HireCade becomes the legal employer of your team abroad, handling employment contracts, payroll, tax, benefits, and local HR compliance. You direct the work; we carry the employment obligations. $499 per employee per month.
An Employer of Record is a company that becomes the legal employer of your workers in a country where you have no legal presence. It carries the employment contract, payroll, tax withholding, statutory benefits, and local HR compliance, while you direct the day-to-day work. HireCade's EOR costs $499 per employee per month on top of salary and statutory employer contributions.
The clearest way to understand the split is to ask who a local authority would contact. A tax office asking about withholding, a social security body asking about contributions, or a labour inspector asking about working time contacts the employer of record. An employee asking what to build this sprint contacts you. It is a division of legal responsibility, not a division of the job.
The model exists because employment law is national and business is not. Incorporating a local subsidiary typically means legal fees, a registered address, a local director in some jurisdictions, a corporate bank account, tax registrations, and a payroll provider: realistically three to six months and a five-figure setup cost before anyone can be paid. An EOR already has all of that in place.
The honest trade-off is that you do not own the employment relationship outright, and per-employee fees eventually exceed the cost of running your own entity. That crossover usually arrives somewhere around five to ten employees in one country, and we will tell you when you have reached it rather than waiting for you to notice.
You find the right person in the wrong country and the hiring conversation turns into a corporate structuring project. Incorporating a local subsidiary typically means legal fees, a registered address, a local director in some jurisdictions, a corporate bank account, tax registrations, and a payroll provider. Realistically that is three to six months and a five-figure setup cost before anyone can be paid.
An Employer of Record removes that dependency. We already have the entity, the payroll registration, and the local HR expertise, so your hire is employed compliantly under our legal umbrella from day one while working entirely for you.
The honest trade-off is that you do not own the employment relationship outright, and per-employee fees eventually exceed the cost of running your own entity. That crossover usually arrives somewhere around five to ten employees in one country, and we will tell you when you have reached it rather than waiting for you to notice.
Enter new markets without incorporating. We handle employment contracts, payroll, benefits administration, and compliance so a new country is a hiring decision rather than a legal project.
Employment agreements drafted to local law, covering probation, notice, working time, leave entitlements, and any mandatory collective agreement terms.
Salaries paid accurately and on time in local currency, with statutory contributions withheld and remitted for you.
Income tax withholding, social security, pension enrolment, and the local filings that follow, submitted on schedule.
Statutory benefits plus competitive local health and pension options, so your offer is credible in the market you are hiring into.
Onboarding through offboarding, including contract changes, leave management, statutory reporting, and correct termination process.
Being the legal employer is not a paperwork role. It means carrying the obligations that come with employment in that jurisdiction: correct classification, statutory entitlements, notice periods, and a termination process that holds up if it is ever challenged.
That last point is where teams get hurt. Most countries offer far stronger dismissal protection than at-will employment, and a termination handled the way it would be handled at home can become an expensive claim. We run the process to local rules.
Our in-country specialists track regulatory change so your contracts and payroll stay current as minimum wages, leave entitlements, and contribution rates move. You get one monthly invoice instead of a stack of local vendors.
Obligations that sit with us, not you
The classic case. Incorporating for a single hire is rarely justifiable.
Employ a small team, learn whether the market works, then decide on an entity.
An employee moves abroad and you want to keep them without a local entity.
Where the working relationship has become employment in substance.
Employ acquired staff compliantly while the corporate structure catches up.
When the candidate has other offers and you cannot wait on incorporation.
Employ now, incorporate in parallel, and transfer once the subsidiary can run payroll.
Hire the best person for a remote role without limiting the search to countries you are registered in.
Exit a country without unwinding a subsidiary you set up for a handful of people.
