TL;DR: There is no single best method, there is a best method for your stage. If you send one payment a year, a bank wire is fine. If you pay the same people every month, the per-transfer fee stops being the expensive part and the FX spread plus the compliance work you are quietly absorbing becomes the real cost. Shor is $19/month per contractor with contracts, W-8BEN/W-9 collection, and invoicing included, plus a flat disclosed 2% FX margin applied only when money actually converts. Deposits, where a country requires one, are quoted up front.
Disclosure: we build Shor, which competes with several tools named below. Every third-party figure here comes from that provider's published pricing page or a clearly cited independent guide, as of August 2026.
Most articles on this question jump straight to a list of products. That skips the part that decides the answer: what you are actually buying. Paying a contractor in another country is four jobs bundled together, and each method below does some of them and silently leaves you the rest.
The four costs that actually decide this
Compare methods on these, not on the sticker fee:
- The transfer fee. The visible number. Usually the smallest of the four.
- The FX spread. The margin priced into the exchange rate rather than itemized as a fee. On $10,000/month of contractor payments, every undisclosed 1% is $1,200/year that never appears on an invoice.
- Speed and failure rate. A payment that arrives in five days, or bounces back short because an intermediary bank took a cut, costs you a contractor relationship and an afternoon.
- The compliance work you keep. A contractor agreement that survives a misclassification look, a W-8BEN collected before the first payment, invoices that match payments, and records tidy enough to hand to a diligence associate. Someone does this work. If the tool does not, you do.
Method four is the one founders systematically underprice, because it does not show up on a statement.
The five options
1. International bank wire
Your bank sends money over the SWIFT network to the contractor's bank.
Typical cost is $25 to $45 per outgoing wire, plus an FX spread buried in the rate your bank quotes, plus whatever each intermediary bank deducts on the way. Arrival is usually two to five business days. Into thinner corridors, wires can sit in intermediary review for a week and land short.
It handles job one (moving money) and none of jobs two through four. There are no contracts, no tax forms, no invoicing, and no record of what the payment was for beyond a memo line.
Reasonable when: you pay one contractor occasionally and your paperwork genuinely lives elsewhere.
2. Freelance marketplaces
You find and pay the contractor inside a platform like Upwork.
The trade is real: discovery, escrow, and dispute resolution are genuinely valuable when you do not know the person yet. The cost is a percentage of the work, indefinitely, on a relationship that stopped needing discovery months ago. We ran the year-one math for a single long-term contractor in the real cost of paying contractors through Upwork.
Reasonable when: you are still hiring, or the engagement is short and you want escrow.
3. Payment apps and processors
Consumer and small-business payment tools move money to a contractor's email address or account.
They are fast to set up, which is the entire appeal. The costs are usually a percentage of the payment plus a currency-conversion margin, and both vary by country, funding source, and account type. Check the current published fee schedule for your specific corridor before assuming this is the cheap option, because the conversion margin is often the larger half. On the compliance side these are payment rails, not contractor tools: no contracts, no tax form collection, no invoicing workflow.
Reasonable when: you need to pay someone this afternoon and you will sort out the paperwork separately.
4. Multi-currency transfer accounts
Purpose-built cross-border money movement, priced transparently.
This is the strongest option on pure cost. Wise publishes US business pricing starting at 0.23% per transfer at the mid-market rate, with volume discounts once spend passes $25,000 and a $31 one-time account setup fee. Transfers on major corridors often land in minutes. On the cost of moving a dollar across a border, that is hard to beat, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What it does not do is jobs three and four. It is a payments company, reasonably, and does not produce contractor agreements, collect W-8BENs, or generate invoices. We put numbers on that trade in Shor vs. Wise, including the admin hours a transfer account leaves on your desk.
Reasonable when: you want the lowest transfer cost and your contracts, tax forms, and records are genuinely handled somewhere else.
5. Contractor management platforms
Contracts, tax forms, invoicing, and payment in one system, priced per contractor per month.
This is the category that does all four jobs. The variable is what the meter costs and whether the FX margin is a published number or something you have to reconstruct from exchange rates.
Deel charges $49/month per contractor and does not publish an FX margin; independent guides report 0.6% to 2% depending on corridor. Shor is $19/month per contractor, covering 150+ countries, with a flat 2% FX margin disclosed on the receipt and charged only when money actually converts. Contractors invoice in USD or local currency, and the ones who hold USD skip conversion entirely. Same-day rails cover India, the Philippines, Nigeria, and 12+ LATAM corridors; other corridors settle on standard timelines.
