Decision modelentityDE05 hires
Decision · EOR or entityEOR vs your own entity: the break-even
An Employer of Record costs $2,388 (RemoFirst) to $8,388 (Oyster) in fees per employee per year. Five employees in Germany at $75,000 through Deel cost $35,940 a year in fees, $107,820 over three years; the 22.3% statutory charges (about $83,500 a year for the five) are owed either way. An entity removes the fee line and nothing else. Enter your adviser's entity quote to see where the lines cross; in Germany the 18-month staff-leasing limit forces the question anyway.
Prices checked 2 Oct–3 Nov 2026 · updated 5 Sept 2026 · methodology
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Threshold instrument
EOR fees over the years against the entity quote you have.
employees inatgross / year, through
EOR · Deel3-year fees
$107,820fees over 3 years · 5 employees
- Fee
- from $599 / employee / mo
- Per year
- $35,940
- Set-up
- none: the provider's entity
Checked 2026-11-03
Get a Deel quoteYour own entity in Germany3-year cost
Enter your quoteset-up and yearly running cost above
- Set-up
- —
- Per year
- —
- Employer
- you, with local payroll
Set-up and running costs are not published by any authority as a single figure; they depend on the adviser, the city and the payroll provider. Enter the quote you have.
| Cumulative, 5 employees in Germany | EOR fees | Entity | Statutory charges (either way) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $35,940 | — | $83,438 |
| Year 2 | $71,880 | — | $166,875 |
| Year 3 | $107,820 | — | $250,313 |
| Year 4 | $143,760 | — | $333,750 |
| Year 5 | $179,700 | — | $417,188 |
| Break-even headcount over 3 years | enter the entity costs to see where the lines cross | ||
Statutory employer charges ($83,438 a year here, +22.3%) are owed whichever route you take; the fee is the only line an entity removes.
Employer charges from official sources for the country chosen; provider fees are the prices printed on their pricing pages on the dates shown; deposits, FX margins and add-ons are not included. Not legal or tax advice. Methodology
Verdict by situation
Not a winner for everyone: the case for each route.
- Choose an EOR if
- you have fewer people than the break-even headcount, you are testing the market, or you want to be able to stop within a month: the fee ($199 to $699 per employee per month) is the whole cost of not having an entity, and the providers that state no minimum term (RemoFirst, Playroll and G-P) let you leave without an annual contract.
- Open your own entity if
- your yearly EOR fees exceed the entity's set-up spread over your horizon plus its running costs, you need the entity for other reasons (contracts, tax, licences), or the law caps the EOR route, as Germany's 18-month staff-leasing limit does: then the fee is money you can stop paying.
Yearly EOR fees to beat, by headcount, at the cheapest and the Deel price.
Fees only, at published monthly rates × 12 × headcount. Your entity quote goes into the instrument above.
| Headcount | RemoFirst fees / yr ($199/mo) | Deel fees / yr ($599/mo) | Highest listed fee / yr ($699/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $2,388 | $7,188 | $8,388 |
| 3 | $7,164 | $21,564 | $25,164 |
| 5 | $11,940 | $35,940 | $41,940 |
| 10 | $23,880 | $71,880 | $83,880 |
| 20 | $47,760 | $143,760 | $167,760 |
An entity pays off when its set-up spread over the horizon plus its yearly running cost is below the fees line for your headcount. Statutory employer charges are owed either way and are not in this table.
What the entity route involves, country by country
Onboarding through an EOR against the registrations an entity needs.
| Country | EOR onboarding | Employer on-cost | The entity route, as researched on the country page |
|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | 1–3 days | at least +3.8% | For one to five employees, an EOR is generally faster and can be cheaper than setting up an entity in India. A private limited entity through the SPICe+ process becomes worth comparing when headcount is expected to grow substantially over several years or the business needs direct GST, import-export registration, and full payroll control. Incorporation timelines and costs vary and no single official source checked established a national benchmark, so this is qualitative decision guidance rather than a quoted threshold. |
| PH Philippines | 2 days | +14.2% | A Philippine subsidiary means SEC incorporation, then BIR, SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG and DOLE registrations, a regional minimum wage set by the region where the entity sits, and bi-monthly payroll. Statutory employer charges are low and capped, so the entity question is about time and compliance rather than contributions: providers can onboard in days, and some add a liability or administration percentage on top of the fee (Deel lists 0.60%). Beyond roughly ten hires, or when the team needs PEZA incentives, a local entity starts to pay off. |
| US United States | 1 day | +8.0% | Employing in the United States without a provider means your own US company, then an employer account in each state where someone works: in California an EDD account for unemployment insurance, the training tax and SDI withholding, plus a workers' compensation policy, alongside federal filings on Forms 941 and 940. The statutory charges are owed either way, about 8.0% of a US$120,000 salary, of which Social Security and Medicare make up 7.65 points. Once that company exists, a PEO becomes the cheaper route: it co-employs staff already on your own books, from US$125 (Deel) or from US$99 (Remote) per employee per month, against published EOR fees of US$199 to US$699, and it cannot be used without the entity. What no law prices can outweigh the charges: a health plan, which an employer with 50 or more full-time employees must offer or risk a payment under section 4980H. |
| CA Canada | 1 day | +8.5% | Opening a local entity in Canada or Ontario is fast and relatively inexpensive, but requires setting up local payroll registrations with the CRA, WSIB, and Ontario Ministry of Finance. For a small team, an EOR is significantly faster and removes ongoing statutory employer compliance burdens. |
| MX Mexico | 2–5 days | +30.9% | Opening a Mexican legal entity (S.A. de C.V.) plus employer registration with IMSS and INFONAVIT takes 3-6 months by Oyster's estimate (hiring via EOR takes "as little as 48 hours", it says, against three to six months for a local entity) and 4-5 months for full incorporation by Deel's, versus 2-5 business days through an EOR. When headcount in Mexico is set to grow over several years, compare the amortized cost of a local entity and an in-country payroll provider with per-employee EOR fees; the break-even depends on your own entity and payroll quotes, not on a fixed headcount. |
| NL Netherlands | 2–4 days | +27.4% | An EOR is the simplest route for a first hire in the Netherlands. A Dutch BV needs no minimum share capital (from €0.01 since the 2012 Flex-BV reform) but requires a notarial deed and Chamber of Commerce (KVK) registration, with typical all-in incorporation costs of roughly €500–2,500 in notary and registration fees. Opening an entity is generally worth evaluating once headcount is sustained (several employees, ongoing local operations) rather than for a single opportunistic hire. |
| SG Singapore | 1–2 days | +17.2% | A Singapore Private Limited (Pte Ltd) starts to make more sense than an EOR once headcount, a local resident director you can appoint, or a need for local banking/IP ownership go beyond one or two hires. ACRA registration itself is fast and cheap by regional standards (a S$15 name-application fee plus a S$300 incorporation fee, and a straightforward application can be approved in 1-3 business days), but you still need a resident director, a company secretary and a registered office, so for a first hire, weigh the ongoing compliance overhead - not the setup step - against the EOR fee. |
| GB United Kingdom | 7 days | +16.4% | A UK limited company can be registered at Companies House in a day for a nominal fee; the real work is PAYE registration, a workplace pension scheme with automatic-enrolment duties, employers' liability insurance and monthly RTI filings. Two levers favour an entity once the team grows: an own company with a pay bill under GBP 3 million pays no Apprenticeship Levy, and it keeps the Employment Allowance for itself. For one to five hires, or a first UK employee before an office exists, the provider route is faster and carries the pension and HMRC administration. |
| IE Ireland | 1–2 days | +12.9% | An EOR can onboard an employee in Ireland in 1-2 business days, versus roughly 2 months to incorporate and register a local entity with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) per Deel's guide, so an entity is rarely worth it for a handful of hires. Opening a local entity pays off only once Irish headcount is large and durable enough to absorb the payroll, tax and compliance overhead that EOR fees otherwise cover per employee; no official threshold sets that point, so price both routes at your planned headcount. |
| DE Germany | 4 days | +22.3% | A German GmbH needs EUR 25,000 of share capital (half paid in), a notarised deed, commercial-register entry, and then registrations with a health fund, the pension insurer, the accident insurer and the tax office; count several weeks and a local payroll provider. The stronger argument for an entity is the leasing law: an EOR hire is a leased worker who must be moved after 18 months with the same client, and after nine months the equal-pay rule ties pay and conditions to your comparable staff. For a permanent German team the entity is the destination; the EOR is the bridge for the first year and for one-off hires. For scale, one provider prints its own estimate: Deel's Germany guide (read 19 September 2026) puts a German entity at EUR 61,446 in one-off costs and EUR 45,187 a year, against an EOR service fee of EUR 6,250 per employee per year. That is a provider's sales figure, not an official or independently checked cost; ask your adviser for a written quote. |
