Employer of Record in Mexico: 20 Providers Compared (2026)

Employing someone in Mexico: key facts

Mexican employment law runs through the federal Ley Federal del Trabajo (LFT), with IMSS/INFONAVIT social contributions and one state tax (ISN) layered on top; figures below are federal unless a CDMX-specific rate is named.

Minimum wage

Mexico sets two geographic zones, and both rise every January 1.

Monthly equivalents use the common ×30.4 payroll convention, not a calendar-month figure.

Employer contributions

IMSS runs several contribution lines on a capped wage base (SBC — salario base de cotización); INFONAVIT sits alongside it on the same cap, while the CDMX payroll tax (ISN) is not capped at all.

Source: elcontribuyente.mx (2026 Cesantía y Vejez schedule: elcontribuyente.mx), checked 2026-10-01.

Every line except ISN is capped once SBC hits 25 UMA/day — why the employer-cost share of salary falls as pay rises past that line (see the cost section after the cards). ISN varies by state; CDMX’s 4.00% is shown because our cost examples are based there.

Working hours and overtime

Source: sdv.com.mx, checked 2026-10-01.

Overtime: up to 3 extra hours/day, max 3 times a week (9 hours/week) at double pay; beyond that, triple the ordinary rate.

A constitutional reform promulgated 2026-03-03 phases the standard week down from 48 to 40 hours — 46h in 2027, 44h in 2028, 42h in 2029, 40h from 2030 — without a wage cut; 2026 hours are unchanged (jornada.com.mx, checked 2026-10-01).

Annual leave and public holidays

Source: cegid.com, checked 2026-10-01. At least 12 days must be taken continuously, vacation can’t be paid out instead of taken, and a prima vacacional of at least 25% of the salary for those days is mandatory on top (LFT arts. 78–80).

Mexico observes 7 mandatory paid rest days a year: January 1, first Monday of February, third Monday of March, May 1, September 16, third Monday of November, December 25 — plus October 1 every six years on presidential transition (leyes-mx.com, checked 2026-10-01). Work on one of these pays triple the normal wage.

Probation

• Up to 30 days standard, extendable to 180 days for managerial, administrative or technical/specialized positions (LFT art. 39-A).
• Can’t be renewed and can’t be applied successively to the same worker, even in a different role.
• Can’t be combined with the separate “capacitación inicial” (initial training) relationship, which runs 3–6 months under art. 39-B.

Source: sdv.com.mx, checked 2026-10-01.

Notice and severance

Mexico has no statutory advance-notice period. Termination is either for cause (LFT art. 47 — no severance beyond accrued pay) or, without a listed cause (“despido injustificado”), severance follows instead:

• The worker can choose reinstatement or a constitutional indemnity of 3 months’ salary, plus accrued benefits (aguinaldo, vacation, prima vacacional) and back pay up to 12 months (“salarios caídos”) (LFT art. 48).
• If a court orders reinstatement and the employer refuses it, an additional 20 days’ salary per year of service can apply (LFT art. 50) — conditioned on that refusal, not automatic on every dismissal.
• Separately, a “prima de antigüedad” (seniority premium) of 12 days’ salary per year, capped at 2× the general minimum wage/day, is owed on any dismissal regardless of tenure, and to a voluntary resignation after 15+ years (LFT art. 162).

Source: geovictoria.com, checked 2026-10-01.

13th salary and bonuses

Aguinaldo is mandatory: at least 15 days’ salary, payable before December 20 each year, pro-rated for partial years of service (LFT art. 87, sdv.com.mx, checked 2026-10-01).

Mandatory benefits

• Aguinaldo — at least 15 days’ salary/year.
• Prima vacacional — at least 25% of vacation-day pay.
• PTU (profit-sharing): employers distribute 10% of annual taxable profit among employees, capped since 2021 at the greater of 3 months’ salary or the worker’s average 3-year PTU, whichever favors the worker; needs 60+ days of service. For an EOR, PTU runs on the EOR’s own taxable profit — a thin service-fee margin — not the client’s, so it’s usually small next to what the same worker might get as the client’s direct employee (idconline.mx, checked 2026-10-01).
• IMSS in-kind benefits — healthcare, maternity, disability, life/invalidity insurance, nursery care — funded through the employer contributions above.
• INFONAVIT — employer-funded housing-credit fund, 5% of SBC.
• SAR/Retiro — employer-funded individual retirement account (AFORE), 2% of SBC, plus the Cesantía y Vejez contribution.

