Employer of Record in Cameroon: 12 Providers Compared (2026)

Employing someone in Cameroon: key facts

Cameroon applies one national Labour Code (law 92/007 of 1992) with no regional split; the figures below are the ones that change what a hire costs and how it can end.

Minimum wage

The SMIG has three tiers; the private non-agricultural one applies to an office or IT hire.

Decree 2023/00338/PM replaced the XAF 36,270 rate of 2014. A 2026-05-01 press article still quotes 36,270; we took the decree text as authoritative.

Employer contributions

Sources: CNPS rates and ceiling from cleiss.fr (table of 1 January 2024); CFC and FNE from PwC Tax Summaries; all checked 2026-10-29. The employee pays 4.20% pension (same ceiling) and 1.00% CFC. No 2026 change to CNPS rates was found.

Working hours and overtime

Sources: Labour Code for hours; wageindicator.org for premiums under decree 95/677, whose text we did not open; checked 2026-10-29. Other guides give 25%, 50% and 75%.

Annual leave and public holidays

• 18 working days a year: 1.5 working days per month of effective service, with the right to take leave arising after one year of service. Working days run Monday to Saturday. Plus 2 days for each full 5 years of service (Labour Code, arts. 89-92, checked 2026-10-29).
• 10 legal holidays: four civil (1 January, 11 February, 1 May, 20 May) and six religious (Good Friday, Ascension, 15 August, 25 December, end of Ramadan, Feast of the Sheep). Civil holidays are non-working for all; religious ones are optional for workers over 18; work on a holiday earns an extra amount equal to the day’s wage (droitsocialenpratique.com, checked 2026-10-29; list read from a summary of law 73/5).

Probation

• Must be in writing.
• Maximum 6 months including renewal, 8 months for executives (cadres); recruitment, travel and training time doesn’t count.
• If service continues after probation, the hire is definitive from the start of probation.

Source: Labour Code, art. 28, checked 2026-10-29.

Notice and severance

Employer notice on an open-ended contract is written and states the reason. Duration by job category and seniority:

Source: ILO Yaounde worker’s guide, summarising arrete 015/MTPS/SG/CJ of 1993; checked 2026-10-29. Which category a professional role falls in depends on the collective agreement grid. Unserved notice is paid out as an indemnity (art. 36).

Dismissal indemnity applies after at least 2 years of continuous service, except for serious misconduct. Per year of service, as a share of average monthly pay over the last 12 months:

• Years 1-5: 20%; years 6-10: 25%; years 11-15: 30%; years 16-20: 35%; from year 21: 40%.
• Abusive dismissal: damages of at least 3 months’ salary and at most 1 month per year of seniority (art. 39); defective formalities: up to 1 month’s salary.

Source: ILO guide and Labour Code, arts. 37 and 39, checked 2026-10-29. A collective agreement may shorten the 2-year condition to 1 year.

13th salary and bonuses

• Not mandatory: we found no 13th-month provision in the Labour Code text.
• Some EOR vendor guides call it mandatory; we found no legal source for that.
• Collective agreements and employer practice may provide bonuses.

Source: Labour Code, checked 2026-10-29.

Mandatory benefits

• Registration with CNPS: family allowances, old-age/disability/death pension, work-accident cover.
• Maternity leave of 14 weeks, starting 4 weeks before the presumed delivery date, extendable by 6 weeks for illness linked to pregnancy (art. 84).
• CLEISS notes no statutory health-insurance branch in CNPS; employer-provided health insurance is a private matter.

Sources: Labour Code; cleiss.fr; checked 2026-10-29. Who pays maternity pay, employer or CNPS, is not confirmed.

Work permits

• A foreign national’s employment contract must be endorsed by the labour minister before work starts; the employer files the request.
• If the endorsement is refused, the contract is void; if there’s no decision within 2 months, it’s deemed granted.
• Renewing a foreign worker’s fixed-term contract needs the minister’s endorsement again.
• We found no official source on whether an EOR can sponsor the endorsement or on the immigration-side permit steps.

Source: Labour Code, arts. 25 and 27, checked 2026-10-29.

