Gusto vs ADP: payroll prices, contracts and which fits your business

Gusto vs ADP at a glance

Gusto entry price

$49 + $6/personSimple, published, checked Oct 16, 2026

ADP RUN entry price

Quote onlyEstimate: about $79 + $4/employee (Tech.co, Jan 2026)

10 employees a month

$109 vs about $119Gusto Simple vs ADP Essential estimate

To leave

Self-serve vs 30 days' noticeGusto cancels online; ADP needs written notice

The two differ most on price transparency and on how you leave. Gusto shows every plan price and lets you cancel from the dashboard. ADP quotes each business, auto-renews by processing cycle and asks for written notice. The full Gusto plan list and add-on fees are on our Gusto pricing breakdown, and the ADP estimates with their sources are on our ADP RUN pricing page.

Side-by-side comparison

Every row below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, terms or help center, checked October 16, 2026, unless it says "estimate." Scores come from our scoring method, which weighs price transparency, tax filing coverage, features, contract and exit terms, support access and documented complaints.

What Gusto and ADP cost for 5, 10 and 25 employees

Gusto's numbers are list prices. ADP's are estimates: ADP shows only "Get pricing" buttons for all four RUN packages. The ADP column uses the most cited estimate, about $79 a month plus $4 per employee for Essential, reported by Tech.co (updated January 7, 2026, "according to user reports") and repeated by Eightx (June 2026) and by Gusto's own competitor guide (August 2026). An older Fit Small Business quote (May 2025, more than a year old) showed $49 base plus $2.50 per employee per weekly pay run. The two sources disagree, so treat any ADP figure as a starting point for your own quote.

Three things move these totals:

• More than one state. Gusto Simple covers one state. A remote hire in a second state pushes you to Plus, which nearly doubles the bill at 10 people ($200 vs $109). ADP RUN files in all 50 states, but you must register each state yourself and hand ADP the ID numbers. Gusto will register for you through Middesk (one-time, price varies by state) or Business Compliance at $85 per state per month.
• Faster pay. Gusto Simple charges $15 a month plus $3 per person for next-day direct deposit; Plus includes it. ADP does not publish its fees for this.
• The ADP promo. New RUN clients with 1 to 49 employees who sign and start payroll by October 22, 2026 get three free months, applied as credits on months 4, 5 and 6. It covers standard payroll processing only and you must keep the same bundle and pay frequency. If the credit covered the full estimated $119 bill at 10 employees, year one would be 9 x $119 = $1,071 against Gusto Simple's 12 x $109 = $1,308. Ask ADP in writing what the credit covers before you count on it.

Payroll fees are the small part of the bill. For the taxes on top, see what payroll really costs per employee and run your state through the employee cost calculator.

Choose Gusto if

• You want to see the price before talking to sales. All three plans and most add-ons are on the pricing page.
• You may hire in a new state and do not want to register tax accounts yourself.
• You want to leave without notice periods. Cancellation is self-serve and takes effect immediately.
• You pay a few US contractors. They cost the plan's per-person rate only in months you pay them.
• You can live with chat and callback support during set hours (5am to 5pm PT on weekdays) rather than a phone line you dial.

Choose ADP RUN if

• You want phone and chat support that ADP says runs 24/7, and you value a large provider's scale.
• You expect to add HR support later. RUN steps up from Essential to Enhanced, Complete Payroll and HR+, and HR Pro without changing systems.
• You may want a PEO later. ADP TotalSource is an IRS-certified PEO (on the IRS CPEO list, report date August 7, 2026) and is quote only; see our ADP TotalSource review.
• You want state unemployment and garnishment payment services handled, which ADP names in the Enhanced package.
• You can sign before October 22, 2026 and use the three free months.

Who pays if a tax filing goes wrong

Tax errors are the most common complaint about Gusto and the biggest payroll complaint in our buyer research (for ADP, reaching support comes first), so read the guarantee before you sign.

• Gusto (payroll terms, Sec. 11): if Gusto fails to remit taxes on time, it pays the taxes and reimburses penalties "directly arising from" that failure. Interest is not named. You must have funded payroll and must forward any agency notice at least 30 days before the response date. Errors from data you entered are excluded.
• ADP (RUN terms, Sec. 11.A): reimburses penalties caused by an ADP "error or omission" and interest only if ADP held your tax funds past the due date. It excludes periods before you joined ADP and late ID numbers. Sec. 11.C caps ADP's yearly liability at "the average charge for one payroll processing"; the text does not make clear whether that cap applies to penalty refunds. Ask for that in writing.

Switching between Gusto and ADP

Neither company publishes a fee for importing your data, and your past payroll records are yours. What transfers: employee records, pay rates, deductions, year-to-date wages and tax totals, and your federal and state account numbers. What does not: your login history, stored I-9s at ADP (access ends on the termination date) and any promo credits you have not used.

Leaving ADP for Gusto

1. Send written notice at least 30 days before your last payroll. Keep proof it was received; several Trustpilot reviewers say ADP kept billing after they canceled.
2. Download payroll registers, tax filings, W-2s and I-9s first. ADP says it "may keep" reports "for a period of time" and does not say how long.
3. Check whether you are inside the promo window. Free months are credits on months 4 to 6, so leaving early forfeits them.
4. Give Gusto the year-to-date totals for every employee so Social Security withholding stops at the 2026 wage base of $184,500 and FUTA stops after the first $7,000.

Leaving Gusto for ADP

1. Cancel after your final payroll, ideally before the 5th of the month. Cancel later or after a payroll run and you pay the full month.
2. Decide who files the year-end forms. If Gusto files your final returns it charges $100 federal, $100 per state and $5 per W-2 or 1099.
3. Have your state ID numbers ready. ADP expects you to supply them.
4. Admins keep read-only access to Gusto forms and reports after canceling, with no end date stated, but download everything anyway.

What buyers complain about

Gusto

• Tax errors where the customer was left with penalties (Trustpilot, October 2 and September 22, 2026).
• Hard to cancel and W-2s or reports held after leaving (September 17 and June 3, 2026).
• Multi-state mistakes after employees moved (June 10 and October 6, 2026).
• Payroll blocked for a funding problem with the fee not waived (September 27, 2026).

Source: Gusto on Trustpilot, 1.9 from 2,535 reviews, against 4.6 from 13,492 on G2 (both seen October 16, 2026).

ADP

• No reachable support (Trustpilot, October 7 and September 23, 2026).
• Billing after cancellation (September 30, 26 and 23, 2026).
• A price rise of more than 10% despite a promised freeze (October 1, 2026).
• A misfiled Form 941 that the reviewer says cost $31,000 from an ERC refund (October 5, 2026).

Source: ADP on Trustpilot, 1.2 from 3,126 reviews covering all ADP products, against 4.7 from 6,579 on G2 for RUN (both seen October 16, 2026). Trustpilot reviews skew toward billing and support disputes on both.

Other options to compare

If neither fits, OnPay charges $49 plus $6 per worker with multi-state included (see OnPay vs Gusto), and Paychex is the other big quote-based provider (see ADP vs Paychex and Gusto vs Paychex). For HR and IT in one system, read Rippling vs ADP. Our ranked list is the best payroll software for small businesses, and the Gusto alternatives and ADP alternatives pages cover why people leave each one.