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: July 2025).

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Gusto vs. Workday

July 2025

Helped 865,295 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

11th

Ranking in Talent Management

16th

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

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud HCM (1st), Talent Acquisition (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of Gusto is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 18.4%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Benefits Administration

Featured Reviews

Mimi Evans

Owner/Operator at Fearless Bookkeeping Services LLC

Simple to use solution that offers a lot; gives employees the option to get cash advances

I think it's great that it syncs with QuickBooks Online and any payroll software that syncs with QuickBooks Online is great. My issue with their syncing was that every single account for a deduction went to a liability account, but not a lot of businesses run that way. As of September, they did not have the ability for me to put an employee's deduction for benefits in anything but a liability account; which made it not difficult, but added a manual step to the syncing of the entering of our payroll between Gusto and QuickBooks Online. I would also like for the tech support to be more responsive. Gusto also advertises their health benefits, but they don't do a good job of explaining why it's a better option to go through them. I think there's more communication that could be done on that. I also think that there are some HR benefits that they could be offering to these lower plans, without having to go to the Premium Plan. I think that that's something that they should consider in the future.

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Sarvesh Kumar Jha

Senior Technology Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Easy to use and provides great flexibility and security

Implementing the solution is generally not easy because it depends on our client's landscape. In the last one and a half years, Workday has started a new implementation approach called launch implementation. This approach allows you, as a client organization, to implement Workday in a shorter amount of time, given that you fulfill certain criteria. It depends on the number of subsidiaries and employees you have and their compensation structure. If it's not too complex, Workday provides its clients with this new approach called launch, where they can quickly onboard with the Workday without many complex requirements. The general implementation for Fortune 500 companies is always complex.

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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."

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

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

"In terms of customization, while it may not be fully customizable, you can configure the features based on the foundation that Workday offers. This allows you to take the basic features and tailor them to the specific needs of your company or business. It provides a lot of configuration flexibility."

"It's a fully consolidated system. All the transactions and configuration are co-located in one fully in-memory system, so there is no need to go to different data sources (multiple DBs) to pull data; it’s all in one place."

"It is quite user-friendly."

"We use the platform for tasks, including applying for leaves, communication, and adhering to our organization's policies through efficient goal setting and reviews."

"It's actually a cloud-native solution and based on the community for development. It is a very good open architecture and able to interconnect with other systems. And it is very stable and very fast in terms of response."

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

"Workday is a secure product."

"Workday's best features are planning and finance."

More Workday pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"For time management, it does not have a calendar generator. For example, if you want to have a shift calendar for an entire year, you need to push the entire year's calendar into the system instead of being able to generate it using a time management pattern."

"The solution can be improved by speeding up the load time when pulling up information."

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

"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."

"In a future release we could like to have access to asset, supply and treasury management functionalities."

"They don't have worker payroll in the product. We have to solve our payroll. I hope one day they will be able to have their own localized standard payrolls for all countries."

"It's possible that the way things are integrated could be improved"

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."

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

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

"Workday is an expensive solution."

"You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part."

"It is on a yearly basis."

"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."

"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

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 f...

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...

SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday

Comparisons

Namely vs Gusto

Compared 50% of the time

isolved vs Gusto

Compared 50% of the time

More Gusto Competitors

Compared 29% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 12% of the time

SAP HCM vs Workday

Compared 9% of the time

UKG vs Workday

Compared 7% of the time

PeopleSoft vs Workday

Compared 5% of the time

More Workday Competitors

Product Reports

Download Gusto product report

Benefits Administration

July 2025

Download Workday product report

March 2025

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

Workday is a cloud-based software solution that specializes in developing applications for capital and finance management applications. The system is built to work in global workforces and is adaptable. The global system ensures that users are up to date and can manage internal career-related information, and everyday business problems like timesheets, payrolls, and time off.

“A Pioneer in Software-as-a-Service”

Workday Human Capital Management tool is designed to simplify and streamline your work. It leverages machine learning to adapt capital management to a changing environment.

The Workday model is based on delivering a single system that uses a single source of data and a single security model to deliver a unique user experience. The system is user-friendly and ensures that employees and management can use it from any and all devices. Workday HCM integrates into a central system that includes financial management, payroll, recruiting, learning, and planning. Managers and employees can provide feedback to one another, too.

Workday’s features include:

Flexible framework that lets you organize your staff according to different criteria. You can group employees by function, hierarchy, or department.
Personalized career guidance: Knowledge management and career guidance that can be easily customized for each staff member and also done at scale.
Augmented reporting and analytics: Configure, change, update, and publish reports, scorecards, and dashboards. The system centralizes the transactional and analytical data so you can act on the data from anywhere.
Compensation tools: Compensatio, payroll, and time tracking are automated and simplified.
Workforce planning allows you to uncover and address talent gaps and get visibility of your staff.
Mobile-first ensign approach: Users can access all resources from any device, and they are always in sync.
Machine learning capabilities enable personalized enterprise experiences and faster business processes.

Workday smart platform consists of the following modules:

Human resource management
Business process management
Reporting and analytics
Benefits administration
Compensation management
Talent management
Survey framework
Employee and management self-service

Reviews from Real Users

Many organizations choose Workday because it provides an all-in-one modular solution for human capital and finance management. Our users say they like the ease of use for time-off requests, career and development segments, and overall HR management. The records and reporting capabilities are another popular feature.

"The solution was very good at reconfiguration and customization of their software. It helped us to meet federal regulations," said one user. Another said that the best feature is the optimization of the work day experience with a unified platform that can be applied across different business units. “You will never find a use case that cannot be covered," said a third.

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!