EOR Index: Employer Costs by Country

A source-led country matrix for comparing the statutory employer burden of hiring — before EOR service fees, benefits, deposits, FX, and other provider-specific charges enter the budget.

What this page answers. The EOR Index compares verified employer contributions and other mandatory employer-side employment costs across countries on a stated salary and worker basis. It does not rank EOR providers, and it does not treat an EOR service fee, employee tax withholding, optional benefits, refundable deposit, or FX charge as statutory employer burden. Release v0.6 publishes verified employer-side components for eight of the ten launch countries and holds Mexico and Colombia at a research status until their evidence is complete. Those rows already show why a single headline percentage misleads. Portugal charges a flat 23.75% of pay with no ceiling at all. Germany starts at 21.15% and falls in two steps as salary rises. Canada's federal statutory employer cost reaches a hard annual ceiling of CAD 6,218.75 per employee in 2026, so the same rules cost about 7.8% of salary at CAD 45,000 and about 4.1% at CAD 150,000. Your first action is to select a country row whose jurisdiction, worker, salary, and effective-date scope actually matches your scenario — and to treat a research status as a research status, not a budget input.

Use this page if you are:

• Comparing the statutory, employer-side cost of employing someone across countries on a common, stated basis — this is the page that owns that layer.
• Checking what a provider's quote should contain before you can reconcile it line by line against the law.
• Deciding the hiring route rather than costing it — go to the EOR versus entity comparison. The statutory burden is the same in both routes; what changes is who administers it and what else you pay.
• Building a final, bookable budget for a named hire — none of these pages is enough on its own. That requires a scoped provider quote and qualified payroll or employment review.
• Hiring in Mexico or Germany — read where the EOR model itself is restricted or licensed before you cost anything. In those two markets the arrangement is regulated separately from its cost.

On this page

• What the EOR Index measures
• When a country row is comparable
• The employer burden formula and cost boundaries
• Where the EOR model itself is restricted or licensed
• Employer costs by country — Germany · Canada · Portugal · Spain · Poland · Philippines · India · Brazil
• How to calculate employer burden from a country row
• Methodology and verification rules
• How to compare countries without false precision
• How to use the Index in a hiring decision
• What the country row does not tell you about leaving
• Choosing a provider at a glance
• Downloads and the update log
• Frequently asked questions

What the EOR Index measures

The EOR Index is a research dataset, not a landing page. It answers one question: under a stated worker, contract, and salary scenario, what must an employer pay in statutory contributions and mandatory employer-side employment costs in each covered country? That is the number a founder, people leader, or finance lead needs before any provider conversation, because it exists independently of which EOR you use — or of whether you use an EOR at all. If you are new to the model itself, start with how an employer of record works; this page assumes the basics and focuses on the country cost data.

Different readers use that layer differently: a founder for a defensible first-pass market comparison, an HR leader for the mandatory costs and caps that shape an offer, a finance leader for a model that keeps salary, burden, fee, benefits, and cash requirements as separate lines, a compliance stakeholder for the boundary where individual legal and tax analysis begins, and a research user for versioned, citable data with provenance. The Index serves all five without pretending to be a quote engine for any of them.

When a country row is comparable

The single largest error in cross-country cost comparison is comparing numbers that were never built on the same basis. Under the Six Comparability Gates, a country row in the EOR Index is comparable only when all six of the following are visible and satisfied:

1. Jurisdiction scope. The country — plus the state, province, region, sector, risk class, or insurer where those change the employer cost. Some countries cannot be summarized in one national row.
2. Worker and contract scope. The employee category, contract type, hours, and any nationality, age, sector, or establishment conditions the modeled values assume.
3. Salary and contribution basis. The local currency, pay period, gross salary or band, the wage definition each contribution actually applies to, and the annualization method.
4. Component boundary. Employer contributions and mandatory employer-paid compensation are in; employee deductions, EOR fees, optional benefits, deposits, FX, and one-time charges are out.
5. Evidence and dates. Each consequential component carries an opened governing source, the date the rule took effect, and the date the source was verified.
6. Release integrity. The visible table, the downloadable data, and the methodology all identify the same release version.

A percentage is not comparable unless country, worker category, salary basis, caps, effective date, and included components match. If any gate is not visible for a row, treat the row as orientation, not as an input to a budget.

The employer burden formula and cost boundaries

The Index uses one transparent formula:

Modeled statutory employer burden = employer social-security and payroll contributions + mandatory employer-paid levies and insurance + modeled mandatory additional compensation. Employer-burden percentage = modeled statutory employer burden ÷ the stated gross-salary basis.

Mandatory additional compensation covers statutory extra-salary obligations — 13th month pay, and in some countries a 14th, meaning an additional month of salary that governing law requires the employer to pay on a set schedule rather than as a discretionary bonus. Where it applies, it is an employer cost whether it is accrued monthly for comparability or paid in one or two instalments.

Everything else that appears in a real hiring budget sits outside that subtotal and is added separately, with its own evidence:

Component	Treatment in the Index
Gross salary / contributory wage	The stated basis, in local currency, with the exact wage definition each contribution uses.
Employer statutory contributions	Included — each component listed separately with rate or amount, base, cap or floor, and effective date.
Mandatory additional compensation	Included where governing law requires it — modeled as an accrual or a cash payment, with timing stated, or excluded with a reason.
Employee deductions and income tax	Excluded — withheld from employee pay; they affect take-home, not employer cost.
Optional benefits	Excluded — separated from statutory or mandatory benefits.
EOR service fee and service taxes	Excluded — provider- and quote-specific; understand EOR fees, deposits, and FX on the page that owns them.
Setup, off-cycle, immigration, and termination fees	Excluded — one-time or event-driven quote items.
Deposits and salary prefunding	Excluded from cost — tracked as a cash-flow requirement; a refundable deposit is not an expense.
FX rate and markup	Excluded — local currency is canonical; any conversion is shown with a dated source.
Minimum commitment and contract term	Excluded — a commercial term, not a statutory cost, but it sets the floor on total spend and belongs in the quote comparison.
Termination and severance reserve	Excluded from burden — statutory severance is an event-driven liability, not a recurring employer contribution; model it separately against the country's notice and severance rules.

This boundary is what makes the dataset usable. A single blended "all-in cost per country" figure cannot be audited, cannot be compared across providers, and silently mixes refundable cash with sunk expense.

Where the EOR model itself is restricted or licensed

Employer burden assumes the arrangement is lawful. In several countries the EOR model is regulated separately from employment cost, and the restriction attaches to the arrangement rather than to the salary. A row can be fully costed and still describe a structure you cannot lawfully use in that market, which is why this table sits before the cost data rather than inside a footnote.

Country	Model status	Regulator or instrument	What it means for the buyer	Verified
Mexico	Restricted	Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social; article 15 of the Ley Federal del Trabajo as amended by the 2021 subcontracting reform; the REPSE registry	Placing personnel to perform the client's own corporate purpose or preponderant economic activity is prohibited. Only specialised services or works outside that activity are permitted, and the provider must hold current registration in the specialised-services registry. The contracting company can carry joint liability for the provider's unmet labour, tax, and social-security obligations, and payments to an unregistered provider are not deductible. Confirm the provider's registration number and its validity date, and take Mexican employment counsel before signing.	Verified with limitation — regime, regulator, registry, and joint-liability consequence confirmed; individual registration status must be checked per provider
Germany	Depends on where the worker sits	Bundesagentur für Arbeit; Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz (AÜG)	The employment agency changed position twice in twelve months. Guidance effective October 2024 treated purely remote work for a German client as having enough domestic nexus to trigger employee-leasing licensing, which several major practices read as bringing much of the EOR model inside the AÜG. Guidance effective 1 October 2025 reversed that. Two cases now separate. A worker employed abroad who works exclusively online for a German client and never travels to Germany to work falls outside the licence requirement under current guidance; the requirement attaches once there is an on-site deployment in Germany. A provider established in Germany that employs a worker in Germany and supplies them to a client is engaged in employee leasing under German law and needs the licence — which is the case for most hires priced against the German row below. Administrative guidance does not bind the courts and there is no supreme-court ruling. Confirm which case describes your hire, then take German employment counsel.	Verified with limitation — see the source note below
Portugal, Philippines, India, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Colombia, Canada	Not yet verified	—	The Index has not completed a model-legality check in these markets. Absence from this table is not a finding that the model is unrestricted. Several of these countries regulate labour leasing, dispatch, or staffing through licensing regimes that may apply.	—

Source note, Germany. The controlling document is the employment agency's own administrative guidance on the AÜG, not any single firm's commentary, and it has moved twice: a revision effective 15 October 2024 extended the licence requirement to location-independent remote work, and a further revision effective 1 October 2025 withdrew that extension. The Index records the current position, names the regulator, keeps the superseded position in the update log, and routes the question to counsel — because the guidance binds the agency, not the courts, and unlicensed leasing carries penalties and an assignment-duration limit if a court disagrees with the agency.

