Gusto vs. Rippling: Differences, pros and cons in 2024

Gusto and Rippling are two of the most popular cloud-based, full-service payroll processing companies. Each offers businesses everything they need to automate payroll processing for both employees and contractors, including direct deposit, tax calculations and filings, detailed reports and automatic employee access to tax information and pay stubs through a self-serve portal. 

Gusto offers plans ranging from contractor-only and single-employer to mid-sized business plans. It’s a great option for start-ups to mid-sized U.S.-based businesses looking for a simple, budget-friendly and automated payroll, benefits administration and workforce management solution. With multiple plans at affordable prices, Gusto can scale with your business as it grows. 

Rippling is a more robust solution that offers payroll processing as part of a larger workforce management platform, including HR, IT and finance management. The comprehensive platform could be overwhelming for businesses only interested in payroll processing. It is better suited for more established businesses that need reliable payroll services, customized to global workforce needs and those ready for a larger suite of workforce management products available in a single integrated platform.

Gusto vs. Rippling side-by-side comparison

Small to mid-sized business plans

Winner: Gusto

Gusto

Gusto offers three core plans, including its Simple, Plus and Premium plans. Here is an overview of each: 

• Simple: This plan offers automated payroll processing for a single U.S. state at $40 per month plus $6 per employee. Its features include direct deposit, unlimited payroll runs, payroll reporting, remote team tools, an employee self-serve portal, Gusto-brokered health insurance administration, payroll and time off reports and integrations. 
• Plus: This plan offers multiple-state payroll processing at $89 per month plus $12 per employee. Its features add to the Simple plan features with PTO management and policies, advanced hiring and onboarding tools, time and project tracking, team management tools, performance reviews, expense reimbursements and employee surveys. 
• Premium: You must request a custom quote to access pricing details for this plan. Its features allow you to scale payroll processing and benefits administration for a larger workforce. In addition to the Plus plan features, this plan offers a dedicated success liaison to help scale processes for growing teams, an HR center, compliance alerts, payroll migration and account setup and waived fees. 

Gusto also offers two outlier plans, including one for hiring only contractors at $35 per month plus $6 per contractor. The first six months only cost $6 per contractor with no monthly base fee. It also offers a one-employee plan to pay yourself and manage your own payroll for $40 per month plus $6 for a single user. 

Rippling

Rippling, in contrast, offers Rippling Unity, a four-tiered plan that automates your operations and helps you manage your workforce from hiring to offboarding. You can then integrate other plans into this central platform. Rippling Unity has four tiers with no published pricing details. They include:

• Core: This plan offers a global employee graph and organizational chart, global workforce analytics, workflow and employee life cycle automations, role-based permission management capabilities, automated compliance management tools, vacation- and leave-time management, auto-localization for over 150 countries (i.e., currencies, date formats and holidays) and automated onboarding tools. 
• Pro: This plan offers a workflow studio that allows you to automate any employee event (such as calendar or email notifications and Slack messaging), ten custom workflows, ten reporting or workflow formula fields and ten advanced reports. 
• Unlimited: True to its name, the Unlimited plan provides unlimited automated workflows, unlimited formula fields (for reporting or automations), unlimited advanced reports and the ability to initiate actions with third-party systems using APIs. 
• Enterprise: Use Rippling’s API to build your ideal payroll, HR, finance and IT platform.

You can then add additional plans to Rippling’s core Unity plan. Its add-on plan choices include: 

• Benefits administration.
• Recruiting. 
• Time and attendance. 
• Learning management. 
• Pulse (for gathering and analyzing employee feedback). 
• Global employer of record (EOR) services (for hiring global employees and offering locally-relevant compliance, benefits, payroll and employee experiences). 
• PEO services (for offloading compliance task management, offering Fortune 500 caliber benefits to employees, automating tax deductions and filings and accessing dedicated HR professional guidance).
• IT cloud (for managing employees’ devices, including setting them up, storing, shipping and customizing them).
• Finance cloud (for managing corporate cards for each employee and tracking and reimbursing employee expenses). 

These plans showcase the different use cases for Gusto and Rippling. While Rippling is a great platform for managing all aspects of a large and global workforce, Gusto offers U.S.-based plans for processing payroll and managing HR and benefits administration for small to mid-sized single or multi-state U.S. businesses. 

