An Employer of Record (EOR) lets you hire employees in countries where you have no legal entity — but comparing providers on price is harder than it should be. Pricing models differ, inclusions vary, and the headline rate is not always the number that ends up on your invoice.
This guide explains how EOR pricing is typically structured, and where costs can hide.
The Two Main Pricing Models
Nearly all EOR providers price in one of two ways, and the difference matters more as your team grows:
Fixed fee per employee. Most EOR providers charge a fixed monthly fee for each employee, regardless of that employee's salary. Atlas HXM's platform-fee pricing starts at $599 per employee per month. This model makes costs predictable: a company hiring ten people knows its EOR spend to the dollar, and the fee does not rise when an employee receives a pay increase.
Percentage of salary. Some providers instead charge a percentage of each employee's gross salary, commonly in the range of 10–15%. This can appear cheaper for junior roles, but it scales with compensation, meaning a senior engineer costs materially more to employ than a coordinator, even though the administrative work involved is broadly the same.
For most organizations building a team of skilled professionals, a fixed fee is easier to forecast as salaries rise — but in practice, pricing is rarely a single number.
Atlas HXM's pricing, for example, has four elements: the platform fee, benefits, foreign exchange (FX), and Local Employer Services. When comparing providers, ask how each element of the fee is calculated, not just what the headline rate is.
What the Fee Should Cover
A credible EOR fee covers the full employment infrastructure in-country: locally compliant employment contracts, payroll processing and tax withholding, statutory benefits enrollment and administration, and ongoing labor law compliance. It should also include access to support, questions about payroll, benefits, or local regulations arise constantly with a distributed team, and answers should not be billed separately.
What the fee does not cover, at any provider, is the cost of employment itself: the employee's salary, employer taxes and social contributions, and statutory benefits. These vary significantly by country. Employer costs can add anywhere from around 10% to over 30% on top of gross salary depending on the jurisdiction, so always evaluate the total cost of employment per country, not just the EOR fee.
What to Watch Out For
#1 Setup, onboarding, and offboarding fees
Some providers charge separately to onboard or exit an employee. Confirm whether these are included before comparing headline rates.
#2 Foreign exchange (FX) margins
Where salaries are funded in one currency and paid in another, a provider may apply an FX markup that never appears as a line item. Ask explicitly how exchange rates are set.
#3 Deposits and prefunding
Many EORs require a deposit or advance funding of one or more months of payroll. This is not a fee, but it is cash flow you should plan for.
#4 Third-party pass-throughs
An indirect EOR, one that relies on local partner entities rather than operating its own, adds an intermediary layer, and intermediaries add cost and delay. A direct EOR like Atlas HXM operates entities in 160+ countries, which keeps the employment relationship, the compliance responsibility, and the pricing in one place.
#5 Tiered support
Check what level of support the base fee includes. If reaching a knowledgeable human costs extra, the headline price is understating what you will actually pay to run a global team well.
The real comparison
The right way to evaluate EOR pricing is total cost per employee per country, per year — fee, employer costs, FX, and any extras — weighed against what you get for it. The cheapest quote is not necessarily the cheapest EOR over the long haul: payroll errors, compliance failures, and unresponsive support all carry costs that never appear in a proposal. That is why the fundamentals, and a direct entity model that removes intermediary costs.