Employer costs by country

Release v0.6, August 8, 2026. Published rows verified against governing sources on August 8, 2026. Research-status rows reflect the same pass. Next scheduled review: November 6, 2026, with a mandatory recheck on publication day and on any known rate, threshold, or scope change.

The launch scope covers ten countries: Portugal, the Philippines, India, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, and Canada. Under the Index's evidence standard, a component publishes only when it is verified against an opened governing source with its base, caps, scope, and effective date — and a modeled subtotal publishes only when every component inside its stated scope is closed. Eight countries now have at least one verified employer component; five carry a publishable subtotal. Two countries have neither, and the rows below say exactly which components are open. Not verified means exactly that — never zero, and never a placeholder estimate borrowed from a vendor guide or a neighboring country.

Release v0.6: published rows verified against governing sources on August 8, 2026.

Which rows matter for your footprint

Your footprint	Rows to work first	What is publishable today	If your market is unpublished
First international hire, one country	The single row for that country	Five countries carry a verified employer subtotal, and eight carry at least one verified component	Use the boundary table as a quote-audit checklist and ask the provider to itemise each statutory component against its own governing source and effective date
Two or three markets, testing before entity setup	Compare capped countries against uncapped ones at your actual offer salary	Germany, Canada, Spain, and Poland cap; Portugal does not; the Philippines caps each of three funds separately	Do not rank on a partial set; rank only the rows you can compare on a common basis and treat the rest as unpriced
Many countries, permanent operation	The cap and floor structure rather than the headline percentage	Every published row states which components cap and where	Budget the unpublished markets from scoped provider quotes, not from this page, and record which figure came from where
Converting contractors in an existing market	None of them yet	This is not a cost question	Read contractor misclassification risk and take local employment counsel before any provider conversation

The ten launch countries at a glance

Every figure in this table is the employer side only, in local currency, on the scope stated in the country row below it, verified against governing sources on August 8, 2026 for release v0.6. It excludes employee deductions, EOR service fees, benefits, deposits, and FX. Read a row here, then open the country row before you use the number.

Country	Employer contribution in scope	Does it cap?	Annual employer maximum	Statutory extra annual pay	Row status
Germany	21.15% of pay, four standard branches	Yes — two separate ceilings	€18,107.03	None statutory	Verified with limitation
Canada	Three federal components, all fixed amounts at the top	Yes — all three	CAD 6,218.75	None statutory	Verified, federal only
Portugal	23.75% of gross pay	No — uncapped at any salary	None	Yes, not yet closed	Verified with limitation
Spain	30.65% of the contribution base	Yes — base capped, then a small solidarity contribution above it	€18,762.22, plus the solidarity contribution	Prorated into the base, not additional	Verified with limitation
Poland	20.48% below the ceiling, 4.22% above it	Partly — two of five components cap	Uncapped	None statutory	Verified with limitation
Philippines	10% of a banded salary credit, plus a flat levy	Yes — three funds, three separate ceilings	PHP 3,530 per month across the verified components	Yes, not yet closed	Partial
India	12% of the contributory wage, plus an insurance levy	Partly — the pension slice caps	Not closed	Not closed	Partial
Brazil	20% of total remuneration, general regime	No ceiling on this component	Uncapped	Yes, not yet closed	Partial
Mexico	Not published	—	—	Not closed	Partial / Blocked
Colombia	Not published	—	—	Not closed	Blocked

The table makes the central point of the dataset visible in one place: whether a country caps matters more than its headline rate. Portugal's 23.75% looks cheaper than Spain's 30.65% and Germany's 21.15% looks cheaper still — until salary rises, at which point Spain and Germany stop and Portugal does not.

Germany — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee subject to statutory social insurance across all four branches; rates effective January 1, 2026 under the Sozialversicherungsrechengrößen-Verordnung 2026, promulgated in the Bundesgesetzblatt on November 26, 2025. Currency EUR. Ceilings are nationally uniform; the former east–west split ended in 2025.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Pension insurance (Rentenversicherung)	9.3% (half of the 18.6% total rate)	Gross pay to €8,450/month, €101,400/year	€9,430.20	Verified	2026-08-08
Unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung)	1.3% (half of 2.6%)	Same ceiling as pension: €8,450/month	€1,318.20	Verified	2026-08-08
Health insurance, general rate (Krankenversicherung)	7.3% (half of 14.6%)	Gross pay to €5,812.50/month, €69,750/year	€5,091.75	Verified	2026-08-08
Health insurance, supplementary rate (Zusatzbeitrag)	1.45% at the 2026 average rate of 2.9%, split evenly	Same ceiling as health insurance	€1,011.38	Verified with limitation — the rate is set by each individual health fund and the statutory average is a reference, not the rate you will pay	2026-08-08
Long-term care insurance (Pflegeversicherung)	1.8%, half of the 3.6% total	Same ceiling as health insurance	€1,255.50	Verified with limitation — a different employer/employee split applies in Saxony; the childless surcharge of 0.6 points falls on the employee and does not change the employer's share	2026-08-08
Insolvency-payment levy (Insolvenzgeldumlage)	0.15%, employer only	Wage base not yet closed in this pass	—	Partial	2026-08-08
Employer apportionment levies (U1 sickness, U2 maternity)	Not verified	Rate set by each health fund in its own statute, so no single national figure exists	—	Blocked — the applicable rates come from the fund the employee joins	2026-08-08
Statutory accident insurance (Berufsgenossenschaft)	Not verified	Rate by trade association and hazard class; employer only	—	Blocked — genuinely employer-specific	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not applicable — no statutory 13th month obligation; collective agreements may create one	—	—	Not applicable	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal, four standard branches	21.15% of pay below the health ceiling	Two ceilings: €69,750/year and €101,400/year	€18,107.03	Verified with limitation — excludes the insolvency levy, the fund-set U1/U2 levies, and accident insurance	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. A defensible German employer-cost model at any salary, with three named exclusions. The subtotal falls in two steps: 21.15% up to €5,812.50 per month, then 10.6% on pay between that and €8,450 per month, then nothing above €8,450 per month. What it does not support: a statement about a specific employee, because the health fund's own supplementary rate, the Saxony variant, the fund-set apportionment levies, and the accident class are all employer- or worker-specific.

