ubiqueYour first hire abroad should not need a lawyer
You found a brilliant engineer in Lisbon and a designer in Toronto. You have no entity, no HR team and no time. Ubique gets them paid compliantly this month, starting at £29 a month per contractor, and grows with you from there.
No minimum headcount. No annual contract on Contractor Management. Cancel any month.
Most startups should begin on the Contractor plan. Here is why.
At the pre-seed and seed stage, roles change every quarter. A contractor agreement that can be ended with 30 days' notice matches that reality better than an employment contract with statutory notice and severance. It is also ten to twenty times cheaper in platform fees.
Ubique's Contractor Management gives you a compliant contract per country, payments in 200 countries and 100 currencies, and a misclassification risk score for each person. When a score turns red, you will know it is time to convert. Until then, you are paying £29 a month per person.
- Contracts drafted for the contractor's country, not a generic template
- One payment run, Ubique pays everyone in local currency
- Expense submission and reimbursement included
- Ubique Shield available for reclassification claims
Fee comparison for 4 people
| Contractor Management | £116 / month |
| Employer of Record | £1,996 / month |
Platform fees only. Employment also adds employer contributions, typically 15% to 30% of salary depending on the country.
Free before you commit
Ubique Calculator estimates total hiring cost in any of 160 countries. The Misclassification Risk Check tells you whether a contractor arrangement will hold up. Neither asks for a credit card.
£499 a month per employee is a lot for a three-person team
We would rather say it than have you find out on the pricing page. For a company with two founders and one hire, Employer of Record costs almost £6,000 a year in fees for that one person. If the hire is in a country with cheap, fast entity setup, or if a contractor arrangement is honestly defensible, EOR may not be the right choice yet.
What you get for the £499 is the employment itself: Ubique's entity in 40 countries (or a vetted partner elsewhere) is the legal employer, which means a local contract, payroll, tax withholding, social contributions, mandatory benefits, leave administration and termination handled by a legal team that does this daily. In the countries we run ourselves, you also get our own payroll team and a 4-business-hour response target.
If that is more than you need today, start on contractors. The platform is the same, and conversion later takes one afternoon.
When EOR pays off, even for a small team
- The person is clearly an employee and the country enforces it (Spain, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands)
- You are raising and investors are asking about contractor exposure in diligence
- The hire needs a visa or a local contract for a mortgage or residency
- You want to offer equity or a pension to retain them
- Entity setup in that country would cost more than a year of fees
When it does not, yet
Short projects, true freelancers with other clients, or a country where you will have five people within the year and an entity is the obvious end state. We will tell you which on the call.
Contractor at seed, employee at Series A, account manager at ten
You do not change platforms as you grow. You change which plan each person is on.
Pre-seed and seed: contractors, £29 each
Compliant contracts and payments. Misclassification scoring tells you who is drifting toward employee status.
First permanent hires: convert to EOR, £499 each
Same dashboard, same person, new contract. Pension, leave and a payslip. Equity plan participation through Ubique's equity service.
Ten employees: a named account manager
Someone who knows your team and your countries, in addition to 24/7 email and live chat in European and American business hours.
Growing clusters: your own entity, with Ubique's help
When one country reaches eight to fifteen people, we help you decide whether to open an entity, and transfer the employees across with service preserved. See Scale-ups for what comes next.
Start with one contractor. Pay £29.
Or book a call if you already know the hire needs to be an employee.