Two pricing models
Most employer-of-record providers charge in one of two ways. A flat monthly fee per employee is the most common for standalone EOR products — general market rates typically run in the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars per employee per month, with some providers higher for full-service coverage. The alternative is a percentage of the employee's salary, often in the range of roughly 10–15%, which scales with pay rather than staying fixed.
Flat fees are predictable and favor higher salaries (the fee doesn't grow with pay); percentage pricing can be cheaper for lower salaries but gets expensive as compensation rises. Always model both against your actual salary before comparing providers.
What's usually included — and what isn't
A standard EOR fee covers payroll processing, tax filings, compliant contracts, and core compliance. Watch for costs that sit outside the headline fee: benefits administration, statutory contributions (which are a real cost on top of gross salary, not part of the EOR's margin), onboarding or offboarding fees, currency-conversion spreads, and deposits. The published per-employee number is rarely the all-in number.
EOR vs. running your own entity
Setting up your own legal entity to employ someone abroad can cost thousands to tens of thousands up front plus ongoing accounting and compliance. An EOR trades that fixed cost for a per-head fee, which is why it's almost always cheaper until you have enough people in one country to justify your own entity — often cited as somewhere around a handful of employees, depending on the jurisdiction.
How Webly's model prices differently
Webly Studio doesn't sell EOR as a standalone product — we vet and place a specialist and employ them for you as part of one arrangement, scoped to the role on a Discovery Call. Because the employment and the placement are bundled, you get a vetted, dedicated person and the employment infrastructure in a single engagement, rather than paying a separate EOR fee on top of sourcing a hire yourself. See our guide on the cost to hire a web developer for how that compares to a US full-time hire.