Sacra estimates that Deel hit a $1.15B annual revenue run rate in August 2025, up from $800M at the end of 2024 (up 70% YoY), with roughly 15% EBITDA margin.

Deel generates revenue primarily through two channels: a $49 monthly fee per active contractor and $599 monthly fee per full-time employee hired through their Employer of Record (EOR) service. The company serves over 25,000 businesses across technology, gaming, marketing, logistics, and other sectors, including notable customers like Shopify, Dropbox, and Nike.

The company has maintained impressive unit economics with 85% gross margins, placing it in the top 15% of all public SaaS companies. Deel has been EBITDA positive since September 2022, a remarkable achievement given its rapid growth trajectory.

Deel's revenue growth has been driven by both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions, including Playgroup (payroll and HCM) and Capbase (equity management). The company's shift from purely international contractor payments to a full-stack HR platform has expanded its total addressable market while maintaining strong customer retention through its "care-first" approach to customer service.

In October 2025, CEO Alex Bouaziz said that Deel expects a 2025 profit of $170M–$200M and will use the capital for acquisitions, payroll/banking expansion, and AI investment.

In September 2025, Deel closed a new $300M primary round led by Ribbit Capital alongside Coatue and Andreessen Horowitz, lifting its valuation to $17B.

Previously, Deel was valued at $12.6B during a secondary sale in February 2025. This was up from $12B at its Series D in May 2022. Earlier valuations include $5.5B following the $425M Series D led by Coatue in October 2021 and $1.25B after a $156M Series C led by YC Continuity in April 2021.

Deel has raised about $986M since its 2019 founding. Notable investors include Andreessen Horowitz, YC Continuity, Spark Capital, Coatue, and General Catalyst.

Deel was founded in 2019 by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang, who met while studying at MIT.

Initially experimenting with performance-based payment systems, they pivoted after identifying the complexities companies faced when hiring international talent.

Up until the late 2010s, companies hiring internationally had three options: 1) spend 12-18 months establishing their own foreign entities, 2) offshore entire departments through an agency like Globalization Partners ($4.2B) or Velocity Global ($500M raised), or 3) risk making one-off payments to contractors through Wise or PayPal.

The rising costs of domestic healthcare & talent combined with COVID in 2020 produced massive demand for international hiring and global labor arbitrage.

Deel's initial product-market fit came from layering a payroll experience & workflow on top of international contractor payments, which abstracted away local compliance and enabled employers to pay their teams in local currency with a single click.

Critically, Deel helped employers save money by de-risking contractor classifications with compliant contracts & automatic recordkeeping, charging $50 per contractor seat but saving them orders of magnitude vs. an employee classification which would cost $500/month for employer of record (EOR) services, $50K+ to set up a local entity or $20K+ (per worker) in penalties & fees if adjudged to have misclassified the worker.

Expanding from contractor payments, Deel launched Employer of Record (EOR) services in late 2020 to help companies hire full-time employees abroad, and then added global payroll in mid-2022 to unify compliance, tax, and payments across their entire team.

Over time, Deel has evolved into a full-stack HR and people platform that now includes global payroll processing across multiple currencies and jurisdictions, employee onboarding and document management, equipment procurement and management for remote teams through Deel IT (acquired via Hofy), immigration support and visa processing services (processing thousands of O-1 visas quarterly and handling visas in roughly 100 countries), performance management and learning tools via Deel Engage (acquired through Zavvy), and U.S. domestic payroll and PEO services.

The platform integrates with existing HR systems and accounting software through open APIs, allowing companies to start with a single product before expanding into the full suite—a strategy that has driven nearly 60% of revenue through cross-sell and upsell.

Deel is a global HR and payroll platform that monetizes through subscription fees based on the number of workers managed through their system.

For contractors, Deel charges companies $49 per contractor per month, while their Employer of Record (EOR) service costs $599 per employee per month. Domestic payroll costs $19-29 per employee per month, performance management $20 per employee per month, and IT management $99+ per month.

The company's core offering enables businesses to hire and pay workers globally without establishing local entities.

Deel handles all compliance, contracts, taxes, and payments in 150+ countries through their own legal infrastructure rather than relying on third-party providers.

This vertical integration—owning local licenses, in-country legal/HR staff (over 2,000 compliance experts), and proprietary payroll engines across 150+ countries—gives them better control over the experience and higher margins than traditional EOR providers while shifting employment liability and compliance risk off customer balance sheets.

After burning sub-$10M in 2021 and turning profitable in 2022, Deel has continued expanding its margins, hitting 16% EBITDA margin in 2025 with ~85% gross margins (vs. ADP at 46%).

Deel's margin resilience at scale has come from eliminating third-party EOR partners (20-30% fees) and using its own entities, replacing local payroll processors (15% markups) with its own payroll engine, and automating away via software manual & operationally-intensive compliance checks & services.

Beyond subscription revenue, Deel generates 25-30% of revenue from fintech services, moving over $2 billion monthly across all currencies and monetizing FX spread and payment rails infrastructure.

Deel operates in the global payroll and HR platform market, competing across several distinct segments that have emerged as companies increasingly hire internationally.

