Building a global team is one of the most exciting—and sometimes overwhelming—decisions you can make as a growing business. Whether you’re a scrappy startup making your first international hire or an established enterprise scaling across continents, choosing the right Employer of Record (EOR) partner can make all the difference.
I’ve spent time diving deep into how two leading platforms, Deel and Rippling, stack up in 2026. My goal here is to give you the honest, practical insights you need to feel confident in your choice. Let’s explore what each platform does best and where they might fall short for your specific needs.
Contents
- 1 Understanding Your EOR Options
- 2 The Quick Overview: Overall Ratings
- 3 Pricing: Where Transparency Matters
- 4 Global Coverage: How Far Can You Reach?
- 5 Compliance: Your Peace of Mind Matters
- 6 Onboarding: Getting New Hires Ready Fast
- 7 Payroll & Benefits: Your Operational Backbone
- 8 Support & User Experience: You’re Not Alone
- 9 Integrations: Connecting Your Tech Stack
- 10 Scalability: Growing Without Growing Pains
- 11 Making Your Decision: Which Platform Is Right for You?
- 12 The Bottom Line
Understanding Your EOR Options
Before we jump into the comparison, let’s be clear about what we’re looking at. An Employer of Record service handles the compliance complexity of hiring employees in foreign countries without you having to set up local legal entities. It’s a game-changer for global expansion.
Rippling started as a payroll and HR platform and added EOR services along the way, operating as part of a broader workforce management suite that ties together HR, IT, and finance.
Deel was built from the ground up as a complete global hiring and payroll solution, focusing specifically on what companies need when they’re ready to go global.
Both are solid players, but they approach the challenge differently. Let’s dig in.
The Quick Overview: Overall Ratings
| Aspect | Rippling | Deel |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Rating | 8.0/10 | 9.5/10 |
| Trustpilot | 4.5 stars | 4.8 stars |
| G2 | 4.8 stars | 4.8 stars |
Pricing: Where Transparency Matters
Let’s talk money, because budgeting for global expansion is real.
Rippling’s approach: Rippling doesn’t publish its EOR pricing upfront. You need to contact their sales team for a custom quote. Plus, most features are add-ons. Want their HR tools? That’s an additional $8 per user per month. And you can’t use EOR without their core HR platform first.
Deel’s approach: Deel starts at $599 per employee per month. That’s transparent, predictable, and it includes access to their global HRIS—no hidden fees. Their pricing may vary based on your countries of operation, but you know exactly what you’re getting.
Real talk: If you’re running a lean operation and need to forecast costs accurately, Deel’s transparent pricing will help you sleep better at night. Rippling’s “contact sales” model can make budgeting feel like a guessing game.
Global Coverage: How Far Can You Reach?
| Feature | Rippling | Deel |
|---|---|---|
| Countries Covered | 80+ countries | 150+ countries |
| Infrastructure | Mix of owned entities & in-country partners | Owned local entities |
| Payroll Engines | In-house in 10 countries; partners for the rest | In-house across all markets |
| Consistency | Can vary by partner | Highly consistent |
Rippling covers a solid 80+ countries, which is impressive. But here’s the catch: for most of these markets, they rely on local partners to handle payroll and compliance. That means service quality can fluctuate depending on which partner you’re working with in each country.
Deel operates in 150+ countries through its own legal entities and in-house payroll infrastructure. This means when something goes wrong or changes, Deel controls the fix. You get consistency across all your markets—no partner lottery.
For expansion-minded teams: Deel’s ownership model means fewer surprises as you scale. With Rippling, you might experience different processes and timelines in different countries.
Compliance: Your Peace of Mind Matters
Global compliance can keep HR leaders up at night. Regulations change constantly, and mistakes can be costly.
Rippling: Offers automated compliance with its Compliance 360 system. It monitors changes, flags issues, and provides recommended actions. Local HR advisors are available for country-specific guidance. This is solid and handles the basics well.
Deel: Takes compliance further with its AI-powered Compliance Hub. It continuously monitors changes in wage thresholds, pension rules, payroll taxes, and leave policies across 150+ countries. When regulations shift, Deel automatically updates your contracts and payroll. An in-house team of legal experts reviews every change before it goes live.
They even offer features like:
- Compliance Monitor: Scans global legal changes and gives you clear summaries of impact
- Monthly Workforce Insights: Alerts you to compliance risks specific to your team
- AI-powered Worker Classifier: Determines employee vs. contractor status with 90%+ accuracy
And the best part? The Compliance Hub is completely free for all Deel users.
Why this matters: As a growing company, you need compliance that keeps up with global changes automatically. Deel’s approach gives you that without additional cost or headaches.
Onboarding: Getting New Hires Ready Fast
Both platforms offer quick onboarding, but they get there differently.
Rippling: Takes minutes thanks to automation and workflow studios. They can connect your EOR with HR, IT, and finance modules. Self-serve dashboards let employees upload documents. Custom automations through Workflow Studio can handle tasks like sending meeting invites or granting system access.
Deel: Also takes minutes, and adds a human touch. Once you add an employee and select their location, Deel auto-generates a locally compliant contract. New hires use a self-serve portal to e-sign and upload documents. Automated reminders keep things moving without manual follow-up.
The real difference? Deel includes a dedicated onboarding manager who’s there when you need them—no extra cost. They also offer a Slack plugin so you can manage onboarding right in your daily workflow.
| Onboarding Feature | Rippling | Deel |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-generated contracts | Via partner networks | Yes, AI-powered |
| Self-serve document upload | Yes | Yes |
| Workflow automation | Yes, via HRIS add-on | Yes, built-in |
| Dedicated onboarding support | No | Yes |
| Slack integration | No | Yes |
The human element: If your team values having someone in your corner during onboarding, Deel’s dedicated support is a genuine advantage.
