Employer of Record Peru: 6 Providers Compared

The first Peruvian offer I priced, I built the annual number on twelve monthly salaries and a payroll tax percentage. Peru does not work that way: a normal year holds fourteen salary payments, plus a savings deposit that leaves your account in May and again in November, plus a small extra bonus that travels with each of those two additional payments.

This guide covers what Peruvian law adds on top of gross salary, the calendar those payments land on, and six providers compared on the prices they actually publish. Every legal and contribution figure below was checked against Peruvian government sources in October 2026.

An employer of record handles the mechanics: it registers your hire on the electronic payroll, runs the cycle in soles, 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.

How an employer of record works in Peru

An employer of record lets you put someone on a compliant payroll in Peru without incorporating there: it employs your hire through a Peruvian entity that it or an in-country partner already holds. You choose the person and the pay; the provider signs the contract and takes on the employer obligations.

The Peruvian mechanics run through a single monthly filing rather than a set of separate agency returns. The employer registers every worker on the planilla electrónica, the national electronic payroll, and the labor inspectorate is explicit that registration happens from the first day of work, probationary period or not. Late registration is its own infraction, separate from whatever the underlying contribution was.

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, five time zones or one away.

CTS is a deposit, not a line on the payslip

The CTS, or compensación por tiempo de servicios, is a severance savings entitlement that leaves your account twice a year and lands in a bank account held in the employee's own name. It is not salary, and it is not a bonus.

Under Law 32322 of May 2025, the employee may withdraw up to half of the balance at any time, and all of it until December 31, 2026.

The Ministry of Labor sets out the mechanics in its official guide to the CTS. The employer deposits one twelfth of the computable remuneration for each complete month worked in the semester, inside the first fifteen calendar days of May and of November. The two semesters run from November to April and from May to October, and the salary used is the one in force in April and October respectively.

Two details catch people out. The first is that one sixth of each gratificación sits inside the computable remuneration, which lifts the annual CTS bill from one monthly salary to about 1.17 of them, or 9.72 percent of twelve months of pay.

The second detail is the calendar: an invoice that follows the statutory schedule is heavy in May and November, while one that accrues evenly is smooth. Both are legitimate, and they produce very different cash flow.

Gratificaciones make a Peruvian year fourteen payments long

Every Peruvian employee on the general private-sector regime earns two extra monthly salaries a year, one in the first half of July and one in the first half of December. They are statutory, they are not discretionary, and no provider can structure them away.

Law 27735 sets each gratificación equal to the monthly remuneration the employee is receiving at the time it falls due, reduced pro rata for anyone who has not worked the whole semester. The qualifying test is light: at least one complete calendar month inside the semester, and active employment on the payment date, with vacation and paid medical leave counting as time worked.

Then Peru adds a twist that no US payroll has a line for. Under Law 30334 the gratificaciones carry no social contributions at all, and the 9 percent the employer would otherwise have sent to EsSalud is paid to the employee instead, as a bonificación extraordinaria alongside the gratificación.

The Ministry of Labor spells out the rule in its guidance on the Fiestas Patrias gratificación, and it puts the figure at 6.75 percent instead of 9 percent for employees covered through a private health provider.

The practical consequence is arithmetic that annual plans get wrong. A year budgeted at twelve monthly salaries understates the pay bill by 16.7 percent before a single contribution is counted, and a monthly figure quoted to a Peruvian candidate is a fourteenth of their year rather than a twelfth.

What a Peruvian hire costs on top of gross

Statutory employer costs add roughly 37 percent to gross pay for a typical Peruvian hire, and about three quarters of that load is deferred pay rather than tax. The EsSalud health contribution is the only broad one; the rest is the gratificaciones, the bonus that rides with them, and the CTS.

The pension line is the one US buyers read twice. Peru puts the whole cost on the employee: 13 percent of gross into the national system, or a comparable deduction into a private fund, with nothing from the employer. That single difference is why Peru looks cheap on a contribution table and stops looking cheap once the deferred pay is added back.

