Aleksandar Stevanovic spent 10 years honing his craft as a freelance content writer. He has a degree in Economics, and extensive experience in software, crypto,…
Sofia Rebuck is an Editor at Techopedia with over five years experience researching and writing about tech and software products, working across the North American…
Choosing the best employer of record (EOR) service is essential for businesses looking to simplify the complexities of international compliance, employee laws, and tax regulations.
Handling this on your own can be daunting, but a trusted EOR service makes it much easier by ensuring compliance across borders while managing payroll and employee benefits for you. This allows businesses to focus on growth without being overwhelmed by legal and regulatory hurdles.
To help you find the right solution, we’ve reviewed and listed the top EOR services available, offering seamless support for global workforce expansion.
Best Employer of Record Services (EOR Services) 2024
Deel offers everything you need to start hiring and managing employees from 150+ countries, including:
Local payroll, so employees get paid in their local currency.
Onboarding so remote teams get up-to-speed quickly.
Tax withholding so your business is compliant with local tax laws.
Region-specific benefits management so employees get access to benefits as per local labor laws.
These features are accessible on Deel’s self-service Human Resource Information System (HRIS). Its user-friendly interface makes it easy for employees and contractors to track payments, manage contracts, and access important information.
But every country is different. So, to ensure you meet local regulations and compliance requirements, Deel has enlisted the help of over 200 in-house legal experts to guide you through the employee lifecycle.
They’ll handle overseas hiring, localized employment agreements, and onboarding processes to reduce your legal and operational overhead. This is especially useful for hiring contractors globally.
In contrast, Papaya uses a more self-service approach to their employer of record services, where you manage your distributed workforce via your dashboard.
Deel offers two hiring plans specifically designed to protect you from penalties due to non-compliance or misclassification of contractors:
Deel Shield, where Deel will manage hiring for you. Its global EOR team will ensure you meet all the requirements for hiring contractors in each country.
Deel Premium, where you are offered an extra layer of protection against financial penalties, legal fees, and third-party indemnity (up to $10,000) in case of any misclassifications.
Overall, Deel is the best global employer of record services if you need to hire international contractors or employees to grow your operations globally.
Deel pricing
Deel offers two pricing plans for outsourcing HR activities:
EOR starting at $599/month for hiring employees.
Contractors start at $49/month for managing and paying contractors.
Additionally, it also has plans for managing global payroll for your international entities, a free HR platform, and immigration services to at least 25 countries.
Localized benefits, equipment management, and background checks are available as optional add-ons.
NOTE: Deel gets costlier as you add more services. So, talk to the sales team to understand if Deel can actually solve your problem before committing.
Papaya Global — Best EOR For Running International Payroll
Papaya Global has a centralized dashboard to easily manage your payments. Its customizable HRIS offers managers a quick overview of vital payroll information, including employee leave reports, salary updates, and a summary.
But it doesn’t overburden the manager with mundane tasks. Instead, it offers a self-service portal where employees and contractors can request time off, manage their benefits, submit invoices, and review payslips—only involving management during the approval phase.
Creating decentralized workflows lets managers focus on more important tasks like making informed decisions about projects, assignments, and employee performance. For example, improving workforce productivity by assigning available employees to a pending project or task.
Offering one of the best EOR services, Papaya Global additionally facilitates international hiring. The EOR platform gives you access to information regarding labor law, local customs, security requirements, and workplace practices. You can learn about these from consultants (online and in-person) or leverage the extensive knowledge base to educate yourself.
Papaya Global’s EOR service is best for firms with a distributed multinational workforce looking for more self-service options to run payroll and invoicing.
Papaya Global pricing
Papaya Global offers two pricing plans for global employer of record service:
EOR starting at $599/user/month
Contractor starting at $30/month.
This makes Papaya a more expensive global employer of record solution than Deel. However, its contractor plan is $15 cheaper per month.
Neither plan includes payroll with its global EOR services. For that, you’ll need to purchase PayrollPlus plans starting at $25 per month — adding to the overall cost.
