Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in pounds sterling.
Paying contractors sounds simple until you are doing it across several people, or several countries, and juggling contracts, tax details, currencies and the question of whether each person is really a contractor at all. A dedicated contractor platform takes that off your plate: compliant contracts, tax-detail collection and reliable payment in local currency, priced per contractor per month. Below are our ranked picks, then a live comparison table and calculator. If you also employ staff on PAYE in the UK, our guide to payroll software for small business prices the options from 1 employee to 25.
How we chose
For paying contractors we weighted per-contractor cost first, then country coverage and how reliably the platform pays in local currency, then the quality of its contracts and compliance tooling, and finally how well it helps you evidence status. Pricing is live from our database in pounds, excluding VAT, and contractor fees are charged per contractor per month.
What matters when you pay contractors
Two things decide this: cost per contractor, and how much compliance you need. If you are paying a larger number of contractors, per-head price carries the most weight, so compare the contractor payments rows: Yes (£37/contractor) for Deel, Yes (£4/contractor) for Papaya Global, Yes (£22/contractor) for Remote and Yes (from £14/contractor) for Payoneer Workforce Management. If you are engaging people across borders, country coverage and localised, compliant contracts matter more: Deel's global payroll row reads Yes (100+ countries) and Papaya Global's Yes (160+ countries), while Remote brings strong compliance through the entities it says it owns. Above all, keep UK status assessment in hand: the platform documents the engagement, but off-payroll status is your determination, and your risk.
IR35 is the real risk
For a UK business the compliance question that bites is not payment, it is status. The off-payroll working rules put the responsibility for deciding whether a contractor is really employed, for tax purposes, on the engaging business in most medium and large cases. Get it wrong and you carry the back-tax and penalty. These platforms help by issuing proper contracts and keeping clean records, which is exactly what supports a defensible status determination, but they do not make that determination for you. Overseas contractors sit outside IR35 and follow the rules of their own country.
The verdict
Deel is the best overall for paying contractors, with broad country coverage and strong compliance tooling. Papaya Global suits a larger contractor programme, Remote is the balanced compliance-and-IP pick, and Payoneer Workforce Management is the specialist for fast multi-currency payments. The calculator above prices payroll for employees at your headcount; contractor fees are charged per contractor, as each platform's contractor payments row shows.
Employing people overseas instead?
If you need to employ full-time staff abroad rather than engage contractors, an Employer of Record is the tool, not a contractor platform. See our guide to the best HR software for remote teams, where the same platforms are ranked on global employment.
What Payoneer Workforce Management and Remote each state for payroll, Employer of Record and contractor payments, and what each leaves to a quote, is set out in our Payoneer Workforce Management pricing guide and Remote pricing guide.
