Best overall
Gusto
Best for: Small teams wanting simple payroll
9.3/10★★★★★★★★★★
- Automatic tax filings
- Fast self-serve setup
- Published pricing
On Gusto's site
Guides and head-to-heads
Payroll mistakes cost penalties and trust. These guides compare the main options for small U.S. teams: a payroll-first tool, an all-in-one HR and IT platform, or a PEO that becomes your co-employer.
- Best payroll software for small business
- Gusto vs Rippling
- Justworks vs Rippling
- Gusto vs Justworks
- Gusto review · Rippling review
Not tax, legal or accounting advice.
How this page was made: from each provider's official product and pricing pages and its public documentation. We haven't run a formal hands-on test for this page. When we add hands-on notes, we'll label them.
How we score
Our scores are editorial scores out of 10. They're our judgment, weighted across the criteria below, based on each provider's official product pages, pricing and documentation, plus public feedback. They aren't user ratings or lab test results, and commissions don't change them.
- Payroll and tax filing coverage
- Pricing transparency
- HR/benefits breadth
- Setup and ease of use
- Scalability
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