Employer of Record (EOR) pricing usually follows one of two models: a flat monthly fee per employee or a percentage of that employee's payroll. On top of the EOR fee you pay the employee's gross salary plus statutory employer costs such as provident-fund contributions in India. Pitch N Hire's India EOR is quoted per hire after a short scoping call, so cost scales with team size.
Providers generally price an Employer of Record engagement one of two ways. The first is a flat monthly fee for each employee, a fixed amount regardless of salary, which makes budgeting simple and tends to favour higher-paid roles because the fee does not rise with pay. The second is a percentage of the employee's gross payroll, which is proportionate and can be cheaper for lower salaries but scales up as pay rises. A minority of providers blend the two or add setup and offboarding charges. Whichever model applies, the EOR fee is the provider's charge for supplying the legal entity and absorbing compliance — it sits on top of, not instead of, the salary and mandatory contributions you owe for the employee.
The EOR fee typically covers the core service of being the legal employer: drafting a locally-compliant employment contract, running in-country payroll, calculating and remitting income-tax withholding and social contributions, administering statutory leave and benefits, generating payslips, and carrying the legal liability for employment compliance. Better providers also fold in onboarding support, expense processing, and offboarding handled correctly under local termination rules. What the fee does not include is the employee's actual compensation or the employer's statutory contributions — those pass through to you at cost. Reading the inclusions carefully matters, because two providers quoting a similar headline fee can differ significantly once you account for what each treats as an add-on versus part of the base service.
Beyond the EOR fee and the gross salary, every country imposes mandatory employer contributions that you fund. In India, for example, these include the employer's share of the Employees' Provident Fund, Employees' State Insurance where the salary threshold applies, gratuity accrual, and professional tax in certain states. Other countries have their own equivalents — pension, social security, health insurance, payroll taxes. These statutory costs can add a meaningful percentage on top of base pay, so a realistic total cost of employment is salary plus employer contributions plus the EOR fee. Any provider should give you a full cost breakdown per hire; if a quote shows only the fee without the loaded employer costs, ask for the all-in figure before you budget.
It depends entirely on the salary. A flat per-employee fee is usually cheaper for well-paid roles, because a fixed amount is a smaller slice of a large salary than a percentage would be. A percentage-of-payroll model tends to be cheaper for lower-paid positions, where a small percentage beats a flat minimum. The crossover point varies by provider, so the practical approach is to model both against your actual target salaries rather than assuming one is universally better. Also watch for minimum fees on the percentage model and volume discounts on the flat model — a provider may quote a lower flat fee once you place several employees, changing the maths again. The cheapest structure is the one that matches your specific pay bands and headcount.
Headline EOR pricing can hide extras that inflate the real total. Common ones include a one-time setup or onboarding fee per employee, deposit requirements held against payroll, currency-conversion spreads on cross-border payments, charges for offboarding or early termination, fees for processing expenses or bonuses, and premiums for supplementary benefits like private health insurance that local norms expect. Some providers also charge for compliance work that others bundle, such as generating specific statutory documents. Before signing, ask for a sample invoice for a realistic hire and confirm exactly which line items are one-off versus recurring. The goal is to compare fully-loaded cost per employee, not headline fees, because that is what actually lands on your budget each month.
For a small team, an EOR is almost always cheaper than incorporating. Setting up your own legal entity means registration and legal fees, ongoing accounting and tax filing, local payroll infrastructure, statutory audits, and the time cost of navigating unfamiliar rules — expenses that recur whether you employ one person or fifty. An EOR converts all of that into a predictable per-employee fee with no fixed overhead, which is why it is the standard route for testing a market or employing a handful of remote staff. The economics flip as headcount grows: past a certain number of employees in one country, the fixed cost of your own entity spreads thin enough that the per-head savings outweigh the EOR fee, which is when many companies incorporate and move on.
Pitch N Hire's India Employer of Record is quoted per hire after a short scoping call rather than published as a single sticker price, because the real cost depends on the roles, salaries, and headcount involved. The scoping conversation establishes what you are hiring for and the compensation, so the quote can include the correct statutory employer contributions for India alongside the service fee — giving you an all-in cost of employment rather than a fee in isolation. This per-hire approach means cost scales naturally with team size: one engineer is priced as one engagement, and adding more people extends the same model. For a concrete figure matched to your situation, the practical step is to share the roles and target salaries and ask for the loaded per-hire breakdown.
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