Gusto vs Workday comparison

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Gusto

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Workday and Gusto are competing in HR and payroll solutions. Gusto's user-friendly design is preferred for smaller organizations, while Workday's integration capabilities favor larger enterprises.

Features: Workday offers robust analytics, extensive integration options, and advanced reporting tools. Gusto provides payroll management, benefits administration, and a seamless interface tailored for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Gusto is known for straightforward implementation and responsive customer service, easing onboarding for smaller organizations. Workday, with its complex features, requires detailed deployment, benefiting those needing custom configurations.

Pricing and ROI: Gusto attracts small businesses with lower initial costs and transparent pricing, offering quick ROI via affordable monthly fees. Workday's tiered pricing model and higher upfront costs align with its comprehensive capabilities, yielding potential higher ROI for companies with complex needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Gusto vs. Workday Report (Updated: March 2026).

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Gusto vs. Workday

March 2026

Helped 884,873 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Gusto

Ranking in Benefits Administration

10th

Ranking in Talent Management

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Workday

Ranking in Benefits Administration

1st

Ranking in Talent Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud HCM (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of Gusto is 1.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 12.2%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Benefits Administration Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Workday	12.2%
Gusto	1.8%
Other	86.0%

Benefits Administration

Featured Reviews

Phil Strazzulla

Founder at SelectSoftware Reviews

Provides time-saving solutions for small business payrolls

I would say, relative to another payroll solution, running payroll with Gusto probably costs half the price and saves us 5 to 10 hours a month. I would say Gusto is a really good payroll solution for small businesses. Running payroll with Gusto costs half the price and saves us 5 to 10 hours a month. My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. I was not offered a gift card or incentive for this review. I rated Gusto 9 out of 10 because of some customer support issues that kept it from being a 10.

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Eslam Abo Elnaga

Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo

Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support

There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I like the payroll part. We also use documents and forms whenever we hire, such as a new hire form for each state, and we like that as well."

"Gusto is a really good payroll solution for small businesses."

"I appreciated the templates that they offered for new hires and onboarding."

"The user interface is good and very easy to use."

"Workday is a holistic HR solution."

"I would say that we have definitely seen a return on investment."

"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."

"The solution is extremely stable."

"It's intuitive, a very usable tool and it's easy to find the data you're looking for."

"The most helpful Workday features for our HR processes were in HCM, particularly in areas like talent, compensation, benefits, and learning."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the usability, learning, and compliance tools."

More Workday pros

Cons

"My experience with Gusto's customer support sometimes shows they're not responsive, and they have definitely made mistakes in the past."

"Their enrollment e-signature, enrollment forms, and other documents need a lot of work. Once we fill in the information, we cannot go back and change any of that. It's a time-taking process. If there is any mistake in the document and if we need to go and change a specific field in the form, it's not possible. We have to redo the entire form."

"In the beginning, their support was top-notch. And then around the beginning of 2022, and end of 2021, their support tanked. We used to get responses in the beginning within one to two business days, and towards the end, we were getting responses in one to two business weeks."

"It is very unique as compared to other tools in terms of the employee master data and how it is organized. That's why sometimes the information needs to sit in two different systems because, in Workday, it is organized differently. This issue is not related to benefits. It is more or so related to how you categorize employees. I don't think this is a problem that could be solved. Workday is aware of this. It is one of those kinds of situations that you just got to live with."

"We would like to see improvement in the mobile app variant of this solution. The time sheet entry and approval, and the geo-tagging features all need to have their functionality updated, in order to be comparable with other products on the market."

"There could be a web-based application for making payments to the employees."

"I'm not sure they have added this feature yet, but there should be a cellphone version, so we do not need to do it on a laptop. I'd like to log in on a cellphone and have the same features. I'm not sure if that is already available or if it's on the roadmap, but that would be a great feature."

"Workday does have a community site where people can go on and off for suggestions. They call them Brainstorms, and you can vote them up. That is something that they do well, but oftentimes, they seem to be racing to deliver something based on what a competitor is delivering. For example, if they hear SAP has this new functionality and learning that's going to be coming out, they prioritize there, which makes sense, but unfortunately, some of these Brainstorms may get neglected where the product might not be improved as quickly or as needed for the customers. You might be waiting for a year or two to get a feature that you'd like released. They should pay more attention to customer feedback and ensure that customer feedback is an essential part of their product roadmap."

"They don't offer any backend database access. This is one limitation that I found in this product. Workday hasn't opened up about what kind of database they are into, which can make it easy for the technical team to emulate issues. It would be good if they can offer backend access to the technical team. It would be helpful if they can also provide a Troubleshooting Guide that we can use to troubleshoot issues. When we have an issue, there are very limited resources to refer to."

"If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive."

"The solution has to work a lot on financial integrations, material management and CRM modules."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."

"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."

"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."

"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."

"It is on a yearly basis."

"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."

"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."

"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Benefits Administration solutions are best for your needs.

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884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Gusto?

I wish Gusto's customer support was better for improvements. My experience with Gusto's customer support sometimes shows they're not responsive, and they have definitely made mistakes in the past.

What advice do you have for others considering Gusto?

What is your primary use case for Gusto?

Our main use case for Gusto is for payroll, and we pay our US employees through it. Gusto helps with our payroll process because we use it for tax filings and benefits.

What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?

Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...

What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?

If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...

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Product Reports

Download Gusto product report

Benefits Administration

March 2026

Download Workday product report

February 2026

Also Known As

ZenPayroll

No data available

Overview

Gusto provides payroll, benefits and HR to modern companies, by handling payments to employees and contractors and also electronically handling the paperwork necessary to help companies comply with tax, labor, and immigration laws.

Gusto

The Workday Platform is an AI-powered platform that unifies HR, financial, and operational data, enabling seamless planning, execution, and analysis. It improves decision-making, streamlines cross-team processes, and leverages Workday Illuminate™ for advanced AI insights from vast HR and finance datasets. Workday empowers organizations of all sizes to innovate and optimize performance.

Sample Customers

Farmgirl Flowers, Bevel, Pooch Pals, ALL MAVEN

AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!