Currency and payroll

• Payroll runs in the Central African CFA franc (XAF), pegged at 1 EUR = 655.957 XAF; the ECB reference rate of 2026-10-28 gives about 1 USD = 589.20 XAF (ECB, checked 2026-10-29).
• Wages are paid at intervals of at most one month, no later than 8 days after the end of the month worked. A worker may request an advance of half the monthly base pay after 15 days. On termination, wages and indemnities are due when service ends (Labour Code, art. 68, checked 2026-10-29).

Is Employer of Record legal in Cameroon?

Restricted. Cameroon has no EOR statute. The Labour Code allows only a licensed temporary-work enterprise to hire workers and place them with users, and only within narrow limits. No Cameroonian authority ruling, law-firm opinion or court case on EOR was found, so this verdict rests on the Code and the 1993 decree (Labour Code, checked 2026-10-29).

• Who may do it. A temporary-work enterprise, whose exclusive activity is to place at users’ disposal workers it hires and pays, may recruit workers for temporary replacement or completion of a project, occasional surges or urgent work, and seasonal work. Such workers may be used only for non-durable tasks in those cases (art. 26).
• Approval. Opening one needs prior approval (agrément) from the labour minister. The worker’s contract and a placement contract with each user must be in writing (Labour Code, art. 26, checked 2026-10-29).
• Conditions of the agrément. Decree 93/572/PM of 1993-07-15 requires a financial guarantee certificate for wages and social charges, makes the agrément personal and non-transferable, and caps a placement with the same user at 12 months including renewals (droitsocialenpratique.com, checked 2026-10-29).
• Sanctions. The labour minister can suspend the enterprise for up to 3 months or withdraw the agrément after an inspection report and formal notice; violations also fall under Labour Code arts. 168 and 170 (same decree, art. 4 and art. 18).
• Foreign hires. A foreign national’s contract needs the labour minister’s endorsement before work begins; refusal makes it void (art. 27).

What this means for a client. A long-term EOR arrangement for one permanent role doesn’t fit the three permitted cases or the 12-month cap. The Code text we read doesn’t say what follows for a client whose placement falls outside them, for example re-characterisation as the real employer, and no ruling was found. The decree’s penalty amounts weren’t read. If the placing enterprise’s agrément is suspended or withdrawn, the placed worker’s arrangement is interrupted. The vendors in the next section offer EOR for Cameroon; our data doesn’t show which legal basis any of them uses.

Who actually employs your hire in Cameroon

Vendors describe their entity model globally far more often than they confirm it for Cameroon. Here is what each vendor’s own Cameroon-facing page says (all checked 2026-10-29). Cameroon’s business registry has no open name search, so none of these was checked against it.

Eleven of these 12 don’t name an entity in Cameroon, and the one that does relies on a statement on its own blog. That matters here because the Labour Code ties placement to an approved temporary-work enterprise, so the legal basis the provider uses is the first thing to establish. Before signing, ask: “Which entity will employ my hire in Cameroon, does it hold the labour minister’s agrément, and can I see the placement contract?”

How to choose an EOR in Cameroon

Is the role temporary? A replacement, a project or seasonal work of 12 months or less is the case the Code provides for. Ask the provider for its agrément and the written placement contract. For a permanent, long-term role, no provider in our data shows a route that fits the Code, and your own Cameroonian entity removes the question.

Need evidence of who the employer is? Borderless AI is the only provider that states it owns entities in Cameroon, on its own blog page, with $579/employee/month and a claimed 1-2 business day onboarding. Treat it as a vendor statement until you see the entity’s name and registration. The other eleven give you nothing to verify yet.

Weighing price against data? Four providers publish a Cameroon price: Skuad ($249/month promo, volume-dependent), Playroll (from $399), Borderless AI ($579) and Deel (from $599). Eight publish none, so a quote is the only way to compare them. Vendor-stated start times vary: Deel says as little as 3 days, Safeguard Global one to two weeks.

Hiring a foreign national? The labour minister’s endorsement must come before work starts, and a refusal makes the contract void. We found no official source on whether an EOR can file it, so ask who files it and how long the provider expects the decision to take.

