Gusto publishes every price on its website. Rippling publishes one number, "from $8 per employee per month," plus a base fee it won't name until you talk to sales. That difference tells you most of what you need to know about who each product is for.
Short answer: A US company under about 50 people that wants payroll, benefits and basic HR should buy Gusto Plus. It's predictable and you can price it in two minutes. Buy Rippling when you also want HR to control software access and laptops, so that a termination in payroll automatically shuts off email, Slack and the company MacBook. That's the feature Gusto doesn't have, and it's worth paying for once you have more than a handful of SaaS apps.
Prices below come from Gusto's pricing page and Rippling's pricing page, checked on October 27, 2026.
Gusto: a base fee plus a per-person rate
Gusto has three plans for companies with employees:
| Gusto plan | Base fee | Per person | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | $49/month | $6/month | Unlimited payrolls, tax filings, single-state payroll, basic PTO |
| Plus | $80/month | $12/month | Multi-state payroll, time tracking and scheduling, next-day pay, contractor invoices |
| Premium | $180/month | $22/month | Named account partner, HR guidance, business compliance, same-day and instant pay, custom admin roles |
There's no contract, account setup is free, and you're only charged for active employees. US contractors bill at your plan's per-person rate, but only in months when you actually pay them. That's a fair policy for companies that use seasonal freelancers.
Solopreneurs get a separate Solo plan at $49 a month plus $6 per person, built around paying yourself as an S corp.
Here's what the plans cost at three common sizes:
| Headcount | Simple | Plus | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $109/mo | $200/mo | $400/mo |
| 25 | $199/mo | $380/mo | $730/mo |
| 50 | $349/mo | $680/mo | $1,280/mo |
The jump from Simple to Plus is the one most teams make, and it's usually forced by one thing: an employee in a second state. Simple handles payroll in one state only. The day you hire a remote person in another state, you're on Plus.
Gusto's add-ons
Gusto's base plans are cheap, and the add-ons are where the bill grows. The ones you're most likely to buy:
- ▸Time & Attendance Plus on Simple: $6/month per person after a free trial (Plus and Premium already include time tracking)
- ▸Next-day pay on Simple: $15/month plus $3 per person
- ▸Same-day pay: $90 per payroll; Instant pay: $100 per payroll (both included in Premium)
- ▸Gusto Business Compliance: $85/month per state on an annual contract (included in Premium)
- ▸Priority Support on Simple or Plus: $30/month plus $3 per person
- ▸Remote I-9: $20 per submission; E-Verify: $5 per submission on top of that
- ▸Health insurance broker integration: $6/month per eligible employee if you keep an outside broker
- ▸HSA: $2.50 per participant a month; FSA, dependent care FSA and commuter: $4 per participant each, $20 minimum, plus a single $200 annual service charge across all four
- ▸Workers' comp: from $14/month
- ▸R&D tax credits: 15% of the credits Gusto finds
Health insurance through Gusto's own brokers carries no Gusto admin fee; you pay the premiums.
Watch the compliance add-on. A company with employees in four states that wants Gusto to track registrations and annual reports pays $340 a month for Business Compliance on Plus. At that point, Premium's higher base fee starts to look reasonable, because compliance is included.
Rippling: modular, and quote-only
Rippling's FAQ says plans "start at $8 per employee per month, with a monthly base fee," and that your total depends on which products you choose. It doesn't publish the base fee or the per-module prices. You get a quote.
The product list is long. HR (HRIS, recruiting, performance, learning), payroll (US and global, contractors, employer of record), time and scheduling, benefits administration and a PEO option, IT (identity and access, device management, inventory), and finance (expenses, corporate cards, bill pay). Most modules are priced per employee per month and stack on top of each other.
That means the $8 headline is a floor, not a price. A 25-person company buying the platform plus payroll, time tracking and benefits administration is paying for several modules, each priced per head, plus the base fee. I won't quote a total I can't verify. In my experience, Rippling for HR plus payroll alone usually comes in above Gusto Plus. You're paying for the platform underneath.
Two things soften that:
- ▸Startup program: eligible US VC-backed startups get free access for six months, according to Rippling's pricing FAQ.
- ▸Implementation: setup includes a Rippling implementation manager and about three calls, at no charge.
My advice for the quote: ask for the base fee, every module's per-employee price, the contract length and the renewal cap in writing. Modular pricing is easy to expand at renewal and hard to compare against anything else.
The real difference: who controls access
This is where I stop thinking like a payroll buyer and start thinking like a CISO.
The most common access-control failure I see in small companies isn't a hacker. It's a former employee whose Google, Slack, GitHub and CRM accounts stayed active for three weeks after they left because nobody told IT. HR knew. Payroll knew. The person who owns the admin consoles didn't.
Rippling's identity and access management is built to close that gap. Access is tied to the employee record, so a termination or role change in HR can automatically suspend accounts, deprovision users across 600+ integrated apps, and cut off SSO access. Device management can lock and wipe a laptop on a schedule tied to the same offboarding flow. For a 40-person company running 30 SaaS tools without a dedicated IT team, that's a real control, and it's the best argument for Rippling.
Gusto doesn't do any of that. It integrates with other tools, but it doesn't run your identity provider or your laptops. A Gusto company that wants the same control needs a separate identity platform such as Okta or Google Workspace admin plus a device manager, and a manual offboarding checklist that links them. That's workable, but the checklist only works if someone follows it every time.
Payroll is a fraud target either way
Whichever you pick, lock down payroll. Changing an employee's direct deposit account is one of the most common business email compromise scams. An attacker who gets into an employee's email or the payroll portal redirects the next paycheck.
Practical steps:
- ▸Turn on payroll approvals. Gusto includes them on every plan. Require a second person to approve each run.
- ▸Use least-privilege admin roles. Gusto's unlimited custom admin roles are a Premium feature. On Simple and Plus, keep the number of full admins to two.
- ▸Verify bank changes out of band. If an employee "emails" asking to change their deposit account, call them on a known number before approving.
- ▸Require MFA for every admin. Confirm it's enforced, not just available, for anyone who can run payroll.
Which one I'd buy
- ▸Under 15 people, one state, no IT staff: Gusto Simple. $109 a month at 10 people is hard to beat.
- ▸15 to 50 people, multiple states, payroll and benefits are the job: Gusto Plus. Predictable pricing, solid tax handling, and you can budget it without a sales call.
- ▸30+ people with a growing SaaS footprint and nobody owning offboarding: get a Rippling quote that includes Identity & Access and Device Management. The extra cost buys you automatic deprovisioning, which is a security control, not just an HR feature.
- ▸VC-backed startup: apply for Rippling's six-month program before you sign with anyone. Free for six months changes the math, but price month seven before you commit.
For broader context, our Gusto vs ADP vs Rippling comparison adds the enterprise incumbent to the mix, and BambooHR vs Rippling covers teams that want HR first and payroll second.