Remofirst — Best EOR For Small-to Medium-Sized Businesses
Remofirst offers global EOR services in over 180+ countries, including payroll, invoice management, benefits management, and visa support.
Like the best EOR services, it also connects users with their legal experts to ensure you’re complying with the local labor laws.
But what makes it ideal for small businesses are its additional services like real-time compliance updates, so you’re always on the right side of labor laws. You also get access to a dedicated account manager for faster resolution of your problems and queries.
It helps you provision equipment for your international recruits so your employees have access to the right gear wherever they are.
Having these at their disposal lets businesses focus on important, strategic tasks that grow the business instead of day-to-day activities.
Remofirst packages these features inside an easy-to-use platform with dedicated processes for both your full-time employees and contractors.
The streamlined approach ensures all necessary employee information is gathered at onboarding, so you don’t have to worry about non-compliance and misclassification.
Remofirst supports integrations with popular HR systems, accounting software, and time-tracking tools, so your information remains consistent throughout.
It’ll come in handy for small business owners who may depend on multiple software for different functions.
In our opinion, Remofirst is ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses looking for a simple EOR service with streamlined workflows, useful integrations, and an easy-to-use platform.
Remofirst pricing
Remofirst offers very affordable pricing plans compared to others on the list. You can choose from two plans:
Employee of recordplan at $199/user/month with access to all its EOR services.
Contractorsplan at $25/user/month, catering to employers only interested in hiring contractors.
You can also include paid add-ons like RemoHealth ($55/user/month), equipment provisioning (custom pricing), and immigration services (custom pricing).
Multiplier provides an HR and payroll solution so you can run locally compliant payroll, tax compliance, benefits administration, and worker’s comp.
Its hassle-free processes allow businesses to scale without worrying about complex international employment regulations.
It starts with a quick 4-step onboarding process for adding employees and contractors to your system. The onboarding time can vary depending on the country’s regulations. But that just goes to show that Multiplier knows its stuff when it comes to compliance management.
Multiplier also provides immigration services. Admins just need to tick the right box, and the EOR platform will take care of the rest—collecting the required information, connecting with the local provider, and ensuring all documents are submitted on time.
The platform also simplifies international payroll by consolidating operations across countries into one platform. It also links with your HRIS system (BambooHR, Workday, or Hibob), making it more accessible for all. But setting up can take 1-3 months.
Multiplier is best for businesses that want to send employees to other countries to set up local entities.
Multiplier pricing
Multiplier is one of the cheapest EOR service providers, with its plans starting at:
EOR starts at $400/month
Contractor starts at $40/month
Multipplier’s EOR services start at $400 per month with access to payroll, benefits management, and so on in 150+ countries. For contractors, you’ll need to pay an additional $40 per month.
For information on its global payroll and immigration services, you’ll need to reach out to the sales team.
NOTE: It’s one of the few EOR services that offers a free version, depending on your requirements. Reach out to the sales team for more information.
Nothing beats Rippling when it comes to streamlining operations. Start with personalized dashboards offering features according to your employee type. For example, only admins can create custom workflows, while managers can choose which they want to implement.
However, Ripping’s standout feature is its automated employee onboarding. Once you’ve approved a hire, the new employee automatically receives a fully-localized contract compliant with local laws.
They also receive other onboarding tasks, such as updating bank details, personal information, learning material, etc. This allows employees to complete essential tasks without a manager or admin yelling at them to get them done.
Meanwhile, managers can streamline mundane tasks using Rippling’s unified platform to create custom workflows. You can also select from existing templates (called recipes).
Each workflow can automate tasks such as payroll, benefits management, tax filings, and compliance monitoring.
It also offers services to transition away from an EOR service. Let’s say your business has scaled to a point where it needs its own local HR team. Rippling will assist you in the transition to a global payroll system—whether it is Rippling or another service.
