Gusto Alternatives: 10 Platforms Compared

Almost nobody leaves a payroll provider because the software is bad. They leave because the company changed and the plan did not: the first hire in another state, the fifteenth employee, the quarter where the bill quietly passed what the accountant costs. This guide shows which of ten Gusto alternatives fits when that happens, and what the published ones really cost.

I have watched founders go through this three or four times now, and the pattern is always the same. They compare starting prices, pick the lowest one, and discover in month two that the feature they actually needed sits one tier up, or that the second state carries a surcharge, or that support at the entry tier is a queue. The starting price was never the number that mattered.

So this comparison does it the other way around. Every rate below was read off the vendor's own site in October 2026, the cost math runs at 10, 25, and 50 employees rather than at a single headcount, and each product is matched to the specific situation it suits instead of being ranked as if all small businesses were the same company.

Why small employers leave Gusto

Four things push small employers off Gusto: the per-person fee compounding as you hire, a feature that turns out to sit one tier up, support that costs extra at the entry tier, and a company that has simply outgrown a self-serve product. Contract terms are the one complaint that does not apply here, and that is worth saying up front.

The published price, and what it becomes

Gusto publishes its rates, which not every product in this category does. Here is the ladder as it stands on the pricing page.

Gusto closed its separate Contractor Only plan to new customers on October 1, 2026, so a business that pays only contractors now runs them on one of these plans, from Simple at $49 a month plus $6 per person, with each contractor billed only in months that contractor is paid.

At 10 employees Simple is $109 a month, which is a fair price for automated federal, state, and local filing. At 50 it is $349. That trajectory is normal for the category, and it is not a trick.

What surprises people is where multi-state payroll sits. It is a Plus feature, so one hire across a state line does not add a surcharge; it doubles the per-person rate from $6 to $12. At 50 employees that is $680 a month instead of $349.

The things that are add-ons

The second frustration is discovering what is billed separately. None of these are hidden. They are all listed on the pricing page, but they are easy to miss when you are comparing headline numbers across five tabs.

Read that list next to the plan ladder and the real shape of the product appears. A 25-person company on Simple that wants faster support pays $199 for payroll and $105 for priority support, or $304 a month. HR guidance is not sold as an add-on at all: Gusto includes it only with Premium, which at 25 people costs $730 a month against the $199 you budgeted.

Support, and the one thing to give credit for

Support at the Simple tier is the basic queue. Priority positioning in phone and chat is a paid upgrade, and a named account advisor exists only on Premium at $180 plus $22 per person. For an employer whose payroll question is time-sensitive, that structure is a real reason to look elsewhere, and several alternatives below include phone support at every tier.

Contract terms, on the other hand, are a point in Gusto's favor. The pricing page states there are no contracts, account setup is free, and you can switch or cancel at any time.

Not every alternative is that flexible. Two of the ten below will not tell you a price until you request a quote, a third shows only a starting price before its quote form, and promotional offers can carry a minimum term of their own. If month-to-month billing matters to you, confirm the new provider offers it before you cancel Gusto.

10 Gusto alternatives at a glance

The fastest way to narrow ten products to two is to sort them by whether they publish a rate at all. Eight show a number on their own site, and six of those also let you sign up without speaking to anyone. Deel and Rippling are the exceptions: Deel publishes its US payroll rate but leads with a demo booking, and Rippling's small-business page gives a payroll starting price while its pricing page is a quote form. The other two (ADP and Paychex) keep their payroll rates behind a quote request.

If you already know your constraint, the short version is below. The detailed reviews follow, and the cost math for every published product sits further down the page.

How we compared them

Every product here had to be something a US small employer could actually run payroll on, and every number had to come from the vendor rather than from a roundup. Four tests decided the ranking.

The 10 alternatives reviewed

Each review starts with the pricing, the monthly bill at the three headcounts, and the current offer, then makes the case for the product and ends with its pros and cons. The order runs from the closest like-for-like swap for Gusto to the two products that answer benefits and international hiring rather than a high software bill.

OnPay charges exactly what Gusto Simple charges and gives you the whole payroll product for it. There is one base plan, and the pricing page commits to all of this: W-2s, 1099s, and year-end filings included; unlimited pay runs and schedules; federal, state, and local tax filings included; workers paid in as many states as you need; support by phone, chat, and email; and no implementation or integration fees.

