A No-Nonsense Review of Gusto: Features, Pricing, Alternatives, and More

TL;DR

Gusto is a payroll, benefits, and HR platform built for small and mid-sized businesses, priced from $49/month plus $6 per employee. Across Gusto reviews on G2 and Capterra, it holds a consistent 4.6/5. It’s a genuinely easy way to run payroll and handle taxes, but its built-in time tracking isn’t built for crews moving between jobsites. It lacks job-costing depth and geofencing precision. Construction and field service businesses that use Gusto for payroll typically pair it with a dedicated GPS time tracker like Workyard rather than relying on Gusto Time alone.

Gusto handles payroll for more than 500,000 small businesses, and it’s easy to see why: setup takes minutes and payroll runs in a couple of clicks, based on our hands-on testing. But construction businesses have a specific problem Gusto wasn’t built to solve: getting accurate, job-costed hours from a scattered crew into payroll without someone re-typing a timesheet. 

This review breaks down what Gusto does well, where its own time tracking falls short for the field, and how contractors typically close that gap.

According to Workyard’s analysis of 280 contractor discovery calls, 45% of construction businesses are still manually re-entering time data into payroll or accounting software, making double-entry one of the leading causes of job costing errors in the trades. That’s the gap construction expense management tools are built to close, and it’s the pairing this review comes back to throughout.

What is Gusto?

Gusto is a payroll, benefits, and HR platform that launched in 2012 as ZenPayroll in San Francisco. It was founded by Joshua Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim out of the Y Combinator Winter 2012 batch. The company rebranded to Gusto in September 2015 as it expanded from payroll into health benefits and workers’ comp.

Gusto passed $1 billion in annualized revenue in early 2026 and serves more than 500,000 businesses, with a June 2025 employee tender-offer valuation of $9.3 billion. For a construction business comparing payroll providers on stability alone, that’s a company with real staying power.

In April 2026, Gusto acquired Mosey, a multi-state payroll and employment-compliance startup, to help businesses manage tax registration across state lines. As of mid-2026, the fully integrated compliance product hasn’t fully launched. Users describe the roadmap as still “incoming,” so a contractor hiring crews across state borders should treat this as a near-term improvement, not a feature to rely on today.

For construction and field service businesses specifically, Gusto’s core lineup covers payroll, benefits, hiring, HR, and time tracking. As a combined Gusto payroll software and Gusto HR software platform, the payroll, benefits, and HR pieces are built for any small business, not construction specifically. 

The time tracking piece, Time & Attendance Plus, is the one we scrutinize most closely here, since it’s the piece most likely to fall short for a field crew.

Gusto overview

Gusto’s product lineup breaks down into these core categories:

• Payroll: Automated wage calculation, direct deposit, and unlimited payroll runs
• Tax filing: Automatic federal, state, and local tax filing, including W-2s and 1099s
• Benefits administration: Health, dental, vision, 401(k), FSA, HSA, and commuter benefits brokered in-platform
• Hiring and onboarding: Offer letters, e-signed new-hire paperwork, and self-onboarding checklists
• Time and attendance: Gusto Time and Time Kiosk
• Contractor payments: Domestic and international contractor payouts, including a new USDC stablecoin option for international contractors
• Gusto Wallet: Employee portal for spending, saving, and early-wage access, including prepaid debit cards

Sign-up and onboarding

I ran through Gusto’s setup process myself to see it firsthand. It’s 10 steps, starting with telling Gusto who I needed to pay (myself, US employees, contractors, or a mix). Then, I answered a few questions about my team and business so Gusto could recommend a plan.

From there, I added my company address, then my federal tax details: FEIN, company type, legal entity name, and the filing form the IRS assigned me (941 or 944). Gusto was explicit that I should never enter an SSN here instead of an FEIN, since the IRS will reject the filing.

Next, I linked a bank account (instantly through Plaid, or manually with routing and account numbers) then chose a direct deposit speed (next-day, 2-day, or 4-day) and confirmed a pay schedule.

The last two steps were creating my own employee profile and signing Form 8655, which authorizes Gusto to file and pay payroll taxes on my behalf. I noticed this step is specific about why a checking account instead of a savings account is required: savings accounts cap the number of monthly transfers, which would break payroll runs.

