Gusto Vs BambooHR – Which Software To Choose In 2025?

Are you having a hard time choosing between Gusto and BambooHR for your business? Do you feel that both of them offer the same features under different labels? If yes, then this guide is for you.

While both these human resources (HR) software offer similar solutions, there are some considerable differences in their offerings that you should be aware of.

In this Gusto Vs BambooHR guide, we’ll compare their core features in detail so that you can make a better decision for your software purchase.

Gusto Vs BambooHR: At A Glance

Features  Gusto  BambooHR 
Hiring And Onboarding  Integrates with external applicant tracking systems like ApplicantPro and BreezyHR  In-built applicant tracking and e-signatures 
Payroll  Global payroll and automated tax filing  Multi-rate payroll and automated tax filing 
Benefits Administration  Health, vision, and dental insurance administration  Carrier connections for seamless data transfer 
Reporting  Helps identify business tax credits  Reporting tools extensively integrated into other features 
Performance Management  Self and manager assessments  Peer reviews and detailed assessments 

What Is Gusto?

Gusto HR is a unified HR platform that’s aimed at automating and streamlining critical functions, such as payroll, benefits administration, and onboarding. The software is primarily geared toward small to medium-sized businesses and can serve as the foundation of their HR department. Gusto is commonly used in industries such as trucking, healthcare, and construction.

Unique Features Of Gusto

  • Unlimited Payrolls: The software allows unlimited payrolls over the month without any additional fees, which can be helpful when paying a diverse workforce
  • Gusto Wallet: A smart mobile app that allows employees to save more money, track every penny of their salaries, and shift time
  • Paycheck Splitter: Allows employees to split their paychecks into multiple accounts
  • Automatic Savings: The platform allows employees to automatically save a portion of their wage, which leads to more fulfillment overtime

Pros And Cons Of Gusto

Pros

  • Employees can easily access important tax documents
  • The pay slip provides a clear salary breakdown
  • Allows employees to edit time entries and make up for missing check-ins

Cons

  • You cannot send invoices with Gusto
  • Customer service could be slow at times for compliance issues

What Is BambooHR?

BambooHR is an all-encompassing HR software that offers solutions for payroll, onboarding, and other essential HR functions. It assists organizations in streamlining intricate HR tasks and freeing up time for HR professionals that they can utilize for more productive outcomes.

The platform is being employed in sectors like construction, education, finance, and healthcare.

Unique Features Of BambooHR

  • Advanced Security: The software utilizes SOC II audit reports and advanced data encryption to ensure safety of an organization’s data
  • eNPS Surveys: Utilizes employee net promoter score (eNPS) and AI to provide valuable and practical insights on employee satisfaction and the organization’s culture
  • Employee Community: A centralized space to communicate all of your important announcements and updates, ensuring everyone’s on the same page
  • Total Rewards: Presents detailed statements highlighting the total compensation and benefits an employee is receiving

Pros And Cons Of BambooHR

Pros

  • Employees can review their remaining time offs
  • Automated task assignment saves a lot of time
  • Customer service is prompt and professional

Cons

  • The ‘Employee Community’ could have more interactive features
  • There’s no option to search help topics with keywords

Gusto Vs BambooHR – Key Features Comparison

Hiring And Onboarding

Gusto supports various integrations for applicant tracking tools, such as ApplicantPro, BreezyHR, and Ashby. These integrations help businesses sync their Gusto accounts with leading hiring platforms, allowing them to simplify their workflows.

Additionally, it allows employers to create detailed job posts, post them publicly, and send personalized offer letters to selected candidates. Employers also get access to customizable onboarding checklists. These checklists can be used to get the necessary information, assign tasks, and include a ‘Must have’ section.

BambooHR comes with a built-in applicant tracking tool that helps companies attract top talent. It offers multiple New Hire Packet Templates to provide new hires with a personalized onboarding experience based on their job role, department, and location.

It also lets employees craft intros that help them blend in with their new team and develop a connection. The system has alerts and built-in messaging tools, allowing stakeholders to communicate updates and changing requirements. Furthermore, Gusto enables employees to effortlessly sign documents with its e-signature option, making it a breeze for new hires.

Winner: BambooHR is the winner as it offers its own applicant tracking tool.