That list is the entire argument. The reason to move here is not a lower number, because at a single-state 10-person company the number is identical. It is that the number stops changing shape.

With OnPay, a second state does not move you up a tier, year-end forms do not appear as a December invoice, and phone support is not an upgrade. For a company that got burned by a tier boundary, this is the cleanest payroll swap on the list.

OnPay sells everything beyond payroll as optional modules. HR tools, time tracking, compliance resources, and live HR support are add-ons priced on the same page, so what grows with the company is a module line rather than a tier.

Patriot is the cheapest legitimate full-service payroll with a published price once you pay five or more workers. Full Service is $37 per month plus $5 per worker paid and covers federal, state, and local tax filings and deposits, with year-end payroll tax filings at no additional fee. Basic at $17 plus $4 does everything except file, which means you handle deposits yourself.

Two billing details make it cheaper than the sticker suggests. The per-worker fee applies to workers you actually paid that month, and in a month with no payroll you are charged only the base.

Two other details make Patriot more expensive: each additional state filing is $12 per month, and the Time and Attendance and HR modules are separate products at $6 per month plus $2 per employee each. A single-state shop pays $287 at 50 people. A three-state shop pays $311 before add-ons, and adding both modules for those 50 people costs a further $212 a month.

Square Payroll has the second-lowest published base of any full-service plan here: $35, behind only SurePayroll at $29. For a business already on Square hardware, it also removes an entire category of work. Timecards import from the Square point of sale or the Team App, direct tips are tracked and imported, overtime is calculated, and labor cost reporting reads against the same sales data.

The full-service plan includes multistate payroll, new hire reporting, and multiple pay rates. The contractor-only plan at $6 per person paid does not, and it also drops auto payroll and off-cycle payments, so compare the two plans line by line. Seasonal businesses get one unusual benefit: months with no payroll are free rather than billed at the base, which for a seasonal restaurant is worth real money.

SurePayroll, which is a Paychex company, has the lowest entry point of the group at $29 per month plus $7 per worker, and its pricing calculator is refreshingly literal about what you will pay. Multi-state payroll is a flat $9.99 per month no matter how many states you operate in, which is the cheapest multi-state surcharge on this page.

The catch is the per-head rate. At $7 per worker it is the highest in the budget group, so the advantage narrows as you grow: cheapest at two employees, more expensive than OnPay by 25.

At SurePayroll, year-end W-2 and 1099-NEC forms are billed annually at a $50 base plus $5 per form rather than included, accounting integration is $4.99 per month, and time clock options start at $5 per month plus $3 per employee. The separate nanny and household product, from $39 per month, is the reason many people find it at all.

The argument for QuickBooks payroll, now sold as QuickBooks Workforce, has always been the ledger, and it still is. Payroll entries land in QuickBooks Online without an export, a mapping step, or a monthly reconciliation ritual. Entry pricing is $50 per month plus $7 per employee, above Gusto Simple on both halves, and there is no annual contract.

The tiers move fast. Time tracking arrives with Workforce Premium at $88 plus $13, and tax penalty protection covering IRS penalties and interest up to $25,000 per year sits at the Elite tier at $134 plus $17. Launch discounts are temporary, so budget from the list price. If your books are somewhere else, there is no reason to be here.

Rippling sells a single employee record that spans HR, payroll, benefits, learning, recruiting, device management, and app provisioning. Its pricing page is explicit that you tell it which services you need and it sends a custom quote, and there is no self-serve signup. The number to set against Gusto sits on its small-business page: payroll plans start at $8 per user per month plus a $40 monthly base fee. Rippling's blog prices the core platform and the payroll module at $8 per employee each, and every other product adds to the bill, so a configured quote lands above that start.

What you are buying is the connections between those systems. Hiring someone triggers payroll setup, benefits enrollment, a laptop, and account provisioning from one action, and the HR Services module lists automatic state and local payroll tax account registration, which is precisely the chore that makes multi-state expansion painful. For a small single-state company with no IT complexity, that is a lot of platform to pay for.

ADP is the default answer when a company has grown past the point where payroll can be a self-serve subscription. The compliance engine is the deepest in the category, statutory changes reach the tax tables without anyone at your company reading a state register, and multi-jurisdiction payroll is included in every RUN package rather than gated.

RUN itself is sold to businesses with 1 to 49 employees in four packages (Essential, Enhanced, Complete, and HR Pro), with a separate product line above 50.