Canada — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee aged 18–64 in pensionable and insurable employment outside Quebec; federal components only; rates effective January 1, 2026. Currency CAD. Quebec runs a separate regime and is shown as its own scenario line.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base, exemption and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Canada Pension Plan (CPP)	5.95%, matching the employee	Earnings above the CAD 3,500 basic exemption to the CAD 74,600 ceiling	CAD 4,230.45	Verified	2026-08-08
Second additional CPP (CPP2)	4.00%, matching the employee	Earnings between CAD 74,600 and CAD 85,000	CAD 416.00	Verified	2026-08-08
Employment Insurance (EI)	1.4× the employee rate of CAD 1.63 per CAD 100, published as CAD 2.28 per CAD 100	Insurable earnings to CAD 68,900	CAD 1,572.30	Verified	2026-08-08
Quebec variant	QPIP applies and the EI employer rate falls to CAD 1.82 per CAD 100	Insurable earnings to CAD 68,900	CAD 1,253.98 for EI	Verified with limitation — the Quebec Pension Plan and QPIP employer rates are not closed in this pass	2026-08-08
Provincial employer payroll or health tax	Not verified	Varies by province and by total payroll, with exemption thresholds	—	Blocked	2026-08-08
Workers' compensation premium	Not verified	Rate by province and industry classification	—	Blocked	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not applicable — no statutory 13th month; vacation pay accrues at a provincially set minimum	—	—	Not applicable	2026-08-08
Federal statutory employer subtotal, at or above CAD 85,000	Fully capped	All three components cap	CAD 6,218.75	Verified — federal components only	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. All three federal components cap, so Canada's federal statutory employer cost has a hard annual ceiling of CAD 6,218.75 per employee regardless of salary. What it does not support: a national all-in figure, because provincial employer payroll and health taxes and workers' compensation premiums are unclosed and both vary by province, payroll size, and industry.

Portugal — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee on a general-regime contract under the Código dos Regimes Contributivos; rate unchanged for 2026. Currency EUR. There is no contribution ceiling.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Single social contribution (Taxa Social Única)	23.75% of gross pay, being the employer share of the 34.75% global rate	Gross remuneration; no ceiling and no floor for a standard employee	None — uncapped	Verified — article 53 of the Código dos Regimes Contributivos, Lei n.º 110/2009	2026-08-08
Reduced-rate categories	Lower employer rates apply to specified categories and to non-profit employers	As above	—	Verified with limitation — the Segurança Social schedule carries the full category list; the general-employee rate is the one modeled here	2026-08-08
Workplace-accident insurance	Not verified	Compulsory cover placed with a private insurer; premium varies by activity and insurer	—	Blocked — an employer cost, but not part of the 23.75% and not a social-security contribution	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not verified	Portuguese law requires additional annual salary payments beyond twelve months	—	Partial — the obligation is real and materially changes the annual figure; the governing articles were not opened in this pass	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal, social contribution only	23.75% of pay at every salary	Uncapped	None	Verified with limitation — excludes accident insurance and additional annual salary payments	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. Portugal is the cleanest arithmetic in the Index and the clearest counter-example to cap-based intuition: because the contribution is uncapped, a senior hire costs the same 23.75% as a junior one, and Portugal overtakes capped countries as salary rises. What it does not support: a full annual employer cost, because the additional annual salary payments are unclosed — and they are the difference between a twelve-payment and a fourteen-payment country.

Spain — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee on an indefinite contract in the Régimen General; rates effective January 1, 2026 under Orden PJC/297/2026, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 31 March 2026 with effect from 1 January. Currency EUR. Contribution group 1 assumed for the minimum base.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Common contingencies (contingencias comunes)	23.60% of the contribution base, being the employer share of 28.30%	Contribution base to a maximum of €5,101.20/month	€14,446.60	Verified — article 4 of the cotización order	2026-08-08
Unemployment (desempleo), indefinite contract	5.50%, being the employer share of 7.05%	Same maximum base	€3,366.79	Verified with limitation — a fixed-term contract carries 6.70% instead	2026-08-08
Wage guarantee fund (FOGASA)	0.20%, employer only	Same maximum base	€122.43	Verified	2026-08-08
Vocational training (formación profesional)	0.60%, being the employer share of 0.70%	Same maximum base	€367.29	Verified	2026-08-08
Intergenerational equity mechanism (MEI)	0.75%, being the employer share of 0.90%	Same maximum base	€459.11	Verified — article 16 of the cotización order	2026-08-08
Occupational accident and disease (AT/EP)	Not verified	Premium tariff by economic activity under the Ley General de la Seguridad Social; employer only	—	Blocked — activity-specific	2026-08-08
Solidarity contribution above the maximum base	0.96% / 1.04% / 1.22% employer share on three tranches of pay above €5,101.20/month	Applies only to pay above the maximum base	Uncapped	Verified — article 17 of the cotización order	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not applicable as an addition — Spanish law requires extra annual payments, but the cotización order prorates them into the monthly contribution base rather than adding to annual pay	—	—	Verified with limitation — confirm whether a quoted annual salary already includes them	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal, capped components	30.65% of the contribution base	Base capped at €5,101.20/month, €61,214.40/year	€18,762.22	Verified with limitation — excludes the activity-specific AT/EP premium; the solidarity contribution applies above the cap	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. Spain caps like Germany and Canada but then partly un-caps: the main contributions stop at €61,214.40 of annual base, and a separate solidarity contribution picks up on pay above it at a much lower employer rate. What it does not support: a total for a specific employer, because the accident-and-disease premium is set by economic activity and is not a single national figure.

Poland — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee on an employment contract (umowa o pracę); rates effective January 1, 2026. Currency PLN. The accident rate shown is the reference rate ZUS itself uses in worked examples, not a rate that applies to every employer.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Pension insurance (emerytalne)	9.76%, matching the employee	Gross pay to the 2026 annual ceiling of PLN 282,600	PLN 27,581.76	Verified	2026-08-08
Disability insurance (rentowe)	6.50% (the employee pays 1.50%)	Same ceiling as pension	PLN 18,369.00	Verified	2026-08-08
Accident insurance (wypadkowe)	1.67% reference rate; the statutory range is 0.67% to 3.33%	Gross pay, uncapped	Uncapped	Verified with limitation — the applicable rate depends on the employer's activity classification and headcount	2026-08-08
Labour Fund and Solidarity Fund (FP, FS)	2.45%, employer only	Gross pay, uncapped	Uncapped	Verified	2026-08-08
Guaranteed Employee Benefits Fund (FGŚP)	0.10%, employer only	Gross pay, uncapped	Uncapped	Verified	2026-08-08
Employee capital plans (PPK)	Not verified	An additional employer contribution applies unless the employee opts out	—	Blocked — confirm the current rate and the employee's opt-out status in the quote	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not applicable — no statutory 13th month for private-sector employees	—	—	Not applicable	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal, at the reference accident rate	20.48% of pay below the ceiling; 4.22% on pay above it	Pension and disability cap at PLN 282,600; the rest do not	Uncapped	Verified with limitation — accident rate is a reference; excludes PPK	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. Poland is a hybrid: two components cap and three do not, so the employer rate steps down from 20.48% to 4.22% at PLN 282,600 of annual pay rather than stopping. What it does not support: a figure for a specific employer, because the accident rate moves with activity classification and the capital-plan contribution depends on the employee's own opt-out decision.

