How to choose an employer of record in Germany

This is the question that matters most, because a lot of providers do not employ anyone in Germany themselves. They pass your hire to a local partner and add a margin. That means an extra link in the chain, less control, and a contract you cannot see the bottom of.

We employ your staff on our own German GmbH, registered in the Handelsregister. That entity also holds an Arbeitnehmerüberlassung licence from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, which is the permission a provider needs to place employees with a client company on a lawful basis in Germany. Not every EOR operating here holds one, and it is a fair thing to ask any provider to show you.

German payroll is not a place for guesswork. Lohnsteuer, the solidarity surcharge, church tax where it applies, and the four social insurance branches all have to be calculated correctly every month and reported to the right bodies. A provider that runs this in-house tends to be faster and more accurate than one that outsources it.

We run German payroll ourselves under our own Betriebsnummer. That means when a question comes up about a deduction or a contribution ceiling, you are talking to the people who actually run the calculation, not a call centre relaying it to someone else.

Employment law in Germany is detailed and it changes. The written-terms rules under the Nachweisgesetz, the notice periods in section 622 of the civil code, and the risk of Scheinselbstständigkeit if a contractor is really an employee all sit on the employer. A good EOR keeps pace with these and tells you when something affects your hire.

Ask how a provider handles works councils as well. Larger sites can have a Betriebsrat with genuine rights over working conditions, and a provider who has dealt with one before will save you from missteps that are hard to undo.

When you employ someone in another country, the difference between a good month and a bad one is often who picks up the phone. Some providers give you a ticket queue. That is fine until a payslip is wrong or an employee has a question that needs a real answer.

We give each client one dedicated Germany specialist who knows your account and your hire. You are not re-explaining your setup to a new person each time, and your employee has a named contact for anything about their pay or their contract.

Pricing is where the differences between providers show up fastest. Some charge a percentage of salary, which quietly rises as your employee’s pay rises. Others advertise a low headline rate, then add currency conversion spreads, onboarding fees or deposits on top.

Our fee is a flat 499 euro per employee a month, the same for a junior hire and a senior one. It sits alongside the actual salary and the employer social contributions of roughly 21 percent, and there is nothing hidden behind it. If a quote you are comparing is hard to pin down, ask for the all-in monthly cost for a named salary and see how quickly you get a straight number.

Put together, the five questions sort providers quickly. Here is what a good answer looks like against a warning sign.