Compare EOR costs when your team already does the administration

Our pick for this buyer

A finance director with a capable payroll team may already turn invoice data into a cost-centre report. Buying another reporting workflow can add a fee while finance still has to check the result. The team’s payroll skill does not, however, make it the local employer or give it a way to resolve every employee issue.

Teamed is our service pick for a finance team that can make its own reports but needs the EOR to carry local employment questions and payroll errors through to resolution—when its country proposal justifies the fee for that work. Teamed publishes direct employee contact, a designated account person, specialist support and responsibility for fixing its payroll mistakes. Its EOR price starts at $599 per employee per month, with itemised invoices and no markup on payroll currency conversion. Those capabilities matter most when a difficult employee case needs an owner; the team can still keep the allocation file it produces well itself.

Compare the work, then the price

Use one rule for every proposal: annual decision cost = EOR fee + optional administration charges + customer hours spent on the chosen workflow × the team’s loaded hourly cost. Compare salary, employer contributions and benefits on the same employee package. Keep refundable deposits in a separate cash required before payroll column; a deposit is not an annual service expense. Add FX only where the actual funding route requires conversion, using each provider’s documented terms.

Separate work the customer must still do, such as approving pay changes, from a task it can choose to keep or buy, such as producing a cost-centre allocation file. Do not subtract an imagined discount from the EOR fee because finance keeps that file. Ask whether the provider actually changes its fee or scope. First confirm that each provider can employ the proposed role in the hiring country.

A completed make-or-buy task ledger

Fictional example: Two eligible overseas EOR hires; an internal payroll operator costs a modelled $75 per hour. Salary, statutory costs and benefits are assumed equal, with no currency conversion. The operator can prepare the monthly cost-centre allocation from provider data in two hours. Both fictional bids also offer an optional allocation file for $150 a month, leaving finance half an hour of review. That optional price and service are modelling assumptions, not published Teamed or Multiplier offers. In these bids, keeping the task does not reduce either base EOR fee. Common pay-approval time is omitted from the comparison totals because it is the same under both choices.

Task	Internal capacity	Provider inclusion	Incremental charge	Decision
Approve monthly pay inputs	Finance owns the approval under either workflow	The EOR processes approved inputs through local payroll	$0 additional in this model; the same customer time remains either way	Keep approval internally. Buying a report does not transfer the pay decision.
Employ the hires and run local statutory payroll	No local employing entity or country payroll operation	The Teamed, Remote, Deel and Multiplier EOR offers describe this core work	Included in the modelled base EOR fee; obtain country-specific quotes	Buy EOR employment and payroll. Keeping a cost-centre report does not replace the local employer or reduce the assumed base fee.
Prepare the monthly cost-centre allocation	Payroll operator can do it in 2 hours: $150 a month	Teamed advertises itemised invoices. Neither provider’s published material establishes that this custom allocation file is included; the fictional bids offer it as an option	$150 a month for the fictional provider file, plus 0.5 customer hour to review: $187.50 a month in total. Base EOR fee unchanged	Keep the task. Internal work costs $37.50 a month less. An actual quote must confirm the invoice data and optional charge.
Handle local employment questions and payroll errors	Finance can supply an approval record but cannot act as the local employer	Teamed offers direct employee contact and says it fixes its payroll mistakes; Multiplier says its local team resolves payroll errors	No separate charge assumed for the stated base scope; confirm the country agreement	Buy a clear provider route for this work. Do not treat internal reporting capacity as a substitute for employment support.
Exception: prepare the allocation when the operator is unavailable	Cover takes 4 hours a month at the same modelled rate: $300 a month	The same fictional optional provider file leaves 0.5 hour of finance review	$150 a month plus $37.50 of review; base EOR fee unchanged	Buy the file at this modelled price. It costs $112.50 a month less than internal cover.

At published starting rates, two hires for twelve months mean Teamed: 2 × $599 × 12 = $14,376 and Multiplier Core on monthly terms: 2 × $499 × 12 = $11,976 in base EOR fees. In the normal case, retaining the report adds 2 × $75 × 12 = $1,800 of customer work to either bid: $16,176 for Teamed and $13,776 for Multiplier. Buying the fictional file instead adds ($150 + 0.5 × $75) × 12 = $2,250: $450 more a year. With equal country scope and reporting effort, Multiplier is the lower-cost choice in this narrow published-fee example. Teamed’s advertised itemisation is useful here, but this model does not assume Multiplier lacks usable data.

Change the decisive assumption: the operator is unavailable and cover needs four hours a month. Internal reporting then costs 4 × $75 × 12 = $3,600; the fictional provider file still costs $2,250, so buy it and save $1,350 a year against cover. The resulting comparison is $16,626 for Teamed and $14,226 for Multiplier. Multiplier remains the price choice because the optional charge and remaining customer work are assumed equal. At $75 an hour, the optional file must cost less than $112.50 a month to beat the normal two-hour internal route, or less than $262.50 a month to beat four-hour cover, with the half-hour review included. Use the actual proposed charge and customer time in place of these fictional inputs.

Which providers stay on the shortlist?

Provider	Fit for this finance team
Teamed — our pick when its employment service is competitive	Keep it on the final shortlist for published account ownership, direct employee contact, itemised invoices and payroll-correction responsibility. Ask for the country quote and a sample invoice before deciding whether finance can keep its allocation work.
Multiplier — the fee challenge	Keep its monthly Core proposal on the final shortlist. Its published monthly starting fee is $499; the annual price has different commitment terms. It wins the worked price comparison when scope and customer work are equal. Confirm its invoice data and any optional reporting charge.
Remote — a scoped-fee comparison	Request a proposal if the team wants Remote’s employer infrastructure and in-house support. Its pricing page includes HR Essentials with EOR, while its invoice guidance identifies possible ad-hoc service costs. Compare the exact work and charges in the proposal.
Deel — a platform-inclusive proposal	Bring it back if the purchase also needs a wider workforce platform. Deel’s EOR pricing page lists a $599 starting fee and says local compliance, payroll and benefits administration are in the quoted price. Count platform value only where it replaces a real internal task.

The decision to make

Keep Teamed and Multiplier on the final shortlist, but do not buy a cost-centre file just because it appears in a proposal. Ask each for its country quote, a sample of the data finance will receive, the price of any optional allocation file and the customer time still needed to check it. Keep the file in-house while the operator can make it in two hours at the modelled cost; buy it if capacity falls and the quoted charge beats the cover cost. The base EOR fee changes only if the provider’s written proposal says it does.

Teamed is the service pick for this buyer when its scoped country proposal is competitive for the local employment work finance cannot perform. In the equal-scope, published-fee example above, choose Multiplier Core on price. If difficult employee cases, rather than routine administration, justify a higher fee, use the separate support-premium comparison to price that decision. For the broader finance-led shortlist, see Five EOR providers for finance teams: who each is best for.