Philippines — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: locally employed private-sector employee; SSS schedule effective January 1, 2025 and carried into 2026 under Republic Act 11199. Currency PHP. Each of the three funds uses a different base and a different ceiling, which is the single most important fact about this row.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Monthly employer maximum	Status	Verified
Social Security System (SSS)	10% of the monthly salary credit, being the employer share of 15%	Monthly salary credit from PHP 5,000 to PHP 35,000, set in bands rather than on exact pay	PHP 3,500.00	Verified — 2025 schedule of contributions	2026-08-08
Employees' Compensation (EC)	PHP 10 where the salary credit is below PHP 15,000; PHP 30 at or above it	Flat amount, employer only	PHP 30.00	Verified	2026-08-08
Mandatory Provident Fund component	Included within the 15% SSS rate, not additional	Applies to the part of the salary credit above PHP 20,000	—	Verified with limitation — a routing rule inside the SSS contribution, not a separate employer cost	2026-08-08
PhilHealth premium	Not verified	Premium is a percentage of monthly basic salary between a floor and a ceiling, shared equally	—	Partial — the rate and ceiling are set by circular under the Universal Health Care Act; the circular endpoint was not opened in this pass	2026-08-08
Pag-IBIG (HDMF) contribution	Not verified	Percentage of a capped monthly fund salary, shared equally	—	Partial — set by fund circular; endpoint not opened in this pass	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not verified	13th month pay is a statutory obligation for rank-and-file employees	—	Partial — the obligation is real and adds roughly one twelfth to annual basic pay; the governing decree was not opened in this pass	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal	Not published	—	—	Blocked — three employer-side components remain open	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. The SSS employer contribution, which is the largest of the three funds, and the structural point that matters most: because the salary credit is capped at PHP 35,000, the SSS employer cost is a flat PHP 3,530 per month for every employee paid above that, so the effective rate collapses as salary rises. What it does not support: an all-in Philippine employer figure, because two funds and the 13th month obligation are unclosed.

India — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee in an establishment covered by the provident-fund scheme; currency INR. The wage on which the contribution is computed is the live variable: the consolidated labour codes change the statutory definition of wages, and that definition, not the rate, drives the Indian employer figure.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Provident fund and pension scheme	12% of pay, of which 8.33 percentage points are diverted to the pension scheme	Contributory wage as defined by the scheme	Not closed	Verified with limitation — the wage definition under the consolidated labour codes is unsettled	2026-08-08
Deposit-linked insurance	0.5% of pay, employer only	Contributory wage	Not closed	Verified with limitation — the wage cap applied to this levy was not opened in this pass	2026-08-08
Pension-scheme wage threshold	—	A new joiner whose basic wage exceeds INR 15,000 per month does not acquire pension-scheme membership and joins the provident fund only on a joint option	—	Verified with limitation — this threshold governs eligibility; whether it also caps the employer's contribution amount was not closed	2026-08-08
Administrative charges	Not verified	Set by the provident-fund schedule	—	Blocked — the contribution schedule is publicly readable but blocks automated retrieval; requires manual capture	2026-08-08
State insurance (ESIC)	Not verified	Applies below a wage threshold; employer and employee shares differ	—	Blocked — publicly readable, blocks automated retrieval	2026-08-08
Gratuity	Not verified	Statutory end-of-service payment accruing with length of service	—	Partial — an event-driven liability rather than a recurring contribution; model it with severance, not with burden	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not verified	A statutory annual bonus applies to employees below a wage threshold	—	Partial	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal	Not published	—	—	Blocked — the contributory wage definition and three components remain open	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. The employer's headline provident-fund rate and the insurance levy on top of it, and the structural warning that matters most in India: the rate is stable and the base is not, so an Indian quote that does not state the wage definition it used cannot be checked. What it does not support: any Indian employer total.

Brazil — employer contribution components, 2026

Scope: employee under the general payroll-based regime; currency BRL. Whether the employer sits in the general regime or in a substitute regime is the first question, because it changes the base from payroll to revenue.

Employer component	Employer rate	Base and ceiling	Annual employer maximum	Status	Verified
Employer social contribution	20% of the total remuneration paid, due or credited in the month to employees	Total remuneration, no ceiling	Uncapped	Verified — general regime	2026-08-08
Accident-risk contribution	Not verified	A risk-graded contribution applies and is adjusted by a prevention factor specific to the employer	—	Blocked — grade and factor are employer-specific	2026-08-08
Third-party levies	Not verified	A schedule of levies collected alongside the social contribution, set by economic activity	—	Blocked	2026-08-08
Severance fund	Not verified	A monthly employer deposit into the worker's severance account	—	Blocked	2026-08-08
Regime	—	Certain sectors and company sizes fall outside the payroll-based general regime	—	Blocked — establish this before applying the 20%	2026-08-08
Mandatory additional compensation	Not verified	Brazilian law requires an additional annual salary payment	—	Partial	2026-08-08
Modeled employer subtotal	Not published	—	—	Blocked — four employer-side components and the regime question remain open	2026-08-08

What this row already supports. The single largest Brazilian employer contribution, uncapped, from the tax authority itself — which is enough to rule Brazil in or out at a high salary before any of the smaller components are closed. What it does not support: a Brazilian total, and specifically not a comparison against a capped country, because the uncapped components are the ones still open.

Countries in verification

These two rows carry no published component values. The "scope to freeze" column is the specification each row has to satisfy before any figure publishes.

Country	Currency	Scope to freeze before a component publishes	Governing source families	Status	What closes the row
Mexico	MXN	State, risk class, the reference-unit and contribution-salary base, and the treatment of the statutory bonus, vacation premium, and profit sharing.	IMSS employer portal and the Ley del Seguro Social provisions on employer and employee contributions by branch of insurance; INFONAVIT for the housing contribution; state payroll-tax authorities.	Partial / Blocked — no official rate schedule endpoint was located in this pass	Capture the per-branch employer rates from the Social Insurance Law itself rather than from a calculator, together with the contribution-salary base, its cap expressed in the national reference unit, and the employer's risk class. One structural feature has to be modelled explicitly: the employer's old-age contribution is not a single rate but a schedule that rises with the employee's contribution salary and steps upward each year under a 2020 pension reform, so a Mexican figure is dated twice over — by year and by salary. The model-legality position is separately verified in the restriction table above.
Colombia	COP	Salary band, occupational-risk class, and integral-salary, benefit, and exemption treatment.	Unidad de Gestión Pensional y Parafiscal (UGPP); Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social; the integrated contribution return (PILA); occupational-risk insurers; the family compensation funds, SENA, and ICBF.	Blocked — no governing endpoint was opened in this pass	Capture the pension, health, occupational-risk, and payroll-levy schedules from the responsible authorities, together with the statutory exemption that removes some employer contributions below a salary threshold. Risk class and salary treatment materially change the result.

The "scope to freeze" column is the real comparison work: two countries can only be compared after each is pinned to a specific jurisdiction, worker, and salary scenario. The source column shows why no single website — official or vendor — can populate a row; each country is a bundle of institutions with their own schedules and effective dates, and a summary that cites only one of them has already dropped components. And the statuses are the product. A dataset that shows you where its evidence is incomplete is more useful, and more citable, than one that fills every cell.

When a row reaches Verified or Verified with limitation, its component amounts, caps, modeled burden, sources, and dates replace the status summary here and in the downloadable release, and the change is recorded in the update log.

The Three Blocking Patterns

The open items above are not random; they cluster into three patterns that any cross-country cost model has to handle.

The first is subnational and risk-class variation. In several launch countries, the employer cost is not a single national figure: it moves with the state or province, the sector, the employer's accident-risk classification, or the insurer involved. That is why Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Canada each require a regime, risk-class, or province decision before a defensible total exists, and why Germany, Spain, and Poland each require a defined insurance or activity scenario. Publishing one flattened national percentage for these countries would not be a rough answer — it would be the wrong answer for most real employers. The published rows demonstrate it: Canada's federal components are closed while its provincial layer is not, Germany's four standard branches are closed while its fund-specific and accident-class layers are not, and Spain's five general contributions are closed while its activity-rated accident premium is not.

The second is salary-base definitions. Contributions do not all apply to the same wage. Some use total gross pay, some a defined contributory or basic wage, some a reference unit or banded credit set by the authority, and several funds within one country can use different bases from each other — Germany runs two different ceilings across four branches, Poland caps two components and leaves three uncapped, the Philippines runs three funds on three different bases, and Canada applies a basic exemption to one component and not the others. Until each component's base is pinned to its governing source, adding the components together produces a number that looks precise and is not.

The third is source fragmentation and access. Even where the responsible institution is clear, the controlling document is a specific current schedule, order, or notification — and in this pass, some of those endpoints were inaccessible to automated retrieval even though they are publicly readable, and some, as in Colombia, were not located at all. The Index records an access failure as a status, never as permission to substitute a secondary estimate.

