Your best candidate just accepted another offer while you were still figuring out how to legally employ them in Argentina. It’s one of the most frustrating patterns in international hiring—not a talent problem, but a speed and infrastructure problem.
Employer of Record platforms exist to solve exactly this. They become the legal employer in foreign markets, handling contracts, payroll, taxes, and compliance so you can hire anywhere without the months-long entity setup process. But not all EOR providers scale equally well, and speed varies dramatically across platforms. Some can activate a new hire in days; others stretch the process into weeks.
Here are six EOR providers that genuinely deliver on fast, scalable global hiring—and what distinguishes each one.
1. Borderless AI: Built for Speed and Scale from the Ground Up
Most EOR providers have added automation features recently because the market demands it. Borderless AI built their entire infrastructure around intelligent automation from the start, and the difference shows in how quickly things actually move.
Their AI assistant, Alberni, handles employee questions about benefits, leave policies, and local regulations around the clock in 170+ languages—so your HR team isn’t fielding routine queries from employees in different time zones while also trying to run payroll. Onboarding completes in 5–7 days, compared to the 2–4 weeks typical of legacy providers. Payroll that used to consume half a day now runs in about 20 minutes, with currency conversions, tax calculations, and local compliance handled automatically across all active countries.
The cash flow advantage is significant for scaling companies. Most EOR providers require 1–2 months of salary deposited upfront before a single employee starts—for 50 employees averaging $80K annually, that’s roughly $650K sitting idle. Borderless AI doesn’t require advance deposits. You pay monthly after payroll runs, keeping capital available for actual business operations.
Owned legal entities in 170+ countries mean you’re dealing directly with the people responsible for compliance—not a chain of local partners where accountability gets murky. North America-based support responds within four hours on average.
Pricing is $599 per employee monthly, covering payroll, benefits, compliance, contracts, AI assistant access, and API integration. Volume discounts apply around the 50-employee mark. No setup fees or hidden charges.
Best for: Tech companies and fast-scaling organizations that need rapid deployment across multiple countries, teams with limited HR resources that need automation to cover the gap, and businesses where tying up capital in deposits creates real operational friction.
2. Plane: Pricing Transparency That Actually Lets You Plan
“Contact us for a quote” is the default for almost every EOR provider. Plane does something genuinely useful instead—they publish their pricing publicly. All of it. You can run the numbers before talking to anyone, which makes real budget planning possible rather than theoretical.
EOR services run $699 per employee monthly, clearly listed on their website. Geographic coverage spans 100+ countries with particularly strong presence across the Americas and Europe—markets that are mature, well-supported, and where most scaling companies hire first. Mixed workforce management is built in: employees, contractors, and US domestic workers through their PEO offering all run through one platform, which matters when your team doesn’t fit a single classification.
The platform itself is clean and straightforward. Employees can handle routine tasks themselves—updating addresses, downloading pay stubs, viewing benefits—without routing everything through HR. Country-specific breakdowns on their website show setup timelines, standard benefits packages, and compliance requirements before you commit, so there are no surprises after you’ve started the hire.
Immigration support for visa sponsorship is included for key markets, useful when candidates need relocation assistance or work authorization help as part of the hiring process.
Best for: Companies that need accurate cost forecasting before scaling, organizations expanding primarily in the Americas and Europe, and teams managing a blend of employee and contractor relationships.
3. Asanify: Integrated HR and EOR for Leaner Teams
International hiring usually means layering multiple systems—an EOR platform here, an HRMS there, maybe a separate recruiting tool—and spending real time keeping data synchronized between all of them. Asanify collapses this into one platform. The same system that manages international payroll also handles employee records, time off, performance reviews, and recruiting.
At $49 per employee monthly, pricing is dramatically lower than standalone EOR services, and it includes the HRMS functionality you’d normally pay for separately. For small and mid-size teams, that consolidation has real budget implications. Coverage spans 100+ countries across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and emerging markets.
Employee self-service handles the routine volume: pay stub access, tax document downloads, time-off requests, policy reviews, and information updates without HR involvement. Compliance tracking monitors upcoming regulatory deadlines—visa renewals, probation end dates, mandatory filings—and flags them before they become problems.
The trade-off relative to specialist EOR providers is depth. Some countries operate through partner relationships rather than owned entities, and customization options are more limited. For companies in the 20–75 employee range that need functional international hiring infrastructure without enterprise complexity or pricing, that trade-off often makes sense.