Run it on a real number. A salary of S/ 6,000 a month is S/ 72,000 across twelve payments, plus S/ 12,000 of gratificaciones, plus S/ 1,080 of extraordinary bonus, plus about S/ 7,000 of CTS, plus S/ 6,480 of EsSalud. That is roughly S/ 98,560 a year, or about US$29,300 at the interbank average of S/ 3.363 the central bank published for August 2026, against a headline salary of about US$21,400.

A $599 monthly platform fee then adds $7,188 a year, billed in dollars against a payroll denominated in soles, so a currency markup lands on top of that. Comparing providers on the headline fee alone misleads badly, because the fee is a fraction of the story and the true cost of employing someone is set by Peruvian law long before you pick a vendor.

Hours, leave, and public holidays in Peru

The Peruvian statutory package is a 48-hour week, 30 calendar days of paid vacation a year, and 16 national public holidays in 2026. None of it is negotiable downward, and no provider can soften it for you.

The vacation entitlement is the headline number, and it is a real one: a full year of service earns 30 calendar days of paid rest under Legislative Decree 713, conditioned for a five-day week on 210 days of effective work. The vacation can be cut to 15 days in writing provided the other 15 are paid out in cash.

The untaken vacation rule is the one US founders tend to discover last. Article 23 of Legislative Decree 713 says that if the employee does not take the vacation within the year after earning it, the employer owes three things: pay for the work done, pay for the vacation that was earned and not taken, and a further indemnity equal to one month of pay.

Vacation dates are agreed between the two sides, and without an agreement the employer fixes them, so it cannot defend itself by saying the employee never asked.

Public holidays follow the national list the state publishes, which runs to 16 days in 2026, from New Year's Day and the two days of Fiestas Patrias in late July through to Christmas. Work on a public holiday without a substitute rest day carries a 100 percent surcharge on top of the day's pay, so covering a US calendar from Lima is a scheduling decision with a price attached.

Probation and severance are formulas, not conversations

Peru gives you a three-month probationary window with no severance, and after that an unjustified dismissal costs one and a half monthly salaries for every year of service, capped at twelve. Both rules sit in the consolidated text of the labor productivity law, and neither is negotiable.

Article 10 of that law puts the standard probationary period at three months, extendable in writing to six months for qualified staff or positions of trust and to a year for genuine management positions. It is the only window that resembles a US trial period, and after it the employee acquires protection against dismissal without a proven cause.

Article 38 sets the price of getting that wrong. Dismissal without a cause that can be proven triggers an indemnity of one and a half monthly salaries per full year of service, with a partial year paid pro rata in twelfths and thirtieths, up to a ceiling of twelve monthly salaries. On top of it sit the accrued gratificación, the CTS to the date of exit, and any untaken vacation.

The practical reading is that an exit in Peru is a scheduled expense you can price months in advance, which is a different management discipline from the one a US founder is used to. If you are accustomed to treating severance pay as a negotiated courtesy, treat the Peruvian version as a liability that grows on a known curve and stops growing at twelve salaries.

Employer of record providers for Peru compared

Six providers, compared on the fees they publish rather than the fees a salesperson mentions. All six publish a rate for employment, which is unusual in this category, though three of them publish a floor rather than a fixed number.

Two things stand out. The published band runs from $199 to $699 per employee monthly, a spread of $6,000 a year on a single Peruvian hire, which is real money at small headcount.

The more useful question in Peru, though, is not price at all: it is whether the provider will tell you in writing which entity employs your person, and how it bills the CTS and the two gratificaciones across the year.

The six providers reviewed

Deel publishes its employment rate at $599 per employee monthly, which is not universal in this category. For a US company making a first Peruvian hire, the practical draw is that contractor management and employment sit in one account.

