Gusto vs OnPay: 2 Payroll Platforms Compared

Gusto and OnPay charge exactly the same entry price, so the decision between them lives in what each plan buys, not in the number on the pricing page. This comparison does the arithmetic: what each plan costs at 5, 10, 25, and 50 people, what sits inside each base plan, where each product is genuinely stronger, and which business profiles point clearly at one over the other.

The first time I lined these two up on a spreadsheet I assumed I had copied a cell wrong. I had not. Gusto Simple costs $49 a month plus $6 per person, and OnPay costs $49 a month plus $6 per worker: same base fee, same per-head fee, same billing model, published on both vendor sites for anyone to read. At 10 employees you pay $109 either way. At 50 you pay $349 either way.

The two companies market themselves very differently, and they build opposite plans around that price. One vendor sells a single plan that includes almost everything payroll needs and asks you to pay for HR and time tracking separately. The other sells three plans, reserves multi-state payroll for the middle one, and charges you to climb.

Which structure is cheaper depends on which features you need, and the answer flips depending on where your people work and whether they punch a clock. There is no universal winner. There is a right answer for a distributed salaried team, a different right answer for a restaurant with hourly staff, and a third for a company that plans to keep growing into more tooling.

Gusto vs OnPay at a glance

Gusto and OnPay solve the same job with opposite philosophies about tiers. OnPay sells one plan with nearly everything payroll-related inside it and charges separately for HR and time tracking modules that sit above payroll. Gusto sells three plans and makes the middle one the gate for payroll in more than one state, something a growing small business tends to want. That tier bundles time tracking too.

That difference explains most of what follows. Neither vendor is hiding anything. Both publish list rates on public pages, both bill by base fee plus headcount, and both file federal, state, and local employment taxes at the entry price. What differs is the shape of the bill as your business changes.

Read that table for placement rather than presence. Almost every capability a small employer needs exists in both products somewhere. What matters is which plan you have to be on to reach it, and whether reaching it costs a tier jump or a small add-on. Three rows decide most purchases: multi-state payroll, native time tracking, and direct deposit speed.

The fourth row worth staring at is the HR add-on line. OnPay used to be described everywhere as the one-plan, everything-included provider, and the payroll half of that is still true. But paid time off (PTO) management, org charts, records management, and equipment tracking now sit in a paid module rather than the base plan, which changes the arithmetic for anyone comparing feature lists from an older roundup.

What Gusto and OnPay actually cost

At the entry tier the two products cost exactly the same, so the useful table is not a comparison of starting prices but a comparison of the plans you would realistically end up on. The grid below runs published rates at four headcounts, pairing each vendor configuration against its nearest functional equivalent.

Three patterns come out of that grid. First, the entry rows are a dead heat at every headcount, which is unusual enough that it deserves to be said twice. Second, adding OnPay HR costs less than moving up a Gusto tier at every size: $144 against $200 at 10 people, $464 against $680 at 50.

The third pattern matters most. The moment multi-state payroll enters the picture, OnPay stays at the entry price while Gusto has to move, and that single fact is worth $181 a month at 25 people.

The per-person fee is what compounds, so it deserves more attention than the base fee when you model payroll pricing. Between OnPay Payroll Essentials and Gusto Plus the gap is $6 per person, which at 50 employees is $3,600 a year. Between the two entry plans the gap is zero. Between OnPay with its HR module and Gusto Premium the gap is $14 per person, or $8,400 a year at the same headcount.

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What the base plan actually includes

Both base plans cover the full payroll job: unlimited pay runs, direct deposit, federal, state, and local tax filing, and year-end W-2 and 1099 forms at no separate charge. That baseline is genuinely equivalent, and a business that only needs payroll run correctly will not feel a difference between them.

Above that baseline the two plans diverge sharply, and the divergence is what you are really choosing between.

Two lines in that table do most of the work. Payroll in a second state costs a Gusto tier jump and costs nothing on OnPay. Time tracking is an add-on on both entry plans, $6 per person on Gusto Simple or $15 a month plus $4 per worker on OnPay, so an hourly employer pays for it either way.

The rest is closer than the marketing suggests. Both platforms collect new hire paperwork with e-signature, both store documents, and both broker health insurance without an administration fee. If your shortlist came down to onboarding quality, you are unlikely to be disappointed by either.

Both platforms reviewed

Below is the honest version of each product: what it is built around, what it does better than the other, and where it will annoy you.