| AU Australia | 2 days | +17.7% | An Australian proprietary company registers with ASIC in a day, but employing means an ABN, PAYG withholding registration, a superannuation clearing house or Payday Super setup, a workers compensation policy in each state where staff sit, and payroll tax registration in any state where grouped wages pass the threshold. A small subsidiary with under AUD 1.2 million of NSW wages pays no payroll tax at all, which is the biggest cost difference against an EOR quote. Below roughly 8 to 10 hires the provider route is faster and keeps the multi-state compliance on their side; above that, the payroll-tax saving alone can fund the entity. |
| CN China | 7 days | +32.9% | In China, hiring without a local entity is not a cost trade-off: it is legally impossible. Article 2 of the Employment Contract Law defines the employing unit as an enterprise or organisation located inside the territory of the People's Republic of China, so only an entity registered in mainland China can be a party to a Chinese employment contract. A foreign company with no local presence therefore has three options and only three: an employer of record, its own subsidiary such as a WFOE, or a contractor arrangement that is not employment. Against that, the provider fee buys a hire in about seven days rather than the months a WFOE takes to register, capitalise and bank. The crossover is unusually late in China because the entity route carries permanent local administration, and because contribution rates and bands change city by city and turn over every 1 July, which is ongoing work somebody has to own. |
| ES Spain | 4 days | +32.2% | Below roughly 5-10 employees, or for a first hire testing the Spanish market, an EOR is almost always cheaper and faster than incorporating. A Sociedad Limitada (SL) now needs as little as EUR 1 in share capital (Ley 18/2022 reform, down from EUR 3,000) but still takes several weeks for notary, Registro Mercantil, NIF and Seguridad Social employer registration, plus ongoing local payroll/accounting overhead — worth it once headcount, local benefits customization, or long-term commitment make the EOR per-employee fee less economical than running your own entity. |
| IT Italy | 3 days | +37.4% | An Italian S.r.l. needs a notarial deed, share capital, INPS and INAIL registrations, a chosen collective agreement and a licensed payroll professional (consulente del lavoro) before the first payslip. Employer charges then depend on the entity's own sector code and headcount, so a small subsidiary with 5 or fewer staff would pay slightly less FIS and no CIGS. Some providers bill one-off onboarding items in Italy, such as the mandatory pre-hire medical check and safety training, and charge extra for Quadro and Dirigente grades (supplementary health and pension funds). For a first hire or a team under ten, an EOR is faster and avoids running Italian payroll compliance in-house. |
| PL Poland | 5 days | +21.0% | A Polish sp. z o.o. can be registered online in days with PLN 5,000 of share capital, but the running cost is the payroll apparatus: ZUS and tax-office registrations, a licensed payroll provider, monthly ZUS DRA filings, PPK administration, and the PFRON levy once the entity reaches 25 full-time equivalents. A brand-new entity with fewer than 10 insured people pays the flat 1.67% accident rate rather than 0.67%. Providers hiring remotely in Poland also bill a pre-employment medical check and a monthly remote-work allowance the Labour Code requires for home-based staff; ask for both figures with the quote. For one to ten hires the EOR route is faster and keeps the PFRON and PPK mechanics on the provider's side. |
| BR Brazil | 3 days | +50.9% | Brazil makes a strong case for using a provider rather than opening your own company. Deel's own Brazil page states the alternative plainly: hiring directly needs an entity, which means a local office, an address registered as a subsidiary and a Brazilian bank account, and it puts that at months against three days through its EOR. The statutory charges are identical either way, so the entity question is about the fixed overhead and the exit. Two Brazilian specifics push the answer further than usual: the employer contribution has no salary ceiling, so a high-paid team does not get cheaper per head as it grows, and dismissal without cause costs 40% of every FGTS deposit ever made, which a foreign parent has to fund locally. The usual crossover of five or more permanent local hires still applies, but the termination exposure is the line to model before the payroll savings. |
| AE United Arab Emirates | 20 days | at least +2.9% | An Emirati payroll looks cheap and is structurally awkward, and both halves of that come from the same fact: the employee is a resident on a permit the employer sponsors. There is no employer pension contribution for a foreign hire, so the statutory percentage is small, but the employer carries the work permit, the residence visa, the health cover and the repatriation, and none of them is a percentage of anything. The other choice that decides the bill is where the entity sits. A mainland employer accrues the gratuity under article 51 and pays it when the employee leaves; a DIFC employer pays at least 5.83% of basic wage into a funded scheme every month and may not set basic pay below half the package. Compare the two routes on the whole picture rather than on the headline rate: the figure on this page is a floor of about 2.9% of salary at a package split evenly between basic pay and allowances, and it rises in direct proportion to the basic share. |
| JP Japan | 5–10 days | +14.1% | Japan is one of the countries where the employer on-cost argues least against an entity: the statutory charge is around 14% at a senior salary and falls in percentage terms as pay rises, because pension and health both stop at a ceiling. What argues for an EOR is time and standing obligations. Playroll's own comparison puts an EOR hire at 10 to 15 business days against 8 to 12 weeks after entity registration for a Godo Kaisha, and a Japanese entity has to maintain rules of employment, a labour-standards filing and its own social insurance registrations from the first employee. For one or two hires that overhead rarely pays for itself; for a local team of five or more, price the entity against the provider fees again. |
| VN Vietnam | 3 days | +23.5% | An entity in Vietnam means an investment registration certificate and an enterprise registration certificate from the provincial planning department, charter capital, a tax code, then registration with the social insurance agency for the three compulsory branches and with the labour federation for union funding. Statutory charges are the reason to think twice: 23.5% of payroll up to the ceiling, of which 2% goes to union funding that is owed whether or not a union exists at the workplace. The administrative traps are the two different ceilings — VND 50,600,000 a month for social and health insurance, twenty times the regional minimum for unemployment insurance — and the fact that both move: the reference level changed on 1 July 2026 and the regional minimum wages on 1 January 2026, each by its own decree. |
| SE Sweden | 10–15 days | +32.6% | Setting up a Swedish Aktiebolag rather than using an EOR is a question of timing and standing obligations, not of the charges above: the 31.42% is the same either way. Playroll's own comparison puts an EOR hire at 10 to 15 business days against 8 to 12 weeks plus payroll setup for an Aktiebolag. The point to weigh first is the collective agreement: an EOR already applies one, with the occupational pension and insurance that come with it, while a new entity has to decide whether to sign one and then fund whatever it commits to. For one or two hires the entity rarely pays for itself; past a small local team, price what owning the employment relationship and the collective-agreement choice is worth to you. |
| BE Belgium | 3 days | +34.4% | Belgium is where the entity-versus-provider arithmetic is least obvious, because one statutory line actually runs the other way. The 1.69% special unemployment contribution is owed only by employers with ten or more workers, so a provider always pays it and your own two-person subsidiary would not. Everything else points the usual way: a 25% employer contribution that stops above EUR 88,434 of quarterly base salary, double holiday pay once a year, and a joint committee that dictates minimum pay, the year-end bonus and voucher rules before you write the offer. The real cost of the entity route in Belgium is not incorporation, it is that somebody has to own the joint committee question permanently. For one or two hires a provider absorbs that; from five or more local employees, price those fixed fees against the provider fees. |
| PT Portugal | 2 days | +23.8% | Portugal is one of the easier entities to run in Western Europe and still a poor first move. The employer side of payroll is a single uncapped rate, there is no fund to join since 2024 and no payroll tax on top, so the arithmetic an entity would face is the same 23.75% a provider faces - none of the Italian collective-agreement tangle or the Belgian collar split. What the entity adds is the apparatus: a Portuguese company, registration with Seguranca Social and the Portal das Financas, a monthly Declaracao de Remuneracoes, a work accident policy of your own, contracted occupational health and safety services, and a local accountant to sign the filings. Against that sits a hire that starts in about two days through a provider. Two Portuguese details move the crossover later than usual. The probation period is long - 90 days generally, 180 for technically complex or senior-qualified roles, 240 for directors - and during it either side can end the contract with no notice and no compensation, so the risk an entity is meant to absorb is small in the first months anyway. And the two subsidies plus the meal allowance make Portuguese payroll administration fiddly in a way that is cheap to outsource and tedious to learn. One or two engineers in Lisbon or Porto belong with a provider; a team of five or more permanent staff, or any plan to trade locally, justifies the Lda. |
