Nine of the twelve EOR providers tracked for Japan publish a price. None of the nine publishes a figure derived from Japan. EOR cost in Japan therefore has no single published answer. The fee is one line inside a monthly total that gross salary and the FY2026 statutory employer rates mostly set, and neither changes with the provider.
Disclosure before going further: AirTA sells no employer-of-record service and is not a recruitment agency.
Which EOR Providers Publish a Japan Price
Prices are transcribed as each provider prints them and are list prices with different inclusions, checked August 19, 2026. Where a provider prints a bare "$" the currency is not stated on the page; only three of the nine state a currency. Read as US dollars, the published band of $199 to $699 per employee per month is ¥31,780 to ¥111,630 at 1 USD = 159.7 JPY (Frankfurter, August 18, 2026), computed by AirTA. Two of the twelve market no employer-of-record product, and the order is alphabetical with no ranking implied.
Of the three that publish no price, only one markets an employer-of-record product.
Employer of record Japan pricing, as published, is global pricing. Three of the nine published prices appear on a Japan page and each matches the provider's global number; the other six are published only on a global pricing page. One of the three prints its number under a Japan pricing heading, with the currency symbol supplied by the browser from a twelve-currency selector.
Currency is unstated in six of the nine cases, which makes any conversion into yen an assumption rather than a transcription.
The Japan entity behind each provider name, and the register it was checked against, is held in the provider directory.
Why the Published Prices Are Not Comparable
No provider in the tracked set publishes a fee set as a percentage of gross salary, a common assumption in budget models. One states on a Japan page that it charges a flat platform fee rather than a percentage of payroll.
EOR fees in Japan are published as a flat charge per employee per month, so a senior hire and a junior hire carry the same administration fee.
Five of the nine figures are published as starting prices. One names four further cost components and quantifies none, another's page defaults to the annual-billing rate, and a third routes every inquiry to a custom quote.
Third-party pages publish Japan prices on providers' behalf. In the cases checked in August 2026, the third-party figure exceeded the provider's own published number, in one case by more than double, computed at the dated exchange rate. Where a provider publishes its own number, that is the one to use.
Across the Japan EOR pricing pages checked in August 2026, the figures carry no capture date and no link to the provider page they came from. A price with neither cannot be checked against what the provider charges today. What can be checked is the rest of the monthly total.
What an EOR Employee Costs a Month in Japan
How much an employer of record costs in Japan is the sum of three charges. On a ¥7,000,000 salary that sum is between ¥8,480,360 and ¥9,438,560 a year, computed across the published fee band. Salary is most of it.
The gross figure comes from Japan salary benchmarks by discipline.
Employer social insurance on that salary is 15.70% for an employee under 40 in Tokyo doing office work, ¥78,500 a month at the FY2026 rates. The percentage falls as salary rises, because the pension grades stop at ¥650,000 of standard monthly remuneration. Each rate and its start date are in the six lines and their start dates.
Computed by AirTA, except the employer social insurance line, cited from the FY2026 employer rates. The annual column is twelve monthly premiums plus the premium charged on the bonus, so it exceeds the monthly column times twelve; the fee lines are twelve monthly charges. The two fee lines are the ends of the published band in the price census and are not any provider's quote. FX 1 USD = 159.7 JPY, Frankfurter, August 18, 2026.
Three consequences follow, all computed. The fee is 4.5% of the annual total at the low end of the published band and 14.2% at the high end. The band moves the annual total by ¥958,200, about 11%. At the high end the year's fee of ¥1,339,560 exceeds the year's employer social insurance charge of ¥1,099,000.
The fee and the statutory charge are equal at about $490 per employee per month, computed, a threshold worth testing a quote against.
A percentage of salary printed beside a management fee is Japanese employer social insurance, owed by whoever runs the payroll, and it is not part of the fee.
A recruitment agency charges once. On the same ¥7,000,000 salary, an exclusive search at 25% is ¥1,750,000 and a contingency search at 35% is ¥2,450,000, computed. Across the published band, 16 to 55 months of administration fees equal one exclusive search fee and 22 to 77 months equal one contingency fee, computed. The route decision turns on more than cost, and is covered in hiring in Japan without an entity.
What to Ask Before You Compare Two EOR Quotes
Four questions make two quotes comparable.
- Is the fee a flat charge per employee per month, or linked to salary? The two behave differently at a senior salary.
- Is the employer's statutory social insurance inside the fee or a separate pass-through? A percentage shown beside a fee is usually the statutory charge, owed either way.
- What is charged at setup, at offboarding, and as a deposit? Only one of the nine requires a deposit, and it names no amount.
- What currency is the fee billed in, and who bears the conversion? Six of the nine state no currency on the page.
Without those four answers, two quotes are two headline numbers with different contents.
No provider is recommended here, and the price census is in alphabetical order. This is a record of what public sources state as of August 19, 2026, and not legal or tax advice.
A monthly charge whose basis was never written down is renegotiated from a weaker position every year the employment continues. EOR cost in Japan is fixed on two of its three lines, and the fee is the only one anyone can still change. Get the basis in writing before the first invoice arrives, then plan your first Japan hires.