Gusto is a payroll company that grew a wider platform around the pay run, and the breadth shows. Time tracking, scheduling, hiring tools, and workforce cost reporting all live inside the product rather than in a partner integration, which means an hourly business can run clock-in, approvals, and payroll from one login. Scheduling is the part that sets it apart, since the OnPay time add-on does not list it.

Direct deposit is the other place Gusto is measurably ahead. Gusto states that direct deposit itself is free on any of its plans and that it offers both two-day and next-day pay schedules. Employers new to Gusto start on four-day processing and move to two-day pay after a 15-day wait and one successful payroll debit.

Next-day pay is included on Plus and Premium and costs $15 a month plus $3 per person as an add-on to Simple. A shorter hold on your cash before each pay run keeps more working capital in the business, and it gives you a wider margin when a payroll run gets approved late.

The frustration is the tier structure. Multi-state payroll, the feature a growing small business most predictably needs, sits behind the Plus upgrade, and the upgrade doubles the per-person rate rather than adding a modest module fee.

Time tracking, at least, comes as a $6 per person add-on to Simple. Multi-state payroll does not, so a company that hires one remote worker across a state line pays $12 per person instead of $6, whether or not it uses anything else Plus contains.

OnPay sells one payroll plan and puts an unusual amount inside it. Multi-state payroll, W-2 and 1099 year-end filings, state new hire reporting, and employee self-onboarding with e-signed I-9 and W-4 forms all sit at $49 plus $6.

The same base price covers document storage, a custom report designer with more than 50 reporting fields, and benefits administration through in-house licensed agents. Setup and data migration are done by the vendor at no charge, and OnPay states it charges no implementation or integration fees.

The vertical coverage is the underrated part. OnPay publishes dedicated handling for restaurants, farms and agriculture, nonprofits, dental practices, and religious organizations, and those sectors carry payroll rules that generic software handles awkwardly.

Tip credits, agricultural filings, and clergy tax treatment each ask the payroll engine to behave unusually, and a vendor that names the vertical is more likely to have built that handling than one that does not. If you run a restaurant payroll or a nonprofit payroll, that matters more than interface polish.

The two real gaps are scheduling and speed. The OnPay Time Tracking add-on, at $15 a month plus $4 per worker, covers clock-in, overtime and break rules, and approvals synced into payroll. It lists no shift scheduling, though, so a team that builds rosters still needs a separate scheduling tool connected to OnPay.

On speed, OnPay puts each account on a two-day or four-day direct deposit turnaround. It picks one through an ACH risk assessment, a review of the bank-transfer risk on your account, once your bank account is verified. Two days is the fastest schedule OnPay publishes, against next-day pay at Gusto.

Four days is not a problem until the week you approve payroll late, and then it is the only thing that matters.

Where each one is genuinely stronger

Strip out the marketing and each product has two or three things it does measurably better. Everything else is close enough that it should not decide a purchase.

Where Gusto wins

Gusto wins on time and money movement. Time tracking, scheduling, and hours approval live inside the platform on Plus, or on Simple through a $6 per person add-on, and scheduling is the piece the OnPay time add-on does not list.

Next-day pay gives you float, meaning your cash stays in your account longer than on a two-day or four-day cycle. Direct deposit itself is free on every plan, including the entry one.

The third advantage is optionality. Having three tiers means the platform has somewhere to go as the company changes shape. A business that starts with five contractors on Simple, hires its first W-2 employee, then opens in a second state can stay on one vendor through all three stages, paying more each time but never migrating.

Where OnPay wins

OnPay wins on predictability and coverage. One plan at one price, with multi-state payroll, year-end filings, benefits brokerage, and onboarding inside it, means you stay on the same plan when the business changes. There is no upgrade conversation, no feature you discover is one tier up, and no per-state surcharge. For a founder who wants payroll to be a settled line item rather than a recurring decision, that is worth real money.

The second advantage is vertical depth. Restaurants, farms, churches, and dental practices are named on the vendor site with dedicated handling, and payroll in those sectors is where generic software quietly gets things wrong. The third is migration: free setup and data migration performed by the vendor removes the single biggest reason small businesses stay on a payroll provider they dislike.

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How to choose between them

Five questions settle this comparison faster than any feature matrix. Answer them honestly about the next 18 months rather than about today.