The common Latin American shape of two contractors in Colombia or Argentina and one employee in Lima does not need two vendors, and converting someone from contractor to employee is a change of product rather than of supplier.

What to press on is Peru specifically. Deel says it owns entities in more than 130 countries, but its pricing page does not say who holds the Peruvian one. That answer decides who is accountable if the electronic payroll registration is late or a dismissal is challenged.

Ask for the Peruvian contract template as well, and read the intellectual property clause, because your hire contracts with the provider rather than with you.

Papaya Global publishes an employment rate starting at $499 per employee monthly, which undercuts every other full platform here by at least $1,200 a year per head. It keeps a Peru entry in its public country reference, and the company was founded in 2016 to put finance, HR, payroll, and payments on one platform.

Running finance and payroll on one platform suits Peru, because the employer load is not one number. EsSalud, two gratificaciones, the extraordinary bonus, and a CTS deposit on its own calendar are four items with different bases and different due dates, and a report that separates them earns its keep in May and November.

Papaya's price needs a careful read, starting with the word in front of it: a starting rate is not a Peru quote, and the contractor products are priced separately, so a mixed team needs both lines added before the comparison means anything.

Remote publishes a Peru country page covering the pay calendar, the statutory benefits, and its own onboarding timeline, which makes it one of the easiest providers here to audit before you talk to anyone. Reading a vendor guide against the Ministry of Labor material is a twenty-minute exercise, and it tells you a great deal about how carefully a provider maintains its country content.

The trade is price, at least on monthly billing. At $699 per employee monthly, Remote ties for the highest published fee here, roughly $1,200 a year above a $599 rate on one Peruvian employee. Committing to annual billing brings its own fee down to $599 per employee.

Remote also publishes a 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 Peru.

G-P publishes a starting rate of $599 per employee monthly and says openly that volume discounts are available, which is the honest version of what most of this category does quietly. It also maintains a Peru country page, so the local detail is checkable before a sales conversation rather than after one.

The shape of that pricing tells you who it is for. A discount that arrives with volume is worth nothing on a single hire and quite a lot on five, so G-P reads better as a choice for a Peruvian team you expect to build than for a one-off.

G-P's AI compliance assistant is priced separately from $500 per seat monthly, which is a line to leave out of the comparison unless you actually want it.

Oyster publishes a rate, gives contractors a free first month before charging $29, and states on its pricing page that setup, onboarding, talking to its HR experts, and processing terminations carry no extra charge. That suits a founder who wants one Peruvian employee and no standing vendor relationship to manage, and the self-serve flow is among the least sales-heavy in this group.

The $300 an hour rate belongs to People Partner Services, a separate project-based HR advisory product, so ask where the included support stops before a contested exit. Oyster also markets aggregate misclassification protection of up to $500,000 for contractors through its paid Oyster Shell subscription. That is the vendor's own description of the cover, so read the policy rather than the brochure.

RemoFirst publishes the lowest fee in this group by a wide margin, starting at $199 per employee monthly, and states that no hidden fees apply regardless of company size. On one Peruvian hire that gap is roughly $4,800 a year against the $599 tier and $6,000 against the $699 tier.

Two things to check before the number decides it. RemoFirst says openly that it works through in-country partners rather than entities it owns, which lengthens the accountability chain. It also confirms on its own pricing page that the fee can vary by country.

Ask for the Peru figure in writing, ask which entity signs the contract, and ask what deposit applies, because a low monthly fee paired with a large deposit is not a low-cost arrangement.

A provider or your own Peruvian company

Use a provider while your Peruvian headcount is small, and model your own company once it is not. The provider fee scales with every head you add, while most of the cost of running a company does not, and the crossover usually arrives sooner than founders expect.

The contractor row deserves a warning rather than a recommendation. Engaging someone in Peru on a services contract while directing their hours and methods is the fastest route to a misclassification finding, and the consequences are concrete: back EsSalud contributions, plus the gratificaciones, CTS, and vacation the person would have accrued as an employee. The product you buy does not decide the classification; the relationship does.

