Entity vs GCC vs EOR breakeven finder.
Enter salary, growth years, and fixed costs. Find the headcount where your own India entity becomes cheaper than EOR. Model both paths and get a verdict.
Blended salary across junior and mid-level roles.
How long you plan to operate this entity or EOR contract.
One-time: legal registration, PAN/TAN/GST, bank setup.
Yearly: compliance, audit, payroll, office, HR admin.
How many people you plan to hire in this period.
Breakeven analysis
Breakeven headcount
·
Employees at year · where cumulative cost is equal.
·
·
Assumes EOR $149/month/employee all-in (statutory load included). Entity costs are fixed setup plus annual ops. Statutory salary load (PF 12%, ESI if applicable, gratuity accrual ~1%) already assumed in salary figure. Breakeven shifts with growth rate and salary changes.
How the breakeven is calculated.
EOR cost model
EOR is purely variable: $149 USD per employee per month, converted at ₹88/dollar = ₹1,312/month per head. Over N years and H headcount, cumulative = Salary × H × 12 × N × 1.10 (10% statutory load) + ($149/mo × H × 12 × N).
Entity cost model
Entity has fixed setup (one-time) plus annual ops cost that compounds over years. Salary costs are the same as EOR but you bear payroll/compliance burden directly. Cumulative = Setup + (Annual Ops × N) + (Salary × H × 12 × N × 1.10).
Breakeven logic
We iterate headcount from 1 to 200 and find the crossover point where cumulative entity cost first drops below cumulative EOR cost. That headcount is the breakeven. Exact year varies by your inputs.
Worked example
On the default 5 person team at ₹12,00,000 average salary, the breakeven lands at 7 employees, the headcount where running your own entity becomes cheaper than EOR.
Breakeven finder, answered.
The questions founders ask when planning India scale.
Why does EOR cost scale linearly but entity ops do not?
EOR is purely variable: $149/month per head. Entity has fixed costs (setup, legal, compliance, payroll operations) that spread across headcount. At low headcount, EOR wins. At 15-30+, entity overhead per head becomes trivial and entity wins.
What costs does the $149/mo EOR fee include?
Compliance, payroll processing, PF/ESIC filing, TDS, professional tax, employment contracts, statutory compliance, HR admin. It is all-in. Entity setup and ops costs are separate.
Why is entity setup ₹4 lakh and ops ₹9 lakh/year?
Setup: legal registration, PAN/TAN/GST, bank account, director KYC, ₹4L is conservative. Ops: compliance filing, accounting/audit, payroll, office rent/utilities, HR admin. For 10-person team, ₹9L/year is realistic. Scales with complexity.
What about the time cost of entity setup?
Entity setup takes 4-6 months (incorporation, registration, bank approval, system setup). EOR onboarding is 2 weeks. This calculator shows cost breakeven but does not model delay-to-revenue. If speed matters more than cost, stay EOR.
When is this calculator wrong?
When you have high fixed overhead (multiple offices, complex operations, significant local compliance risk). Or when regulatory pressure forces entity within a time window (PE risk, labour disputes). Speak to sales for those scenarios.
Longer reading: EOR services in India · EOR vs entity in India · Related tool: EOR vs entity calculator
Tell us where you are on the decision.
A role you want to hire, a team you want moved, or just the two routes to compare. A named person replies in 4 to 6 hours.
What the first call covers
30 minutesA cost comparison for your headcount, on your numbers, both routes.
- A written cost breakdown
- Entity documents before the call
- PF, ESI, TDS, termination law
- No follow-up sequence
You pick the time, we send a Meet link. Any timezone.