How to calculate employer burden from a country row

A country row is designed so you can reproduce its result. The method is the same everywhere, even though the components differ by country.

Start from the stated gross-salary basis in local currency. Then, for each employer-side component, apply the component's rate or amount to the base that component actually uses — which is not always total gross salary. Some contributions apply to a defined contributory wage, some to a basic-wage subset, and some to a banded credit or reference unit set by the authority rather than the salary itself. Apply each component's floor, ceiling, or band before summing. Add any mandatory additional compensation the country's law requires — for example, a statutorily mandated extra salary payment — modeled either as a monthly accrual or at its actual cash timing, with the treatment stated. The sum is the modeled statutory employer burden; divide by the stated salary basis for the percentage.

Caps and floors are why the percentage moves with salary. Consider a purely illustrative jurisdiction — not any real country row. Suppose it levies a pension contribution of 18% of salary capped at a monthly base of LC 6,000, an uncapped 4% health contribution, an uncapped 1% training levy, and a mandatory extra month of pay accrued at 8.33%. At a monthly salary of LC 5,000, every component applies in full and the burden is about 31.3% of salary. At LC 12,000, the pension contribution is fixed at LC 1,080 — now only 9% of salary — and the total burden falls to roughly 22.3%. Same country, same rules, nine points apart. This is why the Index publishes a percentage only together with its salary basis, and why applying one country's headline percentage to a very different salary produces a wrong budget.

Two published rows show the same effect on real 2026 figures, at opposite extremes. Canada, using the federal components only:

Annual salary (CAD)	CPP	CPP2	EI	Federal employer total	As % of salary
45,000 (low)	2,469.25	0.00	1,026.90	3,496.15	7.8%
90,000 (base)	4,230.45	416.00	1,572.30	6,218.75	6.9%
150,000 (high)	4,230.45	416.00	1,572.30	6,218.75	4.1%

Employment Insurance is calculated the way the setting authority calculates it: 1.4 × (insurable earnings × the employee rate of 1.63%). The published employer rate of CAD 2.28 per CAD 100 is that product rounded, and applying it directly gives a figure up to about one dollar per employee per year lower. The Index uses the authority's own method throughout so the annual maximum reproduces exactly.

The single line driving the spread is that every federal component caps — CPP at CAD 74,600 of earnings, CPP2 at CAD 85,000, EI at CAD 68,900 of insurable earnings. Above CAD 85,000 the federal employer cost stops rising entirely, so the same statutory rules produce 7.8% and 4.1% of salary depending only on what you pay. Provincial employer payroll taxes and workers' compensation sit on top and are not in these figures.

Germany, using the four standard branches only, shows a two-step version of the same thing:

Annual salary (EUR)	Pension	Unemployment	Health, incl. supplementary	Long-term care	Employer subtotal	As % of salary
48,000 (low)	4,464.00	624.00	4,200.00	864.00	10,152.00	21.2%
84,000 (base)	7,812.00	1,092.00	6,103.13	1,255.50	16,262.63	19.4%
120,000 (high)	9,430.20	1,318.20	6,103.13	1,255.50	18,107.03	15.1%

The single line driving that spread is that Germany runs two ceilings, not one — health and long-term care stop at €69,750 of annual pay while pension and unemployment run to €101,400 — so the employer's marginal rate falls from 21.15% to 10.6% and then to zero, in two separate steps rather than one. Portugal, by contrast, has no ceiling at all: the employer pays 23.75% on the first euro and the millionth, which is why it looks expensive next to Germany at a junior salary and stays expensive where Germany stops.

Floors work the same trick in the opposite direction. Where a contribution has a minimum base, a low salary can attract a contribution calculated on a base higher than the actual pay, pushing the burden percentage up at the bottom of the range. Fixed-amount levies behave similarly: a flat monthly charge is a trivial share of a senior salary and a visible share of a junior one. The practical consequence is that the Index reports both the amount and the percentage, and the amount is usually the safer number to carry into a budget — a percentage detached from its salary basis invites exactly the misuse the caps create.

Keep the pay-period arithmetic consistent, too. A row states whether its basis is monthly or annual and how it annualizes, because a country whose mandatory compensation adds effectively an extra month of pay cannot be compared to a twelve-payment country on a per-month basis without adjusting one of them. When you recompute a row at your own salary, use the row's stated period and annualization method, then convert at the end — not component by component.

Two further separations keep the calculation honest. Modeled accrual is not cash timing: an extra-salary obligation accrued monthly for comparability may actually be paid once or twice a year, which matters for cash-flow planning even though the annual cost is identical. And a modeled estimate is not an invoice: the row tells you what the statutory rules imply under stated assumptions, not what a specific provider will bill for a specific person. Treat every result as an input to a quote, not a substitute for one.

Methodology and verification rules

Methodology version matches release v0.6. All row statuses reflect the August 8, 2026 verification pass.

The methodology is public because the dataset is only as good as your ability to audit it.

Field definitions

Field	What it records	Publication rule
Country / jurisdiction	Country plus state, province, region, sector, or risk-class scope where material.	No generic national row where subnational rules drive the result.
Currency and salary basis	Local currency, gross salary amount or band, pay period, annualization method.	Local currency is canonical.
Worker and contract scope	Employee category, contract type, hours, and eligibility assumptions.	Visible beside the row or in a shared scope card.
Employer contribution components	Each employer-side contribution listed separately with rate or amount and base.	Employee deductions never appear in these fields.
Floors, ceilings, bands, wage definition	The base each component applies to and its thresholds.	Required for reproducibility.
Annual employer maximum	The most a capped component can cost per employee per year.	Shown for every capped component; "uncapped" where none applies.
Mandatory additional compensation	Statutory bonus or additional-salary obligations, with accrual or cash treatment and timing.	Included with treatment stated, or excluded with a reason.
Modeled employer subtotal	The employer-side statutory total and percentage under the stated assumptions.	Publishes only when every component inside its stated scope is verified, with the exclusions named.
Excluded from burden	Deductions, income tax, optional benefits, EOR fee, deposits, FX, one-time fees, service taxes, contract minimums, severance reserve.	Shown as a visible list; no "all-in" label.
Model-restriction status	Whether the EOR arrangement is itself licensed, restricted, or contested in that country, with the regulator named.	Never inferred from silence; an unchecked country is shown as not yet verified.
Effective date and verification date	When the rule applies, and when the source was opened.	Both required; a page's publication date alone is insufficient.
Source URLs	The direct governing schedule, order, or notification for each consequential component.	A homepage is orientation only when a specific schedule controls the number.
Verification status and limitation	One controlled status plus a note.	Understandable without color or download.

Source hierarchy

Country values come from governing sources in strict order: statute, regulation, official gazette, or the responsible ministry, tax authority, social-security institution, or labor authority first; official regional or intergovernmental material only as a pointer to the national rule; recognized professional interpretation only after the governing source is identified. Vendor country guides are implementation context and are never the sole authority for law or statutory cost.

Model-restriction findings follow the same order, with one difference: where the governing instrument is settled but its application to the EOR model turns on the regulator's own administrative guidance, the Index states the current guidance, dates it, records what it replaced, and says plainly that guidance of that kind does not bind a court.

The Six-Status Evidence Scale

Status	Meaning	What it permits
Verified	Supported by a current, opened governing source scoped to the exact claim.	May support a scoped current statement or total.
Verified with limitation	Supported, but a cap, band, category, region, or unresolved edge restricts the conclusion.	Usable only with the limitation shown beside it.
Partial	Some required fields verified; others open.	May orient a row; cannot support a total or ranking.
Blocked	Governing source unavailable, contradictory, or too ambiguous.	Not publishable as a current fact; shown as "Not verified."
Not applicable	The field genuinely does not apply.	Used only with the reason stated; never to hide missing data.
Superseded	Replaced by a newer source or effective rule.	Update-log use only.