| HU Hungary | 3 days | +13.0% | In Hungary the statutory case for a provider is weak and the practical case is still strong. The employer charge is a single 13% line with no ceiling, no thirteenth month and no fund to join, so an entity of your own would face the same simple arithmetic rather than the tangle of Brazil or Belgium. What the entity route adds is a Hungarian company with its own local business tax of up to 2% on turnover, its own accounting and its own registrations, against a hire that starts in about three days through a provider. The crossover therefore comes down to headcount and permanence more cleanly than usual: for one or two engineers the provider fee is the cheaper overhead, and for a team of five or more permanent staff in Budapest, price the KFT against the provider fees. |
| RO Romania | 3 days | +2.3% | Romania charges an employer 2.25% of gross and nothing else, one of the lightest ledgers priced here, and that changes what the provider decision is about. At 2.25% there is almost nothing for an entity of your own to save on the payroll side: a Romanian SRL would file the same single contribution on the same base. What the entity route buys is the disappearance of a fee that, on a Romanian salary, is a larger share of the total than the tax is - at US$40,000 the 2.25% is about US$75 a month against published provider fees of US$199 to US$699. That arithmetic flips the usual crossover: in most countries you stay with a provider because the statutory ledger is frightening, and in Romania you leave one because the ledger is not. Against that sits the SRL itself - registration, a Romanian accountant, the labour inspectorate's Revisal filings, and the disability quota once you pass fifty staff - versus a hire that starts in about three days. One or two engineers still favour the provider; a team you intend to keep for years is a strong entity case, since the fee it removes is 2.7 to 9.3 times the tax at this salary. |
| CO Colombia | 4 days | +34.2% | Hiring directly in Colombia means a registered entity, a local bank account and registration with a pension fund, an EPS, an ARL and a caja de compensacion before the first payslip. Deel's own Colombia page puts the alternative plainly: an entity means 'a local office, an address registered as a subsidiary, and an account with a local bank', and that this 'can take months', against a start 'in as little as 4 days' through its employer of record. The statutory charges are the same either way, so the entity question here is about fixed overhead and about the four separate institutions that have to be fed every month. One Colombian specific is worth modelling before the payroll savings: the article 114-1 exoneration is written for employees paid under ten minimum wages, so a team of senior engineers can cross the threshold one hire at a time and add 13.5 points of payroll cost per person without any change in the law. |
| DK Denmark | 1 day | +3.2% | Denmark taxes heavily and charges employers lightly, and the two facts are the same fact: the welfare state is funded from the employee's payslip, not from a contribution on top of it. Almost everything a Danish employer owes is a flat sum measured per employee rather than a share of pay, which has two consequences for the entity decision. The statutory charges barely grow with salary, so scaling a Danish team adds cost in a straight line with headcount and does not punish seniority; and the numbers are small enough that running your own entity saves nothing on the payroll itself. What it saves is the provider fee, which at the salary priced here runs from about the size of every statutory line put together, at its cheapest published level, to more than three and a half times it. Against that, the entity has to carry the two costs this table cannot price: salary during sickness, which the law leaves on the employer, and whichever occupational pension your offer has to match to hire at all. Both fall on you either way; a provider only spreads the administration. For one or two engineers the provider is the cheaper overhead, and a permanent Copenhagen team is a straightforward entity case. |
| CH Switzerland | 3 days | +10.9% | Switzerland inverts the usual argument. Statutory employer charges come to barely a tenth of salary, roughly half what Germany costs an employer and a third of what Austria costs, so the case for a provider is not that it saves you charges - it is that the Swiss charges you cannot avoid are the ones that need a local decision every time. You have to pick an Ausgleichskasse, and its administrative levy is 5.00% of your AVS contributions at two employees against 1.00% at fifteen, so your own small subsidiary pays a multiple of what a provider pays on that line. You have to pick a pension institution, and the difference between the legal minimum and an ordinary Swiss plan is worth about five points of salary, roughly US$500 a month on this page's example salary - the same order as a published provider fee. You have to pick an accident insurer, since an office employer is not with SUVA by default. And the family allowance rate you end up paying depends on which canton and which fund you land in. Against that, Switzerland asks for no severance fund of the Austrian or Italian kind, and the notice scale in the Code of Obligations stops at three months. The crossover comes earlier than in Germany or Italy - but the day it comes, somebody has to own four supplier choices that nobody else in your company has ever made. |
| CR Costa Rica | 2 days | at least +35.2% | Costa Rica charges the employer through ten separate lines, but the CCSS collects all of them on one planilla, so the administrative load of a direct hire is lighter than the line count suggests. What an entity really costs here is registration with the CCSS, a local bank account and a separate occupational-risk policy with the INS before anyone can be paid; Deel's Costa Rica page describes the alternative as 'a local office, an address registered as a subsidiary, and an account with a local bank', taking months, against a start 'in as little as 2 days' through its employer of record. The statutory charges are the same either way. The line to watch in a quote is the aguinaldo: it is a full month of pay every December, it is exempt from social charges, and a provider that quotes only the 26.83% collected by the CCSS has left it out. |
| IL Israel | 1–5 days | at least +15.2% | Deel's Israel guide, dated 9 June 2026, puts its own estimate for your own Israeli entity at ILS 118,380 of one-off registration, legal and banking cost plus ILS 125,517 a year of bookkeeping, audit, payroll and corporate tax, against ILS 24,233 a year per employee for its employer-of-record service, and one month to the first hire against one business day. Those are Deel's figures for its own comparison, not an independent estimate, and they exclude the thing that actually decides the question in Israel: labour-court exposure. Israeli labour courts reclassify contractors readily and dismissal requires a documented hearing, so for the first two or three hires, weigh that exposure before choosing a new entity of your own over a provider's. Compare the two routes on the right basis: the figure on this page is at least 15% of salary, a floor rather than a total, because the severance owed above the capped monthly provision falls due on dismissal whoever the legal employer is - it follows the hire, not the structure. |
| SA Saudi Arabia | 20 days | at least +6.0% | The statutory percentage is not what decides a Saudi hire. A foreign employee needs a work visa, an iqama and a block visa quota against the employer's Nitaqat band, and article 40 puts every one of those fees on the employer; that is why Deel quotes 20 days to a first Saudi start. Setting up your own entity means holding that quota yourself, in a nationalisation system that grades an establishment by the share of Saudis it employs, and a first foreign hire in a new entity with no Saudi staff is the hardest case the system produces. The 2024 labour amendments also added a definition of 'Assignment' to article 2 - the service of providing a worker to work for a person other than the employer through an establishment licensed for the purpose - which is the first time Saudi law names the arrangement an employer of record relies on. Compare the two routes on the whole cost: the figure on this page is a floor of about 6% of salary, and the per-head charges beside it are what actually decide the budget. |
| KR South Korea | 2 days | +19.5% | A Korean subsidiary means incorporation and a foreign-investment filing, then registration with four separate insurers — the National Pension Service, the National Health Insurance Service, the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service and the employment insurance office — although the health service collects all four premiums on one bill. The employer side is not where Korea is expensive: statutory charges before severance come to roughly a tenth of pay, and the retirement benefit is the rest. What an entity really buys you is control over the severance scheme and the 52-hour week rules; below ten hires, weigh that compliance load against the provider fees. |
| FR France | 2 days | +48.2% | A French SAS can be incorporated with EUR 1 of capital and no notary, which makes the entity route look cheap until you price what comes after it: a URSSAF and DSN payroll declaration every month, a collective agreement to pick and apply, a compulsory group health plan, an occupational health subscription, a works council once you pass eleven employees, and a AT-MP rate the Carsat notifies against your own claims record. France has no equivalent of the German eighteen-month leasing limit, so an EOR can hold a French employee indefinitely; the argument for your own entity is cost per head at scale and control of the collective agreement, not a legal deadline. Two constraints are specific to the EOR route and worth knowing before you compare. First, the provider's collective agreement is yours: Deel states its French agreement is portage salarial, which carries a 5% business allowance on top of salary and sets a floor on what you may pay. Second, that floor is high - Deel's published EOR minimums for France are EUR 2,704.80 a month for base and junior roles and EUR 3,284.40 for executive roles, against a legal minimum wage of about EUR 1,867. France is not a country where an EOR lets you hire cheaply; it is a country where an EOR lets you hire quickly. |