Work permits

• At least 90% of any employer’s workforce in Mexico must be Mexican nationals (LFT art. 7); going above 10% foreign requires showing no qualified Mexican national was available for that specific role, with a joint duty to train Mexican replacements. The rule doesn’t apply to directors, administrators and general managers.
• A foreign hire needs an immigration status authorizing paid work — typically a “residente temporal con permiso para trabajar” (usually up to 1 year, renewable up to 4 years before permanent residency), sponsored by the actual Mexican employer (elcontribuyente.mx, checked 2026-10-01).
• Whether an EOR can validly act as that sponsoring employer isn’t confirmed in the sources we reviewed — ask the provider directly before relying on it for a work-permit case.

Currency and payroll

• Payroll runs in Mexican pesos (MXN); as of 2026-09-29 the Banco de México FIX rate was 1 USD = 17.8413 MXN — a point-in-time figure; the peso moved from near 16.86 to above 17.84 during September 2026 alone (source, checked 2026-10-01).
• LFT art. 88 caps wage-payment periods at one week for manual/material labor and fifteen days (quincenal) for everyone else; monthly payroll isn’t legally permitted even with the employee’s consent (sdv.com.mx, checked 2026-10-01).
• Market practice for salaried/office staff is biweekly, 1st–15th and 16th–end of month.

Is Employer of Record legal in Mexico?

Grey area. Mexico’s April 2021 labor-and-tax reform added LFT art. 12, banning “subcontratación de personal” outright — one party supplying its own workers for another’s benefit. Articles 13–15 carve out a narrow exception for genuinely “specialized services or works” that fall outside the contracting company’s own corporate purpose, provided the provider is registered in REPSE (Registro de Prestadoras de Servicios Especializados u Obras Especializadas) and stays current on tax, IMSS and INFONAVIT obligations (LFT reform text, checked 2026-10-01).

REPSE registration alone doesn’t settle the harder question: REPSE only covers services distinct from the client’s own core business, and a classic EOR arrangement — the worker performing the client’s own core function under the client’s direction, with the EOR supplying payroll and compliance only — structurally resembles the personnel-provision the reform targeted. Vendors market the model as fully compliant; independent legal commentary treats it as a live risk, especially where the worker is functionally indistinguishable from the client’s own staff. Boundless states its own theory plainly: “A standard EOR arrangement generally sits outside REPSE where the EOR is the direct legal employer, but provider structures differ” (Boundless, checked 2026-10-01) — a vendor’s argument, not a court ruling or STPS position.

What raises the stakes for the client: joint and several liability (“responsabilidad solidaria”) for the EOR’s unpaid labor, tax or IMSS obligations regardless of contract wording; non-deductibility — payments are deductible for income tax and VAT-creditable only if the client verifies a valid REPSE registration at payment time (Ley del ISR art. 27-V, Ley del IVA art. 5-II); fines of 2,000–50,000 times the UMA per affected worker (MXN 234,620–5,865,500 at the 2026 UMA value), assessed against the client too; and STPS’s new inspection protocol, presented 2025-11-24, which cross-references REPSE status against IMSS and SAT/CFDI data specifically for arrangements where the registered “specialized service” overlaps with the client’s core business (dqlegal.com.mx; vonwobeser.com; praxiumconsultores.com; kpmg.com, checked 2026-10-01).

None of the 23 EOR vendors in this comparison turn up in the public REPSE registry under a recognizable name — see the registry check below.

Who actually employs your hire in Mexico

Vendors describe their entity model globally (“160+ owned entities,” “specialists in 90+ countries”) far more often than they confirm REPSE registration or entity ownership for Mexico specifically. Here’s what each vendor’s own Mexico-facing page says, and what a direct check of the public REPSE registry found:

We searched Mexico’s public REPSE registry (repse.stps.gob.mx, checked 2026-10-01) for all 23 EOR vendors tracked on this page, by brand name and by known alternate legal names. None returned a matching result. That doesn’t mean none of them is registered — a provider could be registered under a legal name we didn’t test, or argue (as Boundless does above) that a direct-employer EOR falls outside REPSE’s scope entirely — but no vendor in this comparison states its own REPSE registration number either. Before signing, ask the vendor directly for its current REPSE certificate or its written legal position on why REPSE does or doesn’t apply to your hire.

How to choose an EOR in Mexico

Want the clearest ownership evidence or the lowest price? Deel has the most detailed Mexico-specific evidence — a published price and its own cost comparison against opening a Mexican entity. Boundless is cheaper, at $199/month with no setup fee, but doesn’t publish a Mexico-specific entity statement.

