Remote

What Remote actually does

Remote's product family covers the whole spectrum of paying people abroad. The flagship is the Employer of Record service: Remote legally employs your hire in their country through its own entities, handles the employment contract, payroll, taxes and statutory benefits, and bills you a flat per-employee fee — so you can hire in a new country in days rather than spending months and serious legal fees incorporating there. Around the EOR sit Contractor Management ($29/month per contractor), Contractor of Record (from $325/month, with uncapped indemnity protection if a contractor should really be classified as an employee), Global Payroll for countries where you do have entities ($29/employee/month), a US-focused PEO (from $99/employee/month), equity support (from $39/month) and a free HRIS tier for all direct employees.

Who it's for

Startups hiring their first employees outside their home country — the classic case being a US or UK company that finds its ideal engineer in Portugal, Brazil or the Philippines and has no intention of opening a local subsidiary for one person. It also fits teams formalising a bench of international contractors, where misclassification risk starts to matter. If all your hiring is domestic, you do not need an EOR; a payroll provider is cheaper and simpler.

Pricing reality (verified July 2026)

The number that matters most is the EOR fee: $699 per employee per month billed monthly, or $599 on annual billing — a 14% saving for the commitment, worth $1,200 a year per employee. Contractor Management is $29 per contractor per month, with a $99 Plus tier that adds compliance coverage up to $100,000. Global Payroll is $29 per employee per month, though note the asterisks: an implementation fee applies and there is a recurring payroll delivery fee. Remote states there are no minimums and no platform, onboarding or setup fees outside Payroll implementation, billing is available in 12 currencies, and no long-term contracts are required.

Now the startup code. RFS15OFF takes 15% off for 12 months on an unlimited number of hires. Applied to annual-billed EOR, the effective rate is $509.15 per employee per month — a saving of $89.85 a month, or $1,078.20 per employee over the discount year. Stack three EOR hires and the code is worth over $3,200 in year one. On Contractor Management it takes $29 down to $24.65 per contractor per month.

Worth pricing the whole journey, too. The typical progression is contractor first ($29/month), EOR when the relationship deepens ($599/month annual), then Global Payroll ($29/employee/month plus quoted fees) once a country justifies its own entity. Remote supports all three stages on one platform, which is precisely the argument for starting there: switching providers mid-journey means re-papering employment contracts, a project nobody enjoys. The 12-month discount window also covers the most expensive stage of that journey — the early EOR-heavy phase before you have entities anywhere.

How the offer works

This is a public, self-serve offer on Remote's own startups page — you apply the promo code RFS15OFF and the 15% discount runs for 12 months across your hires. The page does not publish tight eligibility criteria beyond being a startup, which in practice means the friction is minimal. Worth knowing: Remote runs parallel programmes — social purpose organisations get 15% with code RFG15OFF, and there is a refugee-hiring initiative offering free EOR services for up to 10 employees with code RFR10FREE. If you qualify for more than one, do the maths on your actual hiring plan.

Honest limitations

An EOR is a premium way to employ people, even discounted. At $599/month annual, one employee costs $7,188 a year in fees before salary, benefits or the discount — the 15% code softens this to roughly $6,110 for year one, but the full rate returns in year two, so model the ongoing cost, not the promotional one. Second, Global Payroll's headline $29 is not the whole story: implementation and recurring payroll delivery fees apply, and Remote does not publish those numbers on the pricing page, so get them quoted before comparing. Third, the discount window is 12 months — a genuine incentive, not a permanent price. And structurally, EOR employment means a third party is the legal employer of your team member; that is fine for most startups, but it has real implications for IP assignment, equity and eventual migration to your own entity that deserve a lawyer's hour.

How it compares

Against Deel, its closest rival, this is the tightest matchup in the category: both offer EOR, contractor management and global payroll at similar scope, and for most startups the decision comes down to per-country pricing quotes, the specific countries you are hiring in, and which platform's contracts and onboarding you prefer. Remote's differentiators are owning its local entities in-country and the clearly published startup code; get quotes from both for your actual countries, because per-country EOR pricing varies on each side.

Against Gusto, the comparison is really a scoping question: Gusto is excellent, cheaper US domestic payroll. If your team is American, use a domestic payroll provider; if your next hire is in another country, that is precisely what Remote exists for, and the two happily coexist. Teams wanting one system for domestic payroll, IT and HR should also weigh Rippling, which attacks the problem from the HR-platform side.