| TH Thailand | 3 days | +1.1% | A Thai company means Ministry of Commerce registration, a foreign business licence or BOI promotion for a foreign-owned entity, a tax ID, and registration with the Social Security Office within 30 days of the first hire. Statutory employer charges are not the reason to open one: they are capped at THB 875 a month for social security plus a work-injury line of a few hundred baht a year. The reasons are work permits — which need an entity with paid-up capital and a Thai-to-foreign headcount ratio — and the severance exposure, which is the real money at the end of a Thai contract. |
| FI Finland | 1 day | +19.3% | Finland is unusually cheap to enter and unusually awkward to run, and the two pull in opposite directions. Cheap, because the statutory employer side is three lines and 19.3%, below Poland and far below Sweden's 32.6% despite the same Nordic reputation, and because a hire through a provider can start in a day. Awkward, because almost nothing about Finnish employment is a number you can look up. Pension goes to a private insurer whose rate depends on your own disability experience and your own client bonus; workers' compensation and group life are insurer quotes; the unemployment rate depends on your total payroll crossing a EUR 2.5 million line; and the terms that decide what an employee actually earns - the holiday bonus above all - live in a collective agreement that you have to choose and then follow. An entity of your own has to take all of that on, plus registration with the Incomes Register and monthly reporting into it. The case for the entity is strongest when the same collective agreement and the same insurers will cover a whole Finnish team, which is to say five or more permanent staff; for one or two engineers in Helsinki, the provider is carrying a real administrative load rather than only a payroll run. One point cuts the other way and is worth checking: because the unemployment tier follows the employer's payroll, a large provider may be paying 1.23% where your own small entity would pay 0.31%. |
| AR Argentina | 15 days | at least +36.9% | Starting an Argentine hire takes longer and costs more at the front than the paperwork suggests. Deel's Argentina page puts its own onboarding at fifteen days, where its Chilean and Peruvian pages say three days and its Colombian page four, and it charges two one-off fees that those pages do not list: a wet-ink employment agreement handling fee and an onboarding medical check. Running your own entity means monthly filings with ARCA, an ART policy, an obra social affiliation and a peso bank account, in a currency whose monthly accounting rate moves enough that a budget written in dollars needs re-checking each month. The statutory charges are the same either way. The useful question is not the entity threshold but the termination exposure: dismissal without cause carries a seniority indemnity on top of notice, and it is funded locally. |
| MY Malaysia | 1–5 days | +14.2% | Deel's Malaysia guide, dated 9 June 2026, puts its own estimate for your own Malaysian entity at MYR 137,378 of one-off incorporation, licensing and registration cost plus MYR 165,206 a year of payroll, accounting and filings, against MYR 30,466 a year per employee for its employer-of-record service, and one month to the first hire. Those are Deel's figures for its own comparison, not an independent estimate. The structural point is that a Sdn Bhd of your own with fewer than ten Malaysian employees would be outside the compulsory HRD Corp levy band, while a provider's entity is always inside it - one of the few places where an entity is cheaper per head on a statutory line rather than only on the fee. |
| AT Austria | 3 days | +30.0% | Austria is the case where the entity route buys you very little and costs you a permanent job. The statutory employer charges are the same whoever employs the person - there is no size threshold that a small subsidiary escapes, unlike Belgium - so the provider fee is close to the whole of the difference. What you would be taking on instead is the administration: registering with the health insurance carrier that collects all four insurances, registering the establishment with the municipality for the 3% payroll tax and with the economic chamber for the surcharge, and, most of all, identifying and tracking the Kollektivvertrag that governs the role. That last one is not paperwork. The collective agreement sets the minimum pay, the 13th and 14th month, the notice scale and the leave supplements, it is renegotiated annually, and getting it wrong is a back-pay claim rather than a fine. For one or two hires that is exactly what a provider absorbs. From about five local employees, price those fixed fees against the provider fees - and budget for someone who owns the collective agreement question from the day the entity opens. |
| ID Indonesia | 3 days | +14.4% | An Indonesian entity for a foreign owner means a PT PMA with a minimum investment plan, a business identification number, then registration with two separate social security bodies — BPJS Ketenagakerjaan for the four employment programmes and BPJS Kesehatan for health — each with its own reporting portal and its own ceiling. Statutory employer charges are moderate, around 6% of pay before the THR, and the THR takes the total to about 14%. The real reasons to weigh an entity are work permits for foreign staff, the termination exposure, and the fact that both BPJS registrations must be in the legal employer's name. |
| AL Albania | 5 days | +16.4% | Albania is a country where the employer rate is moderate and the ceiling is the story. The employer pays 16.7% of gross: 15% of social insurance, of which 13.8 points go to sickness, maternity and pension, 0.3 to work accidents and 0.9 to unemployment, plus 1.7% of health insurance. On a US$28,000 salary that is about US$382 a month, which sits below a typical provider fee, so the fee rather than the levy is the larger half of what you pay to use an employer of record. Three Albanian specifics belong in the decision. The social insurance base stops at ALL 186,416 a month from 1 January 2026, about US$2,284 at the November 2026 accounting rate, and the ceiling moves each time the minimum wage moves: the ALL 10,000 rise in the minimum wage on 1 January 2026 lifted the ceiling by exactly ALL 10,000. The example salary sits just above it, which is why the page prices 16.4% rather than 16.7%; on a US$40,000 salary the employer's share falls to about 12.0% of gross, because only the 1.7% health line keeps running on the full pay. Law No. 91/2024 rewrote annual leave as at least 22 working days, so a guide that still quotes four weeks, 20 days or 28 calendar days is describing the previous text. And the termination rules carry cost: a dismissal after probation needs a meeting called in writing at least 72 hours ahead under article 144, or the employer owes two months' pay in addition to other awards, and after three years the seniority award in article 145 adds at least 15 days' pay per full year. Article 10 of Law No. 7703 also lets IT employees of companies registered in a technology park under Law No. 58/2022 pay social insurance on the minimum wage with their written consent; this page does not apply that regime to a provider's payroll. |
| SK Slovakia | 7–12 days | +39.3% | The statutory charges are the same under a provider as under your own spoločnosť s ručením obmedzeným: 25.2% of social insurance, 11% of health insurance, the 0.6% social fund allocation and the meal contribution. What differs is the setup. Playroll puts an EOR hire at 7 to 12 business days against 8 to 12 weeks to incorporate an s.r.o., obtain a trade licence, register with the Social Insurance Agency and a health insurer and run a first payroll, and closing that entity later takes a formal liquidation. Two Slovak points belong in the decision either way. Work-injury insurance is a single 0.8% for every employer, so a provider's activity class does not move the price the way it does in the Czech Republic. And the meal obligation follows the employee, so a teleworker hired through a provider is owed the cash meal contribution exactly as one hired by your own entity. |
| HR Croatia | 3 days | +16.5% | In Croatia the statutory ledger is one line, so the entity decision turns on the fee and the paperwork, not on charges. At 16.5% the employer contribution on a US$40,000 salary is about US$550 a month, and a Croatian d.o.o. of your own would file exactly the same health contribution on the same base. What the entity route saves is the monthly provider fee; what it costs is registration, a local accountant, monthly reporting to the Tax Administration and an employer who can defend a dismissal under the Labour Act, against a hire a provider says can start in about three days. Two Croatian points belong in the comparison. The contribution has no ceiling, so a senior salary costs the same 16.5% all the way up. And a first open-ended hire can be relieved of the health contribution for up to a year under article 20(2) of the Contributions Act, which matters more to a graduate programme than to a single senior engineer. |
| PK Pakistan | 1 day | +1.0% | An entity in Pakistan means registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, a national tax number, and then registrations that are split between two levels of government: EOBI is federal, while social security, standing orders, factories and shops legislation are provincial, so a company hiring in both Karachi and Lahore deals with two social-security institutions under two provincial Acts. The recurring charges are small and fixed — 5% of the federal minimum wage of PKR 40,700 and 6% of Sindh's PKR 43,000, PKR 4,615 a month per employee no matter what the salary is. The obligations that scale with salary are the ones that fall due later: gratuity at one month's wages per year of service, the profit bonus in a profitable year, and group insurance for permanent staff once twenty workers are on the books. |
