How to Connect Gusto to Cursor via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → Gusto, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

Gusto + Cursor

Let your AI read your Gusto payroll and HR data: the company, its locations and admins, employees with their jobs and pay rates, contractors, departments, pay schedules and pay periods, processed payrolls with totals, contractor payments, time off policies and requests, earning types and benefits. Read-only for payroll; it can only create and rename departments. Gusto OAuth sign-in, demo or production.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

GUSTO_CLIENT_ID, GUSTO_CLIENT_SECRET, GUSTO_API_URL

Step 1 — Get credentials

1. Create a free account on the Gusto Developer Portal at https://dev.gusto.com and create an application. A new application starts in the demo environment, which runs against test companies.
2. In the application settings, add the redirect URI https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/api/mcp-oauth/callback (if you host AnythingMCP yourself: <your AnythingMCP URL>/api/mcp-oauth/callback). Demo redirect URIs can be edited in the portal; for a production application, Gusto changes them on request.
3. Copy the application's Client ID and Secret into GUSTO_CLIENT_ID and GUSTO_CLIENT_SECRET.
4. Set GUSTO_API_URL to https://api.gusto-demo.com for a demo application, or to https://api.gusto.com once Gusto has approved your application for production. The keys only work in their own environment.
5. To try it first, create a demo company in the Developer Portal. It comes with sample employees, contractors and payrolls.
6. Install the connector, click Authorize with Provider and sign in to Gusto as a primary or full-access admin. Gusto asks which company to connect: one authorization covers one company, so install the connector again for a second one.
7. Run gusto_get_token_info. It shows the company the other tools work on and what your application may read.

Payroll is read-only: the AI reads payrolls with totals, taxes and deductions per employee, pay schedules, pay periods and contractor payments, but it cannot prepare, calculate, submit or cancel a payroll, pay contractors, add or terminate employees or change pay. The only changes it can make are creating a department (gusto_create_department) and renaming one (gusto_update_department, switched off at install), and it confirms both with you first.

What it reads: the company, its locations and admins, employees with their jobs, pay rates and employment history, contractors, departments, time off policies with balances, time off requests, earning types and company benefits. Payroll lists default to processed regular payrolls of the last six months, with up to one year per request.

Permissions come from Gusto: you do not pick scopes at sign-in. Gusto assigns them to your application, broadly in the demo environment and in production after its review. Pay rates need the compensations:read scope, and benefits with health information need the :phi scopes. A call outside your application's scopes answers 403.

Tokens: access tokens last two hours and are renewed automatically. Gusto replaces the refresh token on every renewal, so do not use the same authorization in another tool at the same time: one of the two would have to sign in again.

Common errors: 401 means the authorization was revoked, so click Authorize with Provider again. 403: your application lacks the scope, or the company is not the one you authorized. 406: the API version the connector sends is outside what your application allows (the Developer Portal shows its minimum version). 429: more than 200 requests in a minute, so wait a minute.

The connector does not run payroll, pay contractors, onboard or terminate people, change pay or benefits, or read tax forms and documents. Gusto Embedded is a different product and is not covered.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Cursor

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Cursor reads MCP servers from ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Add this entry:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "url": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

1. Create an MCP API key in AnythingMCP under MCP Servers → your server → API keys, and paste it in place of YOUR_MCP_API_KEY.
2. Save the file and restart Cursor.
3. Open Cursor → Settings → MCP and check that anythingmcp is listed and connected.
4. Start chatting: the agent can now call the Gusto tools.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Sum up our last processed payroll: gross pay, taxes and net pay per employee."
• "Who is off next week, and which time off requests are still pending?"
• "List our active contractors and what we paid each of them this quarter."
• "How many employees do we have per department, and who joined in the last 90 days?"

FAQ

Does Cursor support custom MCP servers on the free tier? Yes, MCP is available on Hobby, Pro and Business plans.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
• Connect to Claude
• Connect to ChatGPT