Remote: payroll software platform

Remote publishes a starting price for every product, which almost nobody in global employment does. Checked 16 October 2026, Employer of Record starts at $599 per employee per month and Global Payroll at $29, with no setup fees and the platform included. Buy it if you hire where you hold no entity. Skip it if you expect those floors to be your rate.

Rajat GuptaEditorial LeadReviewed 16 October 2026Pricing checked 16 October 2026 against the Remote pricing page

Remote in brief

Remote publishes a starting price for every product, which almost nobody in global employment does.

Price: From $29 per employee per month (Global Payroll) · Per person per month, by engagement type, no base platform fee
Best for: Companies hiring employees and contractors across borders
Watch out for: You give up price certainty despite the published figures, and this is the thing to be clearest about.

The short answer

Buy Remote if your hiring plan crosses borders faster than your legal entities do. It prices every engagement model separately and publishes a floor for each, so you can work out roughly what a given hire costs before a sales call: employer of record where you have no entity, global payroll where you do, three tiers of contractor arrangement by who carries misclassification risk, and a US PEO for multi-state hiring. No setup or onboarding fees, and the platform is included on every plan.

Skip it Skip Remote if you read those figures as prices. Every one of them is a starting price with a Get a Quote or Book a demo button beneath it, so the rate for a specific country can sit well above the floor, and statutory benefits and mandatory contributions are governed by local law rather than by the platform fee. Skip it too if your requirement is US payroll and HR for a single-country workforce, since a domestic HCM suite will cost less and do more of the HR work.

Where Remote fits

Remote fits the company whose next five hires are in five countries. It describes itself as the financial operating system for the global workforce, available in 150 or more countries, and the product set is organized by how each person is engaged rather than by company size: Global Payroll, Employer of Record, PEO for the United States, Contractor of Record and Contractor Management. One system of record covers all of them, which matters when the same reporting line has an employee in Germany and a contractor in Brazil.

The entity question decides which product you buy and it is the single biggest cost lever. Hiring where you hold no legal entity means Employer of Record, which starts at $599 per employee per month and covers contracts, local payroll, tax filings, statutory contributions, localized benefits and compliance protections, with onboarding through a dedicated specialist. Paying people through your own entity is Global Payroll, which starts at $29 per employee per month and does gross-to-net locally, remits filings and contributions in each country, and reports by country, entity and cost centre.

On the contractor side the ladder is about risk, not features, and the three rungs are priced accordingly. Contractor Management starts at $29 per contractor per month, bills only for contractors you actively work with in a month, and covers onboarding and payment in 190 or more countries, localized contracts, one-click or automatic invoice approval, compliance screening and 1099-NEC generation. Contractor Management Plus starts at $99 and adds Remote-drafted contracts plus $100,000 indemnity per contractor for penalties, capped at $1,000,000 per company across the term.

Contractor of Record is the version where Remote takes the contract. It starts at $325 per contractor per month, Remote contracts with and pays the contractor directly, carries uncapped indemnity for misclassification and local compliance, and handles IP transfer in its own contract through Remote IP Guard. If classification exposure is the reason you are shopping, that is the line to price, because the cheaper contractor tier leaves the risk with you by design. Read the service terms for exclusions before you treat indemnity as insurance.

The US PEO is a separate product rather than a variation. It starts at $99 per employee per month, covers hiring and managing employees across the United States without separate state entities, and includes guided onboarding, payroll processing, federal, state and local compliance support and dedicated HR and compliance experts. It is billed in USD and requires a US bank account. That is a narrower proposition than a full domestic HCM suite, so compare it against a US payroll provider rather than against the EOR line.

What you get regardless of product is the platform, and Remote makes a point of not charging for it. Integrations with HRIS, finance and IT tools, reporting across headcount, cost and compliance in every country, built-in workflows, employee and contractor self-service, a compliance engine kept current per country, and global payments in 70 or more currencies. Developers get an API, an MCP server, a CLI and webhooks, and Remote says enterprises run its global payroll natively inside Workday, with embedded flows in Personio and BambooHR. On controls, it lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR, audit-ready reporting and status as a regulated payments institution.

Remote pricing

Remote publishes a starting price for every product, and the word starting is doing real work. Checked on 16 October 2026: Employer of Record from $599 per employee per month, Global Payroll from $29 per employee per month, Contractor Management from $29 per contractor per month, Contractor Management Plus from $99, Contractor of Record from $325 and the US PEO from $99 per employee per month. Each figure sits above a demo button, so treat it as a floor rather than a rate: the quoted price for a specific country can be higher. The page also states there are no setup or onboarding fees and that the Remote Platform is included at no extra cost on every plan, which removes two lines that usually appear on a global employment quote.