How evidence and conflicts are handled

Source links, effective dates, verification dates, and statuses sit in or immediately beside the component they support — not in a distant appendix. Where a cap, band, or wage definition changes the result, that field is cited separately from the component rate, because the two can come from different documents with different effective dates. "Verified as of" a date means the exact controlling source was opened on that date; it is a statement about the evidence, not a promise that nothing has changed since. Vendor pages, where referenced at all, are labeled vendor-stated and never support a statutory country value.

No value is inferred from a neighboring country, a regional average, or a prior year, and no missing field is rendered as zero. Where a source is publicly readable but blocks automated retrieval — as with the Indian provident-fund and state-insurance endpoints in this release — the row records a retrieval failure, not an unavailability finding, and the field stays open until someone captures it by hand. When two official sources conflict, the conflict, effective dates, and scope are documented and the legally controlling or more specific current source governs; if the conflict cannot be resolved, the field is blocked rather than resolved toward the more convenient number. Superseded values move to the update log; they never linger as current facts — the German model-restriction position in this release is the worked example.

Review cadence and versioning

Country contribution rates, caps, and bases are re-reviewed before any publication, on official or budget-year changes, and at least semiannually; the dataset as a whole carries a 90-day formal review, next scheduled for November 6, 2026. Model-restriction statuses are reviewed on the same cadence and immediately on any regulator guidance change — the German entry in this release exists because that cadence caught one. Every release is versioned once, across every surface it appears on.

How to compare countries without false precision

Four things keep a legitimate comparison from becoming a misleading one.

"Country" may be too broad. Where a province, state, region, sector, risk class, or insurer changes the employer cost, a single national percentage is not a simplification — it is an error. That is why several launch rows are blocked on subnational scope, and why a row may ultimately be published as a scoped scenario rather than a national figure.

The scenario is part of the number. Every published percentage is true only "under the stated scenario." Change the worker category, the contract type, or the salary, and caps, exemptions, and bands can reorder countries entirely — Germany sits below Portugal at a junior salary and well below it at a senior one, purely because one country caps and the other does not. That is why the Index avoids "cheapest country" framing altogether. If you must rank, rank at your own salary and worker scenario, applied identically to every row, and expect the order to change when the scenario does.

Employer burden is not the tax wedge. Tax-wedge statistics answer a different question: they typically measure employee income tax and both sides' social contributions relative to total labor cost, sometimes net of cash benefits — a household-taxation measure. The Index measures only the employer-side statutory cost of a hire. The two can differ substantially for the same country, and each is legitimate for its own purpose; the error is substitution. If a figure you found elsewhere does not state which measure it is, whose contributions it counts, and on what salary basis, it cannot be reconciled with an Index row — and should not be averaged with one.

Currency conversion is presentation, not data. Local-currency values are canonical. A converted figure is shown only with a dated rate source, because an undated USD ranking silently embeds an exchange-rate bet in what looks like a payroll fact. Modeled accruals and actual cash timing are likewise kept distinct, so a comparison of annual cost does not masquerade as a month-by-month cash forecast.

How to use the Index in a hiring decision

The Index is one input in an ordered workflow, not a verdict on where or how to hire.

1. Freeze your scenario. Country — including any subnational scope — worker category, contract type, and gross salary in local currency.

2. Check the model before the cost. If the country appears in the restricted-or-licensed table, resolve that question first. A cheaper country you cannot lawfully staff through an EOR is not cheaper.

3. Confirm the row. Check each component's status, open its sources, and confirm the row's worker, salary, and jurisdiction assumptions actually match your scenario — a Verified component modeled on a different worker category or salary band is not your component. A Partial or Blocked field is a research status, not a budget input.

4. Build the statutory subtotal. Apply the formula to your salary, respecting each component's base and caps. If the statutory subtotal alone breaks the budget, the answer is a different country, a different seniority, or a different structure — not a cheaper provider, because no provider can discount a statutory contribution. Equally, if no provider will quote your market at all, that is a coverage answer about the country, not a shortlist to keep working.

5. Add the non-statutory layers separately. Benefits, the EOR service fee, any service taxes, one-time charges, and FX each get their own line; deposits and prefunding are tracked as refundable cash requirements, not expense; contract minimums and any severance reserve are modeled separately again.

6. Compare the route. With a defensible country cost in hand, compare an EOR with opening an entity — the burden figure is the same in both routes; what changes is who administers it and what else you pay.

7. Request comparable quotes. Send every provider the same frozen scenario — country and subnational scope, salary, currency, worker type, benefits, start date — and require itemization that separates salary, each statutory component, fee, benefits, deposits, and FX. Quotes built on different inputs cannot be compared, and averaging them produces a benchmark that describes nobody.

8. Escalate what data cannot decide, to the right adviser at the point the question arises:

   • Permanent-establishment and corporate-tax exposure — your tax adviser, before the role and its activities are structured. Permanent establishment is a threshold at which your company's activity in a country makes it taxable there in its own right; it turns on what the worker does, not on who signs their contract.
   • Worker classification, especially where a contractor relationship already exists — local employment counsel, before any provider conversation. Read contractor misclassification risk first. Moving a worker onto a new EOR arrangement does not cure exposure that has already accrued.
   • Immigration and work authorization — immigration counsel, before you make an offer with a start date. Country coverage on a provider's website is not sponsorship capability.
   • Works councils, collective agreements, and employee representation — local employment counsel, before headcount planning. A works council is a statutory body of employee representatives with consultation or co-determination rights over certain employer decisions; where one exists, it can constrain hiring, pay structures, and termination independently of anything in your service agreement.
   • Data protection and cross-border transfers — your data protection officer or privacy counsel, at the point payroll and HR data starts moving between countries.

   Using an EOR does not resolve any of these. An EOR arrangement covers defined employment obligations; it does not absorb your company's permanent-establishment exposure, its corporate tax position, its intellectual-property assignment chain, its immigration obligations, or its equity and incentive treatment, and in some markets it can create joint liability rather than remove it.

Deeper employment-rule detail for each country belongs to its country guide: see hiring in Portugal, hiring in the Philippines, and hiring in India.

What the country row does not tell you about leaving

Every article about engaging an EOR should also cover disengaging from one, and almost none does. The cost row travels with the worker; the liabilities do not all travel with it.

Continuity of employment — the principle that an employee's service is treated as unbroken across a change of employer — is the first thing to establish, because in many jurisdictions accrued service drives notice, severance, and leave entitlements. Whether it is preserved when you move an employee from an EOR to your own entity or to a different provider is a question of local law and of how the transfer is documented, and getting it wrong can either reset an employee's rights unlawfully or leave you carrying more accrued liability than you priced.

Establish these before you sign, not at the exit:

• Notice and termination mechanics. The EOR is the legal employer, so statutory notice periods and termination grounds bind it, not you. Your service agreement's notice period and the employee's statutory notice period are different clocks, and the second one is usually longer. Keep three things distinct: notice is the paid warning period before employment ends, severance is a separate payment often calculated on length of service, and statutory termination pay is whatever the country's law compels regardless of what the contract says. A quote that covers one of the three has not covered the others.
• Accrued liability and who funds it. Severance, unused leave, and any statutory extra-salary accrual are real balances at the exit date. Confirm in writing whether the provider has been reserving against them and what happens to that reserve when the engagement ends.
• Records and payroll history. Employment contracts, payroll registers, and statutory filings have retention periods in the worker's country. Establish who holds them, in what format, and for how long after termination.
• What you are left holding. If the employee transfers to your own entity, you inherit the employment relationship and everything attached to it — including any accrued exposure that predates the transfer.

Transfer mechanics are jurisdiction-specific and belong with local employment counsel. The statutory burden figure in a country row is unchanged by the exit; the termination and continuity exposure is not, and it is not in that figure.

