Employer of Record Cost: What You'll Actually Pay

An employer of record (EOR) typically costs $199 to $699 or more per employee per month, on top of the person's salary and statutory employer costs. Remote& publishes a flat $400/employee/month. The fee model — flat monthly rate versus a percentage of payroll — moves that number more than the vendor you pick.

Prices last verified July 17, 2026. Jump to: How much does an EOR cost? · What EOR providers actually charge

Most vendor pages will give you a number. The harder question is which number is current, what it excludes, and what it looks like in the country you're actually hiring in — that's the part this page is built to answer.

How much does an employer of record cost?

Across the providers with published pricing, EOR fees run $199 to $699+ per employee per month, with the most common band for established providers sitting between $400 and $600. That range moves for three reasons: which pricing model the provider uses (flat fee vs. percentage of payroll), which country you're hiring in, and how much of the fee is bundled versus billed as add-ons. Section 2 below breaks down exactly what each named provider charges, dated to the day we checked it.

What drives the price of an EOR?

The headline "starting at" figure on a pricing page rarely survives contact with a real hire. What actually moves an EOR's monthly price:

• Country of employment. Statutory benefits, minimum-wage floors, and mandatory bonuses differ by country, and providers often price higher-complexity markets at a premium over their advertised floor.
• Headcount and volume. Most providers discount per-employee pricing as headcount climbs; a five-person pilot pays closer to the sticker price than a fifty-person rollout.
• Benefits package depth. A bare-minimum statutory package costs less to administer than a competitive private health plan layered on top.
• Industry and role seniority. Providers using percentage-of-payroll pricing charge more in absolute terms for senior, higher-paid hires by design.
• Add-on services. Background checks, equipment provisioning, and premium support are commonly billed separately from the base EOR fee.

EOR pricing models: flat fee vs. percentage of payroll

Flat monthly fee

The most common model among the providers we checked: a fixed dollar amount per employee per month, independent of salary. It's predictable for budgeting and it's what most of the published price points in this guide ($199, $599, $699) describe. The tradeoff is that a flat fee doesn't scale down for a lower-paid role — a $600/month fee is the same whether the employee earns $40,000 or $140,000 a year.

Percentage of payroll

Some providers price EOR services as a percentage of the employee's gross salary, commonly in the 5%–15% range. This scales with compensation, which can work in a buyer's favor for junior, lower-salary roles and against them for senior hires, where the same percentage translates into a much larger monthly fee than a flat-rate competitor would charge.

Hybrid and custom pricing

At higher volume, several providers move buyers off published rate cards entirely and into negotiated, custom pricing — a blend of flat and percentage elements, volume discounts, or an entirely bespoke quote. This is common enough at enterprise headcount that "starting at" pricing should be read as a floor, not a fixed ceiling.

Hidden and additional EOR fees

The base monthly EOR fee is rarely the whole bill. Ask about these five fee categories before you sign an EOR contract — they're what most often surprises buyers after onboarding:

• Onboarding and setup fees — a one-time charge to stand up a new employee's contract and payroll record, sometimes waived, sometimes not.
• Offboarding and termination fees — separate from severance itself, some providers bill an administrative fee to close out an employment relationship.
• FX and currency-conversion markup — paying an employee in local currency can carry a spread on top of the mid-market rate.
• Government compliance and filing fees — country-specific registration or reporting costs that aren't always folded into the headline rate.
• Benefits administration surcharges — private health, pension top-ups, or perks beyond the statutory minimum often cost extra.

None of this makes a provider dishonest — it's a normal part of how service pricing works. It does mean the number on the pricing page is a starting point for a conversation, not a final invoice.

EOR cost by country

The EOR fee is the service layer. Underneath it sits a second, larger cost that vendor pricing pages rarely show: the employer's own statutory burden, set by local law and paid regardless of which EOR you use. Our own country guides publish these figures for the markets we cover. Here's what that employer burden looks like in five — a rough guide to why the same monthly EOR fee lands very differently depending on where the employee actually sits.

