Employer of Record Austria: 6 Providers Compared
Hiring in Austria through an employer of record: collective agreements, 13th and 14th salaries, employer costs, and six providers compared.
Employer of Record Austria: 6 Providers Compared
What Austrian employment law imposes before any provider touches the hire, what a salary really costs once collective agreements and payroll taxes land, and six employer of record providers compared on published pricing
The first time I priced an Austrian hire, I built the model on twelve monthly salaries and a rounded-up allowance for payroll tax. Both halves were wrong. Austrian pay runs on fourteen payments a year, and the terms of the contract were largely written by a sector agreement I had never heard of, let alone read.
An employer of record fixes the mechanics of that problem. The provider employs your hire through its own Austrian entity, registers them with the health insurance carrier, runs local payroll, and carries the employer obligations, while you keep the work, the salary decision, and the relationship.
What it does not do is change the arithmetic underneath. This guide covers what Austrian law imposes before any vendor gets involved, what a hire costs on top of gross salary, and six providers compared on the prices they actually publish. Every legal and contribution figure below was checked against Austrian government sources in September 2026.
How an employer of record works in Austria
An employer of record employs your Austrian hire through an Austrian legal entity it already holds, so you can put someone on a compliant local payroll without registering a company in Austria. You choose the person and the pay; the provider signs the contract and takes on the employer obligations.
The Austrian mechanics have one hard deadline that catches US employers. An employer must register a new employee with the health insurance carrier before work begins, filed electronically through the ELDA system, and a late filing draws a surcharge or a fine. That is a before-the-first-day task, not a first-week task, which is why providers ask for signed paperwork earlier than a US onboarding process would.
| Function | The provider | You |
|---|---|---|
| Employment contract | Drafts and signs it under Austrian law | Agree the role, the grade, and the salary |
| Social insurance registration | Files with the health insurance carrier before day one | Return signed paperwork in time |
| Payroll and wage tax | Calculates, pays in euros, and remits monthly | Fund each cycle |
| Collective agreement | Applies the agreement its entity is bound by | Confirm which one, and check the grading |
| Statutory benefits | Leave, special payments, and the severance fund | Decide anything above the minimum |
| Day-to-day management | Nothing | Objectives, direction, performance, and promotion |
| Termination | Executes it on Austrian notice and timing rules | Make the decision and give the provider warning |
The right-hand column is the part vendors underplay. A provider removes administration and legal exposure, not judgment. You still recruit, still decide, and still own whatever onboarding experience the person actually gets in their first month.
Collective agreements write most of your contract
Austria has no statutory minimum wage. Pay floors, working-time rules, bonus entitlements, and overtime premiums come from the sector collective agreement that binds your provider's Austrian entity, and that agreement is not something you negotiate.
The Federal Ministry of Social Affairs states the position directly: unlike other EU member states, there is no statutory minimum wage in Austria, and minimum pay for each occupational group or sector is regulated in collective agreements without the involvement of the state. The ministry counts more than 800 agreements covering roughly 95 percent of employees, and the OECD puts adjusted bargaining coverage at 98 percent for 2024.
Coverage is that high because membership of the economic chamber is compulsory for Austrian businesses, so the employer side of the table is close to universal. The result is a system with almost no uncovered ground, which is unfamiliar to a US founder used to treating a salary as a private negotiation.
The subtlety worth knowing: the agreement that binds you is the one for the provider's own business classification, not necessarily the one your industry would fall under if you had your own Austrian company. That mismatch is rarely a problem, but it is worth surfacing before it appears in a contract you have already signed.
Fourteen salary payments, not twelve
Almost every Austrian collective agreement grants two extra monthly payments a year, a holiday allowance usually paid around June and a Christmas payment usually made in November or December. An annual budget built on twelve salaries is therefore short by about 16.7 percent before anything else is added.
These payments are conventionally called the 13th and 14th salary, and Austrian employees think in those terms. A quoted monthly figure is a fourteenth of the year, not a twelfth, so a US offer expressed as an annual number has to be divided carefully before it goes into an Austrian contract. Get that wrong in either direction and the conversation is uncomfortable.
Austrian income tax treats the two special payments on a separate and lighter schedule than regular monthly pay, which is why employees regard them as untouchable rather than discretionary. Social insurance still applies, under its own annual ceiling of EUR 13,860 for 2026, and the payments accrue from the first day and are settled pro rata when someone leaves mid-year.
