What Gusto costs
Gusto does not have a single price. It charges a flat monthly base fee, currently $49/mo, plus a fee for every person you pay, currently $6/emp/mo. Your bill is the base plus the per-employee fee times your headcount, so it moves every time you hire. Plans and pricing checked July 2026, and every figure on this page is pulled live from our database rather than typed in by hand.
There is no free plan (No) and no contract (No), so this is a monthly cost you can stop at any time. What you get for it is genuinely full service: Yes for federal, state and local filing, Yes for W-2 and 1099 filing, and unlimited pay runs in the month.
Gusto plans explained
Simple is the entry tier and the one our calculator quotes, at $49/mo plus $6/emp/mo. It runs payroll in a single state with unlimited pay runs, files your taxes, handles PTO policies and gives every employee the Gusto app. It is the plan most small employers actually buy.
Plus sits above Simple and raises both parts of the bill: a higher base fee and a higher per-employee fee. It is what you move to when Simple runs out, and the three things that usually force the move are multi-state payroll (Yes (Plus)), next-day direct deposit (Yes) and built-in time tracking (Yes (Plus)). If you hire one person across a state line, you are on Plus.
Premium is the top tier, with another step up in both the base fee and the per-employee fee. It buys a dedicated service advisor, access to certified HR experts, performance and compensation tools, and priority support. It is aimed at a scaling team that wants an HR function rather than a payroll tool.
Gusto also sells a contractor-only plan for businesses with no W-2 employees, which pays and files 1099s (Yes).
The base plus per-employee shape, and where it bites
This is the part worth understanding before you sign up, because it decides whether Gusto is cheap or expensive for you.
The base fee is a fixed cost, so it is the whole bill when you are tiny and an irrelevance when you are not. The per-employee fee is the opposite: it is linear and it never stops. Past a handful of people, the per-employee fee, not the base fee, is most of what you pay, and by the time you are at a few dozen employees the base fee is a rounding error. That is why comparing payroll tools on their advertised base fee alone is the classic mistake: a provider with a lower base fee and a higher per-employee fee will cost you more, and the crossover arrives quickly.
It also means the cost curve is steep. Gusto's bill scales directly with headcount, and the higher tiers scale faster, because Plus and Premium raise the per-employee fee as well as the base. Use the calculator above with your real headcount rather than reading the headline figure, because the headline figure is the smallest number Gusto will ever charge you.
Add-ons change the real bill
The plan price is not always the final price. On the Simple plan several things that look standard are paid add-ons, each with its own monthly fee plus, in most cases, another per-person fee on top: next-day pay, priority support, HR resources, performance reviews and full time and attendance. Health insurance itself carries no Gusto administration fee (you pay only the premiums), but integrating an existing broker, running an HSA or FSA, or using pay-as-you-go workers comp (Yes) each add their own line.
Stack two or three add-ons onto Simple and you can land near the cost of Plus without the features Plus includes. If you want more than one of them, price the upgrade before you price the add-on.
What Gusto includes that cheaper rivals do not
The honest case for the fee is that Gusto's price includes work you would otherwise pay for or do yourself. Tax filing is full service on every tier (Yes), not an upsell. New-hire reporting is automatic. Benefits administration is built in (Yes) with licensed brokers, so health, dental, vision and 401(k) sit inside payroll rather than in a separate system. Employees get a real self-service app (Yes), and it syncs with QuickBooks, Xero. Support is Phone + chat.
For a business owner who does not want to think about payroll tax again, that bundle is what the per-employee fee is buying.
Where Gusto falls short
No tool is perfect, and Gusto has real trade-offs. The per-employee fee is the main one: it is not the cheapest per head in this comparison, and a growing team feels that every month. Simple is single-state only, so multi-state payroll pushes you up a tier and up on both fees at once. Several features a small employer assumes are standard, including time tracking and next-day pay, are add-ons or higher tiers rather than included. Global hiring is limited to contractors (Contractors only), so an international employee needs a different tool. And there is no free plan and no free trial, so the cheapest way to test it is a single pay run.
Who Gusto suits, and who should pick a cheaper flat option
Gusto suits a US small business with a modest headcount that wants payroll, tax filing and benefits in one place and is willing to pay a per-head fee to never think about compliance. It suits an owner without a bookkeeper, and it suits a team that values the employee experience.
It is the wrong choice if you are cost-first with a growing headcount and only need payroll run correctly. Patriot Software is the cheaper flat option: its base fee is $37/mo and its per-employee fee is $5/emp/mo, undercutting Gusto on both numbers at once, which means it is cheaper at every headcount, not just at the start. Full-service tax filing is still included (Yes (Full Service)). What you give up is depth: benefits administration is Limited and time tracking is an add-on (Yes (add-on)).
How Gusto compares with OnPay and Rippling
OnPay is the closest thing to a like-for-like rival on price: its base fee is $49/mo and its per-employee fee is $6/emp/mo, so at the entry tier the two are level. The difference is structural: OnPay sells one plan, so benefits administration (Yes) is included rather than tiered, and there is no upgrade to be pushed onto. Gusto answers with a better employee app, stronger time tracking and a deeper platform. If you would end up on Gusto's Plus tier, OnPay is worth costing seriously.
Rippling inverts the shape. Its base fee is ~$35/mo but its per-employee fee is ~$8/emp/mo, higher than Gusto's. A lower base and a higher per-head fee means Rippling only undercuts Gusto on a very small team, and the two cross over at a single-figure headcount, after which Rippling costs more. You pay that premium for a genuine platform: global payroll and employer of record (Yes), device and app management, and time tracking as an included module. For a purely domestic team, that is a lot of platform to pay for.
The live comparison table above costs all four providers against your own headcount, so you can see which one actually lands cheapest for your business rather than trusting a headline base fee.