Gusto vs QuickBooks Payroll: 2 Platforms Compared

These two come up together constantly, and for a reason that has nothing to do with features: they are among the payroll products a small US business can price without a sales call. This comparison uses those published prices to show what each one will really cost you, tier by tier and at real headcounts.

Both put a base fee and a per-person fee on a public web page, both bill month to month, and both let you sign up in a browser tab. In a category where the biggest providers refuse to quote a number, that alone puts both on most shortlists.

The first time I priced payroll for a small team, I made the mistake almost everybody makes: I compared the two entry tiers, saw a difference of about a dollar per employee, and assumed the decision was a coin flip. It was not. The entry plans are close on price and quite far apart on what they contain, and the tier you actually need is rarely the one at the top of the pricing page.

So the arithmetic below covers every tier, not just the entry plans: what each plan costs at 5, 10, 25, and 50 people, what sits in the base tier of each, where each one is genuinely stronger, and which situations point clearly at one over the other. There is no universal winner here. There is a right answer for a salaried single-state team, a different right answer for an hourly workforce, and a third for a business whose books already live in QuickBooks.

Gusto vs QuickBooks Payroll at a glance

The two products solve the same job from opposite directions. Gusto is a payroll company that grew HR and benefits around the pay run. QuickBooks Payroll is a payroll module attached to QuickBooks, the Intuit accounting system for small businesses, and Intuit has been folding time tracking, hiring, and HR services into it under the QuickBooks Workforce name.

That origin story explains most of the differences below. Gusto puts benefits brokerage, contractor payments, and a genuinely friendly employee experience at the center. Intuit puts the general ledger, the time clock, and the accounting bundle at the center. Neither is a payroll afterthought, and both file your federal and state employment taxes, though only Gusto files local taxes on its entry plan.

Read the table for tier placement rather than for feature presence. Almost everything a small employer needs exists in both products eventually; what differs is which plan you have to buy to get it. Two rows decide most purchases: Gusto puts multi-state payroll behind the Plus tier, and QuickBooks puts time tracking behind the Premium tier. If you need either one, the comparison is already narrower than the pricing page suggests.

The second thing worth noticing is the naming. Intuit now markets the product line as QuickBooks Workforce, with the payroll-only plans called Workforce Payroll, Workforce Premium, and Workforce Elite. Third-party guides still quote the old Core, Premium, and Elite names and the old prices attached to them, so check any figure you read elsewhere against the current pricing page before you budget on it.

What Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll actually cost

Both vendors use the same model: a monthly base fee plus a per-person fee, billed month to month with no contract. That makes them directly comparable, which is rare in this market. The table below runs published rates at four headcounts, pairing each tier against its nearest equivalent.

Three patterns come out of that grid. First, Gusto wins the entry tier at every size, by $11 a month at 10 people and $51 at 50. Second, Gusto also wins the middle tier, where Plus undercuts Workforce Premium by $18 at 10 people and $58 at 50. Third, and most usefully, the order flips at the top: Workforce Elite is cheaper than Gusto Premium by $96 a month at 10 employees and $296 at 50, because its per-employee rate is $17 against $22.

The per-person fee is what compounds, so it deserves more attention than the base fee. Between the two entry plans the gap is a single dollar per employee, which is $600 a year at 50 people, roughly the price of a laptop. Between Gusto Premium and Workforce Elite the gap is $5 per employee, which is $3,000 a year at the same headcount. When you compare payroll pricing, model the per-person line at the size you expect to be, not the size you are.

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The costs that sit outside the plan price

Neither headline number is the whole bill. Both vendors move a meaningful amount of functionality into add-ons and partner services, and the items below are the ones small employers most often discover after signing rather than before.

Two of those lines are bigger than they look. Gusto sells state tax registration as an add-on on every tier, priced by state. That matters because opening a withholding and unemployment account in a new state is a separate task from filing in it, and distributed teams easily miss it. On the QuickBooks side, the line to watch is the extra-state fee: $12 a month for each additional state on Workforce Payroll and Workforce Premium, billed outside the promotional discount.

