Contractor management pricing, with the fees that are not on the pricing page
Paying people abroad as contractors costs a flat monthly seat fee per person, published openly by most providers, plus a currency conversion margin that almost none of them publish. Below is every published price we could verify, a model of what it adds up to across a team, and the point where a contractor should really be an employee.
What contractors actually cost you per year
Platform fees are the published per-contractor prices. The payouts and the currency margin are yours to set, because they depend on what you pay and how the money is sent.
What each contractor invoices you in a typical month.
Amount in USDSet to 0 if you pay contractors in your own currency. No provider publishes this rate for contractor payouts, so confirm it in writing before you commit.
| Provider | Per contractor | Fees a year | All in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papaya Global | $5/mo | $300 | $306,300 |
| RemoFirst | $25/mo | $1,500 | $307,500 |
| Oyster | $29/mo | $1,740 | $307,740 |
| Remote | $29/mo | $1,740 | $307,740 |
| Multiplier | $40/mo | $2,400 | $308,400 |
| Deel | $49/mo | $2,940 | $308,940 |
Fees are the prices each provider publishes on its own pricing page, checked 2026-09-05. Some prices are quoted on annual billing or as a starting rate; each provider page carries the exact wording and the source link.
What the monthly seat fee buys
- Locally reviewed contractor agreements and onboarding.
- Invoice collection, approvals and scheduled payouts.
- Payments in the contractor's own currency, with the conversion charged on top.
- Tax form collection where the jurisdiction requires it.
It does not buy any transfer of misclassification liability. That only comes with a contractor of record product, or with employing the person properly through an Employer of Record.
Providers that publish no contractor price
Rippling EOR, Pebl do not list a per-contractor rate anywhere on their own site, so any figure would have to come from a sales call. We do not publish numbers we cannot source.
The seat fee is not the risk
A contractor seat costs a few hundred dollars a year. A reclassified contractor costs back social contributions, unpaid withholding, retroactive leave and statutory severance, typically over a two to four year look-back. The saving disappears with the first challenge.
The tests, the red flags and the penalty ranges by country are set out in EOR vs contractor. If you already know the person should be an employee, price the switch in the EOR cost breakdown.
FAQ
Published prices across the platforms we track run from $5 to $49 per contractor per month. That fee covers contracts, onboarding, invoicing and payouts. It does not cover the currency conversion margin applied when a contractor is paid in their own currency, which is charged separately and is rarely published.
Yes, by a wide margin on the invoice. Contractor fees are a flat monthly amount per person with no employer social contributions, while an EOR adds both a platform fee per employee and statutory employer costs that run from a few per cent to roughly 45 per cent of salary depending on the country. The comparison only holds if the worker is genuinely independent.
A contractor of record sits between you and the contractor: the provider contracts the worker itself, screens the engagement for misclassification risk and takes on part of that liability. It costs several times a plain contractor-management seat, and only some providers publish a price for it.
Almost always, and separately from the monthly seat. The conversion margin on cross-border payouts is the cost most buyers miss, because at scale it dwarfs the seat fee. Ask for the margin in writing, expressed against the mid-market rate, before signing.
As soon as the engagement looks like employment: full-time hours, exclusivity, your equipment, your org chart, no fixed deliverable. At that point the seat fee saving is smaller than the back-tax and severance exposure, and converting sooner shortens the window of risk.