Kleos vs Deel: the same Contractor of Record, 6.5 times cheaper

Yes, and the gap is not small. Deel's published price for Contractor of Record is $325 per contractor per month. Kleos is a flat $50 per contractor, with discounts at volume, which is 6.5 times cheaper for the same arrangement. Deel also sells a $49 plan, but that is contractor management rather than Contractor of Record: your company stays the contracting party and keeps the misclassification risk, so it is not the same product.

There is one more line worth comparing directly, and it is currency conversion. When a payout changes currency, Kleos applies a spread capped at 3.5%, and that cap is written into your contract at signing rather than published somewhere we can change later. Deel publishes a per-contractor price but no conversion rate, so their headline fee is checkable in advance and the conversion cost is not. With Kleos both numbers are known before you sign, which means even the worst case is something you can put in a budget.

Nothing. No platform fee, no withdrawal commission, and every payout method is free, including card and crypto. Whatever you send is what reaches them, after the FX conversion that is capped at 3.5% and locked in your contract.

A day in most cases. You send the contractor list and we do the bulk import rather than making your team re-key it. Contracts are regenerated on our paper with IP assignment and classification checks included. We usually run the first Kleos payout alongside your existing provider's final cycle, so nobody is caught between the two.

This is the question worth asking any provider, because every platform looks the same when a payout is simple. The difference shows when a transfer is rejected, a bank asks for documentation, a contractor's status changes mid-engagement, or an auditor comes back months later.

On Kleos you get a named expert who already knows your setup, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in your own Slack, Teams or Telegram channel. One person with the context, rather than a new agent each time who has to be brought up to speed from the beginning, and a human rather than a bot on the first line. We are alongside you for the whole relationship, not only during the demo.

Paying people on time is the one thing we treat as unmissable. Your balance is credited in two to three hours on instant rails, card and crypto land in seconds and SWIFT from a few minutes, and you can run a payout any time rather than waiting for a cycle. Verification is handled properly at onboarding, so a payout is not held while a document is re-checked mid-run, and if more information is ever needed you hear it from a person with a reason and a next step. Kleos is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, with the KYC and AML policy published on the site.

Both services also run side by side under one invoice. Contractor of Record covers independent contractors, Employer of Record makes Kleos the legal employer for full-time hires in 200+ locations, from $200 per employee per month on top of gross salary and employer taxes, and you can convert between the two without changing provider.