What you get at the base tier

Both entry plans do the core job: run payroll as often as you like, calculate and file federal and state taxes, produce year-end forms, and give employees a portal. The gaps are at the edges, and the edges are where a small employer gets surprised in month two.

The Gusto entry plan is the more generous of the two on the pay run itself. Unlimited payroll runs, multiple pay rates and schedules, basic paid time off (PTO) policies and holiday pay, and domestic contractor payments are all in Simple. Gusto also files federal, state, and local payroll tax forms, including the W-2, the 1099, Form 940, and Form 941. What Simple holds back is time tracking and next-day pay (both sold as add-ons), custom reports, and, most consequentially, payroll in more than one state.

Workforce Payroll reverses the emphasis. It includes next-day direct deposit at the entry tier, along with unlimited 1099 e-filing, an employee portal, document storage, and phone and chat support; Gusto sells next-day pay as a Simple add-on and includes it from Plus. The notable gap in Workforce Payroll is time and attendance, which Intuit places at Premium and above, along with time off management and hiring tools.

One entry-tier detail is easy to miss and expensive to discover late. The Intuit payroll disclosure says Workforce Payroll does not offer local tax payments and filings: its automation covers federal and state taxes, and you have to print local forms and upload them to each local tax site yourself.

The Intuit pricing fine print lists certain local taxes as a Workforce Premium and Elite feature, yet its payroll disclosure tells users of those plans, too, to print local forms and upload them to each local tax site. If your employees work in a city or school district with its own income tax, ask Intuit exactly which local filings Premium automates before paying for the upgrade. Gusto states that it files local payroll tax forms as part of the service on every plan.

Both platforms reviewed

Below is the case for each, written as though you were only going to buy that one.

Gusto

Gusto is a common first payroll purchase for a US small business, and the reasons are consistent across every buyer I have talked to. The pricing is public, the setup is genuinely self-serve, the employee app comes with every plan, and you pay nothing until the first payroll actually runs. The company reports serving more than 500,000 businesses.

Benefits are where Gusto separates itself from a pure payroll product. Gusto acts as your licensed insurance broker at no administration cost, so you pay the insurance premium and nothing on top for the administration. Medical, dental, and vision plans sit alongside payroll deductions rather than in a separate system.

If you would rather keep the broker you already have, Gusto charges $6 per eligible employee per month to work with that broker, and the fee disappears on Premium. Tax-advantaged accounts, meaning health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), dependent care FSAs, and commuter benefits, carry per-participant fees of $2.50 to $4 a month but share one $200 annual service charge rather than four separate ones.

The contractor story is unusually good too. Domestic contractor payments are in every plan and are billed at the per-person rate only in months when a contractor is actually paid, which suits seasonal or project work.

Global contractor payments cover more than 120 countries with no monthly per-contractor fee, and a business with no W-2 employees pays its domestic contractors on a regular plan, from Simple at $49 per month plus $6 each. Getting contractor payroll right matters more than most owners assume, and the IRS classification rules are the place to start.

The main weakness is the tier structure, and specifically one line in it. Multi-state payroll is available only on Plus and Premium, and Gusto says so plainly on its own pricing page. There is no per-state surcharge once you are on Plus, but the upgrade itself is the cost: a 25-person company on Simple pays $199 a month, and the same company on Plus pays $380.

One remote hire across a state line raises the payroll bill by $181 a month before that person has been paid a dollar. For any team where multi-state payroll is likely within a year, that is a real constraint.

The other weakness is support on the two lower tiers. Simple comes with Basic Support only, and priority phone and chat access costs $30 per month plus $3 per person on top, which at 25 employees is $105 a month, more than half the price of the plan itself.