Payroll

Gusto automatically calculates and files local, state, and federal taxes on the company’s behalf, leaving HR with one less thing to worry about.

It also offers global payroll capabilities, allowing businesses to pay their contractors in more than 120 countries. With this feature, companies can be more flexible and hire better resources. With its payroll summary dashboard, managers can review important details, such as tax breakdowns, compensation types, overtime, paid time offs (PTOs), and company costs.

BambooHR offers multi-rate payroll capabilities, allowing companies to fairly compensate employees with multiple jobs. Administrators can create different projects with different pay rates to ensure accurate time tracking and wage calculation.

Its automated tax filing and payroll reports eliminate the need for manual entries and prevent instances of non-compliance. Customers also get assistance from an implementation specialist who guides organizations through every step of software implementation and ensures a smooth transition and setup.

Winner: Gusto wins because of its comprehensive tax filing and global payroll capabilities, allowing businesses to hire worldwide.

Benefits Administration

Gusto offers a range of benefits solutions, including but not limited to health insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, and 401(k) retirement assistance.

It syncs employee’s benefits data with payroll to allow seamless data transfer. This automation reduces the number of manual and repetitive tasks and minimizes errors in payroll. The broker integration enables your current broker to shift to Gusto’s platform. Users can also move their health plans, allowing businesses to manage all their benefits under one roof.

BambooHR offers auto carrier connections, allowing employees to connect with carrier providers directly and have all the data flow automatically. This process eliminates the need for manually transferring and updating data on multiple platforms.

Its Benefits Election Changes report provides a detailed view of all the changes made to an employee’s benefits enrollment plans. It shows plan names, types of changes made, qualifying life events, and effective dates, enabling managers to have a clear picture of each employee’s benefit preferences. The platform also unifies benefits with payroll, which ensures accurate calculations and prevents mistakes..

Winner: BambooHR wins since it offers carrier integrations and detailed benefits reports.

Reporting

Gusto provides managers and administrators with the tools to create clear and presentable reports quickly, allowing them to save time and shift their focus to other areas.

The system helps businesses identify and take advantage of any business tax credit opportunity. It ensures that organizations leverage these credits and lower their overall operating cost. Managers can send anonymous surveys to get employee feedback and make changes accordingly. It also comes with tools to analyze survey trends to help gauge the impact of the changes that have been made.

BambooHR’s reporting analytics are integrated into almost all other features, such as payroll, benefits, and hiring. This allows managers of every department to create relevant, insightful, and data-backed reports on the go.

Not only that, but the platform also offers customized dashboards that enable people in different hierarchies to see only the needed data from a unified report. This means that the same reports can be tailored for employees, managers, executives, and other company stakeholders. These reports also come with e-signature capabilities, making it easy to track who hasn't signed the report yet and speed up the approval process.

Winner: It’s a tie as both software offers comprehensive tools that simplify the reporting process.

Performance Management

Gusto focuses on building a healthy culture that helps develop your workforce and retain the best talent. It allows employees to run self-evaluations, helping them identify areas they are lacking and measure the progress they have made over time.

Manager reviews are helpful as they allow managers to evaluate each employee’s performance and provide guidance on areas for improvement to meet future requirements. It also offers extensive integrations with external performance management tools, such as Empuls, GoalSpan, and Breezy Perform.

BambooHR’s performance appraisal tools are designed to provide a comprehensive assessment. It offers detailed self-evaluations and manager evaluations, allowing accurate and helpful feedback.

Its peer-review feature allows co-workers to give valuable insights as to how it feels working with a fellow employee, what they do best, and what things they could work on. For new hires, BambooHR offers 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day check-ins, allowing HR to keep in contact with new employees and address issues promptly. The assessments are highly customizable to suit different departments in an organization, like sales, operations, and marketing. This helps create personalized questions to get valuable feedback.

Winner: BambooHR wins as it offers more comprehensive features, such as peer reviews, check-ins for new hires, and custom assessments.

Which HR Software Is Better For Your Business?

It all depends on the scale of the solution you want to implement and your company’s specific requirements.

Gusto is ideal for small to medium-sized companies. It offers helpful tools and lots of integrations that enhance productivity and software interoperability.

BambooHR is more suited for medium- to large-sized organizations that want to implement the software at scale while getting access to all the essential HR tools.