Do you need global payroll or an employer of record to pay someone abroad?
Summary
It comes down to whether your company has a legal entity in that country. If it does, your entity is the employer and a global payroll product runs the pay; if it does not, an employer of record hires the person through its own local entity. At Remote's published prices that is $29 versus $699 per employee per month, but the cheaper option assumes you have already paid to set up and maintain a foreign entity.
The pricing pages sort buyers by entity
Remote describes its $29 Payroll product as meant for organizations "that might already have legal entities in foreign countries." Its $699 EOR is for companies that want to hire "in countries where they do not have a legal entity." Deel charges $599 per employee per month for EOR and sells it as a way to avoid opening a local entity. Its payroll product is described as being for companies paying people through their own entities, and neither its pricing page nor its payroll page shows a price for it.
Rippling publishes no global prices and quotes on request, but its global page draws the same line: payroll "via your own entities," or hiring through Rippling's EOR.
What the gap buys
Take three employees in one country. With Remote, global payroll comes to $87 a month and EOR to $2,097. The difference is $2,010 a month, or $24,120 a year.
That figure is the most an entity could save you, and it comes before the entity's own costs: incorporation, local accounting and tax advice, and the annual filings that keep the company in good standing. None of those appear on a payroll pricing page. The EOR section of this site works out the headcount at which an entity starts paying for itself.
Neither fee includes statutory employer costs such as social insurance. The $599 or $699 is the provider's charge, and salary plus mandatory contributions sit on top of it.
Why these prices stay out of domestic comparisons
US payroll software is priced per person too. Gusto Simple, for example, is a base fee plus $6 per person a month, so it is tempting to line up $6, $29 and $699 in one column. They pay for different work. Domestic software handles one country's taxes and filings. Global payroll handles several countries' rules for an employer that already exists in each of them. An EOR also carries the employment contract.
Contractor payments are a fourth product, at $29 per contractor per month with Remote and $49 with Deel. Whether someone can be paid as a contractor at all depends on how they work, not on which fee is lower.
Sources
- https://remote.com/pricing
- https://www.deel.com/pricing
- https://www.deel.com/solutions/payroll/
- https://www.rippling.com/global
- https://www.rippling.com/pricing
- https://gusto.com/pricing
Related on this site
- Employer of record costs: provider fees and country costs
- Contractor or employee: the decision nobody prices correctly
- Employer of record or your own entity: where the number flips
- Employer of record pricing per employee
- Why US and UK payroll prices cannot go in the same table
- Can a US payroll system pay staff in the UK, Canada, India, the UAE, or New Zealand?
Written by Kaz, independent publisher. No commercial relationship with the companies named unless it is listed on the disclosure page.
Published September 27, 2026. The figures above come from the government and vendor pages listed under Sources.
I have not used these products. Nothing here is a personal test result.
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