These three options are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is how misclassification claims and stalled expansions happen.
| Consideration | Employer of Record | Contractor of Record | Own local entity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Employees in a country where you have no entity | Genuinely independent contractors, engaged compliantly | Sustained headcount in one country |
| Legal employer | HireCade | Nobody; the contractor is self-employed | Your local subsidiary |
| Setup time | Days | Days | Three to six months |
| Who carries compliance risk | HireCade | HireCade takes on classification liability | You |
| Worker gets statutory benefits | Yes, full employee entitlements | No, contractors are not entitled to them | Yes |
| Cost shape | $499 per employee per month plus salary | Percentage of contractor spend | Fixed overhead plus payroll |
| Right to control the work | You direct day-to-day work | Limited; control implies employment | You direct day-to-day work |
| Payroll and tax withholding | Run by us in local currency, with tax withheld at source | The contractor invoices and handles their own tax affairs | Run by you or a payroll provider you appoint |
| IP assignment | Drafted into the local employment contract, to local rules | Assigned through the contractor agreement for that engagement | Your own template, adapted to local requirements |
| Termination or exit | Run by us to local procedure, with the documentation it requires | The engagement simply ends on its agreed terms | Your process, your procedural risk, your legal advice |
| Sensible ceiling | Roughly five to ten people per country | Project-based engagements | No practical ceiling |
If you need day-to-day control over how, when, and where someone works, that is employment in most jurisdictions regardless of what the contract is called. Use an EOR, not a contractor arrangement.
One flat monthly fee per employee, on top of their salary and statutory employer costs.
Employer of Record
Full legal employment in the country of hire, with everything required to keep it compliant.
Contractor of Record
For genuinely independent contractors, with classification liability handled for you.
Add HireCade IT
Laptop procurement, provisioning, and access control for the people we employ for you.
Salary, employer social contributions, and statutory benefits are passed through at cost. There is no setup fee and no minimum term.
Share where you are hiring, the salary, and the start date you want to hit.
A local employment contract with correct entitlements, ready for your candidate to sign.
They are employed by us, managed by you, and equipped before their first day.
Salary, tax, and contributions handled, billed to you as one invoice.
An Employer of Record is a company that becomes the legal employer of your workers in a jurisdiction where you have no legal presence. It takes on the employment obligations and liabilities attached to that role, while the day-to-day direction of the work stays with you.
In practice the employee signs a contract with the EOR, is paid through the EOR's local payroll, and receives statutory benefits through the EOR. From their perspective the arrangement is a normal local job. From yours, you have a team member in a country where you never had to incorporate.
This is different from a staffing agency, which typically sources the person as well. With an EOR you choose and manage your own hire; we only carry the employment. It is also different from a Contractor of Record, which engages self-employed contractors rather than employing anyone.
It is also worth separating an EOR from a professional employer organisation, because the two are frequently confused. A PEO typically operates as a co-employment arrangement alongside an entity you already have, taking over HR administration rather than legal employment. The test is simple: if you have no legal presence in the country, a PEO arrangement is not available to you, and an EOR is the mechanism that applies.
The model exists because employment law is national and business is not. It is now the standard route for distributed teams making their first few hires in a new market, and the main thing to watch is the point at which per-employee fees make your own entity cheaper.
One caution for anyone comparing providers. An EOR is only as good as its presence in the country you care about, and "global coverage" on a website can mean anything from an owned local entity with in-country specialists to a partner arrangement two layers deep. Ask which it is for your specific country, who actually holds the employment contract, how the full employer cost is quoted, and what happens at termination. Those four answers tell you more than any coverage map.
Being the legal employer is not a paperwork role, and the distinction is the whole product. When HireCade acts as your Employer of Record, we are the entity named on the employment contract in that country. The obligations that attach to that name sit with us, not with you, even though the person works entirely for your team and answers to your managers.
The clearest way to understand the split is to ask who a local authority would contact. If a tax office has a question about withholding, a social security body has a question about contributions, or a labour inspector has a question about working time, they contact the employer of record. If an employee has a question about what to build this sprint, they contact you.
The obligations themselves vary by country, which is precisely why the model exists: employment law is national and your business is not. What is consistent is the shape. There is a compliant written contract, correct classification of the worker, statutory entitlements that cannot be contracted away, payroll run to a local calendar with the right deductions, filings submitted to local deadlines, and a termination process that follows local procedure rather than the one you are used to at home.