Payroll processing and tax filing

Winner: Rippling

Both providers offer automated payroll processing and state, federal and local tax deductions and filings. Both also help you manage workflows that impact payroll, such as time off requests, deductions and multiple pay rates — all of which sync to payroll for automated and accurate payroll processing.

Gusto only offers payroll for U.S.-based employees. International payroll processing is limited to international contractors. In its entry-level plan, you can only process payroll for one state, while its higher-tiered plans allow for multi-state payroll processing. 

However, Rippling offers the ability to pay employees across the globe (in over 100 countries) in their own currencies and automates foreign tax compliance management. You can also track and reimburse any employee expense in the payroll process. As such, you do not have to set up local entities in each country in which you operate to manage the relevant workforce and its payroll processing needs.

Benefits administration

Winner: Rippling

Gusto is a direct healthcare broker, meaning you can sync medical, dental, vision, retirement, college savings, life and disability insurance and savings accounts with payroll at no extra cost. Each plan also offers assistance from licensed benefits advisors and compliance support. Employees can opt into their own health plans using a self-service portal. 

By comparison, Rippling offers benefits administration as part of a customized, or modular plan, which costs extra. Still, its add-on benefits administration module is more robust than Gusto’s. While Gusto serves U.S.-based employees, in this respect too, Rippling serves a global workforce. It offers locally-relevant benefits to employees across the globe. It’s also a professional employer organization (PE0), which means you can offload your benefits administration tasks to them. 

Employee self-serve mobile app

Winner: Gusto

Both Gusto and Rippling give employees the option to access and manage their own information using a mobile app. Employees can view pay information, view and edit tax and benefit details, manage PTO requests and manage their employee profile. 

Gusto stands out with its Gusto Wallet mobile app. The Gusto Wallet app offers financial tools, like access to employee pay stubs and W-2s, interest-bearing checking accounts, budgeting tools and up to five savings goals. In addition, employees can be paid through this wallet, earn interest on their savings and withdraw their funds from 37,000 ATMS for free using the accompanying debit card. Gusto Wallet also allows employees to clock in and out of work. 

Rippling’s mobile app allows employees to view their pay stubs, clock in and out of work, request time off and view their W-2s, access coworker contact information and access all company apps from one place. However, it does not offer the personal financial management tools Gusto’s employee mobile app does. 

Gusto vs. Rippling alternatives

Gusto is a smart choice for small businesses and start-ups. It provides a cost-effective, easy-to-use and flexible payroll system with benefits administration, tax support and customizable reporting capabilities. However, if you have a global workforce, or need more robust integrations, Gusto may not be the right fit. While Rippling is tough to beat for an all-in-one workforce management tool, it may be overwhelming for businesses only looking to secure a single payroll processing solution.

Overall, with a large variety of features and a higher price point than some alternatives, Rippling and Gusto may not be suitable for businesses looking for a simple payroll processing solution, such as Quickbooks Payroll, Patriot or OnPay. 

Quickbooks Payroll

While Gusto and Rippling offer solutions for mid-sized and large businesses, Quickbooks Payroll is only designed for small businesses with less than 50 employees. Overall, Quickbooks payroll is more focused on payroll processing, accounting and basic benefits administration without all the complementary workforce management features Gusto and Rippling offer. 

For example, while Gusto and Rippling offer workforce management tools such as employee IT management tools and automated employee onboarding tools, you would have to tap into Quickbooks’ impressive selection of over 750 third-party integrations to piece together such workforce management features. 

However, Quickbooks Payroll offers many accounting and expense management features that Rippling and Gusto do not, such as invoicing, mileage tracking, income tracking and bill management. Another unique feature it offers is the ability to add sales channels, such as e-commerce platforms, to the software. 

As such, while Gusto and Quickbooks are better suited for national or global salaried workforce management, Quickbooks is best for very small online and field-sales and service companies that need the ability to reach out directly to their customers and suppliers using its estimates, invoicing and bill pay features, as well as managing sales teams with mileage and expense tracking tools.

