Hiring your first employee means payroll taxes, filings and deadlines you cannot miss. These four platforms all promise to handle that — but they price it in four completely different ways. This guide compares what each one actually publishes, and what the total looks like once you multiply it by your headcount.
Simple plan. Every plan's price is published, and there is no long-term contract.
Core plan for teams over 25. Teams of 25 or fewer pay a flat rate from $250/mo. Payroll is a paid add-on.
Platform entry price, plus a monthly base fee. Payroll and other modules are added per person — full pricing is quote-based.
Flex Essentials — the only Paychex plan with a published price, aimed at businesses with up to 19 employees. Higher plans are quote-only.
| Gusto | BambooHR | Rippling | Paychex | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | First hires and small teams that want payroll handled end to end | Teams building proper HR records, onboarding and time-off processes | Growing companies that want HR, IT and finance on one platform | Small businesses that prefer an established provider and guided setup |
| Core job | Payroll first, with benefits and HR attached | HR system first, with US payroll as an add-on | Workforce platform: HR + payroll + IT + spend modules | Payroll and HR services, up to PEO |
| Published pricing | All plans published: base fee + per-person fee | HR plans published; payroll / benefits / time add-on prices not published | Entry price published ($8/person/mo + base fee); modules are quote-based | Only Flex Essentials published; all higher plans quote-only |
| Entry price | Simple $49/mo + $6/person | Core $10/person/mo (26+ staff) or flat from $250/mo (25 or fewer) | Platform from $8/person/mo + $35–$40/mo base fee | Flex Essentials $39/mo + $5/person |
| Payroll included? | Yes — payroll and tax filing are the product | No — US payroll is a separate paid add-on | No — payroll is a separate module (published at $8/person/mo billed annually, $10 billed monthly) | Yes on Flex plans — payroll is the product |
| Free plan / trial | No free plan; demos and promotions vary | No free plan; free trial offered | No free plan or free trial; sales demo | No free plan |
| Contract shape | Month to month, no long-term contract | Monthly terms available; confirm add-on terms in the quote | Quote-based; billing period changes module prices (see detail section) | Quote-based above Essentials; confirm setup and exit terms in writing |
| Trade-off to know | Multi-state payroll requires Plus, doubling the per-person fee from $6 to $12 | The headline $10/person does not include payroll — and small teams pay a flat rate that works out much higher per person | "From $8" buys the platform alone; every working module adds a per-person fee | Once you pass 19 employees or need a higher plan, there is no published price to budget against |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. "Not published" means the vendor did not list a price on its public pages when we checked — it does not mean the feature is free. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what is included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Per-person pricing hides the total. The table below is simple arithmetic on the published prices above — base fee plus per-person fee times headcount. Add-ons, discounts and taxes are not included, and quote-only products cannot be totaled this way, which is itself part of the comparison.
| Setup priced | 5 employees | 10 employees | 25 employees | 50 employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gusto Simple ($49 + $6/person) | $79/mo · $948/yr | $109/mo · $1,308/yr | $199/mo · $2,388/yr | $349/mo · $4,188/yr |
| Gusto Plus ($80 + $12/person) | $140/mo · $1,680/yr | $200/mo · $2,400/yr | $380/mo · $4,560/yr | $680/mo · $8,160/yr |
| Paychex Flex Essentials ($39 + $5/person) | $64/mo · $768/yr | $89/mo · $1,068/yr | Not offered on published pricing (plan is aimed at up to 19 employees) — quote required | |
| BambooHR Core — HR only, payroll extra | $250/mo flat · $3,000/yr (flat rate for 25 or fewer; at 10 people that is $25/person) | $250/mo flat · $3,000/yr | $500/mo · $6,000/yr ($10/person) | |
| Rippling HR + US payroll only ($40 base + $8 platform + $8 payroll per person, billed annually) | $120/mo · $1,440/yr | $200/mo · $2,400/yr | $440/mo · $5,280/yr | $840/mo · $10,080/yr |
Rippling notes: the base fee appears as $35 on some vendor pages and $40 on others; this table uses $40, so subtract $5/mo if your quote uses $35. Benefits administration and time tracking are not in this row — Rippling's own guidance puts an HR + payroll + benefits + time setup in a $15–$25 per-person-per-month range, before the base fee. BambooHR notes: payroll, benefits administration and time tracking are add-ons with unpublished prices, so a payroll-included total cannot be calculated from public information. Gusto Premium ($180 + $22/person) is omitted from this table for space; at 10 employees it totals $400/mo.
Gusto is the most straightforward of the four to budget for, because every plan is published in the same shape: a monthly base fee plus a per-person fee, with unlimited payroll runs and automatic tax filing included. Simple ($49/mo + $6/person) covers single-state payroll, employee self-service and basic hiring tools. Plus ($80/mo + $12/person) adds multi-state payroll, time tracking, PTO and next-day direct deposit. Premium ($180/mo + $22/person) adds dedicated support and deeper HR tools. A contractor-only plan ($35/mo + $6/contractor) exists for businesses with no W-2 employees yet. Two cost drivers deserve attention: paying people in more than one state forces you onto Plus, which doubles the per-person fee, and extras such as time tracking on Simple or keeping your own health-insurance broker cost extra per person. Gusto also raised the Simple base fee in 2026, so re-check the price at renewal rather than assuming it is fixed.
