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Comparison

Capstan and Oyster

Oyster is a serious product, and this page is not a scorecard. It sets out how each of the two is built, taking each side from how it is publicly positioned, and then gives you the questions worth putting to any vendor in this market, us included. Where Oyster is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.

What each one is built to be

Start here rather than with a feature list. Most of the difference between two HR products is decided before either one ships a feature, by what business the company is in.

Oyster, as publicly positioned, October 2026

Oyster presents itself as a global employment platform built around employer of record, with contractor management and cross-border payroll alongside, and a compliance-forward, people-first posture it backs with human HR expertise. It describes itself as a B Corp certified employer of record whose purpose is to make hiring across borders straightforward for distributed teams: owning the local employment where a company holds no entity, and adding advisory services for the multi-country HR questions that follow. The centre of gravity of the public offer is taking the employment on across borders, compliantly, with expert help attached.

Capstan, published on this site

Capstan is an HR system of record for companies that employ their own people. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and the workflows around them, with the module suite included on every plan for the rest. It is not an employer of record, it computes no payroll, and it runs as a self-contained stack in one EU region live today, data in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam.

Set out in full on the product page, with the residency model on security and every figure on pricing.

Three structural differences

One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what Oyster does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.

  1. Who holds the employment

    Oyster, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    Employer of record is the published core: where you have no entity in a country, a legal employer is arranged there, and the local contract, payroll, benefits and the statutory obligations that come with employing someone are taken on with it.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan employs nobody. It is a system of record for employment you already hold in your own entity: you are the employer, and Capstan is where that employment is written down. It is not an employer of record and never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster.

  2. Who computes and moves payroll

    Oyster, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    Cross-border payroll for the people on its platform is a service Oyster operates, moving money to employees and contractors in the countries it covers, with the statutory content behind it maintained as the rules change.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan is the system of inputs and the system of record; the computation belongs to your payroll partner. It compiles the export, receives the computed results back onto the employee record, moves no money, and holds no statutory rate, slab or formula anywhere.

  3. How the offer is shaped

    Oyster, as publicly positioned, October 2026

    The offer is organised around cross-border employment and the expertise around it: employer-of-record employees, contractors and payroll, with advisory services that put multi-country HR experts alongside the software, presented as one platform for hiring compliantly in many countries.

    Capstan, published on this site

    One core, identical on every plan including the free one, with all fourteen modules included. It is a product rather than an advisory service: the employment-law judgement stays with your own advisers, and what you pay follows how many people you have, month to month, with no annual contract and no lock-in, every figure on one public page.

The six questions to ask any vendor, including us

Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: Oyster’s answers are theirs to give, and a comparison page that fills them in has stopped being a comparison. Ask them the same six, and set what you are told beside ours.

  1. Who employs our people, and who carries the liability?

    It decides who is on the contract of employment, who answers a labour authority, and what you are actually buying: a service that takes the employment on, or a system that records it.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    You do. Capstan is not an employer of record, never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster, and moves no payroll money. If you need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is a different kind of vendor.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  2. Who computes payroll, and whose name is on the filing?

    Computation and filing are where liability sits. A vendor that calculates and files is taking that on. A vendor that prepares inputs is not, and you need the second half of the arrangement in place before you rely on either.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    Not Capstan, by design. It compiles joiners and leavers, pay structures, leave, attendance and adjustments into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula, and files nothing with any authority.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  3. Where does our data live, and who inside the vendor can reach it?

    Residency is a property of where the database is, not of a promise in a policy. Support access is the same question from the other end: not whether staff would look, but whether the system lets them without you switching it on.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    One isolated region, the EU today: data in Frankfurt, compute in Amsterdam. It is a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, so there is no runtime path out of the region. Staff hold no tenant of their own, and access exists only while you have granted a time-boxed consent, masked by default and audited on both sides.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  4. What do we get on the plan we start on, and what changes as we grow?

    This is what growing costs you. If capability moves between tiers, the upgrade you eventually buy is largely software you were already being shown.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Paying lifts the cap and includes all fourteen modules at no extra charge, billed month to month with no annual contract and no lock-in. Every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  5. What happens to our data the day we leave, or the day a payment fails?

    Export is the price of leaving. Either it is written down before you join, or it gets decided at the moment you have the least leverage you will ever have.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    An owner can take a full export at any time: one archive of JSON and CSV, in open formats, with a documented manifest. Export deliberately sits outside the suspension check, so a workspace held for non-payment can still be exported. Deletion is cryptographic erasure followed by hard deletion, with a residue scan.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  6. Does any software judge our people, and can the person see why?

    Whether software scores, ranks or screens people decides who is accountable for the judgement, and whether the person it was made about can be shown the reason.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    No AI scores, ranks or screens your people, and that is architectural rather than a promise: nothing of the kind is built, and the analytics engine can only ever narrow who sees what, with small groups suppressed. There is one optional assistant a workspace can turn on. When it is on, it answers from aggregate figures a caller could already see, such as headcount by department, which it sends to our one AI sub-processor, OpenAI, listed on the sub-processor register and not used to train on the data. No per-person or sensitive record is ever sent to an outside model or used to train one.

    Oyster’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

If an answer of ours turns out to be wrong, it is a bug and we will fix the page. The same standard applies to anything here about Oyster: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose Oyster if

This is the part of the page that makes the rest of it worth reading. If one of these describes you, the honest answer is that Oyster is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You need to hire someone in a country where you have no legal entity. That is what an employer of record is for, and Capstan does not offer one at any price or on any plan.
  • Hiring and paying people across several countries compliantly is the problem in front of you this quarter, and you want one company carrying the employment, the payroll and the in-country compliance rather than a system of record plus a local partner in each country.
  • You want multi-country HR expertise on hand alongside the software, advisers who have done cross-border employment before. Oyster puts that human help in its offer, and Capstan is a product rather than an advisory service.

The part that costs us the sale

Where Capstan is the wrong choice

Not a softened version of the section above. These are requirements Capstan does not meet and is not going to meet, written down so you can rule us out in a minute rather than in a quarter. If one of them is true of you, nothing else on this page matters.

  1. You need a legal employer somewhere you have no entity. Capstan will not become one, now or later.

  2. You want one vendor to hold the employment, run the payroll and move the money across borders. Capstan does none of those three.

  3. Most of your people are employed through an employer of record or paid as contractors by the platform itself. Capstan records people you employ in your own entity, so most of what you are buying would sit outside it.

That is the list as we understand it today. If you hit a limit that is not on it, tell us: a disqualifier we did not know about belongs here more than anything else on the page.

If nothing on this page ruled us out, run it yourself.

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