The legacy EOR market is dominated by companies like Globalization Partners ($4.2B valuation) and Velocity Global ($500M raised) that help enterprises establish international presence.

These providers typically charge 15%+ of payroll and focus on high-touch service rather than technology, targeting larger enterprises that need to build material presence in new countries.

What looked like a multi-winner market in 2020-21 with Remote ($3B valuation), Papaya Global ($3.7B valuation), Oyster, and Panther all raising nine-figure rounds has collapsed toward Deel dominance. Remote has focused on building out its own legal entities in each country, while Papaya partners with local providers.

Rippling ($13.5B valuation, $570M ARR in February 2025) recently expanded into global payroll as well, leveraging its existing HR and IT platform. These companies typically charge $500-600 per employee per month.

The key differentiator has been vertical integration and product breadth—Deel was the only company to follow customers from contractors to EOR to global payroll to full HR suite, while competitors remained point solutions or relied on third-party infrastructure that limited margins and control.

Traditional payroll companies like ADP ($121.9B market cap, $20.6B revenue growing 7.1% YoY) and Paychex ($49.2B market cap, $5.57B revenue growing 5.6% YoY) are expanding into international payments. Newer providers like Gusto ($10B valuation) face similar challenges around international compliance and entity setup.

These companies have large existing customer bases but lack the global infrastructure and compliance expertise that Deel has built. They typically charge $39-49 per employee monthly for domestic payroll with additional fees for international capabilities.

Deel's expansion into US domestic payroll creates direct competition with these incumbents, with the advantage of unified global-domestic management and what the company describes as "global-grade" service—mandatory for 100-country compliance—applied to a US market where customers tolerate two-week ticket resolution from commoditized providers.

The market is seeing increased bundling of services, with providers competing to become the single platform for both domestic and international workforce management.

This has driven significant M&A activity, with Deel having completed 13 acquisitions including PaySpace (APAC & Africa expansion), Zavvy (talent management), and Hofy (IT & device management).

Deel has tailwinds from the rise of distributed work and increasing regulatory complexity around international employment, with opportunities to expand into adjacent markets like domestic payroll, financial services for contractors, and broader HR technology.

The shift toward distributed teams has created demand for tools that make global hiring as simple as domestic hiring. Deel's initial focus on contractor payments gave them a foothold with companies hiring internationally, which they've leveraged to build a comprehensive HR platform.

With $1.4T spent annually on contractor payments and the global HR technology market projected to reach $40B by 2029, Deel is well-positioned to capture a significant share of both markets.

COVID's lasting impact was not remote hiring volume but forcing HR teams to equalize employee experience globally—once the San Francisco office and the Lagos contractor were both on Zoom, subpar international tooling became unacceptable. This created permanent demand for unified global-domestic platforms rather than fragmented point solutions.

Deel's position between employers and contractors creates opportunities to offer financial services to both sides.

Already generating 25-30% of revenue from payments infrastructure moving $2B+ monthly, the company can expand into instant payouts, lending products, and expense management for contractors, plus working capital financing and treasury management for employers.

This mirrors how Block leveraged their payments infrastructure to build Cash App and Square Banking.

By expanding into domestic payroll, Deel can compete directly with incumbents like ADP and Paychex. Their technology-first approach, "global-grade" service standards, and existing relationships with companies hiring globally give them advantages in winning domestic payroll business.

The U.S. payroll software market alone is expected to reach $47B by 2028. Deel's ability to unify domestic and international payroll in one platform—solving the two-system problem companies currently face—positions them to capture significant market share from legacy providers.

With companies starting to use two systems—a domestic payroll provider and Deel for global payroll—Deel's push into US payroll aims to become a unified system for all employees worldwide, creating a collision course with domestic players like Rippling and Gusto expanding internationally.

Deel has launched an AI Workforce Hub to help companies manage both human employees and AI agents in a unified platform, enabling performance monitoring and assignment of AI agents alongside traditional workers.

While AI may reduce headcount per company, Deel sees this as revenue-neutral: industrial revolutions spawn new job categories (crypto market-makers in 2021 became AI labeling teams in 2024, both onboarded through Deel's embedded/white-label product).

The company serves major AI companies including Mistral and Anthropic, positioning them to capture growth in AI-native businesses even as traditional tech hiring fluctuates.

Regulatory compliance complexity: As Deel expands across 150+ countries, they must navigate an increasingly complex web of local employment, tax, and labor laws. Each new jurisdiction adds operational overhead and compliance risk. While Deel has built infrastructure to handle this complexity, a major compliance failure in even one key market could damage their reputation and trustworthiness globally.

Competitive pressure on margins: Deel's 85% gross margins are exceptional but may face pressure as competitors like Remote, Rippling and ADP expand their global capabilities. The core EOR service could become commoditized through API providers like Check. This could force Deel to compete more on price rather than their current premium positioning.

Concentration in tech sector hiring: Many of Deel's 25K customers are tech companies who embraced remote work early. A prolonged tech downturn could significantly impact growth as these companies reduce international hiring. While Deel is expanding to other sectors, tech remains their primary growth driver and source of high-margin customers.