Gusto also asked me for supporting documents partway through setup (a photo ID for the company signatory, an IRS CP575 or 147-C letter, or a recent bank statement) and it wouldn’t finalize my account until every employee finished their own onboarding.

The whole process felt fast and straightforward, guided by an onboarding wizard through tax details and employee data. Entering my personal and company data took roughly 15 to 30 minutes. 

Account verification added one to two business days before I could run my first payroll, and per-state tax registration took two to four weeks per state, worth planning around if you’re switching payroll providers mid-quarter.

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The web app experience

When I logged into my test account, tasks, time-off requests, and team milestones all surfaced on the home dashboard at a glance. Every important feature felt organized and easy to find.

I found the UI leans on a simple sidebar-plus-task-card structure rather than dense tables or nested menus. It stayed uncluttered even while managing payroll, benefits, HR, and time tracking in one place. The visual hierarchy put my next required action front and center on the home screen, so I didn’t have to hunt for what needed attention that day.

The UX delivered on Gusto’s core promise: running payroll in just a few clicks. Here’s the flow I walked through: review hours worked (synced automatically since I connected a time tracking integration), approve them, and Gusto calculates and files the taxes.

Gusto also offers an AutoPilot feature that runs payroll automatically before your deadline if your hours don’t change week to week, which suits salaried office staff more than an hourly field crew whose hours shift daily.

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The mobile app experience

Employees get access to pay stubs, tax forms, and benefits information on the go through Gusto’s mobile app. Administrators can run payroll, add new hires, and manage HR tasks from a phone, too.

I noticed the mobile UI trims the web app down to a handful of employee-facing tasks. That makes sense for a phone screen, but it means the mobile app has real limits compared to the full web version, a constraint I’d flag for a back-office admin who needs to approve a payroll run from a truck between jobsites.

On the UX side, I found clocking in and out through the mobile app easy, though I also read user reviews reporting occasional lag and location-tracking hiccups.

Gusto key features

Payroll

Federal, state, and local taxes get calculated and filed automatically through Gusto’s payroll engine, including W-2s and 1099s. It supports salaried, hourly, and mixed-classification teams, multiple pay schedules, and unlimited payroll runs at no extra charge. 

Benefits administration

Gusto brokers health, dental, vision, 401(k), FSA, HSA, and commuter benefits directly in-platform, with health insurance available in all 50 states through more than 30 carriers. For businesses that want Gusto HR services bundled with payroll rather than bought separately, premiums and contributions sync automatically with payroll, which removes a manual reconciliation step that many small HR teams handle by hand elsewhere.

Hiring and onboarding

Gusto lets you send offer letters, collect e-signed new-hire paperwork (W-4, I-9), and build custom onboarding checklists. New hires can self-onboard by entering their own personal details, which keeps sensitive data like an SSN out of email threads. Adding custom tasks to onboarding checklists is a Plus and Premium feature.

Time & Attendance Plus

Time & Attendance Plus is Gusto’s native time tracking module. It covers GPS-tagged web and mobile clock-in, Time Kiosk (a shared tablet-based clock-in station), scheduling, and project- and hour-level tracking that syncs directly to payroll.

Gusto advertises project tracking and cost reports as part of Time & Attendance Plus, but that’s a general project-hours feature, not cost-code-level job costing. A foreman still can’t tag hours to a specific phase of a job the way a dedicated construction time tracker does. 

Mileage and drive-time capture are absent, too, which matters for crews that bill or reimburse travel between jobsites. So is certified payroll reporting for contractors working public works or prevailing-wage jobs.

Time & Attendance Plus is also an add-on at $6/employee/month on the Simple plan. It’s only included automatically once you’re on Plus or Premium, meaning a small contractor on the entry-level plan pays extra for time tracking whose geofencing is a general radius, not the precise jobsite boundary a dedicated construction tool draws.

Learn how Workyard closes the gap in Gusto’s time tracking

Contractor payments

Gusto pays unlimited domestic contractors via 4-day ACH direct deposit and generates 1099-NECs automatically at year-end. A newer addition lets Gusto pay international contractors via USDC stablecoin, which is relevant if a construction business works with overseas specialty subcontractors or design consultants.

