Top 8 Oyster Competitors & Alternatives
The world of business is increasingly competitive. Not only do you have to compete against other businesses in your local area, you may now face challenges from companies located around the world. Just as technological advances are helping organizations to compete internationally, they’re also helping them hire internationally as well. No longer do your choices for employees need to be based on geography – they can now be entirely based on skill and best fit no matter where workers are located.
An Employer of Record (EOR) like Oyster can help your organization hire and support your workers around the world. While Oyster provides global hiring software and an array of services to help you hire employees and contractors, how do you know if this provider is the best choice for you? In this review, we’ll look at the pros and cons of working with Oyster, discuss its key services, and compare it to other options to help you find the very best partner for your needs.
Oyster as an Employer of Record
A relative newcomer to the EOR industry, Oyster was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. In just a few short years, this provider has grown considerably and, in late 2024, was valued at $1.2 billion. The main service that has propelled this growth is international hiring. If a company doesn’t own an entity in another country but wants to hire employees there, Oyster can use one of its entities or a partner to hire them on the client’s behalf. In this way, Oyster becomes the full legal employer of the local employees while the client manages their tasks and schedules as their worksite employer.
Oyster also takes care of the employees’ payroll, benefits, leave, taxes, and other HR needs. Oyster is able to offer these EOR services in over 130 countries around the world. Its EOR fees start at $599/employee per month. Oyster also helps employers increase their compensation packages by providing additional benefits like health insurance, retirement savings, and company equity.
In addition to EOR services, Oyster also offers contractor management. This service helps clients manage and pay contractors in over 180 countries worldwide. This service costs $29/person per month after a free 30-day period.
Oyster also offers global payroll to help companies that own entities around the world manage payroll for all of their workers. This service is available in 27 countries and provides clients with three payment options. Finally, Oyster offers “talent mobility” services, which help employees relocate to other countries through advice and visa support.
Oyster’s Main Advantages
As a new service provider in this space, Oyster offers its set of services in a unique way that produces benefits and downsides for its clients. The advantages of working with Oyster as your service provider include:
Convenient Platform
According to user reviews, Oyster’s platform is quite easy to implement, learn, and use for administration. It’s simple and uncomplicated, making it more user-friendly than a lot of competitors’ platforms.
Benefits
Oyster administers mandatory benefits for employees around the world. However, it also provides employers with the option to offer more benefits that include health insurance, pensions, and wellness coverage, as well as allowances for relocation, learning, and development.
Multiple integrations
Oyster’s platform comes complete with 16 pre-built integrations to help you connect to it from the apps you’re already using. This might sound like a lot but one of the integrations is with Zapier, a tool that provides connections with thousands of other apps.
Oyster’s Main Drawbacks
Oyster, like all service providers, also has its specific drawbacks, which include:
Pricing
Oyster charges a starting price of $599/month, depending on the country where your employee lives. In terms of the EOR industry, this price is moderate, but it’s still higher than several alternatives and these fees can really add up over the long term.
No recruitment tools
While other EORs provide either active recruitment or useful tools for self-managed recruitment, Oyster supplies neither. It assumes you can source your own employees even in other countries you have no contacts in.
No time and attendance tools
Oyster doesn’t have its own built-in time-tracking tools, which means that you’ll need to submit time and attendance data with timesheets, which can be slow and inconvenient.
An alternative is to use the time tracking feature of an app that integrates with Oyster, but that could represent an extra cost as well.
Coverage
While 130 countries is an impressive number, this is by no means global coverage. Other providers offer EOR services in 180 or even 200 countries and territories, essentially everywhere around the world. If you’re only looking to hire in a handful of countries, you might be covered, but if you want extensive choices, especially in emerging markets, Oyster may not work everywhere you need it to.
No mobile app
Mobile apps provided by other EORs help your employees access their own profiles and manage their payslips, leave requests, and other information. Oyster doesn’t yet provide this convenient and time-saving feature.
Top 8 Oyster Alternatives
Oyster is a moderately-priced EOR provider with a basic, easy-to-use platform and services in 130 countries. However, it also has its drawbacks and if some of these present issues for your company, it may not be the best service provider for you.