| NO Norway | 10–15 days | +18.9% | Norway is one of the places where owning the entity can change the bill rather than only the admin, because the employer's contribution follows the employer's registered zone. A company registered in Oslo pays 14.1%; the same salary run through a registered unit in zone V carries no employer contribution at all, and the zones in between charge 10.6%, 6.4%, 5.1% and 7.9%. An EOR hire is charged at the provider's own registration, which is in zone I, so the zone discount is not something a provider can pass on. Against that, Playroll puts an EOR hire at 10 to 15 business days and an Aksjeselskap at 4 to 8 weeks of incorporation plus payroll setup, with NOK 50,000 to NOK 150,000 of legal, notary and filing fees on its own figures. The arithmetic only favours the entity if the work genuinely belongs in a lower zone and you are willing to register there. |
| CZ Czech Republic | 5–10 days | +34.4% | The statutory charges are the same whether you use a provider or your own společnost s ručením omezeným: 24.8% plus 9% plus the work-injury premium, with the social security ceiling at CZK 2,350,416. What differs is the setup and one small rate. Playroll puts an EOR hire at 5 to 10 business days and an s.r.o. at 6 to 10 weeks plus payroll setup, with $3,000 to $6,000 of legal, notary and registration fees on its own figures, after which you register as an employer with the social security administration and with a health insurer and keep filing. The rate difference runs the other way: an s.r.o. whose predominant activity is software would pay work-injury insurance at 2.8 per mille, where a provider supplying personnel falls into the residual 5.6 per mille group. On one hire that is a fraction of a percent; it is worth knowing only because almost no quote breaks it out. |
| NZ New Zealand | 2 days | +3.6% | New Zealand has no social security contributions in the continental sense, so the employer ledger is three lines, KiwiSaver and two ACC levies, and each of them rests on an assumption the page states. That makes the entity question unusually simple on the money and unusually awkward on the risk. On the money: at 3.60%, Working Safer levy included, the statutory charge on a US$65,000 salary is about US$195 a month, well under any published provider fee, so a New Zealand subsidiary of your own saves the fee and almost nothing else - the same KiwiSaver contribution and the same ACC levy would follow you. On the risk: the two things that actually differ are the ACC classification, which is assigned to the legal employer and is adjusted by its claims history under ACC's Experience Rating programme, and the 90-day trial provision, which only works for an employee who has not previously been employed by that employer. Under an employer of record the legal employer is the provider, so a trial provision sits in the provider's agreement and depends on the provider having never employed that person before - worth confirming in writing if the trial period is part of why you are hiring this way. Weigh that against a provider fee that, on this salary, runs from about the same as the whole statutory ledger to about three and two-thirds times it. |
| UA Ukraine | 5 days | +22.0% | Two Ukrainian facts change the employer-of-record decision in opposite directions, and both are specific to the country rather than general advice. The first is Diia City. Part 14-1 of article 8 of the unified contribution law sets the contribution for a resident of that regime at the minimum insurance contribution - UAH 1,902.34 a month in 2026 - instead of 22% of actual pay. On the salary priced here, that is roughly US$42 a month against about US$550, so a qualifying technology company running its own Ukrainian entity has a structural payroll advantage no provider fee can match. The regime carries conditions on qualifying activity, headcount and average remuneration under the digital-economy law, and a provider hiring on your behalf will not normally bring them to your role, so the honest comparison is your own entity inside Diia City against an employer of record outside it. The second is martial law, in force since 2022 and extended in ninety-day increments. Law No. 2136-IX changes the employment relationship while it lasts: article 12 lets the employer limit annual leave to 24 calendar days for the current working year and grant anything beyond that without pay; article 13 allows the contract to be suspended for up to 90 calendar days in total, during which the employer owes no salary and no guarantee payments; article 5 permits dismissal during sick leave or leave and disapplies the trade-union consent rule in article 43 of the Labour Code; and the public-holiday article of the Labour Code does not apply at all, so the nine holiday dates and the two religious Sundays it names are not guaranteed non-working days for now. Those provisions expire with martial law rather than on a fixed date, which is the part to write into a contract rather than assume. |
| CL Chile | 3 days | at least +14.2% | In Chile the employee, not the employer, carries the larger part of the social security bill: the Superintendencia de Pensiones describes the worker's own pension contribution as 'la actual cotizacion individual obligatoria de 10% de la remuneracion', against a single-digit employer total. That changes where the saving from an entity comes from: not from the statutory charges, which are modest here, but from the provider fee itself. Deel's Chile page describes the alternative to a provider as 'a local office, an address registered as a subsidiary, and an account with a local bank', taking months, against a start 'in as little as 3 days' through its employer of record. Two Chilean specifics deserve a line in any model: the employer contribution is on a nine-year escalator to 8.5% under Ley 21.735, so a three-year budget should not assume today's rate, and the statutory profit share is capped in minimum incomes, so it grows with the minimum wage rather than with your salaries. |
| TR Turkey | 5–10 days | +23.8% | The statutory premiums are identical whichever route you take, so the comparison turns on three other things. Setup: Playroll puts an EOR hire at 5 to 10 business days against 8 to 12 weeks to incorporate a Limited Şirket, with $8,000 to $15,000 of legal, registration and notary fees on its own figures. The Treasury discount: the two points in article 81(ı) depend on the legal employer's own compliance record with SGK, so with an EOR you inherit the provider's record rather than building your own. And severance: an entity of your own carries the kıdem tazminatı liability on its balance sheet and decides how to fund it, while with a provider the same liability turns into a reserve or an accrual that appears on your invoice - a difference of form rather than of amount, but one that decides who is holding the money when the employee leaves. |
| ZA South Africa | 2 days | +1.5% | South Africa is the case where the ceilings do the work. Three employer lines that read as '1% + 1% + a bit' come to about 1.5% at this salary, because UIF stops at R17,712 a month and COIDA stops at R668,000 a year while only SDL runs uncapped. That leaves the provider fee as almost the whole of what an employer of record costs you here: at US$35,000 the statutory charge is about US$45 a month against published fees of US$199 to US$699. On the face of it that is a strong argument for your own entity, and there is a second one most pages miss - SDL is not owed at all by an employer whose leviable payroll stays under R500,000 a year, so your first South African hire through a company of your own might carry no SDL, while the same hire through a provider always does, because the provider's payroll is far past the threshold. Against that sit the things the entity actually brings: registering with SARS for PAYE, UIF and SDL, registering with the Compensation Fund and filing a Return of Earnings each year with its R1,621 minimum assessment, and South African employment law's own protections on dismissal, which are enforced through the CCMA and do not soften for a foreign parent. One or two hires still favour a provider on speed; a team you mean to keep is a real entity case. |
| HK Hong Kong | 2 days | +3.1% | Hong Kong is one of the cheaper places to incorporate in the region, so the entity question here is less about statutory cost than about who carries the employment obligations: the mandatory employees' compensation insurance, the MPF enrolment, and the long service and severance payments that fall due on termination. Under an employer of record the provider is the legal employer and carries all three. The ledger above is short enough that a provider's monthly fee, not the statutory charges, is the larger number on a Hong Kong hire. |
| PE Peru | 3 days | at least +36.9% | In Peru the headline rate and the real cost are more than three times apart. The only monthly percentage an employer pays is EsSalud at 9%, which is why provider pages put Peru near 10%; everything else arrives twice a year, in July and December for the gratificaciones and in May and November for the CTS, and together those add more than 27 points. An entity does not change any of that, since the charges are identical however the employee is engaged. Deel's Peru page describes the alternative as 'a local office, an address registered as a subsidiary, and an account with a local bank', taking months, against a start 'in as little as 3 days' through its employer of record. What an entity does change is who carries the cash-flow lumps: four dated disbursements a year that a small foreign subsidiary has to fund locally and on time. |
| DO Dominican Republic | 3 days | at least +22.6% | In the Dominican Republic the employer carries a much larger share of social security than the worker: 7.09% for health and 7.10% for pensions against the worker's 3.04% and 2.87%, plus the whole of the occupational-risk insurance and 1% to INFOTEP. The TSS caps each branch at a multiple of its own national minimum wage, RD$23,223 since 1 February 2026, and at the example salary the occupational-risk ceiling of four minimum wages binds. The Christmas salary adds close to another month but is itself capped at five minimum wages, and it carries no contributions. Deel's Dominican page puts a start through its employer of record 'in as little as 3 days'. Two lines to ask any provider about in writing: its IDOPPRIL variable rate, between 0.1% and 0.3%, and how it handles the 10% profit share. |
