Best EOR for startups and software companies in 2026

What a startup should want from an EOR

An EOR becomes the legal employer of your worker through a local entity, runs payroll and statutory contributions, and invoices you under a service agreement, so you can hire where you have no company of your own. Every platform below does that. What separates them, for a startup specifically, is a shorter list than the feature grids suggest:

• A transparent price with no minimums. A published per-employee rate lets you model burn without a sales call, and “no minimum” terms matter when you are hiring one or two people, not fifty. Several providers now state both plainly.
• Contractor management and conversion on the same platform. Early teams often start someone as a contractor and convert them to an employee once the role is proven. A provider that handles both — and the conversion step — saves moving systems mid-growth and keeps you clear of misclassification, where contractor-first startups most often come unstuck.
• Speed to onboard. When a candidate is weighing offers, a start date weeks away can lose them. A few platforms publish an onboarding time; treat the figure as the provider's own claim, not an independent measurement.
• Equity and stock-option support. If your offers include options, ask whether the provider can administer equity for people it employs abroad, and get the mechanics in writing. The local tax and reporting rules are a separate question — for Vietnam, see employee stock options in Vietnam, including the open question of whether an EOR-employed person can join a foreign parent's plan.
• IP assignment in the employment contract. For a software company this is not a detail. The contract the EOR signs with your worker must assign the code, designs and other work product to the right party, under local law. How that works for Vietnamese hires is set out in IP ownership of employee work in Vietnam.
• Developer-friendly integrations or an API. If you run your own HR or finance stack, check whether the provider exposes an API or pre-built integrations — and whether that matters at your size, or is scope you will not use.
• Deposits and cash-flow. Some providers hold a deposit or take an implementation fee; others charge none. For a company watching runway, a refundable deposit is working capital tied up, so price it in.
• Benefits and permanent-establishment caution. Statutory and market-expected benefits are a real cost on top of the fee, and using an EOR rather than paying someone as a contractor is also how many startups limit the risk of creating a taxable presence abroad — see permanent establishment risk in Vietnam.

None is a tie-breaker alone; together they separate a provider that fits a ten-person company from one built for a multinational rollout.

How we chose the “best for” labels

We publish no numeric ranking. The “best” EOR depends on where you hire, how your team is split between employees and contractors, and which of the points above you weigh most — and because we sell a competing service in one country, any ranking we produced would carry a conflict of interest. Instead each platform gets a plain “best for” label for the startup scenario it fits — a first international hire, a contractor-heavy team, equity-led offers, a tight budget, or many countries at once — drawn only from facts on its own page: published price, stated reach and product mix. No numeric score, no review stars, no customer counts; we reproduce none of those. The list is alphabetical.

The shortlist at a glance

The table lists ten widely used EOR platforms, in no ranked order, with the starting price each states publicly and the startup use case it suits. “Quote on request” means the provider publishes no per-employee rate; “from” marks a starting tier, not a cap. EOR Vietnam appears only as the Vietnam-only option. Any fee is charged on top of gross salary and each country's statutory employer on-cost.

What the published price leaves out

The headline fee — whether US$199 or US$699 — is the provider's margin for being the legal employer and running the admin. It is not the cost of the hire. On top of it you pay, as pass-through employment cost, three things the fee never covers, and for a company managing runway each one belongs in the model:

• Gross salary, in the local currency.
• The country's statutory employer on-cost — the social, health, pension, unemployment and similar contributions an employer must pay, which vary widely by country. In Vietnam, for example, that is about 21.5% of salary in compulsory social, health and unemployment insurance plus a 2% trade-union contribution, roughly 23.5% in total;11 in parts of Western Europe it is higher still. See how Vietnam's employer on-cost is built up.
• Deposits, implementation and FX. Some platforms hold a deposit, charge an implementation or onboarding fee, or take a spread when they convert your funding currency into the pay currency. Playroll, for instance, states a refundable deposit of one month's salary;7 Remote and RemoFirst state no setup or onboarding fees.25

So a “from” rate is a floor, and the cheapest headline fee is not automatically the cheapest hire — a low fee with a wide FX spread can cost more than a higher fee with none. Compare total landed cost in one currency; the example below shows the arithmetic for a small team.

