Global Payroll Solutions: 11 Compared for SMBs

Almost every comparison in this category makes the same omission, and it is expensive. They quote per-employee rates without separating the two products those rates belong to, so you cannot tell what your own hire abroad will cost. One product costs $29 per employee per month. The other costs $599. Both are called global payroll.

The difference is whether your company already owns a legal entity in the country where the person works. If it does, you are buying payroll processing. If it does not, you are buying an employer of record (EOR), which means renting someone else's legal entity and transferring the employment liability that comes with it. Reading a table that mixes the two produces budgets that are wrong by a factor of twenty.

This comparison covers 11 providers with both figures stated separately, real cost modeled at a 15-person company with 5 people abroad, setup times, and the hidden charges that do not appear on pricing pages. It also answers a question most of these pages skip: whether a US company needs global payroll at all.

What is global payroll?

Global payroll is the process of paying employees in more than one country while meeting each country's tax, social contribution, and employment law requirements. A global payroll solution is the platform or service that does it.

The mechanics differ from domestic payroll in ways that compound. Pay frequencies are not standardized: monthly is the norm in most of Europe, while the United States runs biweekly and semi-monthly. Mexico's labor law, for example, requires pay at least every 15 days, or weekly for manual work.

Statutory contributions differ by country and often by employee category within a country. Payslip content is legally prescribed in many jurisdictions, down to which fields must appear and in what language. Filing calendars follow local tax years that do not align with each other or with yours.

What a global payroll provider actually does

A provider takes on six jobs, and each one gets harder once pay crosses a border.

The last row is the one buyers usually underestimate and finance teams care about most. Running four local providers in four countries is workable; reconciling four sets of reports in four formats and three currencies into a single view of employment cost is where the hours go.

Global payroll versus employer of record

With global payroll, you stay the legal employer through an entity you own abroad; with an employer of record, the provider becomes the legal employer for you. That distinction decides your budget, and most comparisons blur it: both are sold under the global payroll banner, and the price difference is roughly twentyfold.

The quickest way to use this table is to start from the second row. If your company does not have a registered subsidiary in the country where you want to hire, payroll-only pricing is irrelevant to you no matter how attractive $29 looks. If you do have entities, EOR pricing is money you do not need to spend.

Do you actually need global payroll?

You need global payroll only when someone on your team works as an employee outside the United States. Settle that before comparing anything, because many buyers in this category do not need it yet and spend months evaluating platforms that solve a problem they do not have.

For a US-only small business, the honest answer is that this entire category is premature. The relevant purchase is domestic payroll plus a way to run onboarding and keep employee records.

Global payroll outsourcing models

Global payroll outsourcing arrives in three delivery shapes, and the one you buy decides who is on the other end of the call when a filing is late. Some vendors run the payroll themselves in each country, some coordinate local firms that do, and some sell software and leave the local work where it already sits.

Where a vendor states its delivery model, the Model line on its card below says which of the first two it leans on. Among the vendors that do, the pattern is clear: owned-entity delivery sits at the higher rates, while the cheapest EOR, Remofirst, reaches its coverage through in-country partners. Neither model is disqualifying, and partner networks are how any vendor claims 180 countries.

The third model is the one small companies skip too quickly. If you already have a UK subsidiary and an accountant in London who runs that payroll correctly, buying global payroll technology to consolidate the reporting is a much smaller purchase than moving the work. Outsource the whole function when you are adding countries, not when you are tidying up two you already run.

Three things stay with you whichever model you sign: deciding who is an employee, deciding to terminate someone and paying what follows, and approving what each person is paid. The compliance section further down draws that line in full. Those three are why even a fully managed contract needs one person on your side who owns payroll.

11 global payroll providers at a glance

The table below puts every provider side by side, with payroll-only and EOR prices in separate columns because they are different products. The Countries column reflects vendor claims rather than verified counts, and coverage depth varies enormously between a market where a provider owns an entity and one where it relies on a local partner.

How we evaluated these providers

Four questions shaped every entry on this page, because they decide what a small business actually pays and how fast a new hire gets paid.

The 11 global payroll solutions compared

Each provider below gets a card with its pricing, delivery model, and best fit, followed by a short review and its pros and cons.

Deel is the market reference point, and its product breadth is the argument: EOR in 130 or more countries, payroll-only at $29 for companies that own entities, and contractor management at $49 per contractor a month. A Contractor of Record option at $325 a month shifts classification liability to Deel.

