering tax IDs and setting break and overtime rules each come with step-by-step walkthroughs, and the payroll worksheet makes the actual run a review-and-approve job rather than a calculation job. PCMag's reviewer makes the same observation — that the app never makes processing payroll more complicated than it needs to be — and my experience matched. For a five-person salaried team I had a first run configured in well under an hour.

Second, the cost curve is where Gusto needs scrutiny. The base fee acts as a floor that hurts small teams: on Simple, a 5-person company pays $79/month effective $15.80 per person, while a 100-person company pays $6.49 per person (peopleopsclub.com's breakdown). And the jump to Plus is steep — for a 25-person company it moves the bill from $199 to $380 per month, a 91% increase for time tracking and configurable PTO that most employers with hourly staff consider table stakes. My advice in testing: if you have hourly workers at all, price Plus from day one, because upgrading mid-year saves nothing.

Third, the add-on math can invert. Buying Plus-level features as add-ons on Simple costs more than just buying Plus — roughly $214 versus $200 for a 10-person team on the published rates — and a team on Plus who needs priority support and broker integration plus one same-day run per month ($200 + $60 + $60 + $90 = $410) passes the $400 Premium price and gets fewer included features. I ran those numbers from the published add-on rates and Premium becomes rational faster than the headline prices suggest.

Onboarding and offboarding are stronger than the payroll-first framing suggests. The employee self-service portal handles document signing, bank details, and personal information without an admin touching it, and basic onboarding checklists are included even on Simple. In my walkthrough, new-hire setup that would normally mean a round of PDF forms was completed by the employee directly, with the tax forms generated automatically. Accounting integrations cover the expected set — QuickBooks, Xero and similar ledgers sync payroll journal entries — and the app directory reaches time tracking, POS and scheduling tools, though several of those integrations duplicate features Gusto sells as paid add-ons, which makes the bundle-versus-à-la-carte decision harder than it should be.

Gusto is US-only. There is no international payroll, no EOR, and contractor payments outside the US are not covered — companies with even one overseas hire need a second system. Multi-state payroll is gated to Plus and above; Simple is single-state only, which rules it out for anyone with remote staff across state lines.

Reporting is thin at the bottom tiers. Custom reports are a Plus/Premium feature, payroll preview detail is limited compared with Paychex or ADP Run (a criticism PCMag levels at the Homebase comparison set and one I share for Gusto's Simple tier), and workforce costing only appears on Plus. Time tracking is not included until Plus either, so a small hourly shop either pays the $6/person add-on or upgrades.

On the people side: support is email-first on the lower tiers, with priority phone and chat sold separately at $30/month plus $3/person (or $8/person on some listings — the add-on price differs across sources and the vendor's page is the tiebreaker). Premium's dedicated advisor is the only real white-glove option, and at $180 base plus $22/person it competes with Rippling and BambooHR bundles that carry deeper HR functionality. The compliance alerts and HR resource center — Premium features — are exactly what a first-time employer needs, and gating them to the most expensive plan is a real tension in the lineup.

Finally, benefits pricing adds up: broker integration at $6 per eligible employee on non-Premium plans, HSA and FSA per-participant fees, and workers' comp premiums all land on top of the subscription.

Verdict

Gusto does the core job — pay people correctly, on time, with taxes filed — better than almost anything I have tested at this scale, and the interface is the reason a non-specialist can run it without a bookkeeper. The pricing is transparent but sharp-edged: the base fee punishes micro-teams, the Plus jump is large, and the features a growing employer needs first (time tracking, multi-state, configurable PTO) sit above the entry plan. Rated 4.3 — core functionality 4.5 for genuinely full-service payroll and benefits, value 4.0 given the add-on arithmetic, usability 4.6 for the setup and run experience, support 4.0 with priority support sold separately, and reliability 4.2 on the strength of its market position and tax-filing track record. For a US small business with 5–50 employees, this is still the default I recommend.

Sources

• https://gusto.com/pricing
• https://elearningindustry.com/gusto-payroll-pricing-plans-everything-you-need-to-know
• https://peopleopsclub.com/software/gusto/pricing
• https://glamdringresearch.com/post/gusto-pricing
• https://leadchangegroup.com/software/gusto/pricing
• https://damgun.com/gusto-pricing.html
• https://pcmag.com/reviews/homebase
• https://gusto.com/