Deel vs Lattice

Deel is a global HR and payroll platform founded in San Francisco in 2019 by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang. It lets companies hire contractors and full-time employees in more than 150 countries, either through Deel's own employer of record (EOR) entities, where Deel legally employs the worker on your behalf, or through payroll for entities you already own.

The product is modular. Contractor management handles localized contracts, invoices and payouts in many currencies; EOR covers employment contracts, benefits, taxes and statutory filings; Global Payroll consolidates payroll for your own entities; and Deel HR is an HRIS with org charts, time off and documents. Add-ons cover immigration and visa support, equipment provisioning, IT management and engagement tools. Contractor, EOR, payroll and HR modules are each priced per worker per month.

Deel suits remote-first startups and scale-ups hiring across many countries, including Turkey, where it can employ staff without a local company. EOR is expensive per employee, so companies often open their own entity once headcount in one country grows. Support quality varies by country, and the breadth of modules adds complexity. Remote.com and Oyster are direct EOR rivals, Rippling is stronger when US payroll and IT are central, and Gusto is simpler for US-only teams.

Lattice is a people management platform from Lattice, Inc., a San Francisco company founded in 2015 by Jack Altman and Eric Koslow and backed by Y Combinator, Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Tiger Global and Dragoneer. It is led by CEO Sarah Franklin and says more than 5,000 organizations use it. Its core job is running the manager-employee rhythm: performance reviews, goals, 1:1s, feedback and engagement surveys in one place.

The product is sold as modules. Performance covers review cycles, calibration, promotions, succession and PIPs. Goals & OKRs handles cascading goals with Jira and Salesforce updates. Engagement runs pulse, onboarding and exit surveys with AI analysis and eNPS. Compensation and Grow are add-ons for pay bands and career tracks. Every base product includes 1:1s, weekly updates, feedback, Q&A boards, analytics and an AI agent that answers policy and career questions.

Lattice fits companies of roughly 50 to 2,000 employees that already have an HRIS and want a more polished talent layer on top. It is not an HRIS or payroll system: BambooHR, Personio and Factorial store employee records and include their own performance modules, which may be enough for smaller teams. Culture Amp and 15Five are its closest direct rivals.

Buying tip: pricing is per seat per month but billed annually in USD with a $4,000 minimum agreement, so a 30-person company pays the minimum even on Performance alone. Lattice also drew criticism in July 2024 for a plan to add AI "digital workers" to org charts, which it reversed within days.