Best for: Small and mid-size businesses that want unified HR and EOR in one system, budget-conscious teams scaling their first international hires, and organizations that have found multi-platform management more painful than it’s worth.
4. Lano: Scalable Workforce Management Across Employment Types
As companies scale internationally, workforce composition tends to get more complex—full-time employees in some countries, contractors in others, freelancers for specific projects, and ongoing transitions between statuses as relationships evolve. Managing these through separate platforms creates administrative overhead that compounds quickly.
Lano’s unified platform handles employees, contractors, and freelancers in one place, with particularly strong coverage in European markets. Their understanding of EU-specific compliance—GDPR, German co-determination rights, French labor protections, UK employment law—runs deeper than global-first providers that added European markets to an existing framework. If your scaling is concentrated in Europe or you’re hiring across EU markets simultaneously, that expertise matters.
Coverage extends to 170+ countries for organizations expanding beyond Europe, and contractor-to-employee conversions happen within the same platform without re-onboarding. Automated payment handling manages currencies and methods across worker types from one dashboard. Misclassification assessment tools help determine correct worker classification before you commit—reducing the legal exposure that comes with getting it wrong in markets with strict enforcement.
EOR services start at €499 per employee monthly, with lower tiers for contractor management and volume discounts for larger teams.
Best for: European companies scaling across EU markets, organizations managing a mix of employees and contractors simultaneously, and teams that anticipate regular transitions between worker classifications.
5. Native Teams: Low-Cost Entry Point for Market Testing
Not every international hire is part of a scaling strategy. Sometimes you need to legally employ one or two people in a new market to test whether it’s worth pursuing further—and paying $600/month per employee to do that doesn’t make financial sense.
Native Teams addresses this with entry-level pricing at $29 per employee monthly, covering core EOR functionality: employment contracts, payroll, tax compliance, mandatory benefits, and payment handling across 70+ countries. The platform is self-service-oriented, which keeps operational costs down but means you’re doing more of the configuration and management work yourself.
Advanced automation, AI assistants, and dedicated account management aren’t part of the offering at this price point. Support response times are longer than premium providers. The model works well up to around 20–25 employees before the self-service overhead becomes more expensive in time than a more full-service platform would cost.
For bootstrapped startups making their first international hires, or established companies running limited pilots in new markets before committing to full expansion, the economics are straightforward.
Best for: Early-stage companies testing international hiring for the first time, organizations running small pilots in new markets before committing to scale, and budget-constrained teams that need legal compliance without premium service levels.
6. FoxHire: When You Need to Hire and Scale Contingent Teams Quickly
Most EOR platforms are built for permanent full-time employees. If your scaling involves project-based teams, temporary workers, contract-to-hire pipelines, or seasonal workforce ramps, you’re usually trying to force a platform designed for one thing to do another.
FoxHire operates at the intersection of EOR and staffing, supporting both permanent employment and contingent workforce management through the same infrastructure. They can source candidates and employ them, or employ people you’ve already identified—and the platform handles time tracking, project billing, expense management, and compliance across all engagement types.
Coverage in 185 countries is among the broadest available. Scalability for project-based work is built in: ramping from 5 to 25 temporary workers for a six-month engagement and back down doesn’t require restructuring your provider relationship. Contingent workforce compliance—worker classification, co-employment risk, joint employer liability—is a specialization rather than an afterthought.
The trade-off is pricing transparency. Custom quotes are required, and costs increase meaningfully when sourcing services are layered in. The platform is most valuable when contingent workforce management is central to how your company operates, not an occasional edge case.
Best for: Professional services and consulting organizations, companies with seasonal or project-driven hiring patterns, teams that want to evaluate workers before permanent conversion, and businesses that would otherwise manage EOR and staffing through separate vendor relationships.
Finding the Right Fit for Your Scaling Strategy
Speed, cost, automation depth, and workforce complexity should drive the decision. For most fast-scaling companies that need to hire quickly across multiple countries without operational friction, Borderless AI delivers the most complete combination of speed, automation, and cash flow efficiency. Plane is the right call when budget transparency matters and hiring is concentrated in the Americas and Europe. Asanify makes sense for leaner teams that need integrated HR and EOR without paying for both separately. Lano is the strongest choice for European-focused scaling and mixed workforce management. Native Teams makes international market testing financially accessible. And FoxHire fills a specific gap for organizations whose growth relies on contingent and project-based teams.
The right platform removes geography as a hiring constraint. The wrong one just moves the paperwork around.