What Remote publishes

Employer of Record: Starting at $599 employee per month (Monthly, per employee)Hire in 90+ countries without a local entity, onboarding with a dedicated specialist, local payroll, tax filings and statutory contributions, compliance protections and localized benefits. Platform included, no base fee.
Global Payroll: Starting at $29 employee per month (Monthly, per employee)For paying employees in countries where you own the entity. Gross-to-net calculated locally, filings and statutory contributions remitted per country, time off, timesheets and expenses sync, reports by country, entity and cost centre. Self-serve or fully managed.
Contractor Management: Starting at $29 contractor per month (Monthly, per active contractor)Only pay for contractors you actively work with that month. Onboard and pay in 190+ countries, create, edit and sign localized contracts, approve invoices with one click or auto-pay, compliance screening, expenses and 1099-NEC generation.
Contractor Management Plus: Starting at $99 contractor per month (Monthly, per contractor)Everything in Contractor Management, plus $100,000 indemnity per contractor for penalties up to $1,000,000 per company, Remote-drafted contracts and statements of work localized per country, and month-to-month upgrades and downgrades.
Contractor of Record: Starting at $325 contractor per month (Monthly, per contractor)Remote contracts with and pays the contractor directly, with uncapped indemnity for misclassification and local compliance, the same invoicing, payments and bulk admin as Contractor Management, and IP transfer handled through Remote IP Guard.
Professional Employer Organization (PEO): Starting at $99 per employee/month (Monthly, per employee, billed in USD)Hire and manage employees across the United States without separate state entities. Guided onboarding, payroll processing, federal, state and local compliance support, dedicated HR and compliance experts. Requires a US bank account.

Every figure is a starting price taken from remote.com/pricing on 16 October 2026. Each carries a demo request beneath it, so a country-specific quote can be higher.

Four things move the bill away from those floors.

Which product each person sits in, not how many people you have. The same headcount costs very different amounts depending on where your entities are: a hire in a country where you hold an entity starts at $29 per employee per month on Global Payroll, and the identical hire where you hold none starts at $599 per employee per month on Employer of Record. Split your hiring plan by entity coverage before you model anything, because the mix drives the bill more than the total does.
The country, because every figure is a floor. Remote prices per employee or per contractor per month with no base platform fee, so the bill tracks headcount month to month, and the quoted rate for a given country can sit above the published starting price. Ask for the quoted monthly rate for each country you plan to hire in, and ask separately whether statutory benefits and mandatory contributions are billed on top of it.
How much risk you want Remote to carry on contractors. The three contractor tiers are the same workflow with different liability: $29 per contractor per month where you classify workers yourself, $99 where Remote adds $100,000 indemnity per contractor against penalties with a $1,000,000 cap per company, and $325 where Remote holds the contract and the indemnity is uncapped. If misclassification is the risk you are buying down, the cheap tier does not do it.
Currency, which Remote describes rather than prices. Where your billing currency differs from the local payroll currency, Remote applies its own FX rate, sets one rate per monthly billing cycle, shows it in the invoice breakdown before payment and locks it for the cycle, so it absorbs movement inside the period. No spread is published, so ask what the rate was against the market rate over the last few cycles if FX is a material part of your spend.

What costs extra

Almost nothing, by the page's own account. There are no setup or onboarding fees, and the Remote Platform, covering integrations, reporting, workflows and global payments in 70 or more currencies, is included at no extra cost on every plan.
A refundable reserve payment can apply in certain circumstances to cover potential employment-related obligations. Remote says it is not a fee, that the funds remain yours, and that it confirms the amount during onboarding and discloses it before payment is required.
Remote for Startups: companies that have raised pre-seed, seed or Series A get 15% off Employer of Record and Contractor Management for their first 12 months, with no deposit or setup fees and unlimited hires.
Statutory benefits, mandatory employer contributions, severance and local entitlements are set by local law rather than by Remote's platform fee, so they sit outside the published starting prices and belong in your model separately.

Implementation and commercial terms

These rows are what the Remote pricing page states as of 16 October 2026.