Reasonable when: you pay the same people every month and want the compliance layer to exist without building it.
Side by side
| Method | Typical cost | FX transparency | Contracts and tax forms | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bank wire | $25-45 per transfer | Spread buried in the rate | No | 2-5 days, longer in thin corridors |
| Freelance marketplace | Percentage of the work, ongoing | Varies, often not published | Partial, platform terms | Fast inside the platform |
| Payment app | Percentage plus conversion margin | Varies by corridor | No | Fast |
| Multi-currency account | From 0.23% plus a small per-currency fee | Published, mid-market based | No | Often minutes on major corridors |
| Contractor platform | $19-49 per contractor/month | Published by some, not all | Yes | Varies by provider and corridor |
The math for one contractor at $3,000 a month
Twelve monthly payments, platform and transfer costs only, ignoring the value of your time:
| Method | Year one cost |
|---|---|
| Bank wire ($35 each plus a 2% spread) | About $1,140 |
| Multi-currency account (0.23%) | About $83, plus per-transfer fees and $31 setup |
| Shor ($19/month plus 2% on conversion) | $228, plus up to $720 if every dollar converts |
| Deel ($49/month plus reported 0.6-2%) | $588, plus roughly $216 to $720 |
Read that table honestly. On the conversion itself, a multi-currency account beats a flat 2%, and if pure transfer cost is your only criterion it wins. The rows are not comparable line for line, though, because only the bottom two include contracts, tax form collection, and invoicing. The wire row also excludes the FX spread you cannot see, which is the number most likely to be worse than assumed.
The other thing the table hides: contractors who hold their balance in USD and convert on their own schedule pay the 2% only on what they actually convert, which for many is a fraction of what they earn.
The compliance part nobody puts in the comparison table
Whatever method you choose, these are yours to handle:
- A real contractor agreement. Scope, payment terms, IP assignment, and a working relationship that actually looks like contracting. Paying through a slick tool does not fix a worker who is functionally an employee. The classification has to be real, and getting it wrong costs far more than any fee on this page.
- A W-8BEN before the first payment. It establishes that the contractor is a foreign person. A non-US contractor performing services outside the US is generally not 1099-reportable, but reporting rules and thresholds change, so confirm your specific filing obligations with your accountant.
- Invoices that match payments. Not for the tax authority so much as for your next diligence process.
- Records that survive a year. Who you paid, for what, under which agreement.
How to choose
- One payment, one time: a bank wire is fine. Do not over-engineer it.
- Still hiring, short engagement: stay on the marketplace until the relationship is established.
- Lowest transfer cost and paperwork handled elsewhere: a multi-currency account.
- The same people, every month: a contractor platform, and compare them on the FX margin as a written number rather than the headline fee.
If you want the vendor-level detail, we have Wise vs. Deel vs. Shor for the three-way comparison and Deel pricing explained for the line-by-line breakdown.
All third-party pricing and features referenced are from each provider's published pages or the cited independent guides as of August 2026 and may change; confirm current figures directly with each provider. Trademarks belong to their respective owners, and no provider mentioned here is affiliated with or endorses Shor.
FAQ
What is the cheapest way to pay international contractors? For the transfer alone, a multi-currency transfer account is usually cheapest; Wise publishes US business pricing from 0.23% at the mid-market rate. Once you account for contracts, W-8BEN collection, and invoicing, a contractor platform is often cheaper overall because you are not doing that work by hand. Shor is $19/month per contractor with a flat disclosed 2% FX margin charged only when money converts.
Can I just pay international contractors by bank wire? Yes, and for occasional payments it is perfectly reasonable. The costs are $25 to $45 per wire, an FX spread buried in the exchange rate, two to five day arrival, and the fact that a wire produces no contract, no tax form, and no invoice. Those gaps get expensive once payments become monthly.
Do I need a W-8BEN from a contractor outside the US? Collect one before the first payment. It establishes the contractor's foreign status for US tax purposes. Reporting obligations depend on where the work is performed and where the contractor is resident, and the rules change, so confirm your specific filing requirements with your accountant.
Does paying contractors in USD cost me more? No. The contractor invoices in USD, and on Shor the flat 2% applies only when they choose to convert to local currency, which is effectively their side of the transaction. Many contractors hold part of their balance in USD and convert only what they need, so conversion applies to less than the full amount. Our guide to paying international contractors in USD covers why teams ask for it.