Patriot

Patriot is a basic payroll processing software compared to Gusto and Rippling but it’s also more affordable. While Gusto’s monthly price starts at $40 per month plus $6 per employee, Patriot’s plans start at $17 per month plus $4 per employee. 

However, for this lower price, Patriot is not built for scaling up to manage large workforces through automation and does not offer many of the workforce and payroll automation features Gusto and Rippling offer. For example, you cannot put payroll processing on autopilot like you can with Gusto’s software or automate any employee event as is possible with Rippling. 

If you want simple payroll software for an affordable monthly price, Patriot is likely a better fit against more expensive software options such as Gusto and Rippling. If you want advanced workforce management tools for managing thousands of employees, Gusto or Rippling would likely be a better fit than Patriot.

OnPay

Both Gusto and Rippling offer large tool sets for managing workforces, human resources and benefits administration on a large scale. Their automation tools allow you to run payroll on autopilot across multiple states and the globe, post jobs and automate candidate and employee progress tracking. While large companies often desire these powerful capabilities, they can overwhelm smaller companies, such as farms and small dental practices. 

OnPay offers a balanced mix of payroll, benefits and HR management features that don’t overwhelm small businesses. While you can’t automate payroll for thousands of people using OnPay, you can pay your employees from your phone; enjoy automated federal, state and local tax filings; and run unlimited payroll runs per month. And, for less tech-savvy businesses, Onpay will migrate your data and set up the software for you for a fraction of the price required by Gusto.

In the end, while Rippling and Gusto are best suited for multi-state or global businesses, OnPay is best for single-location businesses needing a straightforward and intuitive platform for managing a small workforce.

Gusto vs. Rippling customer feedback

Rippling earned a 4.9 out of five-star user rating on TrustPilot with over 1,000 reviews. Users love that the platform is comprehensive and that data can be easily synced with payroll. Rippling users praise its accessibility and its ease of navigating and finding information, guidance and help. Users describe Rippling as ‘intuitive,’ ‘easy to use’ and ‘extremely powerful’ even when managing global workforces. 

Most negative Rippling feedback focused on poor customer service experiences and the complex route of obtaining a quote and accessing a product demo. One user from Reddit noted that the platform is too focused on developing and maintaining its technology while “leaving service up to a rather ineffective chatbot.”

Gusto has a 3.5 out of five-star rating on TrustPilot with over 1,900 reviews. Positive reviews state the platform is easy to use, simple and user-friendly. They especially value its automation capabilities and the ability to do many tasks with one click, such as employee onboarding.

Some negative user reviews said Gusto’s benefits administration process is unorganized and ‘clunky.’ As one user from Reddit explained, “it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask for your health insurance broker to limit the selection of available health plans… to health plans that actually exist in your state.” Others noted that customized reporting features were limited and often required too much effort to get relevant data. 

Final verdict 

Who is Gusto best for?

Gusto is a good option for start-ups and small businesses looking for an inexpensive but reliable payroll tool that’s built to scale. It gives you the option to run manual or automated payroll for employees and contractors in all 50 U.S. states.

With tiered pricing and a wide range of useful features, Gusto is a comprehensive yet straightforward and simple-to-use software. Its autopilot payroll processing is beneficial for businesses with consistent payroll that doesn’t fluctuate. Moreover, its automations makes it easy to run payroll quickly, automatically sync PTO and deductions with payroll, run detailed reports, direct deposit employee pay and pay and file federal and state taxes. 

However, with capabilities limited to U.S. companies, it’s not a good fit for companies with global workforces that need payroll processing in multiple currencies and localized benefits management features. 

Who is Rippling best for?

Rippling is a great solution for more established businesses looking to extend payroll processing globally. It offers more advanced HR, IT or finance services than Gusto from the convenience of a single platform. Its Unity platform and add-ons allow employers to manage global workforces with tailored benefits administration, payroll processing and customized work devices, while still managing the big picture of company finances.

Rippling is ideal for companies that need a robust platform with global payroll management features. It can handle multi-currency payroll, localized benefits administration and tax compliance for thousands of worldwide employees. Its modular plans allow you to automate your workforce management from onboarding and employee development to offboarding across the globe. 

With so many features to choose from and a price point to reflect them, Rippling is not a good fit for small companies or start-ups that need an affordable out-of-the-box product for payroll processing.