That last item is where teams get hurt most often. Most countries offer far stronger dismissal protection than at-will employment, and a termination handled the way it would be handled in a US office can turn into an expensive claim. Because we are the legal employer, the procedural risk sits with us, but the timeline is set by local law rather than by preference. Tell us early and we run the process properly.
What does not transfer is the working relationship. You set objectives, run reviews, decide what the person works on, and manage performance exactly as you would any other team member. It is a division of legal responsibility, not a division of the job.
These three are the only compliant ways to engage someone in a country where you have no presence, and they are not interchangeable. Choosing the wrong one is how misclassification claims and stalled expansions happen, so it is worth being precise about what separates them.
An Employer of Record employs the person. They get an employment contract, statutory benefits, payroll with tax withheld at source, and the protections that employment carries in that country. You direct their day-to-day work. This is the right answer whenever the relationship is employment in substance, which in most jurisdictions means whenever you control how, when, and where the work is done. Setup is measured in days, and the cost is $499 per employee per month on top of salary and statutory employer contributions.
A Contractor of Record engages a genuinely independent contractor compliantly. Nobody is the employer, because the contractor is self-employed. What the service provides is a classification assessment per engagement, a localized contractor agreement, automated invoicing and global payments, and assumption of misclassification liability. It is the right answer for project-based work where the contractor genuinely controls their own methods, hours, and tools, and the wrong answer for anything that looks like a full-time role with a manager.
Your own local entity is incorporation: a registered subsidiary with its own tax registrations, bank account, payroll provider, and in some jurisdictions a local director. Realistically that is three to six months and a five-figure setup cost before anyone can be paid, plus continuing accounting, filing, and administrative overhead. What you get for it is no per-employee fee, a legal presence you can use for things other than employment, and complete control.
The practical decision rule is simpler than the options suggest. If you need day-to-day control over how someone works, use an EOR. If the engagement is genuinely independent and project-shaped, use a Contractor of Record. If you have enough sustained headcount in one country that per-employee fees exceed subsidiary overhead, or you need a local presence to sign customer contracts, hold a licence, or receive local tax incentives, set up the entity.
The monthly mechanics are the part buyers ask about last and feel first, so here is the shape of it. We run payroll in the country of employment, pay the salary in local currency on the local schedule, withhold income tax at source, calculate and remit social security and pension contributions, and submit the filings that follow. You receive one invoice rather than a stack of local vendors.
That invoice has three components worth separating in your own budgeting. There is the employee's gross salary. There are statutory employer costs, which are the contributions an employer owes on top of salary in that country and which are passed through at cost. And there is our fee of $499 per employee per month. There is no setup fee and no minimum term.
Employer contributions are the line that surprises people, because they vary enormously by country and they are not optional. The same gross salary can carry very different total employer costs depending on where the person lives, which means a candidate who looks affordable in one market may not be in another. This is why we quote the full monthly cost per hire before you commit rather than after: budgeting from gross salary alone is how offers get withdrawn.
On benefits, statutory entitlements come first because they are not negotiable. Pension enrolment, social insurance, mandatory leave, and whatever else that jurisdiction requires are administered as part of employment. On top of that we administer competitive local health and pension options, which matters more than it sounds: an offer that omits the benefits local candidates expect reads as an unserious offer, regardless of the salary attached to it.
What we cannot do is make a foreign package legible by importing your home-market one. Benefits expectations are local, the tax treatment of them is local, and a generous US-style package can be simultaneously expensive for you and unattractive to a candidate in a country where the state already provides most of it. Tell us the market and we will tell you what a credible offer looks like there.
If your team is building software, the question that should be near the top of your list is who owns what the employee creates. It is also the question most often left until after the offer has been accepted, which is the worst possible time to discover that the default answer in that country is not the one you assumed.
