5 Best Employer of Record (EOR) Solutions for Global Hiring in 2026
A finance director at a London startup told me something last year that stuck with me.
They had been paying a developer in Brazil for eight months. Wire transfer, every month, right on time. The developer was happy. The startup was happy. The code was shipping. Everything was fine.
Then a Brazilian labour lawyer explained to them what had actually been happening for eight months.
Under Brazilian law, the moment someone works exclusively for your company, under your direction, on your schedule — they are, in practice, your employee. The label on the contract says "independent contractor." Brazilian labour law does not care about the label. It looks at the relationship. And this relationship looked very much like employment, which meant eight months of unpaid social security, pension contributions, statutory benefits, and a potential severance obligation that the startup had no idea it had been accumulating.
This is the story that plays out constantly, in every country with real employment law, for companies that hire internationally without understanding what they're actually doing. The good news is that the solution exists, it is not complicated, and the five platforms below cover it completely.
An Employer of Record is a company that legally employs your people on your behalf in countries where you don't have a legal entity. They handle the contract under local law, run the payroll, pay the social contributions, manage the statutory benefits, and deal with every piece of local compliance. You tell the employee what to do. The EOR handles everything else.
Here is who does it well.
#1 — Deel
Best for: Companies hiring globally at scale, complex multi-country teams
Starting price: EOR from $599/month per employee
Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang built Deel out of Y Combinator in 2019 on a thesis that turned out to be correct: global hiring was broken, the tools were inadequate, and fixing it was worth building a company around.
They started with contractor payments — a wire transfer problem dressed up as a compliance problem. Then they went further. They built legal entities in over 100 countries. Not partnerships with local providers who handle compliance on their behalf. Owned entities, with Deel's own legal infrastructure in each market. This distinction matters enormously in practice. When you hire someone in Colombia or Romania through Deel, the employment contract comes from a Deel entity in that country. The compliance obligation sits with Deel, not with a third party whose standards you cannot verify.
Then they kept building. Payroll companies, immigration services, IT asset management, equity management. By August 2026 they had crossed $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue. The platform now covers the full lifecycle of global employment.
Deel is the most expensive option on this list. It is also the most complete. For companies hiring across multiple countries simultaneously, or in jurisdictions where compliance complexity is genuinely high, the infrastructure justifies the cost. For a company making its first international hire in a single market, the options below may be more proportionate.
#2 — Remote People
Best for: Fast-growing companies, first international hire, integrated recruitment + EOR
Starting price: EOR from $199/month per employee
Remote People started as Horizons, a global employment platform, and rebuilt itself into something more specific: an EOR that also does recruitment. Almost every EOR platform on the market employs people you've already found. Remote People finds them and employs them, through the same platform, without switching vendors.
The in-house recruitment model matters for growing companies that are hiring internationally and sourcing simultaneously. In-country recruiters return a vetted shortlist in five days. The person you hire is onboarded on the EOR within 48 hours. The compliance infrastructure — employment contracts in 150+ countries, payroll, tax filing, statutory benefits — runs underneath without requiring you to manage it separately.
Remote People was named #1 EOR for 2026 by both Outsource Accelerator and People Managing People, with a 4.8/5 on G2. EOR starts at $199 per employee per month with no setup fees and no minimum commitment. Clients include Binance, Boeing, Coinbase, Porsche, and LVMH. For companies making their first international hire or building a distributed team from scratch, it is one of the clearest starting points on this list.
#3 — Payoneer Workforce Management
Best for: Contractor-heavy teams, mixed workforces, companies already using Payoneer
Starting price: From $199/month
Payoneer has been moving money across borders for fifteen years. It built its reputation on cross-border payments — the infrastructure that gets funds from a business in New York to a freelancer in Cairo or a contractor in Jakarta, reliably, across 190 countries.
Payoneer Workforce Management puts employment compliance on top of that payment infrastructure. The result is a platform built for a specific kind of company: one that manages a workforce that is not neatly divided into "employees" and "contractors," but a combination of both, across multiple markets, where the compliance requirements differ by country and by person.
If you already use Payoneer for payments and want to add employment compliance without changing vendors, this is the most natural path. If you're starting from scratch and your workforce is primarily employees rather than contractors, Remote or Deel may be a cleaner fit. If the workforce is genuinely mixed — and many distributed companies discover that it is — Payoneer WFM handles that complexity without requiring separate tools for each category.
#4 — Gusto
Best for: US-based companies, domestic payroll, occasional international hires
Starting price: From $49/month + $6/person
Gusto built something that American companies needed and didn't have: payroll software that a non-accountant could actually use. Federal taxes, state taxes, multiple states, benefits administration, employee onboarding — Gusto handles all of it in an interface that does not require a degree in US tax law to navigate.
It has since expanded into international hiring, partnering with Remote in a number of markets to offer EOR coverage outside the US. This makes Gusto a reasonable choice for US-based companies whose primary complexity is domestic — and who occasionally need to hire internationally — but it is worth being clear about what Gusto is: a domestic US payroll platform with international capabilities added on, rather than a global EOR platform with US capabilities. For companies where international hiring is the primary requirement, the other options on this list are better suited. For US-based companies running complex multi-state payroll who occasionally need to hire abroad, Gusto is difficult to beat on price and usability.
#5 — Revolut GlobalHire
Best for: Revolut Business customers, European hiring, reducing FX costs
Starting price: From £499/month per employee
Revolut was supposed to be a bank.
Then it became a stockbroker. Then a crypto exchange. Then a business banking platform used by millions of companies across Europe. Now, through GlobalHire, it wants to employ your people. At some point you have to ask what Revolut isn't doing, and the honest answer is that the list gets shorter every year.
GlobalHire launched as an EOR service for Revolut Business customers, and its specific advantage is integration. If you already bank with Revolut Business, the onboarding process for GlobalHire skips steps that other EOR providers require — your account is already linked, your identity is already verified, payroll runs directly from the same account you use for everything else. For a Revolut Business customer making their first international hire, this removes a meaningful amount of friction.
The FX advantage is also real. Standard EOR providers invoice you in one currency and convert to the employee's local currency at a marked-up exchange rate. Revolut converts in-house, at interbank rates, saving up to 5% on international salary payments. Across a team of five or ten international employees, that compounds into a meaningful annual saving.
GlobalHire is newer than the other providers on this list. Country coverage is growing — over 50 countries currently, with a stronger presence in Europe and the Americas than in Asia-Pacific. For Revolut Business customers hiring in Europe, it is the most logical starting point. For companies with complex multi-region needs, or who are not on Revolut Business, the options above offer more complete coverage.
One question before you choose
Before comparing pricing, ask yourself what your workforce actually looks like.
One or two employees in a single European country, already on Revolut Business — GlobalHire removes the friction. Hiring across multiple countries simultaneously where compliance reliability is non-negotiable — Deel's owned-entity model is worth the premium. Building a distributed team that needs global coverage at a proportionate price — Remote People. A mixed workforce of employees and contractors across many markets — Payoneer WFM. US-based with complex domestic payroll and occasional international needs — Gusto.
The mistake is treating them as interchangeable. They are not the same product solving the same problem. They are five different answers to five different versions of the same question.
Figure out which version you're asking. Then choose accordingly.
Quick comparison
Disclosure: FreeMalta has affiliate partnerships with Deel, Remote People, Payoneer, and Gusto. We may earn a commission if you sign up through our links, at no additional cost to you. All editorial assessments are our own.
