Gusto vs Rippling for trade contractors: the payroll price is the smaller decision

Page last updated September 21, 2026 · Vendor documentation and pricing checked September 21, 2026

For a shop with five technicians and one office manager, Gusto's published rates come to $85 to $152 a month depending on the plan. Rippling can't be priced from its website: its own published starting figures put platform plus payroll at about $131 a month before any time tracking, and the real number only arrives with a quote. The bigger difference for a field service business is where technician hours come from. Jobber and Housecall Pro both document a native sync into Gusto. In the vendor documentation reviewed for this page, neither shows a native sync into Rippling, so hours reach Rippling by clocking in there, or through an export or middleware step this research could not confirm.

Who this is for

Owner-operators and office managers at HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping or pest control businesses with roughly 2 to 25 employees who run payroll alongside a field service app such as Jobber or Housecall Pro, and who are deciding between Gusto and Rippling or thinking about moving from one to the other. The cost math below is worked at 1, 5 and 10 technicians, each with one office employee on payroll.

It's less useful if you want a PEO that takes on workers' comp, benefits and HR liability as one bundle, if you're past about 50 employees or run multiple entities and international payroll (where Rippling's breadth matters more than this page's small-shop math), if most of your labor is 1099 subcontractors (start with the W-2 vs 1099 field technicians guide), or if you're already happy inside QuickBooks Payroll, which this page doesn't cover.

Quick verdict

Rows are drawn from vendor help centers and product pages where they exist, and from third-party trackers where they don't. The "Not verified" and "None found" entries mean this research did not confirm the point either way; they are not statements that the feature is absent.

Current pricing

Gusto charges a monthly base fee plus a per-person fee. Every W-2 person on payroll counts, including the office manager, and one tracker reports that anyone paid in a billing month counts even for a single final paycheck, which is worth knowing for seasonal crews. Gusto raised the Simple base fee from $40 to $49 in March 2026; a few trackers still list the old figure.

State tax registration is an add-on priced by state and 401(k) runs through a separate provider, so neither is in the table. Jobber's help center and Gusto's Housecall Pro help article both mention a three-month free offer for new Gusto customers who sign up through those partners (US only); promotions change, so confirm before counting on it.

Rippling doesn't work this way. It sells a required platform, then payroll, time and everything else as separately priced modules, and it publishes only some starting figures.

One more data point, with a caution attached. A third-party summary of Vendr purchase records reports Rippling contracts ranging from about $5,450 to $164,907 a year, with a median near $40,000. Those buyers skew much larger than a six-person shop, so it isn't a benchmark for you, but the smallest observed contract sits well above the $1,572 a year floor calculated below, which is a reminder that real quotes usually bundle more than platform plus payroll.

Worked cost example: 1, 5 and 10 technicians

Assumptions: each scenario is the technician count plus one office employee, so 2, 6 and 11 people on payroll; everyone is W-2 and hourly in a single state; Gusto is billed monthly; Rippling is at its published starting figures on annual billing with the $35 base fee. Excluded: benefits, workers' comp premiums, state registrations, 401(k), implementation fees and your field service subscription (see the FSM total cost calculator for that line).

Formulas: Gusto Simple = $49 + $6 × people; Simple + T&A = $49 + $12 × people; Plus = $80 + $12 × people; Rippling floor = $35 + ($8 + $8) × people. All × 12 for the year. The last row is Gusto Plus minus the Rippling floor, per month.

How to read it. At one technician plus an office employee, Rippling's floor undercuts both Gusto Plus and Simple with the time add-on, and leaves room for a time module. That room closes fast. At 6 people the most a Rippling time-tracking add-on can cost before Rippling passes Gusto Plus is $21 a month, or $3.50 a person. At 11 people it is $1 a month. The floor itself passes Gusto Plus at 12 people on annual billing ($35 + $16 × 12 = $227 against $224), and at 8 people if payroll is billed monthly at $10 a person. Using the $40 base fee instead takes $5 a month off every headroom figure and puts 11 people $4 a month over Gusto Plus.

Gusto has its own plan trap. Simple plus the time add-on is always $31 a month cheaper than Plus, because the base fee gap is fixed. But add next-day direct deposit at the reported rates and the stack costs $154 a month at 6 people against $152 for Plus, so from 6 people up Plus is the cheaper way to get both, and it's the only tier with multi-state payroll. If your crews never cross a state line and you keep time in your field service app, Simple is a legitimate choice, and it is the cheapest full-service line in the table at every size.

