Gusto: price, catch and who it suits

Payroll, benefits and HR in one friendly platform. Automated tax filings, employee onboarding and time tracking — run payroll for your whole team in just a few clicks.

The Weekly 2% Edge looks for small, repeatable gains in how a business runs. This page summarises our research on Gusto, read from the vendor’s own pages and from what other buyers report. It is not a hands-on test.

What it costs

Simple $49 a month plus $6 per person (single-state payroll). Read on Gusto’s own pricing page on 2026-09-05; check the live page before you buy.

The base-plus-per-employee model is transparent but adds up, and Gusto is US-only — excellent for straightforward US payroll and benefits, but not the pick for international teams or complex multi-entity HR.

Who it suits

US small businesses that want genuinely easy full-service payroll, benefits and tax compliance in one place.

Who should skip it

Skip it if you want one vendor for staff outside the US — since 1 May 2026 Gusto refers new international hires to Remote's employer-of-record service (from about $599 per employee a month, a separate contract) — or you need enterprise, multi-entity HR.

Getting started

Gusto blocks plain fetches of its pricing page, so these figures come from reading it in a browser — last on 10 September 2026, when every amount below was on the page. Confirm them yourself anyway before you budget, because a promotion was running on the contractor-only plan that day and promotions move.