Gusto vs QuickBooks Payroll vs Rippling: payroll pricing per employee, after two price increases this year

Both of the two transparent options in this comparison raised prices this year, so if you're working from a saved bookmark or an old blog post, the numbers are wrong — check the current pages before you budget. Gusto's base pricing went up in March 2026; QuickBooks Payroll followed with its own increase in May.

Gusto's Simple plan is now $49/month plus $6 per person for full-service payroll — but "Simple" is single-state only. Hire someone in a second state and you're pushed to Plus, $80/month plus $12/person, which is a bigger jump than the name "Plus" implies. QuickBooks Payroll's Core tier is $50/month plus $6.50/employee after its own increase; Premium ($88 + $15) and Elite ($134 + $19) layer on HR tooling and, at the top tier, tax-penalty protection. Multi-state filing costs extra even on Core, and QuickBooks' contractor-payment and HR features are noticeably thinner than Gusto's at a comparable tier.

Rippling doesn't play by the same rules at all — there's no clean per-employee number to quote, because its pricing is modular: a base platform fee plus add-ons for whichever HR, IT, and finance modules you actually turn on. Both Gusto and QuickBooks land in a $50–125/month base range before per-employee costs, but Rippling's add-on structure can push total spend 20–35% higher than either once you've enabled the modules a growing company typically wants.

| | Base + per-employee | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Gusto Simple | $49 + $6/employee | single-state only |
| QuickBooks Core | $50 + $6.50/employee | multi-state costs extra |
| Rippling | modular, no flat number | add-ons compound quickly |

If you're a single-state small business and want the most transparent, predictable line item, Gusto or QuickBooks are both easy to budget against — pick whichever accounting software you already use, since the payroll tool that's native to your books saves real reconciliation time. If you're hiring across multiple states from day one, price out the *upgraded* tier of each, not the entry price, because that's the plan you'll actually need. Rippling earns its place specifically for companies that want HR, IT device management, and finance tooling under one login and are prepared for a bill that grows with every module they switch on.