The short version is that intellectual property rules are national and default ownership differs. Some jurisdictions vest work created in the course of employment with the employer automatically; others require an explicit written assignment; others limit what can be assigned in advance, particularly for inventions made outside working hours or outside the scope of the role. Moral rights, which cannot always be waived, are a separate question again. None of this is exotic, but none of it is uniform, and a clause copied from a US employment agreement does not reliably do the job elsewhere.
Because we draft the employment agreement to local law, IP assignment and confidentiality are part of that drafting rather than an afterthought bolted on by you. What we ask from you is that you tell us what you actually need before the offer goes out: whether the person will create patentable work, whether they will handle customer data, whether you need post-employment confidentiality, and whether any restrictive covenants matter to you. We will confirm how each of those is handled in that specific country, in writing, so your legal team can review it before anyone signs.
Restrictive covenants deserve their own warning. Non-compete clauses that are routine in one market are unenforceable in another, and in some jurisdictions are unenforceable unless the employer pays compensation for the restricted period. Writing one in anyway is not a harmless precaution: an unenforceable clause gives you false comfort and can undermine the credibility of the rest of the agreement.
The practical advice is to treat the employment contract as a document your legal team reads rather than a form you approve. We will tell you what the local rules require and where you have choices. What we will not do is claim that a single global template covers every jurisdiction, because it does not.
Misclassification is treating someone who is legally an employee as an independent contractor. It is the most common and most expensive mistake in global hiring, and it is almost always made in good faith by a team who thought a contract title was decisive. It is not. Authorities look at the substance of the relationship, not at what the paperwork calls it.
The tests differ by jurisdiction but they circle the same idea: control. If you direct how, when, and where the work is done, that points to employment. If the person works only for you, uses your equipment and systems, follows your schedule, sits in your team's meetings, has a manager, and has no realistic ability to send a substitute or take on other clients, that points to employment. A full-time role with a manager and a fixed schedule is an employment relationship in most countries no matter what the agreement says on its cover.
The consequences when a reclassification lands are cumulative rather than a single fine. Expect back taxes and unpaid social contributions for the period of the engagement, unpaid statutory benefits such as leave and severance, penalties and interest, and the relationship being reclassified going forward with the entitlements that brings. In some jurisdictions there is personal or director-level exposure as well. The cost is rarely what the saved contributions were worth.
The second-order damage is worse than the invoice. A reclassification usually surfaces during diligence, an audit, or a dispute with a departing worker, which means it arrives at the moment you can least afford a compliance problem. Several acquisitions have been repriced over exactly this.
Avoiding it is not complicated. Be honest about the substance of the relationship, and pick the instrument that matches it. If you need control, employ the person: an EOR gives you that in days without an entity. If the engagement is genuinely independent and project-shaped, use a Contractor of Record, which includes a classification assessment per engagement and assumes misclassification liability. What does not work is engaging a full-time team member as a contractor because it is faster, and hoping the question never comes up.
The timeline is the reason most teams look at an EOR in the first place. Tell us the country, the role, the salary, and the start date you want to hit, and in most established markets we can issue a compliant offer within a few days and onboard within one to two weeks, depending on how quickly the candidate returns documents and completes any local registration. Compare that with three to six months to incorporate, register for payroll and tax, and open a corporate bank account.
What sits inside those days is a compliant local employment contract with the correct entitlements, the candidate signing it, local registrations being completed, and payroll being set up before the first cycle. What sits outside it and is worth planning for separately is the right to work. An EOR employs people who are eligible to work in that country; it does not automatically make someone eligible. If your candidate needs a visa or relocation support, that is a different workstream and it has its own timeline, so raise it at the start rather than after the offer.
Equipment is the other item that quietly adds a week. Shipping a laptop into a country where you have no entity is its own small logistics problem, involving customs, import handling, and someone to receive it. HireCade IT handles procurement, provisioning, security baselines, and access management for the people we employ on your behalf, including collection when someone leaves, which is why it is a common pairing rather than an upsell.