Flat fee or a percentage of salary? Most vendors here quote a flat monthly rate. Remote People instead offers 8–15% of gross salary as an alternative — potentially cheaper for a lower salary, more expensive than a flat fee once pay rises.

Hiring a foreign national who needs a work permit? None of the vendors in this comparison confirm they can act as the sponsoring employer for the immigration status a foreign hire needs in Mexico. Verify this directly with the provider before relying on an EOR for that specific case.

Want REPSE confirmed before you sign? None of the 23 vendors we checked show up in the public registry under a recognizable name. Ask for a current REPSE certificate, or — like Boundless — a written legal position on why the arrangement doesn’t need one, rather than relying on marketing language alone.

What it costs to employ someone in Mexico through an EOR

The EOR is the legal employer and runs payroll across many clients, so every contribution applies at its standard rate — there’s no small-employer exemption in Mexico’s system regardless of size. Figures below are for Mexico City (CDMX), office/IT risk class, a year-1 employee with the legal minimum benefits.

Source: elcontribuyente.mx, checked 2026-10-01. FX for the USD figures: 1 USD = 17.8413 MXN, Banco de México FIX rate, 2026-09-29.

The share of salary falls as pay rises because IMSS and INFONAVIT — the biggest line items — are capped once the contribution base (SBC) hits 25 UMA/day (MXN 2,932.75); above that line, only the uncapped ISN and the cash benefits keep scaling with salary. PTU (profit-sharing) isn’t in this table: it’s calculated on the EOR’s own taxable profit, not the client’s, so it doesn’t reduce to a fixed percentage of this salary (see Mandatory benefits in the key-facts section).

The EOR’s own fee is on top of the above. Published Mexico-specific numbers in our data run from $199/month (Boundless, no setup fee) to $249/month (Skuad, discounted from $399) to roughly $640/month (Deel’s MX$136,920/year rate) to $599–699/month (Atlas HXM) and a flat $599/month (G-P). Remote People prices alternatively at 8–15% of gross salary. Most other vendors publish only a global list price ($99–$699/month) or none at all, quote-based.

Hidden costs, where actually published: Deel’s own cost table lists MX$0 one-off cost for its EOR route, against MX$88,411 to set up your own entity. Boundless and RemoFirst both state no setup fee. No vendor in this set discloses a deposit, minimum term or termination fee specifically for Mexico — where the field is blank, treat it as unpublished, not zero.

When you don’t need an EOR

• A genuinely independent contractor. If the person sets their own hours and tools, serves other clients, and isn’t performing your own core business under your direction, a contractor sidesteps the REPSE question entirely. See how to pay contractors in Mexico and our hiring guide; on the EOR/contractor line itself, see contractor misclassification.
• Your own Mexican entity. Deel’s own cost comparison puts this at MX$2,086,066/year all-in (MX$88,411 one-off plus MX$1,201,954 annual) against MX$136,920/year for its EOR route, with 4–5 months to set up versus 1–2 business days. It’s the only route that resolves the REPSE question outright, and the one that applies if the hire needs a new work permit, since no vendor in this comparison confirms it can sponsor that itself.

What changed in 2026

• 2025-11-24 — STPS presents a new Protocolo de Inspección en Materia de Subcontratación, a data-matched inspection system cross-referencing REPSE status against IMSS and SAT/CFDI records plus a digital worker-complaint channel — raising 2026 enforcement risk for arrangements where the registered “specialized service” overlaps with the client’s core business.
• 2026-01-01 — Zona General minimum wage rises 13% to MXN 315.04/day; Zona Libre de la Frontera Norte rises 5% to MXN 440.87/day.
• 2026-01-01 — The Cesantía en Edad Avanzada y Vejez employer IMSS rate continues its graduated 2020-reform rise: for the 4.01+ UMA bracket it climbs to 7.513% (from 6.422% in 2025), on the way to 11.875% by 2030.
• 2026-02-01 — UMA updated to MXN 117.31/day (+3.69%), setting the new IMSS/INFONAVIT contribution cap (25 UMA/day) and the REPSE/subcontracting fine scale.

How we built this page

Facts were collected and checked on 2026-10-01 against government and statutory sources (CONASAMI, the LFT reform text, DOF-linked publications) and payroll-calculator aggregators for the IMSS/INFONAVIT rate tables. Vendor entity claims were checked against each vendor’s own Mexico-facing page, and separately against Mexico’s public REPSE registry (repse.stps.gob.mx) by brand name and known legal-name variants — no match turned up for any of the 23 vendors tracked here. The ranking puts vendors naming Mexico specifically in an ownership claim first, then those with no Mexico-specific entity or REPSE statement. Nobody pays for placement on this page.