100% in your browser — payroll data never uploaded

Split a Gusto paystubs PDF into one file per employee.

When you download paystubs for a whole pay run in Gusto, it hands you one combined PDF with every employee's stub stacked back to back. PDF SmartSplit finds where each employee's stub starts by matching text like "Pay Period" and splits there automatically — entirely in this browser tab.

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How to split a combined Gusto paystub PDF by employee

Gusto's bulk paystub download bundles the whole pay run into a single PDF — there's no built-in option to get each employee's stub as its own file. Here's how to get from that download to individual files you can distribute one at a time.

Download the pay run's paystubs from Gusto

From the Payroll → Run Payroll history or Reports, open a completed pay run and choose to download all paystubs. Gusto generates one combined PDF with every employee's stub in sequence.

Drop it into PDF SmartSplit

It loads into your browser's memory only — nothing is uploaded, so there's no compliance question about where payroll data goes.

Download one zip, one PDF per employee

Gusto prints the "Pay Period" dates once at the top of every stub — match on that and each employee's stub, however many pages it runs, comes out as its own PDF inside one zip.

A note on "Pay Period" as a match: it works well because Gusto prints it once at the top of each employee's stub — but if any single employee's stub runs onto a second page and repeats the header on that page too, "Pay Period" will over-split that stub into extra files. If that happens, switch the match text to "Employee Name" instead, which Gusto prints on the first page of a stub only. Honest limitation: this only works on a paystub PDF with a real, selectable text layer — the kind Gusto generates directly from its download. A version that's been printed and rescanned has no extractable text, so text-match splitting can't find the boundaries there (page-count splitting still works if every stub is exactly the same length). PDF SmartSplit uses pdf.js to read the text and pdf-lib to assemble each employee's pages into their own file, both running as JavaScript in this page.

Split your Gusto paystubs

Free tier: 1 file at a time, up to 30 pages. Text-layer PDFs only (no scanned/OCR yet).

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Drag & drop your combined Gusto paystubs PDF here, or click to choose

Up to 30 pages · stays on this device

Need each paystub named by employee automatically?

Free tier splits and numbers the files for you. Pro (in development) renames each output from the extracted text — e.g. jane-doe_2026-08-15.pdf instead of part-03.pdf — plus multi-file batch processing and unlimited pages. One-time $19, no subscription.

See Free vs Pro →

Your payroll data never leaves your browser

PDF SmartSplit has no upload endpoint, no server that touches your document, and no account to leak. Open your browser's network tab while you split a Gusto paystub batch — you'll see it stay quiet. Processing uses pdf.js and pdf-lib running as JavaScript in this tab; the zip is built in memory and handed straight to your browser's download dialog.