Two things to price beyond the headline. Deel's help center sets the standard EOR deposit at one to one and a half times the full monthly cost, salary and employer charges included, refunded when the contract ends. And Deel converts currency at a forward rate, an exchange rate fixed ahead of the payment date, unless you pay each invoice in the currency it was issued in.

Remote built its position on owning its entities rather than aggregating partners, which trades country count for consistency. Ninety-plus markets is narrower than Deel or Multiplier, but the compliance chain in those markets is shorter.

The billing structure is worth noting: $599 on annual commitment against $699 paying monthly is a $1,200 annual difference per employee, which is a meaningful lock-in decision for a company still validating a market.

Multiplier publishes $459 per employee per month on annual contracts against the $599 set by Deel and Remote, just under a quarter less. The standard rate covers most countries, with adjusted pricing in about 11 percent of them. At 10 international employees that is $16,800 a year saved; at 25 it is $42,000.

Contractor pricing sits in the middle at $40 per person, below Deel's $49 but above Remote's $29 and Remofirst's free tier. Model your actual employee-to-contractor mix rather than comparing headline EOR rates alone.

At a starting rate of $199 per employee per month, Remofirst makes the EOR model financially viable for a single hire in a way the $599 tier does not. For a seed-stage company hiring one engineer abroad, the difference against Deel is $4,800 a year on one person.

The tradeoffs are structural rather than incidental. Remofirst says it works exclusively through vetted in-country partners rather than its own entities, the support organization is smaller, and the integration catalog is thinner. In a straightforward market that rarely matters; in a complex one it can mean slower resolution.

Pebl is what Velocity Global became when it renamed itself on September 9, 2025. The old name survives only as the legal entity behind the brand, Velocity Global, LLC, so this entry covers both names. The brand is newer than its coverage claim suggests, so reference checks at your headcount are worth the time.

Pebl publishes a single EOR rate of $399 per employee per month covering its platform, payroll, access to local benefits, and compliance support across 185 or more countries, and it offers immigration and talent sourcing from the same platform. For a company that wants maximum geographic optionality without negotiating tiers, this is the cleanest structure on the list.

Oyster competes on the experience rather than the price. It is a certified B Corp, publishes a free employment cost calculator and salary insights for building equitable pay, and assigns country-specific onboarding managers to EOR hires.

Its $699 list rate sits above Deel's $599 without Deel's coverage or platform breadth, so the case for it is specific: companies for whom fair-pay tooling and onboarding quality are decision criteria rather than nice-to-haves.

Papaya publishes payroll-only from $29 per employee, level with Deel and Remote, and EOR from $499, below the $599 they charge. The product is aimed at companies that already have entities and need consolidated reporting across them.

What sets it apart is enterprise payroll analytics, workforce intelligence dashboards, and a licensed payments arm, Azimo, regulated in five jurisdictions. If your finance team spends ten hours a month reconciling payroll across countries, the platform pays for itself. If you have five people in two countries, you are buying capability you will not use.

Rippling's argument is architectural: one employee record across payroll, HR, IT provisioning, and benefits, so hiring someone triggers payroll enrollment, account creation, and device shipment from a single action. Deel now sells device management too, so the difference is where the automation starts: Rippling says it already holds every employee's role, location, device status, and app access as the system of record.

Pricing is the weakness for a small buyer. Rippling's own product page starts the platform at $8 per user per month, but each product is bought separately on top of the required core platform, some carry a monthly base fee, and the global payroll and EOR products themselves are priced only by quote.

Gusto Global lets a US company already running Gusto payroll pay contractors abroad and start an international hire from a familiar dashboard. The employment itself runs through Remote: Gusto's EOR page says the service is provided by Remote, in the countries where Remote operates, under Remote's terms.

Gusto publishes no EOR rate of its own, so ask for the quote and set it against Remote's published $599 annual and $699 monthly rates. What Gusto adds directly is contractor payments in more than 120 countries with no monthly per-contractor fee. If you already use Gusto, that convenience is real; for the employees themselves, you are buying Remote's EOR either way.

G-P, short for Globalization Partners, is one of the oldest names in the category and sells to organizations where employment risk carries board attention: formal documentation, audit support, and structured governance controls matching large-corporate norms.