Then there is the end of the arrangement, which we would rather discuss before you need it. Per-employee fees are almost always cheaper than a subsidiary for the first few hires and eventually stop being so. The crossover usually arrives somewhere around five to ten employees in one country, and we will flag when you reach it rather than waiting for you to notice. Keeping you on an EOR past the point where it makes sense is not a relationship we want.
There are also reasons to incorporate that have nothing to do with cost. If you need a local legal presence to sign customer contracts, hold a licence, receive local tax incentives, or establish a registered office, no amount of EOR coverage substitutes for that. When you do incorporate, employees can generally be transferred from the EOR to your new entity, though the mechanics and the employee's continuity of service depend on the country. Ask us to walk through it for your specific jurisdiction before you set a date, because the sequencing matters more than people expect.
An Employer of Record is a company that becomes the legal employer of your workers in a country where you have no legal presence. It carries the employment obligations, including the contract, payroll, tax withholding, statutory benefits, and local HR compliance, while you direct the day-to-day work.
From the employee's perspective it is a normal local job with a local contract and local entitlements. From yours, you have a team member in a country where you never had to incorporate. HireCade's EOR service is $499 per employee per month on top of salary and statutory employer contributions.
Our EOR service is $499 per employee per month, on top of the employee's salary and the statutory employer contributions in their country, which are passed through at cost.
There is no setup fee and no minimum term. Employer contributions vary considerably by country, so we quote the full monthly cost per hire before you commit. Budgeting from gross salary alone is how offers get withdrawn, because the same salary can carry very different total employer costs depending on the market.
In most established markets we can issue a compliant offer within a few days and onboard within one to two weeks, depending on how quickly the candidate returns documents and completes any local registration.
Compare that with three to six months to incorporate, register for payroll and tax, and open a corporate bank account. The one thing that can sit outside that timeline is the right to work: an EOR employs people who are already eligible to work in the country, so if your candidate needs a visa or relocation support, raise it at the start because immigration runs on its own schedule.
An Employer of Record becomes the legal employer in a country where you have no entity, which is what makes it possible to hire somewhere you are not incorporated. A professional employer organisation, or PEO, typically operates as a co-employment arrangement that sits alongside an entity you already have, taking over HR administration rather than legal employment.
The practical test is whether you have a legal presence in the country. If you do not, a PEO arrangement is not available to you and an EOR is the mechanism that applies. If you do, the question becomes whether you want to outsource administration or keep it in house.
Roughly once you have five to ten employees in the same country, or when you need a local legal presence for reasons beyond employment such as signing customer contracts, holding a licence, or receiving local tax incentives.
Below that, per-employee fees are almost always cheaper than the setup and ongoing overhead of a subsidiary. We will flag when you cross that line, because keeping you on EOR past the point where it makes sense is not a relationship we want.
Generally yes, and it is a normal step rather than an exit you should feel awkward about. Once your own entity is registered and able to run payroll, employees can usually be transferred across to it.
The mechanics vary by country, particularly around continuity of service, accrued leave, notice periods, and whether the transfer is treated as a new employment relationship or a continuing one. Ask us to walk through it for your specific jurisdiction before you commit to a date, because the sequencing matters more than most teams expect.
You do. You set their objectives, run their reviews, decide what they work on, and manage their performance exactly as you would any other team member.
We are the legal employer, which means payroll, tax, statutory benefits, and employment compliance sit with us. It is a division of responsibility, not a division of the working relationship.
Statutory entitlements come first, because they are not negotiable. Pension enrolment, social insurance, mandatory leave, and whatever else the jurisdiction requires are administered as part of employment, and the contributions are remitted on the local schedule.
On top of that we administer competitive local health and pension options, so your offer is credible in the market you are hiring into. This matters more than it sounds. An offer that omits the benefits local candidates expect reads as unserious regardless of the salary attached, and importing your home-market package can be simultaneously expensive for you and unattractive to the candidate.
In practice the arrangement is set up so that the work your employee produces is yours, but the mechanism depends on the country, which is why it belongs in the contract rather than in an assumption. Default IP ownership rules differ: some jurisdictions vest work created in the course of employment with the employer automatically, others require an explicit written assignment, and others limit what can be assigned in advance.
