Best PEO Services for 2026

Deel is an Employer of Record (EOR) and a global payroll platform. Companies use it to hire, pay, and manage international contractors and full-time employees without setting up local entities.

Alex Bouaziz, Shuo Wang, and Ofer Simon founded the company in 2019. Deel is headquartered in San Francisco and has raised more than $980 million in seven funding rounds.

The platform is now valued at $17.3 billion.

How Deel works

Companies typically use the platform for the following services:

• Employer of Record (EOR): Deel becomes the legal employer in the target country while you manage the day-to-day work
• Contractor management: Allow clients to hire, manage, and pay independent contractors in multiple countries through a single platform.
• Contractor of Record (COR): Deel takes on the liability, manages all HR/admin, and handles the risk for you.
• Global payroll: Clients submit payroll data and approve it in one dashboard, and Deel handles taxes, deductions, and currency conversions automatically.

What stood out in my tests

In most cases, contracts are generated automatically based on the country, reviewed right on the platform, and approved in a few steps.

What this means for you: you can hire in established markets within days. They’re also likely to find better contract standardization, clear compliance guidance, and faster onboarding compared to smaller regional providers.

Multiplier is an Employer of Record (EOR) and a global employment platform. Companies use it to hire and manage international team members without establishing local entities.

Sagar Khatri, Amritpal Singh, and Vamsi Krishna founded the company in 2020. It's headquartered in New York, United States, and has secured over $77 million in funding since launch.

How Multiplier works

The core services they offer are:

• Compliance management: Multiplier manages local employment laws and requirements.
• Payroll processing: International payments run through the system.
• Benefits administration: Companies can provide employee benefits without setting up local programs.
• Contractor management: Businesses can manage both full employees and contractors in one place.

Most companies can start hiring internationally within days instead of waiting months for entity setup.

Who Multiplier is for

Benefit for clients: You can hire in 171+ countries through one platform without setting up local entities.

Oyster HR is an Employer of Record (EOR) and a global employment platform that allows companies to hire and manage international workers in 132+ countries without setting up local legal entities. Founded in 2020, the company focuses on supporting distributed teams.

Oyster’s services include international employment contracts, payroll processing, benefits administration, and ongoing local compliance in each country where it operates.

Focus on employee experience

Alongside core employment services, the platform includes Oyster Academy for professional development, as well as tools designed to support onboarding and cross-cultural collaboration.

What this means for you: Oyster acts as more than a compliance partner. The platform is designed to help companies build and maintain engaged global teams, not just employ them on paper.

Typical customers

The limiting factor here is the higher rate for Employer of Record (EOR) services.

The platform attracts companies that value consistency, employee satisfaction, and long-term retention, even when that means paying more than low-cost EOR alternatives.

Rippling is a workforce management platform that runs HR, IT and finance off one employee record. Companies use it to manage payroll, benefits, devices and software access from a single system, and it acts as employer of record in 83 countries.

It was founded in 2016, is headquartered in San Francisco, and Parker Conrad is its CEO.

How Rippling works

The point of the shared employee record is that systems which normally run separately move together. Adding someone to payroll is also what provisions their laptop, their email and their software access, because all of it reads the same record rather than being keyed in three times.

What this means for you: the work you stop doing is the re-keying between tools. That is worth most to a company that currently runs HR, payroll and IT provisioning as three separate jobs, and worth least to one that has already solved it.

Who Rippling suits

The fit is a growing company with people in several countries that wants enterprise-grade HR and IT tooling without an enterprise IT department to run it. The breadth is the product.

What this means for you: that breadth is also the learning curve reviewers describe. Budget setup time, and be honest about whether you will use enough of the platform to justify configuring it.

Atlas HXM is an Employer of Record provider built around a direct employment model. The platform positions itself as the legal employer through owned entities across the coverage network, rather than operating through partners.

Companies use Atlas to hire and pay international employees, manage locally compliant benefits, and maintain ongoing compliance support through a single system.

Atlas was founded by Rick Hammell in 2015 as Elements Global Services and rebranded to Atlas HXM in 2022.

How Atlas works

The direct entity model typically matters most in complex scenarios, such as terminations, policy changes, audits, and edge-case benefits requirements.

With fewer third parties involved, escalation paths are more direct.

Who uses Atlas

Papaya Global is a global workforce platform that helps companies manage payroll, payments, and employment across multiple countries.

Founded in 2016 by Eynat Guez, Ruben Drong, and Ofer Herman, Papaya Global later raised roughly $440 million, including a $250 million Series D in 2021.

On the product side, Papaya covers:

• Global payroll: Runs payroll and workforce payments in 163+ countries
• Employer of Record: Allows companies to hire employees in countries where they don’t have a legal entity
• Contractor management: Supports compliant onboarding and payments for international contractors
• Compliance support: Handles local tax rules, labor laws, and reporting requirements
• Benefits administration: Offers benefits for employees (including health coverage) that are matched to each country
• Integrations: Connects with tools like Workday, NetSuite, and other HRIS and ERP systems

Note: HRIS (Human Resources Information System) manages employee data, payroll, benefits, and HR functions. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) integrates core business processes, including finance, accounting, supply chain, and human resources, into one platform.

Justworks is a Professional Employer Organization (PEO). It runs HR, payroll, benefits, and compliance for small and mid-sized companies. The idea for the company was born in 2012 when founder Isaac Oates struggled with benefits and state rules at his earlier startup. He built Justworks to fix the problems he faced in that process.

How it works

The platform covers the full employment cycle. It supports onboarding, payroll, benefits, and compliance in one dashboard.

As a PEO, they use a co-employment model. This setup gives small businesses access to stronger benefits and compliance support that most basic payroll tools don't offer.

Scale and tax coverage

Justworks processed more than $25.6 billion in payroll and $6 billion in federal taxes in 2023. They also support about 2,000 tax localities. This scale supports companies that employ or contract people in different countries.

Who it fits

Justworks fits small and mid-sized companies with five to 99 employees who want less admin work and stronger benefits. The simple setup and clean interface make it a common choice for tech firms and other SMBs that want HR tasks organized in one place.