G-P now publishes a starting EOR rate of $599 per employee, the same as Deel and Remote, plus a contractor product from $39, so it is no longer quote-only. The depth of compliance support is the argument for it; for a 15-person business making one hire abroad, that depth is more than the job needs.

ADP Global Payroll is built for companies consolidating payroll across many countries at scale. ADP says its dedicated compliance and payroll experts worldwide monitor thousands of legislative updates, and by its own count it pays one in six workers in the United States.

The platform covers 140 or more countries and territories, and ADP's product page shows customers moving countries onto it from ADP's older GlobalView and Celergo payroll lines. ADP says it scales from one employee upward, but it runs payroll for entities you already own and publishes no pricing, so a company without entities abroad should look elsewhere.

What it actually costs at 15 employees

At this size, the provider you pick still moves your platform fees a long way, but those fees stay the small part of the bill. Per-employee rates alone hide the fact that global payroll is bought in small quantities: most companies do not put 200 people through an EOR; they put three or five.

The model below assumes a 15-person US company that has hired 5 people abroad and keeps the other 10 on domestic payroll. That is the shape of the typical first international expansion.

Two observations that change decisions.

The first is that the spread is enormous at small headcounts. Five employees through Remofirst cost $11,940 a year in platform fees; the same five through Oyster at its $699 list rate cost $41,940. That $30,000 difference is a hire in itself, and at five people it is hard to justify paying for what the pricier platforms add.

The second is that platform fees are the small number. Five employees at, say, $70,000 each is $350,000 in salary before employer contributions of 15 to 45 percent, which adds $52,500 to $157,500 depending on country. Against a total employment cost between $402,500 and $507,500, the platform fee difference between the cheapest and most expensive provider is roughly 6 to 7 percent of the bill.

The costs that are not on the pricing page

Six charges recur across providers and none of them appear in the headline rate.

Currency spread, the margin a provider adds when it converts your dollars into local currency, is the one most often missed because it is invisible. A 1.5 percent markup on $350,000 of annual salary payments, for example, is $5,250 a year that never appears as a line item on an invoice.

Ask each provider what its conversion margin is and whether it is disclosed; the answers vary, and a provider unwilling to state it is telling you something.

Termination costs deserve equal attention because they arrive at the worst moment. Many countries mandate notice periods measured in months and statutory severance calculated on tenure. An EOR administers that process but you fund it, and a layoff in France or Brazil can cost several times the annual platform fee for that employee.

How long setup actually takes

Through an EOR, a new hire is usually payroll-active within one to two weeks; opening your own entity takes months. That gap is what matters when you have a signed candidate and a competing offer on the table.

The pattern across providers is that document readiness on your side, not vendor speed, sets the real timeline. Passport copies, addresses, bank details, and signed contracts move at the pace of the slowest person in the chain, and that is usually not the provider.

The comparison that matters strategically is the last two rows against the first two. An EOR turns a three-to-six-month entity project into a one-to-two-week onboarding, which is the actual product being sold. The fee buys speed and transferred liability, not payroll processing.

Managing international payroll month to month

Once the first person is payroll-active, the work changes shape. International payroll management is a monthly cycle with more moving parts than a domestic one, and the failures are almost always calendar failures rather than calculation failures.

The payments layer

Global payroll payments run on a pre-funding model. You transfer the full invoice, salary plus contributions plus fee, and the provider pays local currency out of local accounts on the local schedule. That is why a salary deposit appears in the hidden costs table above: what you are buying is money movement, not credit.

Pin down two mechanics before the first run: how many days ahead of payday your funds have to clear, which is where most first-month failures happen, and whether the conversion rate is struck on the funding date or the payment date. A rate struck at payment leaves your dollar cost open until the money lands.

The challenges that show up after go-live

The recurring global payroll challenges are operational rather than technical. Country calendars do not align, so one monthly cycle carries five different cutoffs. Leave and sickness rules differ enough that managers approve time off they should not have. Questions about a local payslip reach you first and can only be answered by the provider.

Then there is year-end. Each country closes its own tax year on its own date with its own reporting, and the first one arrives before anyone has budgeted time for it. The countermeasure is unglamorous. One named person owns the payroll calendar, and every country cutoff sits on it with a reminder, in the same place the US payroll dates already live.

When to stop using an EOR and open an entity

Stop using an EOR in a country once the fees you would save by moving people onto your own entity exceed what that entity costs to run. Every EOR relationship has that crossover point, and knowing roughly where it sits prevents both premature entity setup and years of overpaying.