It’s something we didn’t see with any other EOR on the list, making Rippling perfect for businesses of all sizes looking for a long-term EOR solution that can scale depending on changing requirements.
Rippling pricing
Rippling’s pricing plans start at $8/month/user. But apart from this, it doesn’t divulge its pricing plans on its website since it offers custom pricing based on your needs.
To get a quote for employer of record services, you’ll need to schedule a product demo with the sales team who’ll provide a quote based on your requirements.
To provide our readers with accurate and well-informed recommendations, we test the most popular HR products on the market to find the best options for you. Our methodology consists of the following criteria:
Features: We examine each product’s features to determine what capabilities are offered, and how well it performs crucial HR management tasks, such as tracking a sick leave.
Integrations: We evaluate the integrations of each piece of HR software to determine how well it fits in with other key pieces in a business’s software stack, and whether its functionality can be expanded as required.
User Experience: Usability is paramount when it comes to HR software. That’s why we put ourselves in the shoes of a new user, testing each platform to gain a firsthand understanding if the platform is easy to use or requires onboarding.
Price and Value for Money: Our approach to pricing involves a thorough review of the structure and plans offered by each platform. Beyond just the initial cost, we delve into the details to assess affordability and value for money.
Security: We dig into the security policies of each company, interrogating the safeguards they have in place to ensure the software protects user data properly.
Compliance: A critical requirement for most HR departments, we assess HR software on whether it offers local compliance when it comes to payroll, taxes, and more.
Reporting and Documentation: We look at the reporting and documentation capabilities of each software to make sure they offer comprehensive data sets, takeaways, and collaboration options for documentation.
What is an EOR Service?
An Employer of Record (EOR) service refers to HR-related tasks and responsibilities related to hiring a global workforce. For a growing business, it can be just as important as having an effective project management tool in place.
As an Employer of Record, a third-party organization becomes a legal employer of your workforce and subsequently takes over all employer-related responsibilities on behalf of your company. This includes new employee onboarding, payroll processing, taxes, benefits, and compliance with local employment laws.
One thing to note is that your organization retains full control over the candidate selection process, establishes the level of compensation for the role, and handles all of the day-to-day management tasks. You get to define the role and position duties, the projects the person will be working on, and who they’ll report to, as well as the level of performance expected.
What Does an Employer of Record Do?
Put simply, the best EOR companies act as a legal, registered employer for your global workforce, letting you tap into a global workforce without having to set up foreign entities or risk violating the employment laws of different countries. You’re essentially outsourcing the hiring function of HR while maintaining control over all other aspects of the relationship with new employees.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the key services EOR companies offer:
Drafting and handling employment contracts
Onboarding new employees
Running payroll in different countries
Ensuring compliance with local employment laws
Handling taxes and benefits
Distributing employee stock options
When to Use an Employer of Record Service
An employer of record (EOR) service is a useful option for businesses expanding their operations abroad without creating a local company. This allows them to legally hire and manage employees in foreign countries without worrying about local employment laws.
EOR platforms can also help businesses employ workers from different states within the same country. For example, a Virginia-based company can use an EOR to legally employ workers in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, or any other state within the US.
By partnering with an EOR, businesses can focus on their core activities and speed up their global expansion plans.
What’s the Difference Between EOR and PEO Services?
Both EOR and PEO services help you hire and manage a team of international workers. You can also outsource most hiring-related HR activities to both, so you can have more time to dedicate to day-to-day business operations. However, there are a few key differences between them that you should be aware of.
To understand the difference between these two fairly similar services, we first need to answer the question: “What is a PEO?”
What Does PEO Stand For?
A PEO, or Professional Employer Organization, is a partner company that takes over HR duties from your organization and helps you hire full-time employees from around the world. The services PEOs offer typically include:
Payroll processing
Tax filing
Benefits distribution
Regulatory compliance
Background checks
One crucial aspect to be aware of is that, as a partner, a PEO company is not the legal employer of your workforce — that duty, and subsequently, the liability, falls on your organization. In other words, apart from day-to-day operations, you’re still responsible for all the legal aspects of employment, most notably setting up and registering a legal entity in the foreign country you want to employ in.