One structure worth knowing about for senior hires is the remuneración integral anual. Where monthly pay is at least two tax units, which is S/ 11,000 at the 2026 value of S/ 5,500, Peruvian law allows a written agreement folding the legal benefits into a single annual figure, with statutory profit sharing the one item that stays outside it. It simplifies the payroll rather than reducing the cost, and it removes the separate CTS deposit obligation.

What to ask before you sign

Put these five questions to every provider on your shortlist before you sign, and ask for the answers in writing. They tell you more about the real cost and the real risk than the published fee does.

Before you choose

FirstHR covers the part of a Peruvian hire that stays with you whichever provider employs the person: the first-week onboarding, your own policies and their signed acknowledgments, the training, and the records. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so the Peruvian contract, the payroll in soles, and the employer obligations come from the providers above.

The provider decision and the HR decision are separate, and people conflate them. Several providers here include onboarding support and HR tools for the people they employ.

A separate layer is worth adding when you want one place to run the first week, deliver the training the role requires, and keep employee records for your whole team where you can find them a year later.

That layer is what we built FirstHR for: onboarding with e-signature on offer letters and acknowledgments, document management, training built from your own files with completion recorded, and an employee record that holds together whether or not you have a dedicated HR person, at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an employer of record in Peru?

The party named as employer on the Peruvian contract, the payslip, and the social security file, while the person works for you in every practical sense. It signs the contract in Spanish, registers the worker on the electronic payroll, pays the statutory extras on their calendar, and carries the legal exposure that a US company with no Peruvian presence cannot carry itself.

How much does an employer of record cost in Peru?

Published fees among the six providers here run from $199 to $699 per employee monthly, and three of them publish only a starting price. Add the Peruvian employer load of roughly 37 percent on gross, any deposit the provider requires, and a currency markup, because the fee is charged in dollars and the payroll is paid in soles.

What is the minimum wage in Peru?

S/ 1,230 a month from October 1, 2026, under Supreme Decree 015-2026-TR, which leaves a second S/ 70 step to S/ 1,300 for a decree due in the first half of 2027. The new floor is also the minimum EsSalud base, and it lifts the family allowance to S/ 123, which is 10 percent of it.

What is CTS in Peru?

Severance savings the employer builds up in the worker's own bank account, outside the payslip, which Peruvian law lets the worker draw on before the job ends. One twelfth of the computable remuneration goes in for each complete month of the semester, by the fifteenth of May and of November, and because the base includes a sixth of the gratificación the annual bill is about 1.17 monthly salaries.

What are gratificaciones in Peru?

Bonus pay the law requires, tied to the July national holiday and to Christmas, and worth 16.7 percent on top of twelve months of pay between them. Law 30334 exempts them from social contributions and redirects the 9 percent EsSalud amount to the employee as a bonificación extraordinaria, or 6.75 percent where the employee is covered through a private health provider.

What are employer social security contributions in Peru?

EsSalud at 9 percent of monthly remuneration, and effectively nothing else. Pension sits entirely on the employee at 13 percent of gross in the national system or a comparable private fund deduction, mandatory life insurance is priced by the insurer rather than as a payroll rate, and workplace risk cover applies only to the high-risk activities the law lists.

How much vacation and how many public holidays do employees in Peru get?

An employee is owed 30 calendar days of paid rest for every full year of service, and the national calendar carries 16 public holidays in 2026. The entitlement is conditioned on 210 days of effective work for a five-day week, and half of it can be sold back by written agreement. Leave left untaken past the following year carries a one-month indemnity.

Should I use an employer of record or set up a Peruvian company?

A provider first, and a company of your own once the provider fees, which rise with every person you add, cost more than running one. Your own entity means a notarial deed, registry and tax registrations, a named legal representative, monthly filings, corporate income tax at 29.5 percent, and the ongoing administration that comes with all of it.