Starting prices: EOR from $599, Global Payroll from $29, Contractor Management from $29, Plus from $99, Contractor of Record from $325, US PEO from $99, each per person per month.
Setup fees: None. No setup or onboarding fees, per Remote.
Platform fee: None. The Remote Platform is included on every plan.
Deposits: No standard deposit. A refundable reserve may apply in certain circumstances, disclosed during onboarding.
FX: The Remote FX rate is set once per monthly billing cycle, shown on the invoice before payment and locked for the cycle.
Contractor billing: Contractor Management bills only for contractors you actively work with that month.
Controls: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, audit-ready reporting, regulated payments institution.
Free trial: None listed. The page offers a demo booking.

Budget Remote from a headcount plan split by entity, not from a single rate. Count how many hires sit in countries where you own an entity and how many do not, apply the $29 and $599 floors to the two groups to get a lower bound, then ask Remote for the quoted rate per country and expect it to be higher. Add statutory benefits and employer contributions separately, because local law sets those and the platform fee does not cover them. Ask whether a refundable reserve applies to your countries, how much it is and when it is credited back. If you are hiring contractors, decide deliberately which of the three tiers you need rather than defaulting to the cheapest, and read the service terms for indemnity exclusions. And if you qualify as a startup, get the 15% discount applied in writing along with the price that applies in month 13. The honest comparison here is against another vendor that publishes: put Deel's per-worker list prices next to Remote's floors and compare line for line.

Source: the Remote pricing page, checked 16 October 2026. Confirm current prices with the vendor before you budget.

What Remote gives up

You give up price certainty despite the published figures, and this is the thing to be clearest about. Every number on the page is labelled starting at, and each one sits above a demo request, so none of them is the rate you will pay in a specific country. That is still better disclosure than most of this category manages, and it is not a rate card. Treat the published figures as a floor for modelling and get country-level quotes in writing before you commit to a hiring plan.

You give up the simplicity of one line on an invoice. Remote's model prices each engagement type separately, so a company with employees in two entity countries, employees under EOR in three more and a dozen contractors is managing four product lines at four rates. The upside is that you only pay for what each person needs. The cost is modelling effort and a bill that moves as people change status, so make someone own the monthly reconciliation.

You give up domestic HR depth. Remote is global employment infrastructure, not a US HCM suite: the PEO starts at $99 per employee per month and covers payroll, multi-state compliance and HR support, which is less than a full platform with recruiting, learning, performance and benefits administration built in. If most of your workforce is in one country and your problem is HR process rather than cross-border employment, a domestic suite is the better buy and Remote is the wrong tool.

You give up a trial. None is listed; the page offers a demo. For a product where the real test is how a specific country's payroll, benefits and filings behave, a demo is thin evidence, so make the first country a deliberate pilot with a known exit. Ask what happens to an EOR employee if you terminate the Remote relationship, who the legal employer becomes, and what notice and liability you carry.

You give up indemnity certainty unless you read the terms. The contractor indemnity numbers are specific and so are their limits: $100,000 per contractor on Contractor Management Plus, capped at $1,000,000 per company across the entire term, covering third-party claims arising from Remote's breach of its service warranty, with exclusions set out in the service terms. Contractor of Record is uncapped and applies to incidents during the active engagement period. Read both documents before treating either as a substitute for legal advice, and compare the terms against Deel's contractor of record line.

How Remote compares

Global employment is one of the few finance-adjacent categories where several vendors do publish, which makes a real comparison possible. Remote and Deel publish per-person figures, Papaya Global publishes starting prices, and Rippling publishes one starting rate with an unpublished base fee underneath it. Remote's and Papaya's figures are floors; Deel's are list prices. Every figure below comes from that vendor's own pricing page, checked on 16 October 2026.

Tool	Best for	Price	Where it breaks
Remote	Companies hiring across borders who want every engagement model priced separately with no platform fee	From $599 per EOR employee/month, from $29 per employee/month on payroll	Every figure is a starting price, and domestic HR depth is thin next to a full HCM suite
Deel	Buyers who want list prices rather than floors across contractors, EOR and US PEO	$49 per contractor/month, $599 per EOR employee/month	Local statutory costs on EOR employees still sit outside the platform fee
Papaya Global	Large global payroll footprints wanting payments and workforce data in one place	From $499 per EOR employee/month, from $29 per employee/month on Payroll Plus	Two of its offerings publish no figure at all, and the FX spread is not published
Rippling	Companies that want global hiring inside a single HR, IT and finance platform	From $8 per employee/month plus an unpublished monthly base fee	The base fee is not published, so the starting rate cannot be turned into a cost per head

What to test in a Remote demo

No free trial is listed, so this is a demo plus a first-country pilot. Because the published figures are floors, half the work is turning them into quoted rates you can actually budget against.