What an Austrian hire costs on top of gross
Employer costs add close to 30 percent to gross pay in Austria, and they arrive as five separate line items rather than one payroll tax. Social insurance is the largest at 20.98 percent, and the other four are small individually and material together.
| Employer cost | Rate on gross pay | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Social insurance | 20.98% | Health 3.78%, pension 12.55%, unemployment 2.95%, accident 1.10%, housing 0.50% |
| Family burden equalization fund | 3.70% | The rate has applied since 2025 |
| Provincial surcharge to that fund | 0.31% to 0.40% | Set per province, so the workplace location decides it |
| Municipal tax | 3.00% | Paid to the municipality where the workplace sits |
| Severance fund | 1.53% | Payable from the second month of employment |
| Total employer load | About 29.5% | Before the provider fee and before any currency markup |
Only the social insurance component is capped. For 2026 the monthly contribution ceiling is EUR 6,930, with a separate annual ceiling of EUR 13,860 covering the two special payments, and the threshold for marginal employment is EUR 551.10 a month. The family fund contribution, the provincial surcharge, the municipal tax, and the severance fund all run uncapped on the full wage bill.
Put together, a EUR 5,000 monthly salary is EUR 70,000 of annual gross once the two extra payments are counted. Add the employer load at roughly 29.5 percent and the employment cost is about EUR 90,650 a year, before the provider charges anything. A $599 monthly platform fee adds a further $7,188, quoted in dollars against a euro payroll, so a currency markup lands on top of that.
This is why comparing providers on the headline fee alone misleads. The fee is a tenth of the story, and the true cost of employing someone is set by Austrian law long before you pick a vendor.
Leave, notice, and probation in Austria
Austrian statutory minimums are 25 working days of paid leave on a five-day week, a probationary period capped at one month for salaried staff, and employer notice that starts at six weeks and lengthens to five months with service. None of that is negotiable downward, and a provider cannot soften it for you.
Leave is where the counting confuses people. The Austrian business service portal puts the entitlement at 30 working days for a six-day week or 25 for a five-day week, rising to 36 and 30 respectively after more than 25 years with the same employer. In the first working year the entitlement builds proportionally across the first six months and is available in full from the seventh.
| Term | Austrian position | What a US employer usually expects |
|---|---|---|
| Probation | 1 month maximum for salaried staff | 90 days |
| Paid annual leave | 25 working days on a five-day week, 30 after 25 years | 10 to 15 days of paid time off |
| Normal working time | 8 hours a day and 40 a week, often lower by agreement | 40 hours a week |
| Employer notice | 6 weeks, rising with service to 5 months | 2 weeks as a courtesy |
| Termination date | End of the calendar quarter unless the contract sets otherwise | Any day of the week |
| At-will employment | Does not exist | The default in almost every state |
| Works council | Employees may elect one from 5 employees upward | No equivalent |
Employer notice periods run six weeks in the first and second year, two months after the second year ends, three months after the fifth, four months after the fifteenth, and five months after the twenty-fifth, on rules that have applied to blue-collar and salaried staff alike since September 2021. Employees themselves owe one month.
The default termination date is the sharper detail. Unless the contract specifies the fifteenth or the end of a month, employer notice runs to the end of a calendar quarter, so a decision made in early April can carry to the end of June plus the notice period itself. Ask your provider which date its Austrian contract template uses, because that single clause moves the cost of an exit by weeks.
Employer of record providers for Austria compared
Six providers, compared on the fees they publish rather than the fees a salesperson mentions. Five carry a rate on their own pricing page; for the sixth the table records what market comparisons report instead.
| Provider | Published employment fee | Contractor fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deel | From $599 per employee monthly | From $49 per contractor monthly | Publishes its rate; US PEO product from $125 per employee monthly |
| Remote | $699 per employee monthly | $29 per contractor monthly | States that it owns its Austrian entity |
| Oyster | $699 per employee monthly | $29 per contractor monthly | Annual discount offered; HR advice metered at $300 an hour |
| Multiplier | Not confirmed | Not confirmed | Market comparisons place it near $400 per employee monthly |
| Papaya Global | From $499 per employee monthly | From $5 per contractor monthly | Global payroll priced separately, from $29 per employee monthly |
| RemoFirst | From $199 per employee monthly | Free, or $25 on the premium tier | Lowest published fee in this group |
Two patterns show up immediately. The published band is wide, running from $199 to $699 per employee monthly, which is a spread of $6,000 a year on a single Austrian hire. And the more useful differentiator in Austria is not price at all but whether the provider will tell you, in writing, which entity employs your person and which collective agreement it applies.