BambooHR starts from the opposite end: it is an HR information system — employee records, reporting, approval workflows, hiring and onboarding, time off — and US payroll is an add-on module on top, alongside benefits administration and time & attendance. The HR plans are published: Core ($10/person/mo), Pro ($17/person/mo) and Elite ($25/person/mo) for companies with more than 25 employees, adding performance management on Pro and compensation tools on Elite. The catch for small teams is the billing floor: companies with 25 or fewer employees pay a flat monthly rate instead — from $250/mo for Core, $425 for Pro and $650 for Elite — so a 10-person team on Core pays $250/mo, an effective $25 per person, before payroll is added at all. BambooHR publishes a 15% bundle discount for combining payroll and benefits administration, but it does not publish the add-on prices the discount applies to, so the payroll-included total can only come from a quote.
Rippling's idea is unification: one employee record drives HR, payroll, benefits, device and app provisioning, and spend tools, so onboarding a hire can trigger their payroll setup, laptop and software accounts together. Pricing is modular to match. The platform itself starts at $8/person/mo plus a monthly base fee (listed as $35–$40 depending on the page), and each module adds its own per-person fee. US payroll is one of the few modules with a published price: $8/person/mo billed annually or $10 billed monthly — so billing period alone changes your payroll cost by 25%. Rippling's own guidance puts a combined HR, payroll, benefits and time-tracking setup at roughly $15–$25 per person per month, and adding IT or global tools pushes it higher. There is no published full price list and no free trial; the real number comes from an itemized quote, so ask for the per-module breakdown in writing and check which headcount it bills for.
Paychex is the long-established name in US payroll, selling the Paychex Flex platform from small-business payroll up through HR services and a PEO option. Its pricing transparency sits between Gusto and the quote-only vendors: exactly one plan is priced in public. Flex Essentials ($39/mo + $5/person) covers core payroll for very small businesses and is presented for employers with up to 19 employees — at 10 employees that is $89/mo, the lowest published total in this comparison. Everything above it — Flex Select, Pro, Enterprise and the PEO — is custom-quoted, and comparison sources note that items such as tax administration and year-end W-2 / 1099 forms may be priced separately on Essentials. That makes the written quote the whole game with Paychex: get the per-person fee, the base fee, setup charges and what happens to your payroll history if you leave, all itemized before you sign.
Payroll you must run this month → Gusto or Paychex. An HR system to grow into, with payroll attached → BambooHR. HR tied to laptops, apps and spend → Rippling. Comparing a payroll price against an HR-system price is the most common mistake in this category.
Use the size table above with the number of people you will pay in six months, not today. Watch the structural traps: BambooHR's flat rate under 26 staff, Gusto's per-person fee doubling for multi-state teams, Rippling's annual-vs-monthly module gap.
List what you will actually switch on — payroll, benefits administration, time tracking, multi-state filing — and get every line priced. For BambooHR and Rippling that total exists only in a quote; for Paychex it exists only above Essentials. No itemized quote, no comparison.
Ask four questions in writing: Is there a minimum contract term? What are the setup fees? What does cancellation cost? Can you export your complete payroll history if you leave? Gusto publishes month-to-month terms; for the other three, the answer lives in your contract, not on the pricing page.
On published prices checked in November 2026, per-person fees run from $5/mo (Paychex Flex Essentials) and $6/mo (Gusto Simple) up to $22/mo (Gusto Premium) — but the per-person fee is only half the structure. Every product here also charges a base fee or a flat minimum, and BambooHR's and Rippling's headline per-person prices do not include payroll at all. The size table on this page totals the published structures at 5, 10, 25 and 50 employees so you can see the real monthly figure.
Gusto's published plans are payroll plans: unlimited payroll runs and federal, state and local tax filing are included in the base-plus-per-person price. BambooHR's published price is the HR system only, with payroll sold as an add-on; Rippling sells payroll as a separate module. That is why a simple "per employee" comparison across the four is misleading without reading what the fee buys.
Because the vendors do not publish those numbers. BambooHR does not publish its payroll, benefits or time-tracking add-on prices, and Rippling prices most modules by quote — its pricing page itself is a quote form. Any site showing you an exact total for either is estimating. This guide only totals what can be calculated from published prices and labels the rest as quote-only.
Start with the payroll-first products (Gusto Simple or Paychex Flex Essentials), because your immediate legal obligations are payroll taxes and filings, not performance management. At one employee, the published totals are $55/mo on Gusto Simple ($49 + $6) and $44/mo on Paychex Essentials ($39 + $5) — before any add-ons. Move to an HR platform when headcount, multiple states or onboarding volume makes the record-keeping itself the problem.
These plans are built around US payroll taxes and filings. Rippling and BambooHR sell separate international / employer-of-record services at very different prices, and none of the four replaces a payroll system designed for another country's tax and social-insurance rules. If your employees are not on US payroll, treat this comparison as background only and look at tools built for your jurisdiction.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from hands-on testing. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a flat rate makes very small teams pay a high per-person price — it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown next to it so you can check it yourself. Prices were checked in November 2026 and change often in this category; confirm the current figures on the vendor's site before you sign.