Oyster HR

Oyster publishes its rates, which is unusual for this market. Employer of Record employment is charged per employee per month, contractor management is charged per contractor per month with the first 30 days free, and a separate US PEO is priced per employee per month. The Employer of Record figure is shown in the comparison table. There are no setup or onboarding fees, though a refundable deposit is required to start an EOR engagement and Oyster does not publish the amount.

Not on its own. Oyster sells Employer of Record and contractor management, and the HR tooling (onboarding, time off, documents, e-signature, benefits) is bundled inside those subscriptions. There is no core-HR plan you can buy by itself, which is why it shows as Get quote in the per-employee cost column here rather than an estimate. If you want to run HR for your existing a US team, a real HRIS such as Gusto, Rippling or BambooHR is the right tool, with Oyster added when you hire abroad.

Oyster provides compliant Employer of Record employment in more than 120 countries and contractor agreements in more than 180. It acts as the legal employer, so it carries local employment compliance rather than you setting up an entity. It also offers misclassification protection of up to USD 500,000 through its Oyster Shell add-on, which is a genuine differentiator against rivals that offer no named indemnity.

No, though creating an account is. Oyster lets you sign up and explore the platform at no cost, with fees starting only once you actually engage a contractor or an EOR employee. That is not the same as Deel, which offers a genuinely free HR plan for up to 200 employees. If a free HRIS is what you are after, Deel is the closer match.