Plus carries the same Basic Support and the same Priority Support add-on, while Premium includes priority support, a dedicated service advisor, and payroll migration and account setup. That is a coherent ladder, but it means the two cheaper Gusto plans are the ones where you wait longest for an answer.

QuickBooks Payroll

The classic argument for QuickBooks Payroll has always been the ledger, and it still holds. If your books already run in QuickBooks Online, payroll posts wages, employer taxes, and contributions straight into the accounts without an export, an import, or a monthly reconciliation. That removes a recurring chore and a recurring source of miscoded entries, and it is worth more over a year than the dollar-per-employee difference at the entry tier.

What has changed is how much sits around the ledger. Intuit rebuilt the product as QuickBooks Workforce, and the Premium tier now bundles a full time and attendance system. Employees clock in from the mobile app or an on-site kiosk, managers build schedules by job or shift, hours flow into payroll without an integration, and time off policies and balances live in the same place.

Elite adds geofencing that prompts staff to clock in and out, GPS mileage tracking, and project estimates compared against actual hours. For a business with hourly or field staff, the time system is a second subscription you do not have to buy.

Premium also carries a real HR layer. A company documents center creates, sends, and stores handbooks and employee documents with e-signature. Hiring and onboarding covers offer letters and digital paperwork, with an automated I-9 process. Five automated HR workflows handle multi-step processes like promotions and offboarding, and an HR resource center and handbook creator come through Mineral. Elite lifts the workflow cap, adds performance management, and gives you a personal HR advisor by phone.

Elite is also where Intuit puts its most explicit financial commitment. Tax penalty protection reimburses federal, state, or local payroll tax penalties and interest from an error made while using Elite, up to $25,000 a year. Intuit also helps you resolve the notice, subject to conditions such as sending Intuit the notice within 15 days.

Read that protection as insurance against a filing error rather than as a transfer of liability, because the IRS position on outsourcing payroll is that the employer stays responsible for the tax itself.

Gusto makes a narrower promise. Its payroll terms commit it to paying the penalties that arise from its own failure to remit taxes or file on time, and its pricing page lists no penalty protection plan to match Elite. For an employer who wants a stated annual limit in writing, that difference is real.

The weaknesses are concentrated at the bottom of the range. The entry Workforce Payroll plan has no time tracking, no time off management, and no hiring tools, so it is payroll and little else at $50 plus $7. Local tax payments and filings are not part of the entry plan either, which is a problem for an employer in a city or school district with its own income tax.

The value case also leans hard on the accounting sync: if your books are somewhere else, you are buying a payroll product whose main structural advantage does not apply to you.

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Where each one is genuinely stronger

Strip out the marketing and the real differences are few, specific, and easy to test against your own situation.

The multi-state row is the one worth sitting with. Gusto is transparent that a second state means Plus, and the arithmetic is easy: at 25 people the upgrade costs $181 a month.

Intuit takes the opposite route. Every tier runs multi-state payroll, but its payroll disclosure adds $12 a month per extra state on Workforce Payroll and Workforce Premium, so a 25-person, two-state company on Workforce Payroll pays $237 rather than $225. The practical move is to list every state you file in, price both vendors for all of them, and compare those two totals rather than the tier prices.

The other honest difference is what happens as the team grows. Gusto scales cleanly through Plus and stays a payroll and HR product. QuickBooks scales through Premium and Elite into something closer to a workforce platform with time, hiring, performance, and HR advisory attached. Whether that is an advantage depends on whether you want those things from your payroll vendor or from somewhere else.

How to choose between Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll

Five questions settle this faster than any feature list. Answer them before you open either signup flow.

Whichever way you go, the mechanics of the move matter as much as the choice. Switching payroll companies is cleanest at a quarter boundary and cleanest of all on January 1, because your quarterly employment tax returns have to reconcile to year-to-date totals. Splitting a quarter across two systems means two partial filings that have to agree.