• France — employer contributions typically add roughly 26.5%–33.7% on top of gross salary, before accounting for work-accident insurance and other add-on charges. Read the France country guide.
• Germany — employer social contributions typically add roughly 19.3% on top of gross salary. Read the Germany country guide.
• Brazil — employer contributions typically total roughly 29%–33.5% of gross salary, plus an 8% FGTS severance-fund deposit, and the mandatory 13th-month salary adds approximately 8.3% to annual payroll cost on top of that. Read the Brazil country guide.
• India — employer EPF contributions typically add 12% of an employee's basic salary plus dearness allowance, ESI adds roughly 3.25% for eligible employees, and gratuity accrues at approximately 4.81% annually. Read the India country guide.
• Philippines — employer social security contributions typically total roughly 14.5% of gross salary, and the mandatory 13th-month bonus adds approximately 8.3% to annual payroll cost. Read the Philippines country guide.

The pattern holds everywhere: the EOR's fee is a service charge for handling this correctly, not the statutory cost itself. A provider quoting the same flat rate in France and the Philippines is quoting the same service fee over two very different underlying employer-burden numbers. Ask about this directly during a sales conversation, and model it with a cost calculator before you commit to a market.

EOR cost vs. entity and contractor cost

An EOR isn't the only way to put someone to work in a country where you have no local entity, and it's worth weighing against the alternatives on cost alone.

Opening your own legal entity is the highest-cost, highest-control option. One competitor's own published breakdown puts ongoing payroll administration for a self-run entity at roughly $56,000–$65,000 a year, once you account for incorporation, legal setup, and ongoing local compliance staffing. Against that, an equivalent EOR employee runs about $7,188 a year — in the range of $599/month (source). That gap narrows at very high headcount in a single country, where an entity can eventually undercut per-employee EOR fees. But for most companies hiring a handful of people in a new market, the entity route costs more in year one than years of EOR fees combined.

Independent contractors are the lowest-cost option on paper — no EOR fee, no statutory employer burden — but only for work that's genuinely independent. Using a contractor arrangement for what is, in practice, full-time, directed employment carries real misclassification risk: back taxes, penalties, and benefits liabilities that can dwarf whatever the EOR fee would have cost. If you're weighing the two, our contractor management guide covers how to tell genuine contractor work from disguised employment, and how the cost comparison actually plays out.

For most cross-border hires without a local entity, the EOR fee is the cost of doing the classification, payroll, and compliance work correctly — not an avoidable markup. See how Remote& runs this on the global workforce management platform.

What EOR providers actually charge

This table is dated and sourced — not a static number copied from a year-old post. Every figure below comes from the provider's own pricing page, checked on the date shown, not from a third-party listicle.

At-a-glance comparison

Name-collision note: Remote (at remote.com) is a different company from Remote& (this site, at remoteand.com). Same first word, unrelated products.

RemoFirst publishes the lowest EOR starting price we found among providers with broad country coverage, at $199/employee/month. Like every "starting at" figure in this table, treat it as a floor — country and benefits selection will move the real quote.

Remote& publishes $400/employee/month, flat — no percentage-of-payroll model, and the same number regardless of who you talk to. It sits toward the lower-middle of the range we found: higher than RemoFirst's starting price, lower than Deel, Remote.com, and Oyster. It doesn't yet break the figure out by country on this page; use the by-country section above alongside it to estimate a full landed cost.

Deel publishes $599/employee/month for its EOR product, alongside separate published rates for contractor management ($49/month) and Contractor of Record ($325/month) on the same pricing page. It's the most fully first-party-disclosed pricing page among the third-party providers in this set, with no "contact sales" gate on the base tiers.

Remote.com publishes $699/employee/month, at the higher end of the range we found. Its pricing page presents this as a flat "from" figure without a published lower tier.

Oyster publishes "from $699/employee/month" and markets its pricing as carrying "no hidden fees" — a claim worth testing against the hidden-fee categories above during a real quote.

Rippling does not publish an EOR price. Its site quotes custom pricing, gated behind a sales conversation — the only provider in this set that doesn't disclose a number at all.