Time tracking and job costing for technicians

Gusto. Project Tracking is available on Plus, Premium and the Time & Attendance Plus add-on. You create projects (with optional tasks) for clients or jobs, employees pick a project when they clock in, and Gusto reports the full labor cost from processed payrolls. If you use QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop or Xero, payroll can be grouped by project against your chart of accounts (see the HVAC software with QuickBooks sync comparison for the accounting side). Two documented limits: it doesn't cover contractors, and it doesn't work with pay schedules set up by employee type. Gusto's own materials describe GPS-enabled clock-in with geofencing. A competing time-tracking vendor, Workyard, argues that the geofence is a general radius rather than a precise jobsite boundary and that mileage, drive time and cost-code-level tagging are absent. That is one vendor's claim against another's, so test it on your own routes. Gusto's construction page also lists an integration with Workyard for GPS time tracking.

Rippling. Its Time & Attendance module lets employees log time against different jobs, tasks and projects, offers mobile, web or physical-device clock-in, alerts on overtime and missed breaks, and an optional scheduling add-on. Its payroll article says labor cost can be tracked by project, department or job code, and that approved hours flow into payroll without third-party imports. Rippling's own product page doesn't mention geofencing; one third-party guide lists geofencing and kiosk support, so confirm it if location-verified clock-in matters to you.

What neither does. Both record labor against projects or jobs that are defined inside the payroll system. This research found no documentation of either pulling job records from a field service app, so the project list is something you maintain separately. Job costing in your field service software and job costing in your payroll tool will agree only if someone keeps the labels aligned.

How field time actually reaches payroll

This is the question price pages skip. A technician's hours start in one system and have to end up in another, and the direction of that handoff decides who edits what, where overtime is calculated and what your office does on payroll day. There are two clean architectures, and a third that puts a dedicated field time app in the middle.

The practical consequence: with Gusto you can choose the first architecture today if you're on Jobber or Housecall Pro. With Rippling, the documented native route is the second, which means clocking techs in through Rippling, or accepting an export or middleware step for the first.

Integration status by field service platform

"No documentation found" reflects a limited search of vendor help centers and directories, not an exhaustive check of either marketplace. Rippling's App Shop was not browsed directly. See the platform-specific pages: Jobber vs Housecall Pro, Housecall Pro vs ServiceTitan, Workiz vs FieldPulse, ServiceFusion vs Jobber.

Gotchas that apply even when the sync exists

• Commission and flat-rate technicians don't sync. Jobber's integration excludes salaried, commission and contractor types, and Housecall Pro's requires "paid by the hour." Many HVAC and plumbing shops pay flat-rate or commission, and those technicians' pay must be handled in payroll another way.
• The field service app overwrites payroll. Both vendors state that synced hours replace whatever was entered directly in Gusto for that pay period. Fix time in the field service app, not in payroll, or the next sync undoes your fix.
• Hours travel; job detail doesn't. Jobber's documentation describes timesheet hours and reimbursable expenses reaching Gusto. It doesn't describe job or cost-code data arriving, so job costing stays in the field service app.
• Overtime is still your responsibility. Jobber lets you set weekly, daily, double-time and seventh-consecutive-day rules in the integration and tells you to add any exemptions manually in Gusto. Housecall Pro leaves the regular-versus-overtime split to you. Which employees are non-exempt is a classification question; see the FLSA overtime exemption audit.
• Timing matters. Housecall Pro only syncs into a pay period that is open in Gusto, and edits to a closed pay period don't change anything in Gusto.

Trade-specific checks that price pages skip

Workers' comp. Gusto's help center describes pay-as-you-go workers' comp through NEXT Insurance: premiums are calculated from actual payroll each period rather than paid as a large deposit, plus a $1 per employee monthly Gusto fee capped at $5. Rates depend on the risk class code for the work, and Gusto's help center itself calls out construction as a riskier class, so get a real quote. The subcontractor vs employee cost calculator uses the workers' comp rate as an input. Whether Rippling offers an integrated workers' comp product was not verified; ask for it in the quote.

Crossing state lines. Gusto Simple is single-state, and one payroll guide reports that Gusto won't process multi-state payroll on Simple, so a hire in a second state forces the move to Plus. State registration is an add-on priced by state. If you work in a border metro, price Plus from the start.