| RS Serbia | 5 days | +15.2% | Serbia is a country where the employer rate is moderate and the split is the story. The combined social insurance burden is 35.05% of gross, but article 44 leaves 19.9 points with the employee - 14% pension, 5.15% health and the 0.75% unemployment contribution the employer never touches - and gives the employer 15.15%. On a US$32,000 salary that is about US$404 a month, which sits below a typical provider fee, so unlike Estonia or Latvia the fee rather than the levy is the larger half of what you pay to use an employer of record. Three Serbian specifics belong in the decision. The contribution base is bounded at both ends and republished each January, so a senior salary stops accruing contributions above RSD 732,820 a month, roughly US$6,940 at the November 2026 accounting rate - an entity and a provider get the same relief, but only one of them will tell you about it. The seniority supplement in article 108 raises pay by at least 0.4% for every completed year with the same employer, which quietly changes the five-year cost of a long engagement. And salary tax is withheld from the employee with a non-taxable allowance deducted first, which is why a Serbian net figure is higher than a naive 10% calculation suggests: that allowance belongs to the employee's side of the payslip and does not reduce the employer's 15.15%. |
| LT Lithuania | 2 days | +1.8% | A cheap employer ledger changes what the provider decision is about, and Lithuania shows it plainly. At 1.77% there is close to nothing on the payroll side for a Lithuanian UAB of your own to save: it would file the same four contributions on the same base. What an entity saves is the fee, and on a Lithuanian salary the fee is the cost - at US$40,000 the statutory charge is about US$59 a month against published provider fees of US$199 to US$699. That is the crossover reversed: in Germany or France you stay with a provider because the statutory ledger is frightening, and in Lithuania you would leave one because it is not. Against that sit the things a UAB actually requires - registration and a registered address, a Lithuanian accountant, monthly SAM reporting to Sodra and the 1-SD notice that must reach Sodra the day before the employee starts - versus a hire a provider says can start in about two days. One or two engineers still favour a provider; a team you intend to keep for several years is among the stronger entity cases in our European set, alongside Romania at 2.25%. One caution specific to Lithuania: an entity of your own would be assigned its own accident insurance group, and a new company starts in group I at 0.14%. |
| MM Myanmar | 7–10 days | +0.2% | An entity in Myanmar means a company registration, then registration of each establishment and its employees with the township Social Security office, and a written contract on the Ministry's template for every hire. The statutory employer charges themselves are light: 2% and 1% of wages, both stopping at MMK 300,000 a month, so MMK 9,000 a month is what an employer pays per insured worker today at the basic rates. What an entity inherits instead is the exit, priced by the Notification No. 84/2015 severance scale, and two rules written in advance: a further 4% of employer contributions in the Social Security Rules that start only when the Ministry fixes a date, and a minimum wage of MMK 4,800 a day topped up by MMK 3,000 of daily allowances since 1 October 2025 (National Committee Notification No. 1/2025, not applicable below ten workers). The employment injury rate follows the establishment's own claims record, which under an EOR is the provider's. |
| KE Kenya | 1 day | +4.5% | Kenya is the country where the date on the page matters more than the rate. Both employer charges are simple - 6% to the NSSF and 1.5% to the housing levy - but the NSSF ceiling has been climbing on a statutory schedule since 2023, and it changed again in February 2026. Year 3 capped pensionable earnings at KES 72,000 a month; Year 4 caps them at KES 108,000, which lifts the maximum employer contribution from KES 4,320 to KES 6,480 a month. A page still quoting KES 36,000 or KES 18,000 is not wrong about the rate and is badly wrong about the money. The practical consequence for a hiring decision is that the Kenyan employer cost is close to flat in percentage terms only up to about KES 108,000 a month of pay; above that the 6% stops growing and the housing levy carries on, so the blended on-cost falls as the salary rises. Two figures that look like employer costs are not: SHIF at 2.75% is deducted from the employee, and WIBA cover is an insurance premium the provider buys. Running your own Kenyan entity would not change any of the statutory rates - the same 6%, the same 1.5% and the same KES 600 training levy apply to every employer - so the comparison against an employer of record is about the provider fee and the cost of incorporating, not about cheaper payroll. |
| GE Georgia | 3 days | +2.0% | Georgia is the case where the statutory ledger is almost irrelevant to the decision and the fee is almost the whole of it. At 2% of gross, the employer charge on a US$28,000 salary is about US$47 a month, so a published provider fee of US$199 to US$699 a month is between four and fifteen times the entire Georgian statutory bill. That inverts the usual arithmetic: in Estonia, where the employer charge is about a third of gross, the levies outweigh the fee and an entity saves you nothing on them, whereas here the only real question is what you are paying the fee for. The honest answers are onboarding in days rather than weeks, a local payroll function you do not have to build, and someone to carry employer liability. Two Georgian specifics belong in the comparison. Dismissal is priced rather than procedural: article 48 lets you end a contract on three days' notice, but then owes the employee at least two months' pay, so a short runway is a cash cost you can budget rather than a legal risk. And personal income tax is 20% withheld from the employee, with no employer-side payroll tax layered on it, so the gap between gross salary and total employer cost is the narrowest part of a Georgian offer - which also means a candidate comparing your gross to a European one is comparing two very different take-home numbers. |
| LK Sri Lanka | 3 days | at least +15.0% | An entity in Sri Lanka means company registration with the Registrar of Companies, a tax file, and then two separate monthly filings for the first hire: EPF contributions to the Central Bank's EPF department and ETF contributions to the Employees' Trust Fund Board, each with its own return and its own late-payment surcharge. The statutory charges themselves are simple — 12% and 3% of total earnings, no ceilings, no grade tables, no health or unemployment insurance on top. What an entity inherits instead is the exit: at fifteen workmen the Termination of Employment of Workmen Act switches on, and from then on ending a contract needs the worker's written consent or the Commissioner's approval. The holiday pattern is also unusual enough to plan around: up to nine declared public holidays plus a paid holiday on each Full Moon Poya day, with no substitute day when a Poya falls on a weekly holiday. |
| QA Qatar | 15 days | at least +2.9% | Qatar gives a foreign employer a very short statutory ledger and a long lead time, and the two facts are connected. There is no employer pension contribution for an expatriate, so the payroll percentage is small; what the employer carries instead is a residence permit, a work visa, mandatory health cover priced per person and a gratuity that accrues quietly until someone leaves. Deel quotes 15 days to a first Qatari start, faster than its 20 days for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates but still an order of magnitude slower than a European hire. Two questions decide whether your own entity is worth it: how many people you expect to employ, since the per-head charges do not fall with scale, and how the package is split, since every riyal moved from allowances into basic pay raises the gratuity in direct proportion. The figure on this page is a floor of about 2.9% of salary at an even split. |
| LV Latvia | 3 days | +23.6% | In Latvia it is the statutory ledger, not the fee, that moves the decision. At 23.59% the employer charge on a US$38,000 salary is about US$747 a month, so an entity of your own saves nothing on it: a Latvian SIA files exactly the same single contribution on the same base. What the entity route buys is the monthly fee and the freedom to set your own payroll calendar; what it costs is registration, a Latvian accountant, monthly reporting to the State Revenue Service and the electronic declaration system, against a hire a provider says can start in about three days. The Latvian-specific point to settle before you decide is the ceiling. Above EUR 105,300 a year the contribution stops being VSAOI and becomes the solidarity tax at the employer's expense, so a senior salary does not get cheaper as it rises the way it does in Germany or Japan. Model the full-year cost of your actual band, not the marginal rate, before comparing an entity with a provider. |
| GR Greece | 5 days | +21.8% | Greece is administratively lighter than its reputation: a private company can be incorporated through the one-stop service, and the employer's statutory side is one monthly filing, the APD, listing every employee under a coverage package code. The friction is in the details rather than the totals - the fourteen payments, the separate ceiling that applies to each bonus, the ERGANI declarations that must be filed before an employee starts and every time hours or terms change, and the digital work card that logs clock-in and clock-out for a growing list of sectors. There is no legal limit on how long an EOR may employ someone in Greece, and no equivalent of the German leasing clock, so the case for your own entity is cost per head and control rather than a deadline. Two things to settle in writing with any provider: which coverage package your employee is registered under, and whether the teleworking allowance and the bonuses are inside the quoted employer cost or added to it. |