Reporting

Payroll history, tax filings, and time-off balances all show up in Gusto’s reporting. The reports are clear for standard payroll needs but limited when you want a custom report outside Gusto’s built-in templates. 

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Integrating other business apps with Gusto

Gusto integrates with approximately 150 third-party tools spanning accounting (QuickBooks Online, Xero), time tracking (Workyard, ClockShark, Timeero, Connecteam, QuickBooks Time), HR (BambooHR, Namely), and productivity tools (Slack, Asana, Google Workspace).

For construction businesses specifically, the Workyard integration is worth understanding in detail. It’s listed as a native Gusto integration directly in Gusto’s Help Center. Its integration directory labels the Workyard sync “both ways,” meaning data flows in both directions between the two systems. 

Connecteam gets that same two-way label. ClockShark and QuickBooks Time don’t: they’re marked one-way, sending data to Gusto only. 

That two-way, native sync is what lets GPS-verified hours flow from the field into Gusto payroll automatically, with no CSV file to download, format, and re-upload by hand.

Running your payroll shouldn’t take you more than, you know, a couple minutes because you just export, and then it’s in Gusto.

Workyard’s own buying-barriers data identifies payroll integration uncertainty as a named root cause of stalled software deals. Prospects across multiple payroll platforms, Gusto included, have walked away specifically because a native integration couldn’t be demonstrated and only a manual CSV export was offered. 

For a Gusto customer evaluating time-tracking add-ons, that’s the question worth asking directly: does the hours data sync automatically, or does someone still have to touch a spreadsheet?

See our full Gusto integrations comparison for a side-by-side of how Workyard, ClockShark, and Connecteam each connect to Gusto.

More construction companies choose Workyard for their Gusto integration needs

See the integration

Gusto might be a good fit for you if…

• You run single- or few-state payroll and don’t need heavy multi-state complexity
• You want health, dental, vision, and retirement benefits brokered in the same platform you run payroll from
• Your team is office-based or lightly distributed, not scattered across multiple jobsites daily
• You don’t need construction-specific job costing tied to your time data
• You’re already comfortable with Gusto’s $49+/month starting price and don’t need a free trial to test it first

You might not want to use Gusto’s native time tracking if…

Time & Attendance Plus isn’t the right time clock for every crew, even if Gusto’s payroll, benefits, and HR engine works fine for the business. These are the specific gaps that matter for a field crew:

• You need geofencing precision built around an actual jobsite boundary, not just a general location tag
• Your crew drives between jobsites, and you need mileage or drive-time captured automatically
• You price and bill by cost code and need hours tagged to a specific job phase, not just a pay period
• You’re on the Simple plan and don’t want to pay a $6/employee/month add-on for time tracking that still won’t solve the geofencing or job costing gaps above

What we really would like to just see is how can we integrate better with ADP information.

That contractor’s frustration wasn’t about Gusto specifically. It’s the same “systems don’t talk to each other” pain that shows up across payroll platforms when time data and payroll data live in separate tools with no clean bridge between them. A related concern comes up just as often from contractors who don’t want to migrate payroll systems at all. 

An asphalt and concrete paving contractor, mid-market (51-200 employees), said:

I’m not interested in running our payroll… I’m more interested in finding something that will track time, and then I just populate a timesheet in QuickBooks, and we can run the payroll through QuickBooks.

That’s the same logic that applies to Gusto. Most contractors don’t want to replace their payroll system to fix a time-tracking gap. They want a time tracker that plugs into the payroll system they already trust.

Gusto cost/pricing

Gusto pricing breaks down into four tiers plus a time-tracking add-on:

Plan	Price	What’s included
Contractor Only	$35/month + $6/contractor/month	Contractor payments only; billed only in months a contractor is paid
Simple	$49/month + $6/employee/month	Single-state payroll; hiring in a second state forces an upgrade to Plus
Plus	$80/month + $12/employee/month	Multi-state payroll, next-day direct deposit, Time & Attendance Plus included, scheduling, PTO management
Premium	$180/month + $22/employee/month	Dedicated Customer Success Manager, certified HR expert access, compliance alerts, priority support

Time & Attendance Plus costs an additional $6/employee/month on the Simple plan. It’s included automatically on Plus and Premium. Gusto raised Simple plan pricing from $40 to $49/month in March 2026, a 23% increase, so a contractor budgeting off older pricing data should confirm current numbers directly on gusto.com/pricing.