The cost of all that depth is opacity. ADP does not publish RUN pricing anywhere on its site; every package sits behind a Get Pricing button that opens a quote request and a phone number, and even W-2 and 1099 form delivery is flagged as an additional fee.

ADP runs time-limited promotions for new RUN clients, so price RUN on its ongoing rate rather than on the offer. ADP says RUN needs no contract and can be terminated at any time, but the ongoing rate still arrives in a proposal rather than on a page, so read it before you sign.

Paychex competes with ADP on the same ground and serves approximately 840,000 customers, according to its fiscal 2026 annual report. The product is sold as a service relationship rather than a subscription: payroll, HR guidance, talent, benefits, insurance, and retirement from one vendor, with people attached. It also owns SurePayroll, the self-service product four places higher on this list, and it has since acquired Paycor.

Like ADP, Paychex keeps its numbers off the page. Its compare-packages page lists Basic, Foundations, Advanced, and Complete with full feature lists, and every one carries a Request Pricing button. The ladder is organized by service: Basic leaves garnishment payments and onboarding as add-ons, Foundations adds them along with phone and email support, Advanced adds state unemployment service, and Complete adds advisors and a payroll specialist.

There is no checkout either: every button on every package leads to a contact form or a phone number. Paychex advertises a free-months promotion for new clients, but no rate.

A service model like this is right if your real problem is that nobody in the building knows the answer to a payroll compliance question. It is the wrong model if you wanted to compare a number against $109 a month and get on with your day.

Justworks is two products wearing one name. Payroll at $50 per month plus $8 per employee is ordinary payroll software priced slightly above Gusto Simple. Its professional employer organization (PEO) plans, PEO Basic at $79 per employee per month and PEO Plus at $124, are something else entirely: a co-employment arrangement that, on PEO Plus, lets a small company buy health coverage priced off a much larger risk pool.

Publishing PEO rates at all is unusual and worth crediting. Modules are priced the same way: time tracking $8 per employee, US contractors $8 per paid contractor, international contractors $39, and, on the two PEO tiers only, dedicated HR consulting at $30 per employee and an employer-of-record (EOR) product at $599.

Before you sign with Justworks, be clear about which problem you are solving. At 25 employees PEO Plus, the tier with medical coverage, is $3,100 a month against $199 for Gusto Simple, so this is a benefits decision wearing a payroll costume.

Deel is built for a problem the other nine treat as a sideline at most. If you need to employ someone in Portugal or Brazil without opening a legal entity there, its employer-of-record product handles legal employment, local compliance, payroll, and benefits at $599 per employee per month. Contractors are $49 each per month, contractor of record is $325, and a US PEO is $125 per employee per month.

For domestic payroll it is less compelling. Deel lists US payroll across all 50 states at $29 per employee per month on its self-service tier, with no base fee listed, which comes to $290 a month at 10 employees against $109 for Gusto Simple.

Deel's pricing FAQ describes month-to-month pricing with no long-term commitment required, but its promotions run through a signed order form with a term of their own, so read that term before you take one.

What each one costs at 10, 25, and 50 employees

This is the table that decides most switches, and it is the one almost nobody publishes because part of the field will not show a rate. Every figure below is calculated from published base and per-person rates, with the two Gusto tiers included as the baseline you are comparing against.

Three things fall out of it. At 10 employees the published base-plus-per-person entry plans sit between $87 and $130, close enough that entry price is a bad way to choose. By 50 employees the same plans span $287 to $450, and Gusto lands at $349 on Simple or $680 on Plus depending on one variable: whether anyone works in a second state.

The second pattern is that the cheapest base is rarely the cheapest bill. SurePayroll has the lowest base at $29 and the highest per-head rate among the budget plans at $7, so it wins at two employees and loses to OnPay by 25.

Square starts $6 above SurePayroll on base and passes it at seven workers, because its $6 per person matches the market while SurePayroll charges a dollar more. Patriot wins outright on a single-state team from five workers up and gives some of it back at $12 per extra state.

The third pattern is that the software line is not the whole cost. State tax registration, year-end forms, time tracking, and multi-state fees are billed differently by every vendor here, and the gap between a bundled and an unbundled product at 25 employees is comfortably over $100 a month.

Names that did not make the shortlist

A few products appear in almost every list of alternatives and are missing from this one. Most are left out for the same reason: a small employer replacing a published subscription should not have to book a call to learn a price or to get started. ADP and Paychex make you ask for a price too, and Rippling makes you ask to get started, but each stays in the ranking because it fits one situation clearly better than Gusto does.

