We publish a monthly-verified price tracker for every major EOR operating in India. Deel at $599. Remote at $599. Multiplier at $400. Saileor at $99. Those numbers are real and we stand behind them.

But here’s what a year of tracking EOR pricing taught me: the headline fee is the only number in this industry that’s easy to find, and it’s rarely the number that hurts you.

The numbers that hurt you never appear on a pricing page. Some of them never even appear on your invoice. Let me show you where they hide.

Hiding place #1: the exchange rate

When you fund payroll in USD and your employee is paid in rupees, someone converts that money. Industry analyses of major EOR platforms have found currency conversion markups of 0.6% to 2% above the mid-market rate.

Here’s the part that should bother you: this markup is not a line item. It’s built into the conversion rate itself. Your invoice says “FX rate: 94.9” on a day the mid-market rate was 96.3, and unless you check, you’ll never know. On $1 million of annual cross-border payroll, that’s $5,000 to $10,000 a year, invisible.

For a five-person India team, the FX spread alone can quietly exceed what an India specialist would charge you in total fees.

Hiding place #2: the deposit

Deel requires a deposit of one month’s gross salary per employee, returned 30 days after offboarding. This isn’t a cost, technically. It’s your cash, sitting in someone else’s account, for as long as you employ people.

Hire five engineers at ₹20 lakh a year and that’s about ₹8.3 lakh, roughly $8,700, locked up before your first payroll runs. For a seed-stage startup, that’s a month of runway doing nothing.

Hiding place #3: the “complex market” surcharge

Some platforms add country surcharges of $50 to $150 per employee per month for markets they classify as high-complexity. India, with its state-by-state professional tax and layered statutory system, often makes that list.

So the $599 you compared against becomes $699 or $749 for India specifically, and you find out at contract stage, not on the pricing page. One industry analysis found total employment costs running 30% to 60% above the platform fee once everything is counted.

Hiding place #4: the Indian state your employee lives in

This one isn’t the EOR’s fault, but a good EOR should have told you about it.

Two employees, identical CTC, different states, different bills:

• Professional tax. Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana charge it, roughly ₹2,400 to ₹2,500 a year. Delhi charges nothing.
• ESI. Applies only when gross salary is ₹21,000 a month or less, at 3.25% from the employer. Irrelevant for your engineers, real for support staff.
• Labour Welfare Fund, state rules, local registrations. Small amounts, but they differ by state and they compound.

None of this changes your platform fee. All of it changes your invoice. Two companies paying the same EOR the same fee, one hiring in Bengaluru and one in Delhi, one with a deposit requirement and one without, one eating a 2% FX spread and one paying mid-market, can land 30% to 40% apart in total annual cost. Same product. Same sticker price.

A worked example

Five mid-level engineers at ₹20 lakh CTC each, ₹1 crore total payroll, roughly $104,000 at ₹96/USD. Assumptions stated, so you can check my math.

The statutory costs, PF, gratuity, professional tax, are identical in both columns. Indian law doesn’t care which EOR you use. Everything else in that table is provider choice.

Five questions that expose all of this in one email

Send these to any EOR before you sign, ours included:

1. What FX rate do you apply, and how far is it from mid-market on the day of conversion?
2. Is there a salary deposit? When exactly do I get it back?
3. Is your quoted fee the India fee, or does India carry a surcharge?
4. Can I see a complete sample invoice for an employee at ₹20 lakh CTC in Karnataka?
5. Which statutory costs pass through at actuals, and will you itemise them?

A provider that answers all five in writing, fast, is a provider you can work with. A provider that routes you to a sales call to “walk you through pricing” just answered a different question.

Why we publish our number

Saileor charges $99 per employee per month, flat. No deposit. No India surcharge, because India is not an exotic edge case for us, it’s the only thing we do. Statutory costs pass through at actuals and appear itemised on every invoice.

We can price this way because we’re not maintaining infrastructure in 150 countries to employ your one team in one country. You shouldn’t be paying for that either.

Compare every provider yourself on the India EOR Price Tracker, verified monthly and date-stamped. Then run your real loaded cost on the India Hiring Cost Calculator. Ten minutes with both tools will tell you more than any sales call.