Bring your hiring plan split by entity. List every planned hire with its country and whether you hold a legal entity there, then ask for the quoted monthly rate per country for both Employer of Record and Global Payroll where both apply. Ask explicitly whether statutory benefits and mandatory employer contributions are billed on top of the quoted rate.
Pick one awkward country and work it end to end. Choose the market with the strangest rules in your plan rather than the easiest, and walk through contract generation, benefits selection, the first payroll cycle, the filings Remote submits on your behalf and what the employee sees. Ask who the dedicated onboarding specialist is and what their turnaround commitment is.
Price the contractor tiers deliberately. Compare Contractor Management at a starting $29 per contractor per month against Contractor Management Plus at a starting $99 with $100,000 indemnity per contractor, and against Contractor of Record at a starting $325 where Remote holds the contract. Read the service terms for exclusions and the aggregate cap before deciding which tier your exposure actually requires.
Test the platform against your systems and your auditors. Connect your HRIS and general ledger, run the AI-powered general ledger export, pull a headcount and cost report across countries, and check the audit trail: who can approve a payment, who can reverse one, what retention applies and what the SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 scope covers. Developers should try the API, MCP server, CLI and webhooks rather than take them on trust.
Settle the money mechanics and the exit. Ask whether a refundable reserve applies to your countries, how much and when it is credited back. Ask how the Remote FX rate compared with the market rate over recent cycles, since no spread is published. Then ask what happens if you leave: who becomes the legal employer of an EOR employee, what notice applies, and what you can export of payroll history and filings.

Frequently asked questions about Remote

How much does Remote cost?

On remote.com/pricing as of 16 October 2026, Employer of Record starts at $599 per employee per month, Global Payroll at $29, Contractor Management at $29 per contractor per month and the US PEO at $99 per employee per month. All are starting prices, with no setup fee and the platform included.

Is Remote free?

No. There is no free plan and no free trial listed as of 16 October 2026. The lowest published figure is a starting price of $29 per employee per month for Global Payroll, and the platform itself is included at no extra cost on whichever paid plan you buy rather than sold separately.

Is remote.com a legitimate company?

Remote Technologies is a global employment provider operating in 150 or more countries, and it lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance, audit-ready reporting and status as a regulated payments institution on its own site. Verify those attestations directly with Remote before relying on them for your own compliance.

What is the difference between Remote EOR and Global Payroll?

Employer of Record, from $599 per employee per month, is for hiring where you hold no local entity: Remote becomes the legal employer and handles contracts, payroll, benefits and compliance. Global Payroll, from $29 per employee per month, pays people through your own entity, calculating gross-to-net locally and remitting filings.

Does Remote charge setup or platform fees?

No. Remote's pricing page states there are no setup or onboarding fees and that the Remote Platform is included at no extra cost on every plan. A refundable reserve payment can apply in certain circumstances, and Remote says it discloses the amount during onboarding before payment is required.

What does Contractor of Record cost?

Contractor of Record starts at $325 per contractor per month as of 16 October 2026. Remote contracts with and pays the contractor directly, carries uncapped indemnity for misclassification and local compliance during the active engagement, and handles IP transfer in its own contract through Remote IP Guard.

How much indemnity does Contractor Management Plus include?

It starts at $99 per contractor per month and adds $100,000 indemnity per contractor for penalties, with a maximum aggregate of $1,000,000 per company across the whole term. Cover applies to third-party claims arising from Remote's breach of its service warranty, and the service terms list the exclusions.

How does Remote handle currency conversion?

Where your billing currency differs from the local payroll currency, Remote applies its own FX rate, sets one rate per monthly billing cycle, shows it in the invoice breakdown before payment and locks it for the cycle, so it absorbs movement within the period. No spread is published, so ask how recent rates compared with the market.

Does Remote integrate with HR and finance systems?

Yes. The included platform connects HRIS, finance and IT tools, has an AI-powered general ledger export, and offers an API, MCP server, CLI and webhooks. Remote says enterprises run its global payroll natively inside Workday, with embedded hiring flows in Personio and BambooHR.

Does Remote offer a startup discount?

Yes. Companies that have raised pre-seed, seed or Series A funding get 15% off Employer of Record and Contractor Management for their first 12 months, with no deposit or setup fees and unlimited hires. Get the discount and the month 13 price confirmed in writing before you budget on it.