| TW Taiwan | 5 days | +14.3% | A Taiwanese entity means foreign-investment approval, company registration with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, a tax registration, and then six separate enrolments for the first hire: labor insurance, employment insurance, occupational accident insurance and the arrear wage fund with the Bureau of Labor Insurance, health insurance with the NHIA, and a pension account for the 6% contribution. The statutory charges are not the argument against an entity — labor insurance stops at about TWD 3,687 a month and health insurance stops entirely above TWD 313,000 a month of pay. The argument is the administration: four insured-salary tables with four different ceilings, each with its own declaration and adjustment windows, plus the supplementary health premium on anything paid above the declared insured amount. |
| AM Armenia | 3 days | +0.0% | Armenia is the case where the employer-of-record fee is the entire cost of using one, because the statutory employer side is nothing at all. Article 7(1) of the Law on Funded Pensions makes the employer a tax agent: it calculates and transfers the employee's social payment, and bears none of it. The social payment itself is the employee's, capped by article 6(7) at 5% of gross up to AMD 500,000 a month and at 10% of gross minus AMD 25,000 above that, with income tax withheld separately. So the gap between what you pay and what the employee receives is the widest part of an Armenian offer, and the number that matters to a candidate is net pay, not gross. Two consequences for the decision. Against an entity of your own, there is no statutory saving to chase - an Armenian company files exactly the same withholdings - so the comparison is purely fee against registration, local accounting and monthly filings. And against another country, the honest comparison is total cost of employment rather than a rate: on the salary priced here Armenia adds nothing to the salary, while Georgia adds about 2% and Poland about 21%. |
| EC Ecuador | 2 days | at least +21.8% | Ecuador uses the US dollar, so the salary, the fee and the statutory charges share one currency and no exchange rate moves the budget. The headline 12.15% is the IESS contribution of 11.15% plus the 1% payroll charge that once funded IECE and SECAP and has gone to the Treasury since 2015. Two salaries come on top: the thirteenth, one month of pay, and the fourteenth, one basic wage of USD 482 in 2026 whatever the salary, neither of them subject to contributions. The step to plan for is the fondo de reserva, 8.33% of pay from the thirteenth month of service. Deel's Ecuador page puts a start through its employer of record 'in as little as 2 days' and lists a one-off USD 80 wet-ink contract handling fee. |
| BD Bangladesh | 5 days | +12.5% | There is no general contributory social security in Bangladesh: no payroll pension contribution, no state health insurance, no unemployment insurance. What replaces them is a set of obligations tied to the basic wage and to the end of the contract — the banked month of basic wage per year of service that the Rules impose on any organisation supplying workers to other establishments, two festival allowances a year, gratuity of thirty days' wages a year (forty-five after ten years), and an annual increment of at least 5% of basic. An entity adds the ones that depend on size and profit: group insurance at one hundred permanent workers, and five per cent of net profit into the workers' participation and welfare funds. Registration runs through the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments, and 120 days' notice on a monthly-rated permanent worker makes the exit slow as well as expensive. |
| BG Bulgaria | 5 days | +14.7% | Bulgaria is the case where the ceiling, not the rate, decides the answer. The headline employer charge is 19.02% of pay, but contributions stop at EUR 2,300 of monthly insurable income, so at US$40,000 the effective charge is about 14.7% and it keeps falling as the salary rises: the charge is capped in absolute terms at roughly EUR 5,249 a year whether you pay an engineer US$40,000 or US$140,000. A Bulgarian EOOD of your own would file exactly the same seven lines against the same ceiling, so there is no statutory saving to chase - what an entity saves is the fee, and at this salary the fee is the larger of the two numbers, US$199 to US$699 a month against about US$489 of statutory charge. Against that sit the things an EOOD actually requires: registration in the commercial register, a registered address, a Bulgarian accountant, monthly declarations 1 and 6 to the National Revenue Agency, and the three-day deadline for filing the employment contract. One or two engineers favour a provider; a team you intend to keep for several years is a reasonable entity case, with one Bulgarian specific - your own entity would be assigned its own KID-2025 code, and an information technology company sits in the 0.4% accident band rather than the 0.5% an employer of record carries. The other thing to plan for is the currency. Bulgaria joined the euro area on 1 January 2026 at BGN 1.95583 to the euro, so Bulgarian payroll is now euro payroll, and any provider quote, contract template or cost table still written in leva was written before that. |
| JO Jordan | 7 days | +14.3% | Jordan's statutory ledger is a single payroll remittance to the Social Security Corporation: 14.25% of pay up to JOD 3,733 a month, with no end-of-service accrual behind it for an insured worker. That makes the total easy to audit, and the percentage stops growing above the ceiling, which sits near US$63,000 a year at the CBJ parity. The example salary here is about JOD 1,418 a month, a little over twice the JOD 656 the Corporation reports as the 2025 average insured wage of Jordanians, so it is a senior local salary rather than a typical one. A foreign hire adds a work permit and, for engineering roles, the approval of the Engineers Association, which is where the time goes. Setting up your own entity means registering with the Corporation and carrying these filings yourself; the headcount of that entity also decides whether a Jordanian under 30 attracts the Regulation 45 reduction, which a large provider entity may not qualify for. |
| MT Malta | 3 days | +8.7% | Malta's statutory side is small and mostly fixed, so the provider fee is a large share of the difference between routes. On a US$45,000 salary the three lines come to about EUR 3,508 a year, about US$327 a month, and above roughly EUR 29,000 of basic pay the social security and maternity lines stop growing. A Maltese limited company of your own would pay exactly the same capped contributions and the same government bonuses. What an entity saves is the monthly fee; what it costs is incorporation, registration as an employer with the tax administration, monthly payroll filings and a local accountant, against a hire a provider says can start in about three days. One Maltese detail belongs in the decision: for a technical or managerial employee paid at least double the national minimum wage, probation is one year unless a shorter period is agreed, which gives either route a long window to part ways on one week's notice. |
| AZ Azerbaijan | 6 days | +17.5% | Azerbaijan is a mid-weight ledger with a shape worth understanding before you compare providers. At the US$28,000 example the statutory employer cost is about 17.5% of gross, roughly US$408 a month, so a published provider fee of US$199 to US$699 a month sits between about half of the statutory side and 1.7 times it: neither dominates the decision. The shape is regressive by design. Because the social insurance rate steps down from 22% to 15% and, since January 2026, to 11% above AZN 8,000 a month, while medical insurance drops to 0.5% above AZN 2,500, the employer's rate is about 18.3% of gross at AZN 2,500 a month, 16.8% at AZN 8,000 and 14.7% at AZN 15,000. Senior hires cost proportionally less in levies, which matters when you price a team rather than one engineer. Three Azerbaijani specifics belong in the comparison. The reduced schedule depends on the employer sitting outside oil, gas and the state sector, which an EOR's private local entity does, and the gap to the general 22% schedule is about 7 points of gross at the example. The 2026 reform moved several numbers at once, and provider pages have not all caught up: check that a quote uses the 11% band and the AZN 2,500 medical threshold. And redundancy is a priced exit: notice of 2 to 9 weeks plus severance of 1 to 2 months' pay, both scaled to service, is a cash cost you can budget at the start. A company planning a sizeable engineering team in Baku should also price a technology park resident entity, whose employees may opt into a reduced social insurance base. |
| UY Uruguay | 3 days | at least +25.4% | In Uruguay the worker carries a larger share of the social security bill than the employer: 15% of pay to the pension system and 3% to 8% to FONASA, against 7.5% and 5% on the employer's side. The employer's statutory charges on salary are therefore moderate, and the cost that is easy to miss sits elsewhere: the aguinaldo adds a month of pay with its own contributions, and the salario vacacional adds close to another four points, paid in cash before each leave. Deel's Uruguay page puts a start through its employer of record 'in as little as 3 days'. Two Uruguayan specifics belong in any model: the pension ceiling is a peso amount the BPS republishes on its values page, so check it before each budget, and the BSE accident premium is priced on the employer's activity, so ask for it in writing. |