The arithmetic gives you a break-even point rather than a rule of thumb. At Deel's published rates, twenty employees in one country cost $143,760 a year through its $599 EOR and $6,960 through its $29 payroll-only product once you own the entity. The $136,800 difference has to cover formation, ongoing accounting, local filings, and the management attention an entity requires.

Put per head, each employee moved off the EOR saves $6,840 a year in fees. The entity pays for itself once your headcount in that country times $6,840 exceeds what the entity costs to run each year, so get that running cost quoted by a local accountant before deciding.

One practical note: think about the exit when you choose a provider, not when you reach break-even. Providers differ in how gracefully they support moving employees from their EOR onto your own entity, and the ones that also sell payroll-only make that migration considerably easier than those that do not.

Contractors, employees, and the classification line

A large share of first international hires are engaged as contractors, sometimes correctly and sometimes as an attempt to avoid EOR fees. The second version trades a known monthly fee for misclassification exposure that can cost far more.

The classification test differs by country but the pattern is consistent: control, exclusivity, integration into your organization, and who supplies the tools. Someone working full time under your direction, on your schedule, using your systems, with no other clients, is an employee in most jurisdictions regardless of what the contract says.

The United States follows the same pattern. The IRS sorts the evidence into three categories (behavioral control, financial control, and the type of relationship) and weighs them together rather than letting one factor decide.

The consequences of getting it wrong land on you rather than the platform: back taxes, social contributions, penalties, and in some countries automatic reclassification with retroactive employment rights.

What hiring costs by country

The country you hire in moves your budget more than the provider you pick. Employer contributions vary by a factor of three across common hiring destinations, and several markets carry statutory obligations that have no US equivalent and surprise first-time buyers.

Ranges are indicative and vary by salary band, industry, and applicable collective agreement. Treat them as a planning input rather than a quote, and get a country-specific breakdown from any provider before committing to a hire.

The figures come from each government's own rate tables. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year, the UK charges employer National Insurance at 15 percent above £5,000 a year, and employers add a minimum 3 percent pension contribution on qualifying earnings.

In Spain, Social Security puts about 30.7 percent on the employer for a permanent contract in 2026, before the work-accident premium. In France, the URSSAF collection agency charges 13 percent for health insurance at the full rate and 10.66 percent for old-age pensions below the social security ceiling, before unemployment insurance and complementary pensions.

In Brazil, Law 8,212 sets the employer social security contribution at 20 percent of total pay, with a separate workplace-risk rate on top. India brought its four labor codes into force on November 21, 2025, and they give fixed-term staff gratuity after 1 year of service rather than 5. Gratuity is the lump sum an employer pays when employment ends.

The obligations that catch US employers

Three patterns recur, and none of them exist in US employment.

The first is mandatory extra payments. Brazil has required a 13th salary every December since 1962, the Philippines requires 13th month pay, and Mexico's Federal Labor Law requires a year-end bonus, the aguinaldo, of at least 15 days of salary.

Spain's Workers' Statute adds two extra payments a year, one at Christmas, though a collective agreement may spread them across the 12 monthly payments. Portugal also pays 14. A monthly salary times 12 therefore understates the annual cost by about 8 percent under a 13th salary and about 17 percent under 14 payments.

The second is that dismissal is not at will. Every country on that list requires cause, notice, or both, with notice periods commonly running one to three months and statutory severance calculated on tenure. Germany and France sit at the strict end, where dismissal without a recognized ground can be reversed. Budget for termination cost at hire rather than at exit.

The third is that collective agreements override contracts. In France, Italy, and Spain, sector-level agreements set minimum terms on pay, hours, and leave that your employment contract cannot undercut. Which agreement applies depends on the work performed, and getting it wrong is a compliance failure rather than a negotiation outcome.

How to check a provider before signing

Country coverage claims are marketing numbers. Eight questions separate a provider that can genuinely employ someone in your target market from one that will find a partner after you sign.

Weigh two red flags heavily. A provider unwilling to name its entity model in your specific country is usually relying on a partner it has not yet secured. And a provider that will not put the all-in monthly cost in writing before signature will not become more transparent afterward.

Switching providers and moving off an EOR

These are two different transitions, and both are more constrained than domestic payroll switching, because employment contracts and statutory registrations are involved rather than just data.