1099 subcontractors. Gusto has a Contractor Only plan at $35 a month plus $6 per contractor, and Rippling pays contractors from the same platform. Neither settles whether the person is a contractor at all; that call comes first, and the W-2 vs 1099 guide walks through it.

Prevailing-wage jobs. Neither vendor's own pages reviewed describe generating the WH-347 certified payroll form natively. Third-party certified payroll tools connect to both, and some sellers say outright that Gusto doesn't produce the form. If public work is part of your pipeline, get written confirmation from each vendor and read the certified payroll and WH-347 guide first.

Which one to choose

Choose Gusto if: you run Jobber or Housecall Pro and want approved timesheets to flow into payroll without double entry; you want a price you can compute before talking to sales; you have roughly 2 to 12 people on payroll, where the arithmetic above favors it; you want workers' comp deducted with each payroll; or your crews stay in one state (Simple) or you want time tracking and multi-state bundled (Plus).

Choose Rippling if: you want payroll, HR and time tracking in one native system and are willing to make Rippling the clock your technicians punch into; you expect HR or IT needs beyond payroll (device management, multi-entity, international hires); or an itemized quote for your headcount, including time tracking, comes in under Gusto Plus. Several third-party comparisons put Rippling's sweet spot at around 50 employees and up. That is opinion rather than a measured threshold, but it fits the arithmetic above: the flat base fee weighs most at small headcounts.

Consider neither if: most technicians are paid flat-rate or commission and you want automatic sync, if prevailing-wage reporting is routine, or if you want a PEO. In each case, price a specialist tool alongside these two.

Questions to put in a Rippling quote request

Because Rippling's price only exists as a quote, ask for these in writing so the quote is comparable to Gusto's published plans:

1. The platform base fee, and whether it is per month or per employee.
2. The per-employee price for payroll, on annual and monthly billing.
3. The price of Time & Attendance, including job costing and any scheduling add-on.
4. Contract length, renewal terms and any cap on annual increases.
5. Implementation, data-migration and setup fees.
6. Whether it connects to your field service app (Jobber, Housecall Pro or other), how, and in which direction hours flow.
7. Workers' comp options, multi-state registration costs, and how WH-347 certified payroll data can be exported.

Methodology and sources

Gusto's plan prices come from third-party pricing trackers dated May through August 2026 that agree on $49 plus $6, $80 plus $12 and $180 plus $22; one of them states it checked Gusto's pricing, payroll and multi-state pages on July 25, 2026, and G2's listing shows Simple starting at $49. Gusto's pricing page itself could not be retrieved during research, so confirm figures there before you sign. Gusto add-on prices (time tracking at $6 per person, next-day deposit at $15 plus $3 per person) are as reported by those same trackers. Feature and integration claims come from vendor help centers and product pages: Gusto's support site, Jobber's and Housecall Pro's help centers, and Rippling's product and blog pages. Rippling's pricing comes from its own articles, which conflict with each other, plus third-party reporting, and a Gusto-authored guide that is itself a competitor's account and is treated accordingly. Workyard is a competing time-tracking vendor whose claims about Gusto are attributed and not adopted as fact. Where a point could not be confirmed, this page says so rather than filling it in.

What this page could not verify

• Gusto's current prices directly from gusto.com; figures rest on the third-party trackers above.
• Any Rippling price for Time & Attendance, the correct base fee ($35 or $40), and Rippling's contract term.
• Whether a Rippling connection exists for Jobber, Housecall Pro or the other platforms. Rippling's App Shop was not browsed.
• Whether Gusto's Workiz integration is discontinued.
• Payroll integrations for ServiceTitan, FieldPulse and Service Fusion.
• Whether Rippling offers an integrated workers' comp product.
• How precisely either platform's geofencing tracks a jobsite boundary.
• Native WH-347 generation on either platform, beyond what the vendors' own pages state.

Estimates only, for informational purposes. This is not professional financial, legal, tax or payroll advice. Vendor prices, plan terms and integrations change; confirm every figure and every integration with the vendor in writing before you sign.

Frequently asked questions

What to read next

• W-2 vs 1099 field technicians guide: settle whether a worker is an employee before choosing what payroll platform pays them.
• Certified payroll and WH-347 guide: what public-works reporting needs from your payroll data, and where both platforms fall short.
• FSM total cost calculator: price the field service subscription that sits beside your payroll bill.
• Jobber vs Housecall Pro: the two platforms with documented Gusto syncs, compared on true annual cost.
• Technician billable rate calculator: turn payroll burden into the hourly rate you need to charge.

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