The platforms, A–Z

Short, factual notes drawn from each page on 11 October 2026. The “best for” labels are use cases, not a verdict on quality, and the order is alphabetical.

Deel — best for running employees and contractors together

Deel publishes a flat US$599 per EOR employee per month, with contractor management at US$49 per contractor per month and a contractor-of-record option at US$325 where it takes on the misclassification liability; it states full legal employment in 130+ countries and lists integrations such as Google Workspace.1 For a startup running a mixed team of staff and freelancers on one dashboard, that breadth is the draw. If you are weighing Deel specifically, see our Deel alternatives comparison.

G-P (Globalization Partners) — best for scaling into many countries

G-P states coverage of 180+ countries, EOR pricing “starting at USD 599 per employee/month” with “no minimum contract length”, contractor from US$39 per month across 190+ countries, and that it can “generate locally compliant employment contracts in seconds” and integrate via custom APIs.4 The reach suits a startup planning to hire in several markets quickly; the trade-off is a product shaped around larger programmes.

Multiplier — best for mid-market pricing across many countries

Multiplier is a global EOR and contractor platform. Its own pricing page did not load for us on the day, so the figure comes from a third-party comparison dated 26 September 2026, which lists Multiplier EOR at about US$459 (Core) and US$519 (Growth) per employee per month, with an implementation fee noted.10 Treat the number as third-party and confirm the current price with Multiplier directly; if you are comparing it head to head, see Multiplier alternatives.

Oyster — best for converting contractors to employees

Oyster lists US$699 per employee per month for EOR across 120+ countries, contractor management free for 30 days then US$29, and states a contractor-conversion service to “transition contractors to full-timers”, with setup and offboarding included and an API available.3 That conversion path fits a startup that hires freelancers first and makes the strong ones permanent. The EOR headline sits at the top of the range.

Playroll — best for a mid flat fee with no minimum

Playroll's pricing page reads “From $399 per month” with “no minimum commitments” across 180+ countries, offers contractor-to-full-time conversion, and states a fully refundable security deposit of one month's salary.7 The clear flat fee and no minimum suit a small team; as a younger brand, confirm whether it employs through its own entity or a partner in your country, and budget the deposit.

Remote — best for equity-led offers on owned entities

Remote publishes a flat US$699 per employee per month for EOR across 90+ countries, with global payroll and contractor management at US$29 each and an equity-grant add-on from US$39 per month for direct employees, EOR employees and contractors.2 It states it “directly owns all of our legal entities”, charges no setup fees, applies no minimum, and gives an average onboarding time of 2.3 days as its own figure.2 The equity add-on and owned entities suit startups making option-bearing offers. The EOR fee is top of range. For a direct comparison, see Remote alternatives.

RemoFirst — best for a tight budget across many countries

RemoFirst lists EOR “from $199 per person/month” across 185+ countries, with “no setup, onboarding, or termination fees” and “no minimum contract terms or number of employees”; contractor management is free or US$25, visas and work permits reach 110+ countries, and health insurance is a separate add-on from US$55.5 The low fee and absent minimums suit a cash-conscious first expansion; the watch-out is that benefits and insurance are quoted on top. See RemoFirst alternatives for the field around it.

Rippling — best for existing Rippling customers

Rippling prices EOR by custom quote — it directs buyers to “request a quote” rather than listing a per-employee rate — and documents an API alongside its HR, IT and spend products.8 Because EOR sits within that wider suite, it is most compelling for a startup already standardised on Rippling; the missing public price makes like-for-like comparison harder. See Rippling competitors for alternatives.

Skuad — best for a lean team on a low published fee

Skuad lists EOR “starting from $199 per employee/month” across 160+ countries, with an Agent-of-Record option from US$99 and contractor management from US$19, payroll in 70-plus currencies and “70+ one-click integrations”.6 The low entry price suits a lean team; as with other budget options, check entity ownership and the cost of benefits administration in your country.