Before going live, export full pay history, confirm every state account number transfers, check how far each employee has progressed toward the taxable wage base (the yearly cap on wages subject to some payroll taxes), and run one parallel cycle.

The IRS guidance on depositing and reporting employment taxes is the reference for what the new system has to get right. The IRS checklist for picking a third-party payroll provider is worth ten minutes regardless of which one you sign with.

Before you choose

FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so it works next to Gusto or QuickBooks rather than replacing 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 include onboarding of their own: Gusto puts employee self-onboarding and offer letter templates on every plan, and QuickBooks adds hiring and onboarding from Workforce Premium. A separate layer earns its place mainly on Workforce Payroll, or when you want hiring paperwork to stay put through any later change of payroll vendor.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll cheaper?

It depends on the tier. Gusto is cheaper at the entry level, $49 plus $6 per person against $50 plus $7, which is $109 versus $120 at 10 people. It stays ahead in the middle, where Plus at $80 plus $12 beats Workforce Premium at $88 plus $13. The order flips at the top: Workforce Elite at $134 plus $17 comes in below Gusto Premium at $180 plus $22, a $171 monthly difference at 25 employees.

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 with no W-2 employees pays its contractors on one of these plans, from Simple at $49 plus $6 per person, since Contractor Only closed to new customers on October 1, 2026. Outside the plan price, state tax registration is an add-on and priority support on Simple and Plus is $30 plus $3 per person. Keeping your own insurance broker costs $6 per eligible employee, and HSA, FSA, dependent care, and commuter accounts add small per-participant fees plus one shared $200 annual charge.

How much does QuickBooks Payroll cost per month?

Intuit now calls the product QuickBooks Workforce. Workforce Payroll is $50 per month plus $7 per employee, Workforce Premium is $88 plus $13, and Workforce Elite is $134 plus $17. Bundles that include QuickBooks accounting start at $88 plus $7 per employee for Workforce Payroll with Simple Start. Intuit offers new customers either half off the base fee for three months or a 30-day free trial, and the discount never touches the per-employee charge. A second state costs $12 a month extra on the two lower tiers.

Does Gusto Simple handle multi-state payroll?

No. The Gusto pricing page sells Simple as single-state payroll and puts multi-state payroll on Plus and Premium, so a second state means upgrading. Gusto lists no per-state payroll fee on Plus, so the cost of the second state is the tier jump itself, which at 25 employees takes the bill from $199 to $380 a month.

Does QuickBooks Payroll include time tracking?

Only on Workforce Premium and Workforce Elite, which Intuit confirms in its payroll disclosure. Those tiers include clock-in from the mobile app or an on-site kiosk, schedules by job or shift, time off management, and hours that flow into payroll without an integration. Elite adds geofencing, GPS mileage tracking, and project estimates against actual hours. The entry Workforce Payroll plan has none of it.

Should I use QuickBooks Payroll if I already use QuickBooks accounting?

Usually yes. Wages, employer taxes, and contributions post to the general ledger without an export or a monthly reconciliation, which saves time every pay period and removes a recurring source of coding errors. It is not automatic, though: Gusto also integrates with QuickBooks Online, so if you want brokered benefits or contractors paid abroad, compare the tier you actually need rather than the entry price.

Which one is better for a business with hourly employees?

QuickBooks at Premium or above, because time tracking, scheduling, and time off management are bundled rather than added. Gusto includes time and attendance tracking with Plus, and Simple customers can add the same module for $6 per person per month. The totals are close, at $380 for Gusto Plus against $413 for Workforce Premium at 25 employees, so the deciding factor is which time features you need rather than which plan is cheaper.

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

No. The IRS holds employers ultimately responsible for withheld income tax and for both halves of Social Security and Medicare, even when a third party files and deposits. Workforce Elite comes closest to a backstop with penalty protection up to $25,000 a year, but that pays back penalties; the tax obligation itself stays with you. Reconcile your payroll tax filings regardless of who prepares them.