The TriNet entry is worth a note because the naming has moved. Zenefits is now the TriNet HR Platform: TriNet acquired it, and the TriNet site still labels that login as HR Platform, also known as TriNet Zenefits.

TriNet now sells it within HR Plus, its outsourced administrative services offering, after moving customers there during 2025, according to its annual report. HR Plus pricing depends on headcount and service level, runs on a per employee per month model, and requires a conversation with the team.

If you arrived here from a Zenefits comparison written a few years ago, TriNet is where the product went, and it is no longer a self-serve HR platform you can sign up for and price in an afternoon.

How to choose a Gusto alternative

Five questions separate a switch that pays for itself from a lateral move that costs you a quarter of cutover work. Answer them before you book a single demo.

One last piece of process. Whichever way you go, run the cutover at a quarter boundary so year-to-date wages and taxes transfer cleanly, keep access to the old system until you have filed a full quarter on the new one, and re-collect nothing you already have.

Before you choose

FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so it sits beside whichever of these you pick rather than replacing Gusto. It covers the people work around the pay run: onboarding workflows, e-signature on offer letters and acknowledgments, employee records, and document management, at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50.

That matters during a switch. A payroll migration moves pay history and tax settings, but the offer letters, signed policies, and new hire paperwork need a home too, and keeping them outside the payroll vendor means the next change of provider does not move them again.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best alternative to Gusto for a small business?

OnPay, for most companies. It charges the same $49 per month plus $6 per worker as Gusto Simple but sells one base plan, with federal, state, and local tax filings, year-end forms, unlimited pay runs, and payroll in as many states as you need all included. If cost is the driver, Patriot Full Service is $37 plus $5. If your team clocks in through a point of sale, Square Payroll at $35 plus $6 fits better.

Why do small businesses switch away from Gusto?

Four reasons: the per-person fee compounding from $109 a month at 10 employees to $349 at 50, multi-state payroll sitting on the Plus tier, priority support being a paid add-on while HR guidance sits on Premium, and outgrowing a self-serve product. Contract terms are not on the list, since Gusto bills month to month with no contract.

How much does Gusto cost per month?

Simple is $49 plus $6 per person. Plus is $80 plus $12. Premium is $180 plus $22. Contractors are paid inside these plans and billed only in months they are paid. Add-ons such as priority support at $30 plus $3 per person and next-day pay on Simple at $15 plus $3 per person are billed on top.

Is there a cheaper payroll service than Gusto?

Yes. Patriot Full Service is $37 plus $5 per worker paid, Square Payroll is $35 plus $6 per person paid, and SurePayroll starts at $29 plus $7 per worker, though its higher per-head rate closes the gap as you grow. Check the extras before switching on price alone: Patriot adds $12 per month for each state beyond the first, and SurePayroll charges $9.99 for multi-state.

Which alternative handles multi-state payroll without an upgrade?

OnPay, Square Payroll, and Justworks Payroll include it in the base rate. SurePayroll charges a flat $9.99 per month for multi-state regardless of how many states, and Patriot charges $12 per month per additional state, as does QuickBooks Workforce on its two lower tiers. Only Gusto puts multi-state tax filing behind a tier change.

Do ADP, Paychex, and Rippling publish payroll pricing?

Not in full. ADP advertises promotions for new RUN clients but asks you to call for a rate. Rippling's small-business page starts payroll at $8 per user per month plus a $40 monthly base fee, but its pricing page asks which services you need and sends a custom quote, because the platform is sold as modules rather than plans. Paychex lists Basic through Complete with a Request Pricing button on each and sells every package through a sales contact.

Should I move to a PEO instead of another payroll product?

Only if benefits pricing is the real problem. Justworks publishes PEO Basic at $79 per employee per month and PEO Plus at $124, and Deel publishes US PEO plans at $110 and $120. At 25 people, Justworks PEO Plus, the tier with medical coverage, comes to $3,100 a month against $199 for Gusto Simple, so it is a different budget rather than a cheaper swap.

What should I check before switching payroll providers?

Confirm filing coverage in every state and locality where you have workers, who pays if a deposit is late, what year-end filing costs, and the contract term. Then plan the cutover for a quarter boundary so year-to-date wage and tax records transfer cleanly instead of mid-quarter.