| NG Nigeria | 2 days | +12.0% | Nigeria prices cleanly and then hides its cost in two places. The clean part: 10% pension, 1% to the Employees' Compensation Fund and 1% to the Industrial Training Fund, none of them capped, which means the employer on-cost is the same percentage at USD 20,000 as at USD 100,000 - no ceiling flattens the curve the way Kenya's KES 108,000 NSSF limit or Morocco's MAD 6,000 CNSS ceiling does. The first hidden part is the pension base. The Act charges 'monthly emoluments' with a floor of basic plus housing and transport allowances, so a package paid as one salary is charged in full while a package split into allowances is charged on the narrower base. That single structural choice moves the pension line by a third or more, and it is a contract drafting question rather than a tax question. The second is the group life policy: three times annual emoluments is mandatory under section 4(5), the premium is commercial, and at the rate Deel publishes, 1.8% of salary, it is almost as large as the two levies together. For an entity-versus-EOR comparison, note that the ITF levy applies to employers with five or more employees or NGN 50m of turnover - a threshold a small local entity might sit below for a while, and one that an employer of record clears by definition. |
| EG Egypt | 10 days | +3.7% | Egypt looks expensive and prices cheaply, because of one number. The statutory employer rate is 18.75% - 12% pension, 3.25% sickness, 1.5% work injury, 1% unemployment and 1% gratuity, each traceable to its own article of Law 148 of 2019 - but every one of them applies to a contributory wage capped at EGP 16,700 a month from 1 January 2026. That ceiling is worth roughly USD 297 a month at the November 2026 accounting rate, so the entire employer charge stops at about EGP 3,131 a month. Against a software salary the effective on-cost is therefore a few per cent, and it falls further with every raise. Two things follow for a hiring decision. First, the percentage you see quoted for Egypt (18.75%) and the percentage you will actually pay are different numbers, and anyone budgeting from the headline will over-provision. Second, the real variables are elsewhere: the three-month notice period that Labour Law 14 of 2025 applies uniformly from day one after probation, the per-head fixed fees a provider may add, and the currency itself - the Egyptian pound is flagged as volatile in this site's exchange-rate file, so a dollar budget set today can drift with the January revision of the wage band. Running your own entity changes none of the statutory rates; it changes who carries the registration, the monthly filing and the governorate-by-governorate question of which health insurance regime applies. |
| EE Estonia | 2 days | +33.8% | Estonia is unusually easy to incorporate in and unusually expensive to employ in, and the two facts are often confused. e-Residency and a one-company-one-afternoon registration say nothing about payroll: the social tax is 33% of gross with no ceiling and is owed by whoever is the legal employer, entity or provider alike. So the reason to use an employer of record here is speed and the absence of a local payroll function, not a lower statutory bill. The uncapped base also means the gap between an EOR fee and an entity narrows as salaries rise, because the statutory side scales linearly while the fee does not. |
| KZ Kazakhstan | 7 days | +14.7% | In Kazakhstan the headline percentage is of little use, because the four main employer charges run on four different bases and two of them are capped at different multiples of the minimum wage. Add their statutory rates and you get 17.5%; compute them properly against their own bases, add the 0.12% accident insurance tariff of an office activity, and the bill at the salary priced here is about 14.7%, and it keeps falling as pay rises because social contributions stop at seven minimum wages while everything else continues. That single feature is the argument for pricing a senior hire here rather than assuming a flat rate. Two things should shape the entity-versus-provider decision. The first is that the statutory side is legislated to rise: employer pension contributions go to 4.5% in 2027 and 5% in 2028 under article 251, so a three-year cost model built on 2026 rates understates the last year by about a point and a half of salary. The second is that the 2026 Tax Code reset the social tax to 6% and stopped letting employers net their social contributions off the tax due, which lowers the headline but changes the arithmetic in ways most published breakdowns have not absorbed - several still show 11%. Neither of those is a reason to build an entity, since an entity pays exactly the same charges. What an entity buys here is control over the risk class used for accident insurance and over the payroll calendar; what it costs is registration, a local accountant and monthly filings against a hire a provider says can start in about a week. |
| GH Ghana | 3 days | +13.0% | Ghana has one employer charge and three ways to get it wrong. The charge is 13% of basic salary to SSNIT. The three wrong numbers are 18.5%, which is the combined employer-and-worker contribution; 13.5%, which is the share of that combined figure remitted to the first tier and includes half a point taken from the worker's 5.5%; and 18%, which is 13% and 5% added together as if the second tier were an extra bill rather than a carve-out of the same 18.5%. Deel's Ghana page prices social security at 13.50%, half a point above what the Act puts on the employer. The second thing worth knowing is the ceiling, because it moved this year: SSNIT raised maximum insurable earnings to GHS 69,000 a month on 1 January 2026, which is high enough that a software salary is charged in full and the 13% behaves like a flat rate - the opposite of Egypt, where a low ceiling collapses an 18.75% headline into a few per cent. The base is basic salary rather than total pay, so a package split into basic plus allowances is charged on the narrower part; that is a drafting choice, and it is the main lever on Ghanaian employer cost. Your own entity would pay exactly the same 13%: the comparison against an employer of record turns on the provider fee and on who carries registration and the fourteen-day remittance deadline. |
| MA Morocco | 3 days | +15.1% | Morocco is a ceiling story, and the ceiling only covers part of the bill. Two of the five employer lines - short-term benefits at 1.05% and long-term benefits at 7.93% - stop at MAD 6,000 of monthly pay, which is around USD 608 at the November 2026 accounting rate and far below a software salary. The other three do not stop at all: family allowances at 6.40%, health insurance at 4.11% and the vocational training tax at 1.60% are charged on the whole of pay. The result is an employer cost that starts near 21% at low pay and settles around 15% at the example salary, sliding gently rather than collapsing the way Egypt's does behind a single low ceiling. Three practical notes. The five rates on this page are read in the decrees themselves, in the consolidated collections of legal texts the CNSS publishes, and the MAD 6,000 ceiling sits in article 4 of decree 2-01-2723 of 12 March 2002. Work-accident cover is a private policy and sits outside these five lines. And the AMO rate is not the same for every employer: a firm that held group medical cover before Law 65.00 pays only the 1.85% solidarity contribution, which is why two quotes for the same salary can differ by more than two points of payroll. |
What the instrument compares, and what it does not
The Employer of Record side is fully published: the provider’s fee per employee per month, times headcount, times years. The entity side is yours: no authority prints the cost of running a foreign company, so the instrument takes your adviser’s set-up and yearly figures and puts them next to the fees. Statutory employer charges appear in a separate column because they are paid on both routes and cancel out of the decision.
The fees to beat
At the cheapest published fee (RemoFirst, $199) an entity must run for under $2,388 a year per employee to win; at Deel’s $599, or Remote’s $599 on an annual contract, the bar is $7,188; at Oyster’s $699 it is $8,388. Ten employees through Deel cost $71,880 a year in fees. The headcount table shows these lines at 1, 3, 5, 10 and 20 people; the year-by-year table in the instrument shows when the cumulative fees pass the entity’s set-up.
Beyond the arithmetic
Three things push the decision before the numbers do. Speed: the country pages record EOR onboarding of one to twenty days, while an entity needs registrations with several authorities before the first payslip. Exit: the providers that state no minimum term (RemoFirst, Playroll and G-P) let you stop without a long commitment; an entity is wound down, not cancelled. Law: Germany caps the staff-leasing model at 18 months per client, so a German EOR is a bridge by construction. Read the entity notes in the country table before you trust a break-even alone.
Get the EOR quote before you pay for an entity.
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Questions people ask before booking a demo
- At what headcount does an entity become cheaper than an EOR?
- When the entity's yearly cost (set-up divided by your horizon, plus running costs) is below your yearly EOR fees: $2,388 per employee at RemoFirst, $7,188 at Deel or at Remote on an annual contract, $8,388 at Oyster. If your adviser quotes $30,000 a year all-in to run a German GmbH, the break-even is 13 employees at RemoFirst's fee, 5 at Deel's or Remote's and 4 at Oyster's. The instrument computes it for your numbers.
- Does an entity save the statutory employer charges?
- No. Pension, health, unemployment and accident contributions are owed by whoever employs the person, at the same rates: +22.3% in Germany, +12.9% in Ireland, +37.4% in Italy at the example salaries. The country pages list each line with its official source. The fee is the only line an entity removes.
- How long can an EOR employ someone in Germany?
- German staff-leasing law (AÜG) limits the assignment of a leased employee to the same client to 18 months unless a collective agreement provides otherwise, and an EOR in Germany is a licensed staff-leasing company. Plan the entity, or a change of set-up, before month 18.
- How much does it cost to set up a foreign entity?
- No authority publishes it as one figure: it is the sum of incorporation, share capital where required, registrations, a registered office, local payroll and accounting, and it varies by adviser and city. This site does not estimate it. The country table describes what each entity route involves; ask an adviser for a written yearly figure and enter it above.