Gusto review

Full-service payroll with built-in HR and time tracking, so a trade owner can run payroll, pay 1099 crews, handle tax filings, and track hours from one account.

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What it costsas of August 2026

Contractor Only: $35/mo basePlus $6 per contractor; for shops with no W-2 employees
Simple: $49/mo basePlus $6 per employee
Plus: $80/mo basePlus $12 per employee; adds multi-state payroll, time tracking
Premium: $180/mo basePlus $22 per employee; adds HR experts, priority support

Every plan is a monthly base fee plus a per-person fee, and Gusto only bills the per-person fee for people you actually paid that month. Gusto runs promos that waive the base fee for the first few months.

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What Gusto does

Pricing & terms

Starts atThe real monthly cost to get in the door, before add-ons.

Contractor Only $35/mo plus $6 each; Simple $49+$6, Plus $80+$12, Premium $180+$22

How pricing worksFlat tiers, per user, or per job. This decides how fast the bill grows as you add people.

Monthly base fee plus a per person fee, billed only for people you actually paid

Free trial or planCan you try it with your own jobs before paying?

No real trial, but setup is free and billing starts when you run your first payroll

ContractMonth-to-month vs a year-plus commitment you can't easily leave.

Month to month, cancel anytime, no annual contract

Fit & support

Ease of useHow hard it is to get a non-technical crew actually using it.

Among the easiest to run; guided setup and payroll in a few clicks

SupportWhat owners say about reaching a human when something breaks.

Phone, chat and email on weekdays; priority help and a named rep cost extra

What it does

Files payroll taxesFiles and pays the payroll taxes for you, which is the whole reason to buy this.

Files and pays your federal, state and local payroll taxes, plus W-2s and 1099s

Direct depositThe crew gets paid to their bank without you cutting checks.

Standard 2 to 4 day deposit; next-day speed costs extra or needs a higher plan

1099 contractorsHandles subs and 1099s, not just W-2 employees.

Contractor Only plan is $35/mo plus $6 per contractor, with 1099s filed for you

Multi-state payrollMatters the moment you take work across a state line.

Simple covers one state only; crew in more states needs Plus at $80 a month

Pulls in hoursTakes crew hours from a time clock so nobody retypes a timesheet.

Built in on Plus and up; Simple adds it for about $6 per person a month

Alternatives to Gusto

Other tools that do the same job for a trade business.

Homebase

Crew scheduling and a mobile time clock that lets a trade owner build the week's shifts, have techs clock in and out from their phones, and turn the hours into timesheets, with a free tier that covers a small shop.

ClockShark

A GPS time clock and crew scheduling app built for construction and field-service crews, so a trade owner can see who clocked in at which job site, what they worked on, and what the labor actually cost per job.

FreshBooks

Cloud accounting built around invoicing and time tracking, so a trade owner can bill customers, log hours, track expenses, and take card payments from one account.

Patriot Payroll

Cheap, no-frills payroll for a small shop: you run payroll in three steps, pay W-2 employees and 1099 subs in the same run, and on the Full Service plan Patriot files and deposits your federal, state and local payroll taxes.

QuickBooks Payroll

Runs payroll for your crew with automatic tax calculation, filing, and direct deposit, and it plugs straight into QuickBooks Online so wages land in your books.

QuickBooks Time

Lets your crew clock in and out from a phone with GPS location and job codes, then sends approved timesheets straight into QuickBooks so hours flow to payroll and invoices without retyping paper time cards.

How we research this

Pricing comes from Gusto's own pricing pages and is dated at the time we checked it. Features are taken from the vendor's documentation, not from a sales call. We are independent and rank on fit alone. See how we review.