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Playroll costs $399 per employee per month and that is not what you pay. It also holds a refundable deposit of one month’s gross salary for every person you employ through it, and that deposit is the reason most finance teams start looking elsewhere.
So this page starts with the real number, then works through where else Playroll runs out, and matches each of those to the provider that answers it.
Check current pricing and plans
What does Playroll actually cost once you count the deposit?
For a team of 40 people on an average $75,000 salary, $250,000 of your cash sits with Playroll until those people leave. That is the deposit alone, on top of $399 per person per month, and it is refundable rather than free.
Look at it per head and the size of it is clearer. One employee on $75,000 carries a $6,250 deposit, which is more than 15 months of that same employee’s platform fee, paid before they start.
Neither Remote nor Deel asks for a deposit at all. Both charge $599, which is $200 a month more than Playroll. On a single $75,000 hire, the deposit you hand Playroll is worth about 31 months of that difference.
None of this makes Playroll expensive. It makes Playroll a working capital decision as well as a price decision, and a venture-backed company counting runway should treat those as two separate approvals.
Where does Playroll stop working?
Three places, and all three arrive at a size rather than a date. Playroll is a good product for a small international team and each of these turns up as that team grows.
The platform stops at EOR, contractor management and a limited payroll product. There is no HRIS, no device management, no performance and no equity administration. By 50 international employees your people team is running BambooHR or HiBob alongside it, and the second subscription is where the saving against Deel goes.
Then the payroll footprint does not match the EOR footprint. Playroll markets EOR in 180+ countries and runs global payroll in roughly 36. Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom work. A hire in Chile, Ghana or the Philippines puts you back in front of local payroll bureaus.
That gap is worth checking before anything else on this page, because it is the one that will not show up in a demo. Ask for the payroll country list and compare it against your hiring plan, not against the EOR list.
Third, support runs Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 UTC, with a 24 hour response commitment. An employee in Japan who raises a ticket on Tuesday afternoon waits for London to wake up. One who raises it on Friday evening waits until Monday.
If none of those three has happened to you, we would stay. At $399 with EOR in 180+ countries and entity infrastructure that goes back to 2004 through its parent, Playroll is hard to beat at its size.
Which Playroll alternative answers your trigger?
Six routes, and the right one depends on which of the limits above you hit first. If your reason for leaving is not on this list, the disruption of an employment event is probably not worth it.
If the deposit is the problem
Remote takes no deposit and owns the entities it employs through in its main markets, using vetted local partners across the rest of its 90+ countries. At $699 it answers the working capital question outright, and it answers the entity question only for the countries it owns.
The entity point is worth separating from the marketing. Playroll’s entities come through its parent VAT IT Group, which is a real and durable arrangement and is still one layer removed from Playroll itself. Remote’s are not. Whether that layer matters is a question for your Legal team, not for us.
If you are paying for a second platform already
Deel at $599 brings 120+ integrations, an HRIS, US payroll, device management and equity administration into the same place. The premium over Playroll is $2,400 per employee per year.
Run that against what you are already spending. If BambooHR, an IT tool and a performance tool are all on your card because Playroll does not do them, your real cost per employee may already be above Deel’s, and consolidating is a saving rather than an upgrade.
If cost is the only trigger
Remofirst at $199 is roughly half of Playroll and saves the same $2,400 a year per employee in the other direction. The platform is narrower, the tooling thinner, and the entity model leans on partners.
This works if you do not use the global payroll module and you already have an HRIS. Check your countries against Remofirst’s list before you sign, because at this price coverage is where the compromise usually sits.
If your hiring is concentrated in Asia-Pacific
Multiplier at roughly $400 sits at Playroll’s price with deeper native coverage in Singapore, India, the Philippines and Vietnam, and a longer integration list. Your cost stays flat and the regional knowledge improves.
Playroll’s structure runs through a London parent, so its Asia-Pacific depth is a function of that group rather than of local roots. Multiplier’s is the reverse. If most of your next 20 hires are in the region, that difference shows up in onboarding times.
If your employees are the ones raising tickets
Oyster puts named customer success managers on every tier and adds employment liability insurance, with support built for a workforce spread across time zones rather than for one London working day.
You pay more for that. Our own pages quote Oyster’s EOR fee inconsistently and we have not been able to settle it, so ask Oyster for a written rate for your countries before you compare it with anything here.
If procurement needs artefacts, not a dashboard
G-P covers 180+ countries with the longest record in the category, and EOR Prime supplies named account teams, SLA-backed onboarding and compliance documents a procurement function can actually file. Pricing is on application and it will not be $399.
This is the answer past roughly 500 international employees, where the thing you are buying stops being software.
If 10 of your people are in one country
Then the alternative is not a vendor. Ten employees in a single country cost $47,880 a year in Playroll platform fees before salary, and your own entity removes that fee rather than discounting it. You would keep an EOR for the countries holding one or two people.
