Gusto vs SurePayroll: which costs less for your team

Gusto vs SurePayroll at a glance

10 employees a month

$109 vs $99 to $109SurePayroll's own page shows a $29 and a $39 base

Year-end forms

None listed vs $50 + $5 eachSurePayroll bills W-2 and 1099 forms yearly

Second state

Plus plan vs $9.99 add-onGusto Simple is single-state

Payroll score

69 vs 56Gusto vs SurePayroll, out of 100

Both sell full-service payroll to very small businesses at posted prices, and the monthly bills land close together. The differences are in the extras: SurePayroll charges for year-end forms, extra states and its accounting link, while Gusto charges more per person once you need a second state. SurePayroll is a Paychex company.

Vendor detail: Gusto's plans and add-on fees and our SurePayroll review.

Side-by-side: plans, fees, guarantee and exit

Prices come from gusto.com/product/pricing and surepayroll.com/pricing, checked October 16, 2026; terms and support details from each company's terms and help pages the same day. Scores follow our scoring method. Gusto earns more for its state registration service, penalty terms and published exit rules; SurePayroll loses points for the conflicting base price and unpublished guarantee terms.

Cost for 5, 10 and 25 employees

Monthly fees are nearly a tie at 10 employees. The year-end form fee is what separates them over a full year:

Once you have staff in a second state, the order flips, because Gusto's Simple plan is single-state and the Plus plan doubles the per-person rate:

Other fees to price in: Gusto's next-day pay on Simple ($15 a month + $3 per person), Business Compliance ($85 per state per month on an annual commitment) and Priority Support ($30 a month + $3 per person); SurePayroll's $4.99 accounting integration and unquantified local tax fees. None of this includes payroll taxes, which our employee cost calculator adds by state. For the wider field, see payroll service costs compared and payroll for teams of one to ten.

Tax penalties and state registration

Gusto publishes its penalty terms: Section 11 of its payroll terms says Gusto remits taxes it failed to pay on time and reimburses "the amount of any penalties directly arising from such failure(s)". It does not name interest, and you must tell Gusto about an agency notice "no less than thirty (30) days prior to any applicable response date". Errors from data you entered and periods while your account is suspended are excluded.

SurePayroll has a page titled "No Penalty Tax Filing Guarantee", but its terms could not be read when we checked, so we cannot say what it covers. Ask for the terms in writing, including whether interest is covered and whether there is a notice deadline.

On new states, Gusto is the only provider in our research that registers state tax accounts for you, either once through Middesk or on an ongoing basis through Business Compliance. SurePayroll lists "State tax ID registration assistance" only on its Household plan and does not say it registers accounts on the Small Business plan, so plan to register with each state yourself. Our 2026 state unemployment rates show what a new account in each state costs you.

Choose Gusto if

• You have, or expect, employees in more than one state and want the provider to register those state accounts.
• You want published penalty terms, cancellation rules and record access after you leave.
• You want weekend chat support, or next-day and same-day pay options.
• You have 25 or more employees, where Gusto Simple is cheaper than SurePayroll ($199 vs $204 or $214 a month).

Choose SurePayroll if

• You employ a nanny or other household worker: the Nanny & Household plan is $39 a month including one employee, with state tax ID registration help.
• You have a small single-state team where the $29 base applies, or a two-state team where the $9.99 add-on beats Gusto Plus.
• You want phone support with weekday hours to 7pm Central.
• You may later want Paychex services, since SurePayroll is a Paychex company.

SurePayroll vs Paychex

SurePayroll belongs to Paychex, but the two are sold very differently. SurePayroll posts prices and lets you cancel online. Paychex Flex publishes no price for any of its current plans (Basic, Foundations, Advanced, Complete); every plan shows "Request Pricing". The $39 a month plus $5 per employee still quoted on review sites belongs to the retired Paychex Flex Essentials plan and is not a current offer.

Paychex's current promotion, "Do Not Pay Until April 2027" (October 12 to 31, 2026), waives payroll fees for up to six months for new clients with 1 to 250 employees on a one-year agreement, and Paychex can recover the free months if you leave early. Setup and other one-time fees still apply.

On our payroll scores, SurePayroll (56/100) ranks well above Paychex Flex (25/100), mainly because Paychex publishes no prices, cancellation terms or guarantee. Paychex makes more sense if you want an assigned payroll specialist and plan to add HR, 401(k) or a PEO later. See Paychex pricing estimates and Gusto vs Paychex.

Switching and canceling

Gusto cancellation is self-serve and takes effect immediately, but you pay the full month if you cancel after the 5th or have already run payroll that month. If Gusto files your final returns, it charges $100 for federal, $100 per state and $5 per W-2 or 1099. Admins keep read-only access to past forms and reports with no end date stated.

SurePayroll cancellation is also self-serve (Company, then Subscription, then Cancel Subscription) "at any time", but it does not say how long you keep access afterwards. Download pay registers, quarterly filings and W-2s before you cancel. If you took the October promo, check your service agreement for what happens to free months if you leave in the first year.

1. Pick a switch date at a quarter end if you can, so one provider files each full quarter.
2. Load year-to-date wages and taxes into the new provider so the $184,500 Social Security wage base and $7,000 FUTA wage base carry over.
3. Agree in writing who files the final Form 941, state wage reports and the year's W-2s.
4. Keep your state unemployment account active and its quarterly reports filed. Missed reports after a switch can raise your rate; one owner reported a jump "from 0.8% to 12.75%" (Hacker News, August 2026).

Documented complaints

Gusto

• Tax filing errors with penalties left to the customer: "their mistakes have cost me thousands of dollars in penalties, interest, and fees" (October 2, 2026); "Gusto policy is to not pay overdue taxes even though Gusto is at fault" (September 22, 2026).
• Hard to cancel, and W-2s and reports withheld after leaving (September 17 and June 3, 2026).
• Multi-state errors after employees moved (June 10 and October 6, 2026).
• Payroll blocked for insufficient funds with the fee not waived (September 27, 2026).

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

SurePayroll

We did not research SurePayroll complaint patterns in this pass, so we do not list any. Its Trustpilot score is 3.6 from 1,851 reviews and its G2 score 4.4 from 533 (seen October 16, 2026). Read recent low-star reviews, especially about year-end form fees and tax notices, before you sign.

Other payroll comparisons

Gusto is also compared in OnPay vs Gusto, Gusto vs Square Payroll and Gusto vs QuickBooks. For household employers, our nanny payroll guide covers the 2026 $3,000 threshold and Schedule H. Every provider is ranked in the best payroll software list.