Every figure above is sourced and dated. Want the total for your actual hire — our $400 flat fee plus the statutory employer costs in the country you're hiring in? Talk to us about the countries on your list.

A note on why we date every citation

While researching this page, we found a public EOR pricing comparison — published by one of the third-party providers in the table above — that lists Deel's EOR price at $499/employee/month. Deel's own pricing page currently shows $599/employee/month, last modified June 18, 2026 — about $100 higher than the cited figure, and the comparison table carrying the $499 number has no "last checked" date attached to it, so there's no way to tell whether it's a typo or simply stale. We can't verify which explanation is correct. What we can do is date every figure on this page and keep it current, which is the whole point of building this comparison the way we did.

How do you compare EOR pricing quotes?

Before you sign an EOR contract, ask each vendor:

• What's included in the base fee, specifically? Payroll, statutory benefits, and compliance filings are standard; private health, equipment, and premium support often aren't.
• Is this flat or percentage-based, and does it change at your salary level? Ask for the number at the actual salary you're hiring at, not a generic example.
• What does onboarding or termination cost beyond the monthly fee? Get this in writing before, not after, you need to offboard someone.
• How is currency conversion handled, and is there a markup? Ask for the spread over mid-market rate, not just "we handle FX."
• What's the country-specific quote, not the global "starting at" number? The headline figure is a floor; the country you're hiring in sets the real price.
• What's the contract length and cancellation policy? Some providers lock in multi-month minimums; others don't.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an employer of record cost?

Published EOR pricing runs from about $199 to $699 or more per employee per month, based on providers' own current pricing pages checked July 17, 2026. Most established providers land between $400 and $600. The real number for a specific hire depends on the pricing model, the country of employment, and which add-ons you need — see the comparison table above for current, sourced figures.

Flat fee or percentage of payroll — which EOR pricing model is better?

Neither is universally "better" — it depends on who you're hiring. A flat monthly fee is more predictable and usually cheaper for higher-paid roles, since the fee doesn't grow with salary. Percentage-of-payroll pricing, typically 5%–15% of gross salary, can work out cheaper for junior or lower-salary hires but costs more in absolute terms as compensation rises.

What's included in the price of an EOR?

Most published EOR fees cover payroll processing, statutory benefits administration, locally compliant employment contracts, and required compliance filings in the country of employment. They typically do not include the employer's own statutory costs (like social security contributions), private benefits beyond the statutory minimum, or one-time onboarding and offboarding charges — ask about those separately.

Are there hidden fees with employer of record services?

Not hidden so much as unbundled. Common charges beyond the base monthly fee include onboarding or setup fees, offboarding or termination fees, FX conversion markup, government filing costs, and benefits add-ons beyond the statutory minimum. None of these are unusual for a services business, but they belong in your total-cost comparison, not just the headline "starting at" number.

Why do EOR prices vary so much by country?

Two separate things move by country: the EOR's own service fee, which some providers adjust for local complexity, and the underlying statutory employer burden — social security, pension contributions, mandatory bonuses — which is set by local law and sits on top of the EOR fee regardless of provider. See the by-country section above for what that statutory burden looks like in five markets.

Is an EOR cheaper than opening a legal entity?

For most companies hiring a small number of people in a new market, yes, at least in year one. One published breakdown puts the ongoing cost of running your own entity at roughly $56,000–$65,000 a year, against about $7,188 a year for an equivalent EOR employee, once incorporation and local compliance staffing are counted (source). That math can flip at very high, single-country headcount, where an entity eventually undercuts per-employee EOR fees.

Is a contractor cheaper than an EOR?

On paper, yes — there's no EOR fee and no statutory employer burden for genuinely independent contractor work. But using a contractor structure for work that functions as full-time, directed employment carries real misclassification risk, and the resulting back taxes and penalties can cost far more than the EOR fee would have. Our contractor management guide covers how to tell the two apart.

Does Remote& publish EOR pricing?

Yes — $400 per employee per month, flat, no percentage-of-payroll pricing. That's the service fee; the country you're hiring in still adds its own statutory employer costs on top (see the by-country section above, or model your own with the cost calculator). Book a demo for a full, country-specific total.