Oyster Pricing

Oyster’s published EOR rate of $699/employee/month (its public list price; annual or negotiated deals need a quote) puts it at the higher end of the mid-market bracket.

For a team of 10, you are looking at about $84,000/year in platform fees alone, before the deposit, FX on cross-border pay, and benefits admin fees that push your actual cost above the headline.

What you get for that premium is a platform reviewers rate as one of the easiest to use in the category (G2 4.4/5) and an all-inclusive base fee with no setup, onboarding, or contract amendment charges.

Whether that UX premium justifies the price is a question your HR team and your Finance team will answer differently, and the answer matters because these are the two teams who will live with the consequences of your choice.

What does Oyster charge?

Published prices by product

Oyster publishes pricing for three products. The EOR rate of $699/employee/month is transparent but sits well above budget providers like Multiplier ($459) and Remofirst ($199).

Contractor management at $29/month is genuinely competitive, cheaper than Deel ($49) and most mid-market alternatives.

Source: Oyster pricing page, verified March 2026.

What the global payroll rate is worth

Global Payroll runs your own legal entities rather than employing staff for you, so it is billed per payroll entity plus per employee, with a one-time implementation fee per entity. It is not a flat $25 per head.

The base runs about USD 290 / EUR 270 / GBP 230 / CAD 390 per entity per month, plus about USD 29 / EUR 27 / GBP 23 / CAD 39 per employee per month, with a one-time implementation fee of about USD 500 / EUR 465 / GBP 395 / CAD 685 per entity. Optional payment processing adds about USD, EUR or GBP 2 (CAD 3) per employee per month. That is strong value if your own entities happen to fall within the supported countries.

If they do not, you will need a second provider, and that is where the real cost appears.

What does Oyster’s fee include?

What the base fee covers

Oyster’s base fee covers the full employment lifecycle: contract drafting and localisation, payroll processing with payslips, tax withholding and filing, statutory benefits administration, onboarding and offboarding management, HR advisory access, platform access with integrations, compliance monitoring, and contract amendments at no extra charge.

We benchmarked Oyster’s inclusion list against the other six providers compared, and only Remote matches it line for line. That last point matters more than it looks.

Why zero amendment fees matter

Deel charges for certain contract amendments.

If your employees change roles, locations, or compensation frequently, Oyster’s zero-amendment-fee policy saves you incremental costs that accumulate over a year.

The inclusion list is comparable to Deel and Remote at a similar headline price point.

You are not paying more for less, you are paying the market rate for a platform with unusually strong UX and equity compensation support, the kind of polish that quietly makes your HR ops day shorter.

What costs sit on top of Oyster’s fee?

The headline fee is the floor. Your actual cost depends on four variables that sit outside it.

Security deposit

Oyster’s customer terms condition service on payment of a required refundable deposit, but the amount, the triggers, and any right for Oyster to call for more are set in your service agreement rather than published. Treat it as real working-capital exposure and confirm the amount and top-up rights in writing before you sign.

This is a dimension that varies meaningfully across providers.

Whether Oyster can call for a top-up, and on what terms, is a contract clause rather than a published one, so pin it down before you model cash.

Your treasury team should budget for the deposit as working capital tied up from day one, so build headroom into the plan. Remote requires no deposit at all.

If your Finance team is sensitive to working capital, this is a material difference.

FX conversion spreads

Oyster does not publish its FX margin, and neither do Deel or Remote; all three apply a conversion cost when your billing currency differs from the payout currency, so pin it down in writing.

The cost is easy to underestimate: a conversion margin applies every month on every salary, so across a 10-person team it can add up to several thousand dollars a year that does not appear on the pricing page. Get the corridor-specific rate in writing rather than relying on an estimate.

Supplemental benefits markup

If you offer health, dental, or life insurance beyond statutory minimums, Oyster may add an administration markup on the premium cost; it does not publish the rate, so confirm it in your quote.

On a few hundred dollars a month of premium per employee, even a modest markup adds up across a team, so price it into the comparison rather than treating benefits as pass-through.

Mandatory employer contributions

Gross salary plus employer social contributions are pass-through costs that vary dramatically by country. France and Belgium can add 40-50% to gross salary. Lower-cost markets add 15-25%.

This is not unique to Oyster, every EOR passes through these costs, but it means your total employment cost in Europe is often 1.4-1.5x the gross salary before the EOR fee is added.

How does Oyster compare on price?

Where Oyster sits in the market

Oyster sits in the middle of the EOR pricing spectrum, more expensive than the value tier, competitive with the premium tier, but with a narrower product set than the broadest platforms.

Where contractor pricing wins

Oyster’s contractor pricing at $29/month is where it genuinely undercuts the field. If your workforce mix skews toward contractors, the savings there can offset the higher EOR rate.

For 20 contractors, you save $4,800/year compared to Deel’s $49/month rate.

For the full platform review, see our Oyster.
For head-to-head comparisons, see Oyster vs Deel and Oyster vs Remote.

Is Oyster worth the cost?

Oyster is worth the cost when your HR team values platform usability over lowest-possible price, when you need contractor management at scale ($29/month is hard to beat), when you grant equity to international employees, or when you want a provider with no contract lock-in and 30-day termination notice.

It is harder to justify when you are optimising for total cost of ownership across 20+ employees (Multiplier costs less per seat), when you need global payroll in more than 28 countries (Deel covers 100+, Papaya 160+), when your reporting needs go beyond basics (some reviewers flag Oyster’s analytics as limited), or when you need guaranteed phone or live-chat support (Oyster’s channels and SLA vary by plan and contract, so confirm what yours includes).

The deposit structure deserves particular attention.

Because the required deposit amount and any right for Oyster to call for more are set in your service agreement rather than published, the cash-flow exposure is harder to model than Remote’s zero-deposit approach. Confirm the number and the conditions in writing before you sign.

Frequently asked questions

Methodology and disclosure

WhichPayroll is an independent comparison site. We do not sell EOR, payroll, or contractor services.

We may earn a commission from provider links. This does not affect our editorial judgement.

This review drew on Oyster’s public pricing page, terms and conditions, and third-party pricing analyses.
FX spread and benefits markup figures are sourced from review aggregators and are classified as probable inferences, Oyster does not publish these figures.

Oyster was not tested as a live product.

Last reviewed: April 2026