Moving between EOR providers

The employee is legally employed by the outgoing provider, so this is not a data migration but a termination and rehire in most jurisdictions. That has consequences the sales conversation rarely covers.

In the European Union, the Transfer of Undertakings Directive moves existing employment contracts to the new employer when a business, or part of one, changes hands. Where a provider switch qualifies, continuity carries over automatically, which is better for the employee but more complex to execute.

Ask both providers how the transfer works in that specific jurisdiction before committing to a date, and expect the process to take four to eight weeks rather than the one to two weeks an initial onboarding takes.

Moving from an EOR to your own entity

This is the transition every growing company eventually faces, and the one worth planning before you need it.

The total is commonly six to nine months from decision to clean cutover, which is why the crossover analysis belongs before headcount in a country reaches break-even rather than after. Every hire made while formation runs still goes through the EOR at the full rate.

One structural point in favor of providers that sell both products: moving from a vendor's EOR onto that same vendor's payroll-only service is a commercial change rather than a full migration. Your employees still move onto contracts with your entity, but you do not switch platforms at the same time.

Deel, Remote, Multiplier, and Papaya Global all publish rates for both products, so weigh that at selection time even if entity ownership is years away.

Compliance basics you stay responsible for

An EOR takes on the employment relationship, and buyers reasonably assume that means compliance is handled. Most of it is. Some of it never transfers.

Two rows deserve emphasis. Classification stays with you because it is a determination about how you work with someone, not a data-entry task, and no provider can override the facts of the relationship. Termination decisions stay with you along with their cost, which in mandatory-severance jurisdictions can be substantial and arrives with little notice.

Permanent establishment risk also survives an EOR. If someone abroad is negotiating and concluding contracts in your name, tax authorities in that country may treat your company as having a taxable presence there, a permanent establishment, regardless of who signs the payslip. That is a tax question rather than an employment one, and it belongs with your accountant rather than your EOR.

Data protection is part of international payroll compliance

Paying someone abroad means moving names, addresses, bank details, and salary figures across a border into a provider's systems every month. Where the provider handles that data on your behalf, European and UK data protection law treats it as a processor.

Article 28 of the GDPR, the EU General Data Protection Regulation, requires a contract with the processor setting out the subject matter, duration, nature, and purpose of the processing.

Three things to settle before the first run. Whether a data processing agreement covers the countries you hire in. Which sub-processors sit behind the platform, because the partner-led delivery models described earlier are sub-processors in data protection terms. And where the payroll data is stored, since some jurisdictions restrict employee records from leaving the country.

Ask for the processing agreement and the sub-processor list in the same conversation as the entity-ownership questions above. A provider running its own entity in your target market usually has a shorter processing chain as well, which is the same argument arriving from a different direction.

Which should you choose

Choose by your situation rather than by a single winner, because the right answer changes completely with headcount, geography, and whether you hold entities.

The first row routes away from every product on this page, and that is deliberate. A US-only team is better served outside this category, and so is a company that needs contractor management rather than employment. A comparison that cannot say so is not much use.

Before you choose

FirstHR does not process payroll of any kind, domestic or international, and does not act as an employer of record. Every provider above does something we do not. If you are paying people abroad, one of them is your answer.

The reason this section exists is that a meaningful share of people researching global payroll turn out to have entirely US-based teams. They arrive here because the category markets itself broadly, not because they have an international hiring problem.

For a US-only team, the sequence is domestic payroll from the payroll software comparison plus a way to run onboarding and hold employee records, and global payroll becomes relevant the day someone actually starts work in another country.

The second layer is what we handle: onboarding workflows, e-signature on offer letters and I-9s, employee records, document management, and training with completion tracking, for small and growing US teams at a flat $98 to $198 per month rather than a per-employee rate. It sits alongside whichever payroll arrangement you use rather than replacing it. If your real bottleneck is paperwork and process around new hires rather than paying someone in another country, that is the gap we built for.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is global payroll?

Paying employees in more than one country while complying with each country's tax, social contribution, and employment law rules. The term covers two arrangements at very different prices: payroll-only at $20 to $29 per employee per month when you already own a local entity, and employer of record at $199 to $699 when you do not.

What is the difference between global payroll and an employer of record?

Who legally employs the worker. With global payroll you remain the employer through an entity you own and the provider runs the mechanics. With an EOR the provider becomes the legal employer, holds the contract, and carries the compliance liability while you direct the work. That difference is why one costs $29 and the other $599.