Put simply, working with a PEO requires you to have a company branch in a foreign country or establish one. Additionally, you cannot hire part-timers, independent contractors, or freelancers through a PEO, only FTEs (Full-Time Employees).
Now that you know what a professional employer organization is, let’s see how it differs from an EOR.
Key Difference Between PEO and EOR
To help you better understand where the key differences between PEO employment and EOR services, here’s an easy-to-understand comparison table:
PEO
EOR
Acts as
Partner/co-employer
Full legal employer
Liability
Shares liability
Assumes liability for the entire hiring process
Scope
Lets you outsource HR-related duties
Completely takes over the employer role and all hiring-related duties
Setting Up a Legal Entity
Required
Not required
Types of Employees You Can Hire
FTEs only
FTEs, independent contractors, freelancers
Long-term Cost
More expensive
More cost-effective
Why Should I Use EOR Software?
If you’re running a remote or a hybrid company, hiring an international workforce is certainly an enticing concept.
Compared to a US-based worker, hiring an international employee is much more cost-effective, due to the fact that you can offer lower compensation based on the difference between the cost of living in the two countries. Additionally, you have a much larger international pool of candidates to choose from, so it’s infinitely easier to find and hire top talent for virtually any role.
That said, hiring internationally is not as easy and straightforward as you might think. At a bare minimum, you need to be familiar with the labor laws in the country and figure out how you’re going to set up payroll, contributions, and benefits.
Additionally, you need to be aware of potential compliance risks, as well as the risk of employee misclassification, which can lead to hefty financial repercussions.
In order to legally employ people overseas, you either need to establish a legal entity in the country, engage employees as contractors, or work with a global EOR service. While hiring contractors is certainly viable, keep in mind that you can’t treat them as FTEs with fixed schedules and fixed pay since they might claim that they’re misclassified and request full-time employee benefits.
With an EOR, you don’t have to worry about any of this. As a full legal employer, an EOR company will handle every aspect of global hiring, including compliance, licensing, payroll, tax filing, contributions, benefits, insurance, and more.
In addition to effectively negating all the risks associated with global hiring, an EOR is both faster and more cost-effective than establishing a legal entity in every country you want to hire in, so it saves you a ton of valuable time and money in the long run. It’s a similar rationale as to why you would use a business password manager – ensuring you can operate efficiently and effectively.
What Are the Benefits of Using an Employer of Record?
EOR providers have expertise in navigating local employment laws and regulations, managing payroll and benefits, and ensuring compliance with local tax laws.
Global expansion – An EOR solution can help your business?easily expand its operations globally and grow its footprint in international markets.
Staying compliant – Your EOR software ensures compliance with local labor laws and tax regulations while giving you control over employee hiring and management.
Reducing costs – You can save money and reduce costs by not having to physically establish a legal subsidiary in every location you want to operate in.
Accurate payroll – By utilizing an EOR, you can ensure accurate payroll for your employees, follow all local regulations, and ensure?timely payments.
Streamlined HR – You can simplify your HR tasks by outsourcing complex tasks, freeing up your in-house team to focus on growing your company and ensuring employee satisfaction.
Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Global EOR Solution
Global EOR companies essentially offer the same base service — helping you hire international workers. However, the coverage, additional services, HR platforms, and prices can differ significantly from one provider to the next.
Here’s a breakdown of the key factors you need to consider when choosing the best EOR software to work with:
ServicesCountries SupportedThe Platform's Ease of UsePricing
Services
As the full legal employer of your global workforce, an EOR assumes complete legal responsibility for the hiring process. As such, every EOR handles contracts, payroll, taxes, benefits, and background checks, at a bare minimum.
That said, some EORs go above and beyond and offer many additional services that are invaluable for managing global employees and ensuring their satisfaction. These can include onboarding, providing essential equipment, distributing training materials, etc.