What it costs to employ someone in Cameroon through an EOR

The EOR is the legal employer, so neither salary below gets small-employer relief. Both examples are 12 monthly payments with no 13th month (not mandatory). XAF 29.5 million is about USD 50,068 and XAF 59 million about USD 100,136 at 1 USD = 589.20 XAF (ECB reference rate of 2026-10-28).

Total employer cost is XAF 31,761,750 and XAF 62,515,500 respectively, before the EOR fee. The percentages are low because family allowances and pension stop at XAF 9,000,000 a year (XAF 750,000 a month). On pay at or below that ceiling, the same rates add up to 15.45%.

Not counted: the EOR fee, paid leave, sickness cost, severance provisions, health insurance, and the accident premium if the real risk class is 2.50% or 5.00% (that adds 0.75 or 3.25 points of gross).

The EOR’s own fee is on top. Four providers publish a Cameroon-specific price, all per month: $249 at Skuad (promo, list $349, depending on hiring volume), $399 from Playroll (per employee, billed separately from payroll and statutory costs), $579 at Borderless AI (per employee, on its own Cameroon page) and $599 from Deel (widget on its Cameroon page). The other eight, Safeguard Global, Remote People, RemotePass, RemoFirst, Rivermate, G-P, Atlas HXM and Pebl, publish none.

Hidden costs: no provider in our data publishes a setup fee, deposit, minimum term or termination fee for Cameroon. Treat blanks as unpublished, not zero.

When you don’t need an EOR

• A genuinely independent contractor. If the person works for themselves rather than under your direction, see how to pay contractors in Cameroon and our hiring guide.
• A temporary need. For a replacement, a project or seasonal work of 12 months or less, the Code’s route is a licensed temporary-work enterprise. Our data records no EOR vendor stating that it holds this approval, so ask for the agrément.
• Your own Cameroonian entity. For a long-term hire, this avoids depending on the temporary-work rules. Atlas HXM’s Cameroon page estimates the cost of opening a local entity at USD 15,000-50,000 (vendor estimate).
• PEO. A PEO co-employs alongside a client that has its own local entity; Deel’s Cameroon page offers its PEO only to clients with an entity in the country. See EOR vs PEO.

What changed in 2026

• 2026-01-01 — Finance Law 2026 (law 2025/012 of 2025-12-17) in force. In the November 2025 draft we read, the income-tax articles concern exceptional income and withholding mechanics; we found no change to the salary tax scale, the salary deductions or CNPS rates. The enacted text wasn’t opened (dgb.cm, checked 2026-10-29).
• 2026-05-01 — Labour Minister Gregoire Owona announced a future SMIG increase with no amount or date; no revaluation decree was found, so the XAF 60,000 grid of 2023 still applies (allafrica.com, checked 2026-10-29).
• 2026-06-23 — End of the transition period of personal-data law 2024/017 (promulgated 2024-12-23), reported by one secondary source as 18 months. Not confirmed in the law text; cross-border transfers of personal data need prior authorisation of the data protection authority (cabinetnkoyokngoue.com, checked 2026-10-29).

Numbers vendors haven’t updated

• Playroll’s guide gives the 2026 SMIG as XAF 41,875/month. That is the tier for State agents under the Labour Code; the private non-agricultural minimum is XAF 60,000 (decree 2023/00338/PM, checked 2026-10-29). RemotePass states XAF 60,000, which matches the decree.
• Employer cost percentages differ. Deel’s Cameroon page shows an estimated employer cost of 16.05% of salary and RemotePass’s 15.45%. Our rates sum to 15.45% only below the XAF 750,000 monthly ceiling and with the lowest accident class; secondary guides show totals of roughly 13.7-18.7% depending on class and on whether CFC and FNE are included. We didn’t check Deel’s figure against CNPS.

How we built this page

Facts were collected and checked on 2026-10-29 against the Labour Code, the 1993 temporary-work decree, CLEISS and PwC tables, and secondary guides where primary text wasn’t open; each rests on the source linked beside it. Cameroon’s business registry has no open name search, so vendor entity claims are recorded as the vendors state them, and “not disclosed” means the vendor’s page doesn’t name an entity. The order above puts the one vendor that states a Cameroonian entity first, then providers by published Cameroon price and completeness of data. Nobody pays for placement on this page.