How much does global payroll cost?

Payroll-only runs $20 to $29 per employee monthly at the published end. EOR runs from $199 at Remofirst to $699 at Oyster, with Pebl at $399, Multiplier at $459, Papaya Global at $499, and Deel, Remote, and G-P at $599. Rippling shows only an $8 per user platform start and quotes global payroll and EOR, and ADP publishes no rates. None include salary or employer taxes.

Do I need global payroll for a US-only team?

No. Payroll obligations follow where the work is performed, so a US-only team creates US-only obligations. What you need is US payroll at roughly $29 to $80 base plus $5 to $12 per employee. The question is geography rather than company size: one person outside the US changes the answer.

How long does it take to set up global payroll?

EOR onboarding typically runs 5 to 10 business days. Pebl advertises hiring in as little as 24 hours, while visa sponsorship can stretch it to 2 to 12 weeks. Payroll-only on existing entities takes several weeks. Setting up your own entity runs 8 to 12 weeks at fastest and 3 to 6 months typically.

What is global payroll processing?

The operational side: collecting pay data across countries, calculating gross-to-net under each jurisdiction's rules, converting currency, funding local accounts, remitting taxes on each authority's schedule, and producing compliant local payslips. The complexity is that none of these steps are standardized across borders.

When should I set up my own entity instead of using an EOR?

There is no fixed headcount; run the arithmetic. At Deel's rates each employee moved from its $599 EOR to its $29 payroll-only product saves $6,840 a year, so twenty people save $136,800. The entity pays off once headcount times $6,840 exceeds what it costs to run each year, and formation alone takes 3 to 6 months.

Can I use an EOR to hire contractors?

You can, but they solve different problems. Contractor management, at free to $49 per person monthly among these providers, covers contracts, invoicing, and payment for genuinely independent workers. Paying a real contractor through an EOR is unnecessary cost, while engaging an employee as a contractor to dodge EOR fees creates misclassification exposure in their country.

Which global payroll provider is cheapest?

For EOR, Remofirst at $199 per employee monthly, a starting rate that may vary by country, then Pebl at $399 and Multiplier at $459 on annual billing. For payroll-only, Multiplier starts at $20 and Deel, Remote, and Papaya Global publish $29. Remofirst reaches its markets through in-country partners rather than its own entities.

What hidden costs come with global payroll platforms?

Currency conversion that few providers publish as a percentage, deposits such as Deel's one to one and a half times monthly cost, adjusted pricing in some countries, implementation fees on payroll-only setups, benefits markups, and termination costs that fall to you rather than the provider.

What is multi-country payroll software?

The same category as global payroll software: a platform consolidating payroll across several jurisdictions into one system and one set of reports rather than separate local providers reconciled by hand. The commercial distinction that matters is whether the vendor owns entities in each market or aggregates local partners behind one interface.

Which countries are most expensive to hire in?

France and Brazil sit highest, at roughly 35 to 45 percent and about 35 percent in employer cost on top of salary. Spain runs about 31, Germany about 22, Poland 20 to 22, and the UK about 15 to 16. Brazil, the Philippines, Mexico, and Spain also mandate extra payments beyond twelve monthly salaries.

How do I check whether a provider really operates in my target country?

Ask whether it owns an entity in that specific country or uses a local partner, and how many employees it runs there today. Coverage of 180 markets does not mean active operations in all of them, and a provider that has never run payroll in your market is learning on your hire.

Can I switch from one EOR provider to another?

Yes, but it is usually a termination and rehire rather than a data migration, since the outgoing provider is the legal employer. Continuity of service may reset, probation can restart, benefits need re-enrollment, and the employee can decline the new contract. EU transfer rules may preserve continuity in some cases. Budget four to eight weeks.

How long does moving from an EOR to my own entity take?

Commonly six to nine months: 8 weeks to 6 months for formation, 2 to 6 weeks for payroll registration, 4 to 8 weeks to move employees onto new contracts, then a parallel cycle or two before cutover. Run the break-even arithmetic early, because every hire made during formation still pays the full EOR rate.

Does global payroll handle employer taxes and statutory benefits?

Providers calculate and remit them, but you fund them, and they sit outside the advertised fee. Employer contributions commonly add about 15 to 45 percent on top of gross salary, with France and Brazil at the high end and the UK at the low end. Budgets built on platform fees alone understate the real cost.