Payroll & Benefits: Your Operational Backbone
This is where your day-to-day operations live, so it needs to work smoothly.
Rippling: Processes payroll in 80 countries, but only manages in-house engines in 10 of them. The rest? In-country partners handle it. This fragmentation can mean different timelines, different approaches, and inconsistent service. They offer basic reporting and off-cycle pay flexibility, plus localized benefits support where they operate.
Deel: Manages payroll in-house everywhere they operate. Real-time gross-to-net calculations, off-cycle payment options, and a friendly payroll cutoff on the 20th of each month. Employees can use Anytime Pay to access earned wages whenever they need them. They offer consolidated global payroll reporting so you can see everything at a glance across all countries and subsidiaries.
Benefits administration is integrated with payroll. Deel handles both statutory and voluntary benefits through a marketplace of top-tier providers, ensuring compliance with local laws while getting your team competitive rates.
Real-world impact: With Deel’s in-house approach, you’re not coordinating with multiple partners. Updates roll out uniformly. Mistakes get caught by the same team. Your payroll runs on schedule, every time.
Support & User Experience: You’re Not Alone
Growing companies need partners who respond when you call.
Rippling’s support: Available via live chat, email, and phone—but not 24/7. They don’t clearly specify support hours. Support is primarily for account admins, with limited access for EOR employees. Their local HR expert network is small, covering only a few countries.
Also, their interface unifies HR, IT, and finance into one place. If you only need EOR and payroll, the platform can feel overwhelming with extra tools you don’t need.
Deel’s support: Available 24/7 in multiple languages across many channels:
- In-app chat
- Phone
- Video calls
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
You also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager, onboarding support, and access to global HR experts. Support covers both your company and your EOR employees across all locations.
Their user interface is purpose-built for international hiring—clean, focused, and without the clutter of HR/IT/finance tools you don’t need.
| Support Factor | Rippling | Deel |
|---|---|---|
| 24/7 availability | No | Yes |
| Languages supported | Limited | Multilingual |
| Channels | 3 | 6+ |
| Support for employees | Limited | Full |
| Dedicated success manager | No | Yes |
When you need help: You want someone available when your team is working. With Deel’s global support, that’s guaranteed.
Integrations: Connecting Your Tech Stack
Rippling: Offers over 500 integrations, which sounds impressive until you realize many aren’t relevant to EOR workflows. The list includes IT management tools, design software, and marketing apps. They do support native integrations with Greenhouse, Lever, and QuickBooks. Their API is powerful but requires serious technical expertise to implement.
Deel: Offers over 120 integrations focused specifically on global HR and payroll needs. Think QuickBooks, Xero, BambooHR, Greenhouse, and Workday. But here’s the thing: many Deel users don’t need extensive integrations because Deel’s built-in tools handle learning management, career development, performance management, device lifecycle management, and more.
Their API is developer-friendly with sandbox access, structured around cross-border hiring workflows.
Bottom line: Deel’s focused integration library means you’re not drowning in options you don’t need. And if you want to build custom integrations, their API is actually approachable.
Scalability: Growing Without Growing Pains
This is crucial as you expand.
Rippling’s growth challenge: Relies on local partners for most EOR operations. As you expand to new markets, each partner has different systems and timelines. This can slow onboarding, complicate compliance updates, and fragment your global operations. Additional modules like performance management and learning management often require extra setup and technical oversight.
Deel’s scalability advantage: Purpose-built for businesses of any size. Simple enough for startups, powerful enough for large enterprises. As your team grows, you can activate contractor management, immigration services, performance management, learning tools, and device lifecycle management as needed—without complex customization.
Since Deel owns its legal entities in every country, it controls feature rollouts and compliance updates. You can expand to new markets and test new regions without maintaining your HR tech stack. You can also use Deel’s white-glove or white-label services when expanding across subsidiaries or brands.
The scaling reality: Rippling’s partner model works until it doesn’t. When you’re managing teams across 20 countries, you want consistency. Deel delivers that consistency as you grow.
Making Your Decision: Which Platform Is Right for You?
Choose Rippling if:
- You’re a large enterprise with strong internal IT and HR teams
- You want to centralize HR, IT, and finance into one unified platform
- You have dedicated technical resources to configure workflows and integrations
- You prefer a “contact sales” pricing model
- You operate primarily in 80 key countries
Choose Deel if:
- You want transparent, predictable pricing from day one
- You’re expanding to 150+ countries and want consistency across all markets
- You value 24/7 multilingual support when you need it
- You want compliance handled automatically with minimal oversight
- You prefer built-in tools over integrations
- You want a dedicated onboarding manager and customer success support
- You’re scaling globally and can’t afford operational fragmentation
The Bottom Line
Both Deel and Rippling are capable platforms. But they reflect different philosophies about global hiring.
Rippling is a comprehensive workforce management suite that adds EOR as another module. It’s best for large organizations with the internal resources to make it work.
Deel is purpose-built for global hiring and expansion. It prioritizes transparency, consistency, and human support. Whether you’re making your first international hire or managing thousands of employees worldwide, Deel grows with you without the operational complexity.
If you’re building a global team and want a partner that removes headaches instead of creating them, Deel’s all-in-one approach, owned infrastructure, and dedicated support make it worth serious consideration.
The investment you make in choosing the right EOR platform will pay dividends in compliance confidence, team happiness, and operational peace of mind.
You’ve got this. And with the right partner, scaling globally is absolutely achievable.