We will not give you a setup cost. Our own pages carry three incompatible ranges for it, so treat any published figure, ours included, as unreliable and get a written quote from an accountant in that country. Playroll itself sells entity setup services, which tells you the category expects this move.
WhichPayroll view
Playroll is a genuinely good buy between roughly 5 and 40 international employees, if you do not need an HRIS, do not need support outside London hours, and can carry the deposit.
Past 40 it changes. The deposit becomes a treasury item, the missing HRIS forces a second contract, and the $2,400 a year premium for Deel or Remote is usually less than the stack you have built to work around Playroll.
How do Playroll alternatives compare on price?
Playroll at $399 is the cheapest mid-market EOR we assess, and only Remofirst at $199 undercuts it. Moving up to Deel or Remote is a $200 per employee per month step, which is $2,400 a year each.
| Provider | EOR price | Security deposit | Entity model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playroll | $399/month | 1 month gross salary per head | Via parent VAT IT Group; EOR in 180+ countries | Budget EOR, 5-40 employees |
| Deel | $599/month | None | Mixed, split undisclosed | Integrations, support, platform breadth |
| Remote | $699/month | None | Owned in main markets, partners elsewhere, 90+ countries | Entity certainty, no deposit |
| Multiplier | ~$400/month | Not published | Mixed | APAC depth at the same price tier |
| Oyster | $599-699/month (see note) | Not published | Mixed (Direct+) | Employee experience, named CSMs |
| Remofirst | $199/month | Not published | Partner-dependent | Budget-first teams |
| G-P | Custom (enterprise) | Not published | Mixed, long track record | Enterprise white-glove, 180+ countries |
Source: Provider pricing pages and third-party analyses, verified April 2026. “Not published” means the provider does not disclose a deposit policy publicly, so ask during procurement. Our own pages quote Oyster’s fee inconsistently and we have not settled it; ask Oyster for a written rate.
The deposit column is the one to read across. Two providers here publish that they take nothing, one publishes a month of salary per head, and the other four leave you to ask. A provider that will not answer that question in writing during a sales process is telling you something.
One number moves for nobody. Statutory employer costs, pension and health contributions add 15 to 40% on top of gross salary in most countries, they are invoiced by every EOR, and they follow the employee rather than the provider. Switching changes the platform fee and the deposit treatment. Nothing else.
What goes wrong when you leave Playroll?
The timing does, more often than anything else. Payroll year-to-date records, tax filings and statutory year-end reporting all break cleanly at the year end and messily anywhere else, so a switch in September means dual filings in every country you operate in.
Wait for January unless the trigger is urgent: a compliance failure, a support breakdown, or the deposit cash being needed. That single decision saves more work than everything else in this section.
Then plan four to eight weeks. Every employee under a Playroll entity is terminated and rehired under the new provider’s legal entity, so this is an employment event and not a platform migration.
Get the deposit back on a schedule you have agreed. The refund runs through VAT IT Group’s treasury, so request it in writing as soon as termination dates are confirmed, and reconcile each employee’s deposit separately. Do not assume the money lands in the week the employment ends.
Benefits can lapse across the two to four week handover, and some countries impose a fresh qualifying period under the new employer. Identify who sits in a country with a mandatory waiting period, then set termination dates around those people.
Accrued leave does not transfer. Document annual leave, sick days and time off in lieu, then either cash them out under the Playroll contract or get the incoming provider to honour them in writing, before the termination date.
Work permits are the one that can stop somebody working. Where a permit is sponsored through a VAT IT Group entity, changing the legal employer starts a fresh application. Map every permit dependency first, and pay particular attention to Singapore, the UAE and the UK, where holders are most concentrated.
Check current pricing and plans
Frequently Asked Questions About Playroll Alternatives
Has Playroll been acquired by Deel?
No. Playroll was independent as of April 2026, backed by its parent VAT IT Group. Deel’s confirmed acquisitions are PaySpace, Safeguard Global’s payroll division, Assemble, Atlantic Money, PayGroup and Zavvy. Playroll is not among them. We have not re-checked this since April 2026, so confirm it with Playroll if it is load-bearing for your decision.
Which 36 countries does Playroll run payroll in?
Playroll does not publish the full list. It names the US, UK, Canada, India, South Africa, Singapore and selected European markets. Ask for the rest in writing, because the EOR count of 180+ tells you nothing about it. For a wider payroll footprint, look at Papaya Global or Remote.
How we assessed Playroll alternatives
WhichPayroll is an independent comparison site. We do not sell EOR, payroll or contractor services. We may earn a commission from provider links, and that does not affect our editorial judgement.
We assessed the seven providers in the table above against the three limits buyers most often hit with Playroll. Pricing, entity models and product scope were checked against public documentation in April 2026, and the deposit arithmetic is our own on Playroll’s published policy.
No provider was tested as a live product. For the wider decision, see our guide to choosing an EOR and our assessment of EOR compliance guarantees.
Last reviewed: April 2026