The six providers reviewed
Deel publishes its employment rate, starting at $599 per employee monthly, which puts it in the middle of the published figures here rather than at either end. For a US company making a first Austrian hire, the practical draw is that contractor management and employment sit in one account, so the common shape of two contractors elsewhere and one employee in Vienna does not need two vendors.
What to press on is Austria specifically. The pricing page does not say whether the Austrian entity is owned or a partner's, and that answer decides who is accountable when a registration is late or a grading is challenged. Ask for the Austrian contract template as well, and read the intellectual property clause, because your hire contracts with the provider rather than with you.
Remote is the only provider in this group that says outright it owns its Austrian entity rather than working through a local partner, and in Austria that claim buys something specific. Someone has to choose the collective agreement, file the registration before day one, and defend a grading if it is questioned, and a single named entity shortens that chain considerably.
The trade is price. At $699 per employee monthly it is the joint highest published rate in this group, a $100 premium over the next platform down and roughly $1,200 a year on one Austrian employee. It also publishes a separate payroll product at $29 per employee monthly for companies that already hold a local entity, which is the product you move to if you eventually incorporate in Austria.
Oyster publishes a rate, gives contractors a free first month before charging $29, and sells HR advice by the hour rather than bundling it. That suits a founder who wants one Austrian employee and no standing relationship to manage. Its Austria material is unusually specific about the things that trip US buyers up: it dates the 13th payment to the end of June and the 14th to the end of November, sets out the notice ladder by length of service, and states plainly that the probationary period is one month and cannot be extended.
The hourly advisory rate is the tell about the model. At $300 an hour, guidance is a metered product rather than an included service, so if you expect to lean on the provider through a difficult exit, price that in. Ask what escalation looks like before you sign, because an Austrian termination is exactly the moment you want a person rather than a ticket.
Multiplier is the one provider here whose rate I could not read off its own pricing page, so the only way to learn what Austria costs is to ask. Market comparisons place it near $400 per employee monthly, and if that holds for Austria it sits below every published figure in this group except RemoFirst. Treat the number as an opening position for a conversation rather than as a fact about the quote you will receive.
A quote process is not free either. It costs a call, a proposal cycle, and usually some indication of future headcount to reach the better rate, which is hard to justify for a single Austrian employee. For three or four people in Austria it is easier to justify, and that is roughly where the economics of this whole category start to move anyway.
Papaya Global built its platform around payments and reporting first, which matters more in Austria than in most markets, because the employer load is not one number. Social insurance, the family fund contribution, the provincial surcharge, municipal tax, and the severance fund are five levies with different bases and different caps, and a report that separates them is genuinely useful at budget time.
Its published starting rate of $499 per employee monthly undercuts every full platform here except RemoFirst, which is not where this vendor sits in most buyers' heads. The catch is that reporting depth only earns its keep when there is something to report on. One Austrian employee does not need a multi-country cost dashboard. Several countries, several currencies, and a finance lead asking why the Austrian figure moved is a different situation entirely.
RemoFirst publishes the lowest fee in this group by a wide margin, starting at $199 per employee monthly, and states that it charges no setup, onboarding, or termination fees and sets no employee minimum. On one Austrian hire that gap is roughly $4,800 a year against the $599 tier and $6,000 against the $699 tier, which is real money at small headcount.
The words doing the work sit in front of the number, because a starting rate is not an Austria quote. Austria is not a cheap market to serve, with five separate employer levies and a collective agreement to administer, so ask for the Austrian figure in writing, ask who owns the Austrian entity, and ask what the deposit is. A low fee paired with a large deposit is not a low-cost arrangement.
