Remote is one of the most credible names in global employment. If you've already picked the person you want to hire in another country and you need a clean, compliant way to employ and pay them, Remote is a genuinely strong choice — especially because it owns its own legal entities in its core markets instead of renting them from third parties. Remote was founded in 2019 by Job van der Voort and Marcelo Lebre, and it grew fast. By April 2022 it had raised a $300 million Series C led by SoftBank — with Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, and General Catalyst also in — at a valuation near $3 billion (TechCrunch). That backing matters in this category: when a company is the legal employer of record for your people, its balance sheet and staying power are part of the product. Remote's core business is Employer of Record (EOR): it becomes the legal employer of a worker in a country where you have no entity, handling the contract, payroll, taxes, and statutory benefits so you don't have to open a subsidiary. It also runs contractor management and global payroll for companies that already have entities abroad.

Remote's public pricing is refreshingly flat. EOR runs $699 per employee/month, contractor management starts at $29 per contractor/month, and global payroll starts at $29 per employee/month (Remote pricing). Coverage spans 90+ countries.

The differentiator Remote leans on hardest is ownership. In its own words: "We directly own all of our legal entities around the world and never rely on third parties to employ workers, which helps avoid costly markups and gives us full control over service quality" (Remote pricing). In a market where many EOR providers quietly subcontract to local partners — creating a liability gap and margin stack you don't see — owning the entities in core markets is a real, verifiable advantage.

Owned entities in core markets. For hiring in places like the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, you're employing through Remote's own legal infrastructure — not a partner it happens to resell. That means fewer hand-offs and clearer accountability when something goes wrong. Transparent, flat pricing. A published per-employee number you can plan a budget around, with no percentage-of-salary games. That predictability is rare in EOR and genuinely useful for a finance team. Serious backing and scale. SoftBank-led funding at a multi-billion valuation buys the compliance depth, security posture, and longevity you want from the company that legally employs your team. Full-stack employment. EOR, contractors, and payroll under one roof means you can start one worker as a contractor and convert to full employment without switching vendors.

Remote is an employment platform, not a hiring service. It becomes the legal employer of whoever you bring to it — it doesn't find that person or judge whether they're any good. The sourcing, screening, and technical vetting are yours to run before Remote ever enters the picture. That's the right split if you already have your candidate. The EOR rate reflects owned-entity, full-compliance employment — it's priced for durability, not for being the cheapest line item. And in the 90+ countries beyond its core markets, coverage may run through vetted local partners rather than a wholly owned entity, which is worth confirming for the specific country you're hiring in.

Here's the honest gap Remote leaves open, and it's not a knock on Remote — it's just a different job. Remote employs whoever you already found. It's the rail. But the hardest part of hiring an AI-native engineer isn't the payroll — it's finding the right one and knowing they're actually good before you're on the hook to pay them. That part is still entirely on you. The best engineers usually aren't on a job board, in a talent pool, or answering recruiters. The ones you actually want are already working — booked on a contract somewhere else, heads-down, not looking. Nextdev reaches the top 1% of AI engineers — the ones who aren't looking. Then we prove it. We give each a real problem to build and watch how they actually work, so you know they're AI-native because you've seen it — not because a résumé or a profile said so. And then we do the part Remote does, too: we employ them for you. One named engineer, delivered. The contract, payroll, and compliance never touch your desk. With Remote, you still have to go find the engineer and gamble on their skill, then run the employment or bolt on a tool to do it. With Nextdev, reach, proof, and employment are one motion. You're not picking from who signed up. You're getting the engineer who never would have.

Remote is an excellent EOR — well-funded, transparently priced, and one of the few that truly owns its entities in core markets. If you already know exactly who you want to hire abroad and you need a compliant, dependable way to employ them, it's a smart pick. If the real problem is finding a proven AI-native engineer in the first place, that's a different job — and it's the one Nextdev does end to end.