Gusto does not offer a free trial. This is worth planning around if your Gusto pricing evaluation depends on hands-on testing before you commit.

Gusto reviews

Gusto holds high scores across more than 11,000 G2 reviews (4.6/5) and 4,200+ Capterra reviews (4.6/5). Gusto’s mobile app holds 4.8 stars on the App Store and 4.5 stars on Google Play, based on 45,000 and 18,100 ratings, respectively.

Most searches for Gusto reviews, Gusto payroll reviews, or Gusto HR reviews turn up this same score. Users praise its user-friendliness and easy setup but also remark on missing features and inconsistent customer support, including time tracking described as “lacking.”

Capterra: 4.6/5
G2: 4.6/5

A G2 reviewer summed up the platform’s strength plainly:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“The ease of completing every task. From adding employees, to paying employees, to adding contractors, to paying contractors, to being compliant with worker’s compensation insurance, to issuing W-2s and 1099s. Gusto is just easy.”

Another G2 reviewer put it more simply: 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I love how easy it is to set up, invite new employees, and set up direct deposit. Running payroll takes less than a minute; it’s amazing.”

On the critical side, a Capterra reviewer flagged the gap this review covers in the Key Features section above: 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

“The user interface for employees can be somewhat clunky at times. They have reported long loading periods when attempting to clock in or out, and there are occasional issues with the location tracking.”

Our score (and why we chose it)

We scored Gusto well on ease of use and onboarding speed. It loses points from us on features and functionality specifically because of the time-tracking gap detailed above, a platform built for broad small-business use, not construction’s specific job-costing and geofencing needs. Weighed against its Gusto pricing, that gap matters most for a contractor paying extra for Time & Attendance Plus on the Simple plan.

Gusto alternatives

If Gusto isn’t the right fit, these payroll platforms are worth considering:

• QuickBooks Payroll: Best for QuickBooks users
• ADP Run: Great for growing businesses with more complex payroll needs
• Paychex Flex: Flexible payroll and HR tools
• Rippling: Combines payroll, HR, and IT in one platform

The right payroll software depends on your business size, budget, and HR needs. If you decide Gusto is the best fit, the next step is choosing a time tracking app that integrates seamlessly with it.

Best time tracking apps to pair with Gusto

In our view, the best time tracking app with a Gusto integration for construction and trades businesses is Workyard, ClockShark, or Connecteam, depending on how much construction-specific depth you need. 

If you’re comparing your options, we’ve also published in-depth reviews of ClockShark and Connecteam to help you decide which platform best fits your business.

All three sync with Gusto payroll, but only Workyard is built exclusively for construction and field service crews.

Payroll teams looking for time tracking software that exports cleanly into QuickBooks, ADP, or Gusto should prioritize a direct integration over a CSV workaround. Workyard connects to Gusto with one login, and GPS-verified timesheets export automatically from there, without a spreadsheet step in between.

Also evaluating an estimating or invoicing tool alongside your Gusto payroll setup? See our Joist review for a look at a different corner of the construction software stack.

Final Thoughts

Gusto setup is fast, the dashboard is clean, and running payroll genuinely does take a few clicks once your account is live. For an office-based or lightly-distributed business, that’s a strong, transparently priced package.

That promise doesn’t extend to time tracking for a construction business with a crew moving between jobsites. Gusto’s own Time & Attendance Plus wasn’t built to solve job costing, jobsite geofencing, or mileage capture.

That’s the gap Workyard closes, and Synaptic Solar’s HR Field Manager, put it plainly:

Ever since Workyard has been implemented and we’ve been utilizing it to track job costing, our accounting department has been able to break down all of that information and give us more realistic numbers with regards to what we need to focus on to avoid any additional losses.

Synaptic Solar has saved roughly $5,000/week in payroll costs after replacing an unreliable QuickBooks-based setup.

Pair Gusto with a time tracker built for construction. Payroll teams looking for time tracking software that exports cleanly into QuickBooks, ADP, or Gusto should look for exactly what Workyard does: hours that flow straight into payroll automatically, with no back-office admin reformatting a CSV file by hand every pay period.