Because we draft the employment agreement to local law, IP assignment and confidentiality are part of that drafting. Tell us before the offer goes out what the role will create and what data it will handle, and we will confirm in writing how it is handled in that specific country so your legal team can review it. The same applies to non-compete clauses, which are routine in some markets and unenforceable, or payable, in others.
Tell us early and we will run the process to local law, which in most countries is materially stricter than at-will employment. Expect required notice, documented grounds, and in some jurisdictions statutory severance or a consultation step.
Because we are the legal employer, the procedural risk sits with us, but the timeline is set by local law rather than by preference. Terminations handled without that process are where the expensive claims come from.
No, and treating them as interchangeable is the most common and most expensive mistake in global hiring. A contractor is self-employed, sets their own working methods, and receives no statutory employee benefits.
If you direct how, when, and where someone works, most jurisdictions treat that as employment regardless of the contract title. That is misclassification, and penalties can include back taxes, unpaid benefits, fines, and reclassification. Use an EOR for employees and our Contractor of Record service for genuine contractors.
Start with control. If you decide how, when, and where the work is done, that points to employment in most jurisdictions. Exclusivity, using your equipment and systems, following your schedule, having a manager, sitting in your team's meetings, and having no realistic right to send a substitute all point the same way.
If the engagement is genuinely independent and project-shaped, our Contractor of Record service handles it compliantly, with a classification assessment per engagement, a localized contractor agreement, automated invoicing and global payments, and misclassification liability assumed. If it is not, use the EOR. The instrument should match the substance of the relationship, not the speed you would like to move at.
Employment and immigration are separate questions, and it is worth keeping them separate in your planning. An Employer of Record employs people who are already eligible to work in the country of hire; it does not by itself create that eligibility.
HireCade Immigration covers visa and relocation support, and it runs on its own timeline, so raise it at the start of the process rather than after the offer. Tell us the country and the candidate's situation and we will confirm what is possible before you make any commitments to them.
We support employment across major hiring markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, with coverage that continues to expand.
Tell us the specific country and we will confirm coverage, timelines, and the full employer cost before you make an offer. If we cannot support a country properly we will say so rather than improvise.
Yes. HireCade IT handles laptop procurement, provisioning, security baselines, and access management for people we employ on your behalf, including collection when someone leaves.
It is a common pairing, because shipping a laptop into a country where you have no entity is its own small logistics problem involving customs, import handling, and someone on the ground to receive it. Planning for it alongside the employment contract avoids the quiet extra week between a signed offer and a productive first day.
Employment is one part of hiring internationally. These pages cover the alternatives to employing someone, the immigration workstream that has to run alongside it, and the products that help you find and assess the person in the first place.
For genuinely independent contractors: classification assessment per engagement, localized agreements, global payments, and misclassification liability assumed.
Visa and relocation support. An EOR employs people who are already eligible to work; immigration is the separate workstream that creates eligibility.
Bring immigration capability into your own team when relocation becomes a regular part of how you hire.
Laptop procurement, provisioning, security baselines, and access management for the people we employ for you.
Every published rate in one place, including Employer of Record at $499 per employee per month.
Rank resumes at $0.10 each and run $5 structured screening interviews across timezones, around the clock.
Run the whole hiring pipeline at no cost, with unlimited jobs, candidates, and team seats.
A free curated shortlist every Monday, including candidates who are not visible on job boards.
Senior engineers run your technical loop and return scored reports, with slots available in any timezone.
How to run an international engineering search, from sourcing through to a compliant offer.
Sourcing, screening, interviewing, employment, immigration, and device management in one place.
Benchmarks to sanity-check a package before you commit, since total employer cost varies sharply by market.
Compare compensation across roles and markets when you are deciding where a remote role should be based.
Level definitions that keep an international team consistent when titles do not translate between markets.
How progression frameworks map across companies and countries, useful when scope and title disagree.
Tell us the country and the role. We will come back with a compliant offer, the full monthly cost, and a realistic start date.
