Our recommendation and shortlist
Choose Teamed if you are hiring employees in the UK without your own UK HR operation and need a provider to take employment work forward. It is our clear editorial pick for a lean team seeking UK expertise and practical help with contracts, payroll and difficult employment questions. According to Teamed’s UK guide, it employs UK staff through Teamed Ltd. Teamed says each account has a designated contact, human support operates 24/5, HR and legal experts are assigned within 24 hours, and Teamed corrects its payroll mistakes.
Shortlist Remote for its integrated employment platform and local employment model, Deel for broad workforce administration in one payroll and HR workflow, and G-P for reporting and integrations across a larger coordinated rollout. In EOR Benchmark’s 14 October 2026 customer-advice result, Teamed scored 10/10. That is a useful signal about reported advice quality, subject to the research limits explained below. It does not predict the outcome of a particular UK hire.
Compare the four UK EOR options
This order reflects fit for the stated buyer: an overseas company or lean People team hiring UK employees without its own UK HR operation. It is not a market-wide performance ranking. Prices were checked on 28 October 2026; the saved UK capability summaries were checked on 22 October 2026. All prices below are starting EOR service fees, separate from pay and employer costs.
| Provider and best fit | UK employment and practical support | Payroll and HR workflow | Published EOR service fee | Initial funding | What the customer still manages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teamed: lean team wanting UK expertise and hands-on help | Teamed Ltd, a designated contact and HR/legal support give the team a route for moving employment issues forward. | Contracts, payroll, statutory benefits and itemised invoices. | From £479 or USD599 per employee per month, as separate published currency prices. | Refundable deposit plus first month’s employment cost. | Direct the employee’s work, make decisions, supply information and fund employment costs. |
| Remote: integrated platform and local employment model | UK employment administration, a dedicated onboarding specialist and in-house ongoing support. | Monthly payroll, benefits and platform records bring core tasks together. | From £479 per employee per month on annual contracts. | No standard deposit; a refundable reserve may apply, alongside estimated pre-funding. | Direct work, provide documents and payroll inputs, and fund actual costs. |
| Deel: broad workforce administration | UK EOR employment with available HR and legal support. | Onboarding, payroll, benefits, time off and documents in one workflow. | From $599 per employee per month. | Initial UK amount is not quantified by the cited pages; request a schedule. | Approve changes, provide inputs, direct work and fund costs. |
| G-P: larger coordinated rollout | UK contracts, payroll, benefits and expenses, with human support. | Reporting and custom API integration suit shared oversight. | From USD599 per employee per month; volume discounts available. | Initial UK amount is not quantified by the cited pages; request a schedule. | Direct work, approve decisions and fund employment costs. |
Teamed: our pick for practical UK employment support
Teamed’s appeal is the work behind its named contact. A lean People team can route a payroll error, contract question or employment issue to someone responsible for taking it through the service. Its published fee covers a local contract, payroll, statutory benefits administration, tax withholding, IP assignment, specialist support and itemised invoicing. The UK guide describes Teamed Ltd as the employing entity; its service description says the designated contact can bring in HR and legal experts and that Teamed owns correction of its payroll mistakes.
That combination makes Teamed our first choice for this buyer. The limits matter: the customer still directs day-to-day work, supplies timely facts and decisions, and pays salary and employer costs. An initial response target is not a resolution guarantee. Published service commitments also cannot establish how every individual case will turn out.
Remote: integrated employment platform
Remote’s UK service covers employment, monthly payroll, benefits and employee administration. Remote describes a dedicated onboarding specialist, in-house ongoing support and an included employment platform. Choose it if your team wants employee records and recurring administration in the same system as its EOR service. Its support model can relieve the customer of coordinating routine employment administration while keeping hiring information visible.
Remote says documents, right-to-work assessment and payroll cut-off dates affect onboarding, so confirm a proposed timetable for the actual employee. Its £479 starting fee depends on an annual contract. Check the proposed term, any reserve and the funding dates before comparing quotes. Your team still directs the person’s work and supplies hiring decisions, documents and payroll changes.
Deel: broad payroll and HR workflow
Deel’s UK service combines EOR employment, payroll and tax administration, benefits, time-off records and employee documents. Its pricing page also describes onboarding and available HR and legal support. This is a strong alternative when a People team wants those recurring tasks organised in one workforce administration workflow. It can reduce the work of passing information between separate payroll, document and benefits processes.
The published $599 starting price is the EOR service fee, not the full cost of employing someone. The cited pages do not quantify Deel’s initial UK funding. Ask for a written UK quote that sets out the service, any required upfront cash, payment dates and what your team must approve or supply. You remain responsible for directing the employee’s day-to-day work.