Choosing a provider at a glance

Provider selection is a separate decision with a separate evidence standard, so this page describes what to shortlist for rather than naming vendors. The list below is a shortlist specification — the documented characteristics that matter once you have a country row in hand — segmented by situation, because no provider is best for every buyer.

• For a first hire in one country: a provider that issues an itemized quote separating gross salary, each statutory employer component, its own service fee, benefits, deposits, and FX — so you can reconcile the quote line by line against the country row.
• For finance teams modeling cash flow: a provider that discloses deposit or prefunding amounts and refund conditions in writing, and states its FX source and any markup rather than embedding it.
• For multi-country plans: a provider that documents, per country, which entity is the legal employer rather than quoting a headline country count. An owned entity is a local company the provider itself controls; an in-country partner is a third party the provider contracts with to employ your worker, which adds a link to the liability chain and a party you have no contract with. Where the model is not disclosed, treat it as not verified.
• For regulated or representation-heavy markets: a provider that names its local escalation path, evidences compliance and security claims with current documents rather than badges, and can show its licensing position where the model is licensed.

Your situation	Shortlist move	Confirm in the demo or quote
Founder testing one or two markets	Shortlist providers willing to quote against your exact frozen scenario.	Which entity employs the worker? Which statutory components, bases, and caps does the quote assume, at what effective date? What is excluded?
Finance leader budgeting a multi-country plan	Shortlist providers with written deposit, FX, and off-cycle terms.	What deposit or prefunding applies, and when is it refunded? What FX rate source and markup are used? Which one-time fees can arise? What is the minimum commitment?
HR leader making an offer in a capped-contribution country	Shortlist providers that recompute burden at the actual offer salary.	Which contributions cap out at this salary? How is mandatory additional compensation timed? Which benefits are statutory versus optional?
Any buyer in a licensed or contested market	Shortlist only providers that will document their licensing position in writing.	Do you hold the required licence or registration in this country, under what number, and valid until when? Who carries liability if it lapses?

Apply one symmetry rule: every provider on your shortlist answers the same questions, on the same scenario, in writing. The verification questions above are the scorecard; a provider that cannot be scored on them is not comparable, whatever its marketing says. For a named, evidence-checked comparison, use the EOR provider shortlist.

Downloads and the update log

Release v0.6, August 8, 2026. This is an HTML-only release: no downloadable file is live yet, and this page is the whole dataset until one is. The CSV ships with release v0.7 and will carry the same rows, fields, sources, and statuses.

Every release of the EOR Index is a package, published once and versioned once:

Asset	Contents	Rule
Crawlable HTML	The matrix, methodology, statuses, source links, as-of dates, and update log on this page.	Must be fully usable without any download.
CSV	The same release version, rows, fields, sources, and statuses as the HTML, with stable UTF-8 headers.	The citation-and-reuse copy; it may never lag the visible page.
XLSX (optional)	The same release plus a field glossary and source log.	Analyst convenience, not a separate truth source.
Methodology	Field definitions, assumptions, formula, source hierarchy, status rules, missing-data policy, FX treatment.	Versioned with the release.
Update log	Release date, changed countries and fields, prior value or status, reason, source, and reviewer.	Consequential data is never silently overwritten.

Update log

Release	Date	Change	Reason
v0.6	August 8, 2026	Portugal, Spain, Poland, the Philippines, India, and Brazil moved from research status to published components, taking the published set from two countries to eight. A ten-country at-a-glance comparison table was added ahead of the individual rows. Germany's long-term-care employer share published at 1.8% and the four-branch employer subtotal published at 21.15%, replacing the previous Blocked total. Annual employer maximums added to every capped component. Canada's Employment Insurance derivation restated on the setting authority's own method. Brazil's general-regime employer social contribution verified at 20%. Mexico's model-restriction status raised to Verified with limitation. Germany's model-restriction entry corrected: the previous entry described administrative guidance effective 15 October 2024 that the regulator withdrew with effect from 1 October 2025; the superseded position is retained here and no longer stated as current.	Verification pass against governing sources completed August 8, 2026.
v0.5	August 1, 2026	Germany and Canada moved from research status to published components. Poland's 2026 contribution ceiling verified; remaining Polish fields still open. Model-restriction table added for all ten launch countries. German long-term-care employer share recorded as Blocked on a source conflict.	Verification pass against governing sources completed August 1, 2026.
v0.4	July 21, 2026	Initial ten-country scope, methodology, formula, and status framework published with no component values.	Scope and evidence standard fixed before any figure published.

To cite the Index, reference the release version and your access date — for example: EOR Hub, "EOR Index: Employer Costs by Country," release v0.6, August 8, 2026. Reuse is governed by the site's terms; no open license is implied.

EOR Hub is an independent editorial publisher. It is not an employer of record, a PEO, a payroll processor, a law firm, or a tax or immigration adviser, and nothing here is legal, tax, or immigration advice for your situation.

Commercial relationships. This page names no provider, ranks no provider, and carries no commercial link. Nothing on it — inclusion, ordering, wording, or status — is affected by any commercial relationship, prospective or actual. Per-provider disclosure belongs on the pages that name providers, and any relationship affecting the EOR provider shortlist or the EOR pricing guide is disclosed there, per provider rather than as a blanket notice.

Corrections. If you find an error, a superseded source, or a figure that no longer matches its governing document, write to hello@eorhub.com with the country, the field, the value you believe is wrong, and the governing source you are relying on. Providers and authorities correcting the record are treated the same way as any other correspondent: the claim is checked against the governing source, and if it holds, the change goes into the update log with its date and the source that prompted it. A correction never leaves the log silently.

Frequently asked questions

Why doesn't the Index rank the cheapest EOR?

Because it measures statutory employer costs, which are set by law and are identical whichever provider — or no provider — employs the worker. Ranking countries or vendors on a blend of statutory cost and vendor fee would produce a number no one can audit.

Do the figures include employee taxes and deductions?

No. Employee income tax and employee-side contributions are withheld from the worker's pay; they change take-home salary, not the employer's statutory cost. Mixing them into employer burden overstates the cost of hiring and double-counts what tax-wedge statistics already measure. The Index keeps the two sides in separate fields throughout.

Will the employer-burden percentage be the same at any salary?

It depends on whether the country caps. Portugal does not: the employer pays 23.75% at every salary. Germany, Canada, Spain, and Poland all cap, so the percentage falls as salary rises — Canada's federal rules produce about 7.8% of salary at CAD 45,000 and about 4.1% at CAD 150,000, and Germany's four standard branches produce 21.2% at €48,000 and 15.1% at €120,000. Always recompute a row's result at your actual offer salary before budgeting.

What is the difference between an EOR and a PEO?

An employer of record is the legal employer of your worker in a country where you have no entity; the client company directs the day-to-day work while the EOR holds the employment relationship. A PEO or co-employment arrangement normally assumes you already have a local employing entity and shares defined employer responsibilities with you rather than replacing you as employer. The terminology and legal effect vary by country, and in some markets the EOR model attracts labour-leasing rules that a PEO arrangement does not. Compare the two on the EOR versus PEO page.

Does an EOR remove permanent-establishment risk?

No. Permanent establishment is a threshold at which your company's own activity in a country makes it taxable there, and it turns on what your business does in that market — sales concluded, contracts negotiated, a fixed place of business — not on who is named as the employer. An EOR arrangement can change who holds the employment relationship without changing your company's tax footprint, and treaty positions differ by country pair. Many treaties also apply a dependent agent test, under which a person who habitually concludes contracts on your behalf can create a taxable presence for your company even without an office — which is why the worker's actual authority matters more than their job title. Take this to your tax adviser before the role is structured, not after the hire.

Who owns work created by someone employed through an EOR?

