Oyster vs G-P (Globalization Partners) vs 4dev.com

Pick G-P if most of your overseas hiring is employees. Its EOR begins at $599 per head monthly, carries no minimum contract term, comes with 156 documented country guides and lists SOC 2 along with four ISO standards. Pick Oyster if you want a lighter, self-serve product with a B Corp badge and a contractor tool at $29 per contractor a month, though its EOR is listed at $699. Neither lists a Contractor of Record product. For contractor work, 4dev.com is the contracting party for each contractor; its price is a service fee of 3% or less per payout.

Settle one thing first: employees or contractors. Employing someone in a country without a company of yours requires an Employer of Record. Each of the two sells it, and it is where they compete directly. If you already run a local entity, you are shopping for payroll instead.

For contractors, the two are alike. Both offer contractor management, in which you sign directly with the contractor and carry the decision on whether the arrangement is genuinely independent. Neither markets a Contractor of Record. That is the gap a Contractor of Record fills, and 4dev.com is built for it. When the only job is getting funds into a person's account, a payout tool could do.

Both are EOR specialists with a contractor tool bolted on, so the difference is history, price and how much of the stack you want to rent. G-P is the incumbent: seven years older, with analyst recognition and a long list of certifications. Oyster is the younger, self-serve challenger with a B Corp badge and a smaller catalogue.

The prices point in opposite directions. G-P's EOR is $100 a month cheaper per employee, which is $1,200 a year per hire, and it states no minimum contract length and volume discounts. Oyster's contractor tool is $10 cheaper per contractor than G-P's. Oyster also asks for a refundable deposit on EOR and offers annual billing with seats you can reuse; it says setup, onboarding and offboarding carry no extra charge. G-P labels its price a flat platform fee; on top of it come local payroll, statutory benefits and taxes.

Coverage numbers look alike and mean different things. G-P states 180+ countries and documents 156 EOR guides on its own site. Oyster says 120+ for EOR and up to 180+ once contractors are counted, and its country index lists 156 with no split by product. Neither publishes how many countries run through entities it owns. G-P's pages for Canada, Germany, the UK and the US speak of its own legal entities; Oyster is silent on the point, so ask, country by country, which company signs the employment contract.

Security is where G-P has the longer list: SOC 2, ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 42001 and GDPR. Oyster states GDPR and SOC 2 for its own practices and points to a Trust Center we haven't reviewed, so a buyer with a procurement checklist should request the report itself.

Don't set $599 against $699 as the whole story. G-P describes its fee as a platform charge with local payroll and statutory costs added, while Oyster's page doesn't say what its $699 contains beyond the platform, so ask both for one full monthly cost on the same hire. The contractor tools are also priced differently: G-P bills only in months you pay a contractor, and Oyster's fee starts once you engage one.

Under contractor management you hold the contract with the contractor yourself, and deciding how the person is classified stays with you. Oyster's Global Contractors and G-P Contractor both work like this. G-P's page describes a classification engine and self-serve invoicing, and never casts G-P as the other signatory. Oyster's page covers generated contracts, invoices and tax forms.

A Contractor of Record alters the signatures: the contractor's agreement is with the vendor, and your agreement is with that same vendor. Neither card lists such a product. A COR reduces the risk of reclassification but does not remove it, since the engagement must still be genuinely independent in practice. If a seller from either company says its tool covers that risk, ask to read the clause that says so.

4dev.com fits a team whose overseas workers are contractors rather than employees. It is the contracting party for every contractor, which neither Oyster nor G-P lists as a product. Its listed price is "Service fee: 3% or less per payout"; no subscription applies, and contractors are charged 0%.

Run the calculator case of ten contractors at $3,000 each: 4dev.com costs $900 at most; Oyster's contractor tool is $290 and G-P Contractor $390 for the same ten. Those are different products, since classification stays with you in both, so the gap is the price of having a contracting party. Percentage against flat, the two cross at low rates: 3% is below Oyster's $29 until a contractor earns $967 a month, and below G-P's $39 until $1,300.

Contractors join by invite or by self-registration and clear automatic KYC. The platform generates the contract with IP assignment built in, then produces invoices and closing documents you can export with one click, and it also has an API with a Sandbox. Payouts go to 150+ countries as a bank transfer (IBAN/SWIFT), on a card or in USDT; the 1–3 day arrival time is 4dev.com's own claim. Trustpilot shows 4.1 from 56 reviews.

For employees, price, term and country list decide it. G-P's $599 has no minimum term, volume discounts and 156 documented country guides; Oyster's $699 covers 120+ countries, with seats you can reuse on annual billing. Oyster's standalone global payroll launched in 2024 in roughly 20 countries, a figure its site no longer states, while G-P also sells global payroll for firms with local entities.

Neither vendor discloses the entity split, and Oyster is described by third parties as hybrid, which means some countries run through local partners. Reviewers mention partner delays in places. Match both lists against your real hires. For wider lists, see EOR providers and global payroll software.

Support. Oyster offers tickets, email and a help center and promises a reply inside 24 hours, though reviewers find a human on the phone hard to get. G-P shows a phone line, email, a customer success team and G-P Assist, an AI helper available 24/7, without stating hours for human staff. Reviewers on both sides mention ticket-only handling. On the 4dev.com side, contractor questions go to support or the Help Center, staffed in working hours.

Onboarding. Oyster says as fast as 48 hours for EOR and minutes for contractors, after ID verification. G-P says hiring takes minutes and gives no figure in days. Neither claim is an SLA. On 4dev.com, full access to the platform follows a passed KYC check.

Integrations. G-P names Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, UKG, Okta, HiBob and BambooHR, plus an API. Oyster's list covers Xero, Slack, Carta, HiBob, Personio, Ashby, BambooHR, Greenhouse and QuickBooks. Neither gives a total count. On 4dev.com you get an API, a Sandbox and role-based access.

Oyster's ratings are 4.6 on Capterra from 91 reviews, 4.4 on G2 from 1,624 and 3.8 on Trustpilot from 272. G-P holds 4.5 on Capterra from 65 reviews and 4.3 on Trustpilot from 148, plus 4.4 on G2, which shows no review count. Over half of Oyster's reviewers are employees paid through it, who like the portal and fast onboarding; clients ask for easier phone contact and complain about deposits. G-P's reviewers are split between clients, who praise a named success manager, and employees, who report late payments. Both sets of reviews include many incentivized ones.

Treat a switch between Oyster and G-P as leaving one system and opening another. Whichever direction you move, first export the signed contracts, invoices, each person's payout history by year, and the tax forms for the period. On the new platform, contractors should expect a fresh onboarding and another round of identity checks.

EOR staff can't simply be transferred. Employment ends with the old EOR and begins again with the new one, so look at notice periods, accrued leave, benefit continuity and any new probation. Oyster holds a refundable deposit on EOR, so ask when it returns; G-P states no minimum contract length for EOR, which makes leaving it easier on paper. Confirm every employee's country is on the new vendor's list before you give notice.