| Company | Description |
|---|---|
| Horizons | Provides customized EOR and PEO services designed to simplify global expansion, helping businesses navigate complex international employment laws and regulations. |
| Deel | Streamlines global hiring by offering an all-in-one solution for managing international payroll, compliance, and employee benefits, making cross-border employment easy for companies of any size. |
| Remote | Offers seamless global employment services, specializing in managing payroll, taxes, and benefits while ensuring compliance across multiple countries for distributed teams. |
| Rippling | Combines human resources, payroll, and IT management into a single platform, simplifying the process of hiring and managing global teams with ease. |
| Global Expansion | Focuses on providing tailored EOR and global mobility services, empowering businesses to hire employees anywhere while ensuring compliance and managing risks. |
| Safeguard Global | Provides end-to-end workforce management solutions, enabling companies to effectively manage global payroll, compliance, and benefits while scaling internationally. |
| Multiplier | Delivers scalable EOR and HR services, focusing on compliance and employee benefits management, ensuring companies can hire anywhere with peace of mind. |
| Remofirst | Offers a cost-effective EOR solution designed for startups and growing businesses, making international expansion more accessible with simplified hiring and compliance processes. |
Thankfully, there are several other options you can choose including these our top eight Oyster alternatives:
1
Horizons
Horizons is our top choice for an affordable alternative to Oyster. It provides EOR and contractor management services in over 180 countries which is far more extensive coverage than what Oyster provides. It’s also significantly less expensive. Horizons’ EOR services start at just $299/employee per month, while its contractor price matches Oyster’s at $29/person per month.
Crucially, Horizons provides active recruiting services to help clients find the employees they need in countries all over the world. This recruiting is done in-house rather than subcontracted to third parties and is charged 2% per month of the salary of each candidate hired.
In addition, Horizons administers additional benefits for its clients and helps employees with its immigration support services. Its platform is far more complete and presents a comprehensive HRIS (human resources information system) for clients to manage their HR functions in a single application.
Horizons Key Features:
- EOR and contractor management services are provided in 180+ countries.
- Horizons manages additional benefits like health insurance and private pensions.
- It can actively source talent around the world for its clients.
- The Horizons platform works as a complete HRIS.
- This provider also offers immigration services, equipment provisioning, and workspace access as extra services.
2
Deel
Deel is a well-known EOR service provider founded in 2019. It offers EOR and contractor management services in 150 countries and also provides global payroll services in 120 countries. In addition, clients can outsource their HR or IT needs to this provider.
Deel doesn’t provide active recruiting services or tools to help clients source their own talent. It also doesn’t offer additional benefits administration. However, Deel has a very highly-rated platform that users find very intuitive. It’s also known for providing high-quality service from both customer success managers and HR, legal, and tax experts around the world.
Deel Key Features:
- Deel provides EOR services for the same price as Oyster, of $599/employee per month.
- It also has contractor management, HR, and global payroll services for international companies.
- Deel’s platform can integrate with over 100 applications, providing smooth access to its user-friendly platform.
- Deel employs experts around the world to advise clients on HR and compliance and now features an AI-powered advice tool as well.
REMOTE PEOPLE FURTHER READING
Explore our detailed guide for an in-depth comparison between Deel and Oyster, highlighting their features, strengths, and key differences.
3
Remote
As one of the main alternatives to Oyster, Remote matches both its EOR service ($599) and contractor management ($29) prices exactly. At the same time, Remote offers EOR service in just about 100 countries, much fewer than Oyster. This is due to the wholly-owned model Remote uses. It doesn’t use third-party partners but instead, it controls the quality of its services by only hiring through its own entities.
Like Oyster, Remote doesn’t do recruiting for its clients. Instead, however, it offers recruitment tools to help them source talent on their own. Remote also offers contractor management, global payroll, and additional benefits management services for its clients.
Remote Key Features:
- Remote helps clients hire employees in just 100 countries through its wholly-owned entities.
- It offers benefits packages that include health insurance and private retirement savings.
- Instead of active recruiting, Remote provides paid access to its talent pools and AI-powered candidate matching services.
REMOTE PEOPLE FURTHER READING
Check out our comprehensive guide that provides a thorough comparison of Remote and Oyster, focusing on their unique features, advantages, and the key distinctions between them.
4
Rippling
Rippling provides contractor management services in the biggest range of countries we’ve seen so far – 188 total. At the other end of extremes, however, it only offers EOR services in 29 countries. Why? Rippling began life as an HRIS and only later expanded into international hiring, so its EOR services haven’t yet grown extensively. However, it’s a high-quality, fully comprehensive HRIS that can be used to manage all of your employees, whether they’re domestic or international.
This platform also integrates out-of-the-box with over 600 HR, finance, communications, and management apps for easy data sharing. Rippling’s EOR fees also start at $599/employee per month.
Rippling Key Features:
- Rippling provides EOR services in 29 countries and contractor management in 188.
- Its platform includes talent management, recruitment, analytics, time-tracking, and other HR tools.
- Rippling provides global payroll services and also manages mandatory and optional employee benefits.
5
Global Expansion
Another alternative to Oyster which offers recruitment services internationally, is Global Expansion (GX). This provider can help you source talent around the world and is truly a global solution.
As an EOR, it helps clients hire employees and contractors in as many as 214 countries and territories. GX provides employers with health insurance and retirement savings packages to help them offer more to their employees.
The GX platform is very highly rated for ease of integration and daily use. However, this provider charges a lot more than Oyster for EOR services, with its packages starting at $850/employee per month.