Another thing to consider is how well the EOR supports you in managing the workforce. For example, some Employer of Record platforms let you easily manage everyone’s time off, automatically collect everyone’s timesheets, and let you automate HR and IT workflows to save valuable time.
Countries Supported
When comparing different EOR solutions, pay close attention to how many and which countries are supported. If you’re planning on hiring employees from specific countries or regions, make sure that the EOR has established entities in those countries before you commit.
The last thing you want is to start paying for an EOR service only to discover that your choice of countries to hire from is extremely limited.
The Platform’s Ease of Use
You’ll be processing payments, tracking time off, and managing your global workforce through an EOR/HR platform, so it’s a good idea to choose one that’s intuitive and easy to use.
Most EORs let you schedule a demo and will walk you through the entire platform to showcase how it works in practice before asking you to commit to a monthly or annual pricing plan. We strongly recommend setting aside 30 minutes to an hour for a demo, as you’ll get a much better idea of what the platform can do and how easy or difficult it is to utilize effectively. You should also consider whether you want a package that integrates with other products in your technology stack, such as your CRM.
Pricing
EOR services can get pretty expensive, especially since most of them charge you per employee every single month. That’s why it’s crucial to be fully aware of what’s included in each pricing plan, so you don’t get unpleasantly surprised by additional fees or realize that the true price of the service with all the add-ons is much higher than you’ve anticipated.
That’s why we recommend getting in touch with the EOR first and scheduling a demo or a consultation quote, explaining the needs of your business, and getting a direct quote from the company’s representative. This will help you accurately forecast the costs so that you can plan your budget allocation accordingly. Now all you have to worry about is your VoIP line.
What are the main services on offer with EOR services?
The main services EORs offer include drafting international employment contracts, processing global payroll, filing taxes, distributing employee benefits, maintaining a record of employment, and doing background checks on candidates. Essentially, they take legal responsibility for every aspect related to hiring.
Can I hire globally without an Employer of Record?
You can, but that would require either engaging people as independent contractors or setting up a legal entity in the country where you want to hire full-time employees. The first option is convenient and more cost-effective, but you can’t enforce a fixed work schedule or stipulate conditions of work, or you’ll be running the risk of misclassification, which can be quite costly. The second option is extremely expensive and time-consuming, especially if you want to engage a workforce from multiple countries around the world. That’s why an EOR is a much safer and often much more cost-effective solution.
How is an EOR different from a staffing agency?
A staffing agency helps you source qualified candidates for the position but doesn’t help you hire them. In other words, a staffing agency can find, pre-select, and interview candidates. However, you’re still fully responsible for drafting employment contracts, processing payroll, distributing benefits, filing taxes, and ensuring compliance with local employment laws. EORs, on the other hand, take over all the hiring-related tasks while you get to choose exactly who you want to interview and hire.
Are there limitations to working with an EOR service?
There’s typically a limit to the number of employees you can hire in one country through an EOR before it is considered a taxable presence or a permanent establishment, in which case you’d have to open a legal entity there. The upper cap varies from one country to the next. For example, Germany limits the number of employees you can hire to 10. However, this limitation does not apply if an EOR already has a legal entity established.
Do my employees work for me or the EOR?
Although an EOR is the full legal employer on paper, you’re still in full control of managing the employees and their day-to-day operations. So, while they’re employed and paid by the EOR, in reality, the employees work for your company.
Aleksandar Stevanovic spent 10 years honing his craft as a freelance content writer. He has a degree in Economics, and extensive experience in software, crypto, and cybersecurity industries. He covers a multitude of topics, writing factual and informative articles, helping individuals better understand the intricacies of the online world. Over the last two years, his research focus shifted more towards tech and software content, as evidenced by his publications on CEX.IO, Business2Community, and Techopedia. He believes in simplifying complex topics and bringing them closer to like-minded individuals. His work is as detail-oriented as it is creative, and is designed to…