A provider or your own Austrian company
Use a provider while your Austrian headcount is small, and model your own company once it is not. Forming an Austrian GmbH became cheaper when the company law amendment of 2023 cut minimum share capital to EUR 10,000, of which at least EUR 5,000 must be paid in cash, but the rest of the setup did not get simpler.
| Route | What it takes to start | What it costs to run | When it wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employer of record | A contract and a deposit; the provider already holds the entity | $199 to $699 published per employee monthly, plus the Austrian employer load | One to a handful of people in Austria |
| Your own Austrian GmbH | EUR 10,000 share capital, at least EUR 5,000 in cash, a notarial deed, and a register filing | Accounting, payroll administration, and 23 percent corporate income tax on profit | Sustained headcount in Austria |
| Independent contractors | A contract, if the relationship is genuinely independent | Contractor platform fees from free to $49 per person monthly | Genuinely project-based work only |
The contractor row deserves a warning rather than a recommendation. Engaging someone in Austria as a contractor while directing their hours and methods is the fastest route to a misclassification finding, because the test looks at how the work is actually controlled rather than at the label on the agreement. The product you buy does not decide the classification; the relationship does.
On the entity side, corporate income tax runs at 23 percent of taxable profit, a flat rate rather than a graduated one. Worth raising with your tax adviser separately: whether the way your Austrian person works could create a taxable presence for your US company regardless of who employs them. That question is about your business, not about the provider you choose.
What to ask before you sign
Before you choose
FirstHR is not an employer of record. We hold no entity in Austria, employ nobody on your behalf, and take on no employer liability, so if you need someone on an Austrian payroll next month, the providers above are the category to shortlist. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider.
The reason this section exists is that the provider decision and the HR decision are separate, and people conflate them. A provider handles the Austrian legal employment. It does not run the first-week experience, own the signed documents, deliver the training your role requires, or keep employee records in a state where you can find them a year later.
That layer stays yours whichever route you take, and it is what we built FirstHR for: onboarding with e-signature, document management, training with completion tracking, and an employee record that holds together for a small business without a dedicated HR person, at a flat $98 to $198 per month.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an employer of record in Austria?
The party named as employer on the contract, the payslip, and the social insurance file, while the person works for you in every practical sense. It signs the Austrian contract, files the registration, remits wage tax and the local levies, and carries the legal exposure that a US company with no Austrian presence cannot carry itself.
How much does an employer of record cost in Austria?
Published fees among the six providers here run from $199 to $699 per employee monthly, with one publishing no rate I could confirm. Add the Austrian employer load of roughly 29.5 percent on gross, a refundable deposit that market data puts at 1 to 1.5 times the total monthly charge, and a currency markup, since the fee is billed in dollars against a euro payroll.
Does Austria have a minimum wage?
No. The Federal Ministry of Social Affairs confirms there is no statutory minimum wage and that minimum pay is set sector by sector in collective agreements. More than 800 agreements cover around 95 percent of employees, so the floor for your hire depends on the applicable agreement, the job grade, and years of relevant experience.
What are the 13th and 14th salaries in Austria?
The two extra monthly payments that make Austrian pay a fourteen-part year: a holiday allowance in early summer and a Christmas payment late in the year. They come from the sector agreement rather than the statute, accrue from day one, are settled pro rata on exit, and carry social insurance under a separate annual ceiling of EUR 13,860 for 2026.
What are employer social security contributions in Austria?
The employer share is 20.98 percent of gross: health 3.78 percent, pension 12.55 percent, unemployment 2.95 percent, accident 1.10 percent, and housing 0.50 percent. Contributions stop at the ceiling of EUR 6,930 a month for 2026. The family fund contribution, provincial surcharge, municipal tax, and severance fund are all separate and uncapped.
How much notice do I have to give an employee in Austria?
Anything from six weeks to five months, set entirely by length of service: six weeks in the first two years, two months after year two, three after year five, four after year fifteen, and five after year twenty-five. Notice normally expires at the end of a calendar quarter unless the contract sets the fifteenth or the end of a month, which lengthens the real timeline.
How much annual leave do employees in Austria get?
Five weeks, expressed in Austrian law as 25 working days on a five-day week, and six weeks once service passes 25 years with the same employer. The statute counts on a six-day basis, where the same entitlements read as 30 and 36 days, and public holidays sit outside the allowance entirely.
Should I use an employer of record or set up an Austrian company?
A provider first, and a company once the fee per head costs more than running one. An Austrian GmbH needs EUR 10,000 of share capital with at least EUR 5,000 in cash, a notarial deed, a register filing, local accounting, and ongoing administration, against a fee that scales with every head you add.