Global Expansion Key Features:
- Global Expansion provides talent-sourcing services through its international network of recruitment agencies.
- It also lets companies outsource their global HR and payroll functions for the entities they already own.
- GX has a highly-rated online platform and focuses on high-quality service, for which it charges a higher price than some providers.
6
Safeguard Global
Safeguard Global is another provider that offers global recruitment services. It can source talent to fill both long-term and temporary staffing needs. Its EOR services are available in a healthy range of 170 countries, and it also provides HR and global payroll outsourcing services.
Safeguard Global has about the lowest contractor management price in the business, which starts at just $5/person per month. However, its other prices aren’t publicly available online and you’ll need to ask for a quote to help you compare them with other providers.
Safeguard Global Key Features:
- Safeguard Global offers EOR services in 170 countries.
- Clients who own entities in multiple countries can outsource their HR and payroll functions to this provider.
- Safeguard provides active recruitment services as well as temporary staffing solutions.
7
Multiplier
Multiplier is a more affordable alternative to Oyster. Its EOR service starts at $400/employee per month, and it charges a competitive $40/person per month price for contractor management. Both of these services are available in over 150 countries.
Multiplier also offers to administer additional benefits like health insurance, equity, and pensions for its clients. It also provides multiple options for employers to pay their contractors. Unfortunately, however, this provider doesn’t have active recruitment services on offer, nor does it provide any tools to help clients source talent on their own.
Multiplier Key Features:
- Multiplier provides EOR and contractor management services in 150 countries.
- Its payment options for contractors include a choice of 120 currencies as well as cryptocurrencies.
- It also provides visa and immigration support for mobile workers.
8
Remofirst
The final option on our list of the top 8 Oyster alternatives is Remofirst. This provider helps clients hire employees for the very low starting price of just $199/employee per month and contractors for $25/person per month. It also offers outsourced global payroll and complete HR management services and can help clients add health insurance to their employees’ compensation packages.
At the same time, this provider is lacking recruitment services. Its basic platform also doesn’t offer lots of key features like recruitment or employee engagement tools, but it’s also very simple and easy to use.
Remofirst Key Features:
- Remofirst manages global payroll services in over 180 countries for clients who already own international entities.
- Remofirst offers RemoHealth benefits packages for employee medical, vision, dental, and wellness coverage.
- This provider also performs background checks for new hires and can help with equipment provisioning and immigration if needed.
REMOTE PEOPLE FURTHER READING
Discover our detailed guide that offers an insightful comparison of Oyster and Remofirst, highlighting their core features, benefits, and the key differences that set them apart.
How to Choose the Best Alternative to Oyster
When you’ve examined Oyster closely and determined that it’s not the ideal provider for your organization, how do you choose an alternative? We recommend that you look for the things you need that this provider lacks so you can leverage all the services and features that top EORs offer.
1. Fees
Oyster’s fees are quite moderate for the EOR industry, but they can still add up over time and may break your budget. Look for more affordable providers if your budget is tight.
2. Global coverage
While Oyster offers contractor management in an extensive 180 countries, its EOR services are slightly limited to 130 countries. If you’re going to hire all over the world, especially in emerging economies, you may need a provider with broader coverage.
3. Recruitment
If you need help sourcing talent in other countries, working with an EOR that also offers active recruitment services can be very convenient. If you want to perform this function yourself, look for a provider that at least offers tools like an applicant tracking system to help you do it.
4. Platform features
Choosing an EOR with a comprehensive platform saves you both money on subscriptions and the complication of transferring data between multiple systems. If you need time-tracking, employee engagement, analytics, and other features, ensure the provider you choose includes them.
Horizons as Your Employer of Record Oyster Alternative
Oyster is a reputable and professional EOR provider, but it may not include all of the services and features your organization requires. Thankfully, there are many other options to choose from that can help you with your international hiring.
Horizons is one provider with extensive experience, a comprehensive platform, and an affordable price that can make an excellent partner and Oyster alternative.
Frequently Asked Questions
The definition of a human resources information system is not terribly clear, but it generally means a platform that includes all the features needed to manage all HR functions in a single location.
As such, Oyster’s platform lacks recruitment, employee engagement, talent management, and other features and may not qualify as a full HRIS. Instead, it integrates with some popular HRIS platforms which you’d have to subscribe to separately.
At the present time, Oyster has not yet released any AI-powered features or services. However, because competition in the EOR industry is intense, it’s likely that Oyster will introduce AI features in the future.
Yes, Oyster offers an application programming interface (API) that your developers can use to build customized integrations with the software you use within your company.
Exploring Oyster Alternatives In-Depth
Our Solutions
- EOR from $199
- Employee Benefits
- Global Payroll
- International Recruitment
- Contractor Management
- Company Incorporation