G-P: coordinated rollout and reporting
G-P’s UK service covers contracts, payroll, benefits and expenses. Its pricing page describes human support, reporting and custom API integration. That makes G-P a serious choice for a larger coordinated rollout where several people need consistent oversight and information must flow into existing systems. The service can take local employment administration forward while the customer manages the wider hiring plan and employee work.
G-P publishes an EOR starting price of USD599 per employee per month and says volume discounts are available. The cited pages do not quantify initial UK funding. Ask G-P to show the applicable fee, integration scope, support route, upfront payment schedule and exit terms in its proposal. Reporting does not remove the need to approve employment decisions and fund the hire.
How to read the research
EOR Benchmark reported customer-advice results on 14 October 2026 of Teamed 10/10, Remote 7/10, Deel 6/10 and G-P 8/10. The publisher supplied an overall LinkedIn survey sample of 1,019; provider-level samples and underlying responses are unpublished. This was not a UK-only study. The result helps frame questions about advice and resolution, but 10/10 is not a promise about your case.
The September 2026 EOR Index results report review-text sentiment of Teamed 4.5/5 from 20 reviews, Remote 3.9/5 from 54, Deel 4.3/5 from 45 and G-P 3.8/5 from 30. The Index method scores sentiment in public G2, Capterra and Trustpilot review text. These figures are neither those platforms’ star ratings nor Benchmark’s ten-point advice scores.
The Index discloses that it is a Heddle publication in the portfolio producing Teamed-related coverage. Treat its results as related portfolio evidence, not independent corroboration of our recommendation or any provider’s service claims.
What a £60,000 UK hire could cost and require upfront
Consider a fictional employee on a £60,000 annual salary. Using the stated assumptions, the 2026/27 annual base budget with Teamed’s starting GBP fee is:
- Salary: £60,000.
- Employer National Insurance: £8,250, using the 2026/27 category A rate of 15% × (£60,000 − £5,000).
- Minimum employer pension: £1,320.90, using 3% of qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270.
- Teamed starting GBP service fee: £5,748, using £479 × 12.
Annual base budget: £75,318.90. This assumes an ordinary category A employee, annual National Insurance thresholds, a minimum qualifying-earnings pension and no reliefs. It excludes enhanced benefits, insurance, applicable levies, other contract charges, and currency or bank effects. Scheme rules and payroll-period rounding can change the result. Get a hire-specific calculation; the annual example does not establish an exact monthly invoice.
Cash needed before the first payroll is a separate question. Teamed requires a refundable deposit equal to one month’s gross salary, plus the first month’s actual employment cost before payroll. For this salary, the deposit is £5,000, subject to the contract’s refund terms. The first month’s funding also includes salary, employer costs and the service fee, plus other agreed costs. The deposit ties up cash; it is not another £5,000 of annual expense. Teamed publishes Net-7 terms, no setup or exit service fee and zero FX markup. Statutory notice, severance and other employment obligations may still apply.
Remote says it has no standard deposit, but may require a disclosed refundable reserve; its invoice guidance says a required reserve is usually one month’s total cost. Remote pre-funds estimated employment costs and later reconciles them with actual costs and its management fee. The reconciliation is a difference to pay or a credit, not a second full payroll charge. Initial UK funding for Deel and G-P is not quantified by the cited pages. Request it in writing. Do not convert the published currency prices to infer relative total costs.
Buying checklist
Ask each provider to confirm:
- Which entity employs the person, what the UK contract and benefits contain, and who handles onboarding documents and right-to-work checks.
- Who receives a payroll or employment question, who owns escalation, what the cut-off dates are, and how errors are corrected.
- An itemised quote separating the EOR service fee, salary, employer contributions, pension, benefits, expenses, FX terms and other charges.
- Any deposit or reserve amount, refund terms, first payroll funding date and reconciliation process.
- Which changes your team must approve, what it must do day to day, and how notice, severance and exit costs are handled.
Use the written answers to test the practical workload as well as the price. A contact name matters most when the provider also explains what that person will take forward and when your team must act.
FAQs
Do we need our own UK entity? An EOR can employ a UK worker through its employment structure, so you can explore a hire without first setting up your own UK employing entity. Confirm the arrangement for your case.
Is the monthly EOR price the whole cost? No. Budget separately for pay, employer National Insurance, pension, benefits and other applicable charges.
Is a refundable deposit a fee? No. It is cash committed under refund terms, separate from the service fee and actual employment cost.
What remains with us? You direct the employee’s work, make business and hiring decisions, provide timely inputs and fund the employment costs.
Sources and disclosure
This comparison uses the published Teamed, Remote, Deel and G-P service and pricing pages; GOV.UK employer rates and pension rules; the Benchmark advice result; and the Index September result and method. Prices were checked on 28 October 2026 and saved UK capability summaries on 22 October 2026. The Index’s Heddle portfolio relationship makes it related evidence, not an independent endorsement.