Remote

Remote Payroll is $29/emp/mo per employee per month with no monthly base fee, published openly rather than quoted. That shape matters: a US payroll specialist typically charges a monthly base fee plus a small per-employee fee, so Remote starts cheaper for a very small team and climbs steadily as you hire. Remote also states that the payroll product carries an implementation fee to set up your entities and a recurring payroll delivery fee, and it publishes neither, so ask for both figures before you compare. Employer of Record, for hiring where you have no legal entity, is priced separately at $699/emp/mo per employee per month. The calculator above estimates your monthly cost on your own headcount.

Yes. Remote lists Payroll as an available product in the United States alongside Contractor Management, Employer of Record and PEO, and it runs multi-state payroll across all 50 states. It handles federal and state tax calculations, registers you with state labor and tax authorities, and pays employees by direct deposit with pay stubs available online. That is the own-entity payroll product, which is a different thing from Employer of Record: with Employer of Record, Remote is the legal employer in a country where you have none.

Half of it. Remote publishes automated 1099 form generation and distribution for contractors, so that side is covered. It says nothing anywhere about filing W-2s for the employees of your own entity, and this table records that gap rather than rounding it up. The same applies to new-hire reporting and workers compensation, which the US payroll specialists list explicitly and Remote does not. If year-end W-2 filing being handled for you is a requirement, get it in writing before you sign, or use a domestic payroll provider that states it plainly.

They are built for different jobs. A US payroll specialist is optimised for one country and states its position on W-2 and 1099 filing, new-hire reporting and workers compensation. Remote is built for employing people across borders: it owns its local entities rather than subcontracting compliance to partners, and it puts US payroll, Employer of Record and contractor payments in one platform. If everyone you pay is in the United States, the specialist will usually be cheaper past a handful of employees and more complete on domestic detail. If you are already hiring abroad, running one platform for both is the reason to look at Remote.

Yes. Remote publishes an official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server alongside its API and command line tools, and names ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor as supported clients. That lets an AI assistant query live workforce data, for example headcount, contract renewals or paid time off, and run compliance checks against your own records. Very few payroll platforms in this comparison ship an official MCP server, so if you want AI tooling connected to your payroll data this is a genuine differentiator rather than a marketing line.