Pebl (formerly Velocity Global) — best for consultative, equity-aware deals

The platform now states plainly that “Velocity Global is now Pebl”, covers 185+ countries, and quotes “one predictable monthly fee” on request rather than publishing a rate; it lists a Global Equity Program, a contractor-conversion use case, a developer API and an onboarding claim to “launch 90% faster” as its own figure.9 It leans consultative, which fits a startup wanting a managed arrangement with equity support. Because it is mid-rebrand, confirm the entity names on your contract.

Papaya Global — a payroll-led option

Papaya Global is a payroll-first platform that also offers EOR; it does not publish a flat per-employee rate on a page we could open, and the 26 September 2026 third-party comparison lists its EOR from about US$499 per employee per month.10 Weigh whether you are buying an EOR or a payroll platform with EOR attached, and confirm the current fee directly.

An example budget for a small team

A platform fee only makes sense next to the salary and on-cost it sits on. The illustration below builds the monthly employer cost of a three-person engineering team in Ho Chi Minh City (minimum-wage Region I), using self-reported median salaries from ITviec's technology survey and Vietnam's roughly 23.5% statutory employer on-cost. All three salaries are below the ₫50,600,000 social- and health-insurance contribution cap, so the full 23.5% applies cleanly.1112

Building an engineering team in Vietnam

Vietnam is a common choice for a startup's first offshore engineering team: a large, young developer pool, a cost base below more established Asian tech hubs, and a UTC+7 time zone that overlaps a working day with both Europe and Asia. The groundwork — the talent base, contract terms for developers, work permits for foreign leads, and the IP and equity points above — is covered in hiring software developers in Vietnam through an EOR.

EOR Vietnam employs people in Vietnam only. We do not serve any other country, and we include ourselves in this guide solely as the Vietnam-only option — if your hiring is spread across borders, one of the global platforms above will suit the rest of the team, and you can pair it with a specialist for the Vietnamese hires. Where Vietnam is the market, here is exactly how we price it, as of October 2026.

Our service fee is a flat US$149 per employee per month for Vietnamese nationals — the same fee whatever the salary, seniority, role, location in Vietnam or headcount. It is not a percentage of payroll, so a senior engineer's offer never inflates our charge. Foreign nationals who need a Vietnamese work permit are quoted separately, because the work-permit, visa and temporary-residence handling differs case by case — see work permits for foreign employees in Vietnam. There are no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees, and no hidden fees.

A refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee's employment cost — gross salary plus statutory employer contributions — is held for the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts. Everything beyond our fee is passed through at cost: gross salary, the roughly 23.5% statutory employer contributions for Vietnamese staff (about 21.5% in compulsory social, health and unemployment insurance plus the 2% trade-union contribution11), and any statutory or agreed payments such as a 13th-month bonus where due. We employ through a Vietnam-registered entity, named in your written quote. You can request a costed quote, read how to choose an EOR in Vietnam, or compare the wider market in the best EOR services. Hiring elsewhere in the region as well? Sibling guides cover the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and India; we do not provide EOR in those countries ourselves.

A choosing checklist

Whichever platform you lean towards, this sequence keeps a startup's comparison honest:

1. Map your hires. List every country and headcount. One country points to a specialist; several point to a global platform.
2. Get the total landed cost in writing, in one currency: fee, gross salary, statutory employer on-cost, any deposit, implementation fee and FX spread.
3. Check the contractor path. If you hire freelancers first, confirm the provider handles contractor management and the conversion to employee, so you are not changing systems later.
4. Settle equity and IP. If your offers carry options, confirm the provider can administer them abroad; and check that the employment contract assigns IP to the right party under local law.
5. Ask who the legal employer is in each country — the provider's own entity or a partner — and get it named, since that drives the liability and data chain.
6. Confirm minimums and exit terms — any minimum headcount or lock-in, notice to exit, final pay and data return — before you sign.