One thing sits outside the software choice entirely. Whichever vendor files your returns, the IRS holds the employer ultimately responsible for withheld income tax and both halves of Social Security and Medicare tax. The deposit and reporting rules do not soften because a vendor pressed the button, so reconcile your quarterly payroll tax filings against your own register either way.

The same goes for records. The Department of Labor requires three years of payroll records and two years of the time cards and wage tables behind them, and neither platform relieves you of producing those on request.

Before you choose

FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so it runs alongside Gusto or OnPay rather than in place of either. It covers 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.

Both payroll vendors already handle new hire paperwork. Gusto puts employee self-onboarding on every plan, and OnPay includes self-service onboarding in Payroll Essentials, with custom onboarding workflows in its HR add-on. A separate HR layer earns its place mainly when you want offer letters, signed policies, and employee files to stay in one home through any later change of payroll provider.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Gusto or OnPay cheaper?

At the entry price they are identical: $49 per month plus $6 per person on both, which is $109 at 10 people and $349 at 50. The gap opens when you need something Gusto Simple does not carry.

Multi-state payroll sits on Plus at $80 plus $12, which is $380 at 25 people against $199 for OnPay. Time tracking adds cost on both: $15 a month plus $4 per worker on OnPay, or $6 per person on Gusto Simple.

How much does OnPay cost per month?

One plan, Payroll Essentials, at $49 per month plus $6 per worker, advertised as starting at $55 because that is the base fee plus one worker. It covers full-service payroll for W-2 and 1099 workers, tax filing, multi-state payroll, unlimited pay runs, year-end filings, self-onboarding, and benefits administration.

Four add-ons sit outside the plan: HR at $15 plus $2 per worker, Time Tracking at $15 plus $4 per worker, Compliance Resources at $10, and Live HR Support at $65.

How much does Gusto cost per month?

Simple is $49 per month plus $6 per person, Plus is $80 plus $12, and Premium is $180 plus $22. A business paying only independent contractors runs them on one of these plans, from Simple at $49 plus $6 each, billed only in months they are paid.

Outside the plan price, priority support on Simple and Plus is $30 plus $3 per person, keeping your own insurance broker is $6 per eligible employee, and HSA and FSA accounts carry a $200 annual service charge.

Does OnPay charge extra for multi-state payroll?

No. OnPay includes paying workers in as many states as you need at the base rate, with no per-state fee and no tier to upgrade to. Gusto also charges no per-state fee, but restricts multi-state payroll to Plus and Premium, so the main cost of a second state is the upgrade itself. That takes a 25-person company from $199 a month to $380, triggered by one remote hire.

Does OnPay have time tracking?

Yes, as a paid add-on. OnPay Time Tracking costs $15 a month plus $4 per worker and handles clock-in, overtime and break rules, and approvals synced into payroll, but it lists no shift scheduling.

Gusto builds time tracking and scheduling into Plus and Premium and sells them to Simple users at $6 per person. For a salaried team this changes nothing. For an hourly team that builds rosters, OnPay can also sync a third-party time tracking tool that handles scheduling.

Which is better for a restaurant, a farm, or a church?

OnPay is the stronger default, because it publishes dedicated setups for restaurants, farms and agriculture, nonprofits, dental practices, and religious organizations. Tip credits, agricultural filings on Form 943, and clergy tax treatment each ask the payroll engine to behave unusually.

Gusto serves restaurants and churches too, but its help center states that it does not offer agricultural payroll, so a farm with farmworkers on payroll is better served by OnPay.

Do Gusto and OnPay both include benefits administration?

Yes. Both act as licensed brokers and fold benefits administration into the subscription with no separate admin fee. OnPay uses in-house licensed agents and offers 401(k) through named partners Vestwell and Betterment, with pay-as-you-go workers compensation through its partner ERGO NEXT, and it integrates an outside broker of record at no charge.

Gusto brokers health, dental, and vision itself, and charges $6 per eligible employee per month on every plan if you want to keep an outside broker. Insurance premiums are separate from the software fee on both.

Does using Gusto or OnPay make them responsible for my payroll taxes?

No. The IRS holds the employer ultimately responsible for income tax withheld from wages and for both the employer and employee portions of Social Security and Medicare tax, even when a third party calculates, files, and deposits on your behalf. Neither vendor claims otherwise. Keep every agency notice, read it, and reconcile your quarterly returns against your own payroll register regardless of who filed them.