Not automatically you. The assignment chain runs through the EOR's employment contract with the worker and then through your service agreement with the EOR, and both links have to actually assign the rights. What an employee can assign, and what vests in the employer by operation of law, varies by country, and some jurisdictions limit assignment of future inventions. Read both contracts before the worker starts, and take counsel where the work is patentable or where the worker will contribute to a product you intend to license or sell.

Can an EOR sponsor a work visa?

Sometimes, and it is provider- and country-specific. A provider's country coverage list is a statement about payroll capability, not about sponsorship capability, and the two are frequently different. Ask which legal entity would be the sponsor, in which country, under which permit category, what the realistic processing time is, and what happens to the arrangement if the permit is refused — then confirm the answer with immigration counsel before you commit to a start date.

Why isn't my country in the Index yet?

The launch scope is ten countries, and a component publishes only when it is verified against a governing source with its base, caps, and effective date. Two of the ten are still in verification, and new countries are added with a complete evidence bundle, never with estimates — so absence means "not yet verified," not "not important."

How long does EOR onboarding take once you choose a country?

There is no universal timeline. Onboarding commonly runs from days to a few weeks, and the clock is set by the slowest dependency: the local employment contract and supporting documents, any required registrations, first payroll funding, and work authorization where it applies. Treat any vendor-stated timeline as conditional on those inputs, not guaranteed.

How much does an EOR service fee add on top of statutory costs?

That belongs on a different page and a different refresh cycle. Providers price either as a flat per-employee monthly fee or as a percentage of salary, and the published list price is never the total: deposits, FX treatment, benefits administration, and one-time charges sit on top of it, and negotiated rates differ from list. The EOR pricing guide carries the current figures with their as-of dates; this page deliberately does not duplicate them, because a fee figure maintained in two places will eventually disagree with itself.

How should I cite the EOR Index?

Cite the dataset by name with its release version and your access date, and link to this page. The update log records what changed between releases, so a citation to a specific version stays reproducible even after the data is updated. Until the CSV ships, this page is the release.

Next step

Freeze your scenario — jurisdiction, worker, contract, and salary in local currency — then check the model-restriction table before the cost table, and treat every status honestly: a Verified component is a budget input, a Partial or Blocked one is a research queue.

• If you are the founder: confirm the country and the worker's status first, then ask two providers to quote against that exact scenario. You are looking for a quote you can reconcile line by line, not the lowest headline.
• If you are modeling this in finance: build the statutory subtotal from the components and their caps, then add benefits, the EOR fee, deposits, FX, one-time charges, contract minimums, and any severance reserve as separate, separately evidenced lines. Deposits are working capital, not expense.
• If you own the compliance risk: start with the restricted-or-licensed table, then route permanent establishment to your tax adviser, classification and works-council exposure to local employment counsel, and sponsorship to immigration counsel — before anyone signs.

The comparison is only as good as the row scope you start from, so start there.

Sources and last verified date

Last verified: August 8, 2026

Next review: November 6, 2026

• Beitragsbemessungsgrenzen 2026 — Die Bundesregierung — German 2026 contribution ceilings for health and long-term care insurance, and the pension ceiling, under the Sozialversicherungsrechengrößen-Verordnung 2026.
• Beiträge der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung — Bundesministerium für Gesundheit — German statutory health insurance general contribution rate and the 2026 average supplementary contribution rate.
• Faktenblatt Rechengrößen und Beitragssätze 2026 — GKV-Spitzenverband — German 2026 contribution rates for unemployment and long-term care insurance and the insolvency-payment levy.
• Die Sozialversicherungsrechengrößen 2026 — Deutsche Rentenversicherung Knappschaft-Bahn-See — German 2026 pension contribution rate and the pension and unemployment contribution ceiling.
• Das ändert sich 2026 für gesetzlich Krankenversicherte — Verband der Ersatzkassen — German 2026 long-term care insurance employer share of 1.8% and the employee-only childless surcharge.
• CPP contribution rates, maximums and exemptions — Canada Revenue Agency — Canadian CPP employer contribution rate, basic exemption, earnings ceiling, and annual maximum.
• Contributions to the Canada Pension Plan — Government of Canada — Canadian CPP2 second-ceiling earnings range, rate, and maximum for 2026.
• Canada Employment Insurance Commission sets the 2026 Employment Insurance premium rate — Employment and Social Development Canada — Canadian 2026 EI employee and employer premium rates, maximum insurable earnings, annual employer maximum, and the Quebec rates.
• Lei n.º 110/2009 — Código dos Regimes Contributivos do Sistema Previdencial de Segurança Social, Diário da República — Portuguese article 53 setting the global contribution rate at 34.75%, of which 23.75% falls on the employer.
• Trabalhadores por conta de outrem — Segurança Social — Portuguese contribution schedule and the reduced-rate categories outside the general employee rate.
• Orden PJC/297/2026 sobre cotización a la Seguridad Social — Boletín Oficial del Estado — Spanish 2026 maximum contribution base, common-contingency, unemployment, wage-guarantee, training, intergenerational-equity, and solidarity contribution rates and employer shares.
• Wysokość składek na ubezpieczenia społeczne — Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych — Polish contribution rates, the 1.67% reference accident rate, and the 2026 annual ceiling.
• Nowe wysokości składek na ubezpieczenia społeczne w 2026 r. — Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych — Polish 2026 annual contribution ceiling of PLN 282,600 for pension and disability insurance.
• Pay Contributions — Republic of the Philippines Social Security System — Philippine monthly salary credit range, employer and employee shares, Employees' Compensation charge, and the provident-fund component inside the SSS rate.
• SSS Contribution Table — Republic of the Philippines Social Security System — Philippine contribution schedule and its statutory basis in the Social Security Act.
• Schedule of Contributions effective January 2025 — Republic of the Philippines Social Security System — Philippine employer and employee contribution amounts by salary credit band.
• Present rates of contribution — Employees' Provident Fund Organisation — Indian provident-fund contribution schedule identified as the governing source for the India row; endpoint blocks automated retrieval.
• Employees' Provident Fund scheme FAQ — Employees' Provident Fund Organisation — Indian employer contribution structure and the pension-scheme diversion within it.
• Contribuições previdenciárias — Receita Federal do Brasil — Brazilian general-regime employer social contribution of 20% on total remuneration paid to employees.
• IMSS employer portal — Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social — Mexican social-insurance employer source family for the Mexico row.
• Reforma en materia de subcontratación — Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social — Mexican subcontracting reform, its basis in article 15 of the Ley Federal del Trabajo, and the specialised-services registry requirement.
• Acuerdo por el que se dan a conocer las disposiciones de carácter general para el registro — Diario Oficial de la Federación — Mexican governing instrument establishing the specialised-services registry.
• Registro de Prestadoras de Servicios Especializados u Obras Especializadas — Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social — Mexican registry conditions, cancellation grounds, and the requirement to cite the registration number in each contract.
• Aktualisierte Fachliche Weisungen zum Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz — Bundesarbeitgeberverband der Personaldienstleister — publication and effective date of the German employment agency's revised AÜG guidance applying from 1 October 2025.
• Employer of Record nun doch nicht erlaubnispflichtig — KPMG Law — analysis of the German employment agency's reversal and the conditions under which the licence requirement no longer applies.
• Kehrtwende der Bundesagentur für Arbeit — Kliemt — the boundary between remote-only work from abroad and on-site deployment in Germany under the revised guidance.
• Employer of Record in Deutschland — Rödl & Partner — treatment of a provider established in Germany employing a worker in Germany as employee leasing under the AÜG.
• Das Ende des "Employer of Record"-Modells? Die neuen FW AÜG der Bundesagentur für Arbeit — Hogan Lovells — analysis of the superseded 2024 guidance, retained as the record of the position the regulator withdrew.
• Employer of Record: Neue Risiken der illegalen Arbeitnehmerüberlassung — Flick Gocke Schaumburg — penalties for unlicensed leasing and the assignment-duration limit under the AÜG.