# Deel vs HiBob

> Deel scores 69.1 (B) on agent readiness against HiBob's 57 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do hr employees. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob.md (~1,950 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Deel scores 69.1 (B) on agent readiness against HiBob's 57 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do hr employees.

- Deel: grade B, 69.1/100, rank #168 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/deel.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deel.json
- HiBob: grade C, 57/100, rank #484 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/hibob.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hibob.json

## Which one, for what

### Deel (B)

Good for: A company that already runs HR, contractors, EOR or payroll on Deel and wants an agent to read the directory, update personal information, file and review time off, follow onboarding and fetch compliance documents.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 88 against 67
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 78
- Agent ergonomics, 65 against 47
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 59

Watch for: 5 requests a second shared by every token in an organisation, with no rate limit headers on REST responses per the rate limits page

### HiBob (C)

Good for: An agent working inside a company that already runs Bob and needs field-level control over employee data, time off requests, documents and tasks.

Watch for: No public price, free tier or trial. The sandbox is a purchased module


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Deel | HiBob | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 88 | 67 | Deel +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 78 | Deel +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 47 | Deel +18 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 64 | 68 | HiBob +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 0 | Deel +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 59 | Deel +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 71 | HiBob +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **69.1 · B** | **57 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Deel | HiBob |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Deel, Inc. | Hi Bob Ltd. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.letsdeel.com/rest` | `https://api.hibob.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Deel's platform terms. The Deel CLI on GitHub is MIT | Proprietary service under HiBob's customer subscription terms and API Terms of Use |
| Tools exposed | 86 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 17 npm/wk | none |

## Verdicts

**Deel.** The API has 506 operations in public OpenAPI 3.1 specs, about 90 read and write OAuth scopes, a sandbox and a dated versioning policy with one year of deprecation notice. The limit is 5 requests a second for a whole organisation, and the legal documents load only with JavaScript, so data handling terms weren't read.

**HiBob.** Service users start with no permissions and gain view or edit rights per field, and the docs are served as Markdown with an OpenAPI definition on each endpoint page. There is no public price, trial or free sandbox, so an agent needs a paying customer's admin to issue credentials. No idempotency keys or official SDKs were found.

## Before you call either

### Deel

1. Queue calls to stay under 5 requests a second for the whole organisation. Other integrations on the same account share the limit
2. Send `X-Version: 2026-01-01` on REST calls, and watch `X-State`, `Deprecation` and `Sunset` response headers
3. Send a UUID `Idempotency-Key` on POST and PATCH. Only retry a 5xx on a write when the request carried one
4. Test against https://api-staging.letsdeel.com/rest with a sandbox token. Production and sandbox tokens aren't interchangeable
5. Request read scopes only (people:read, time-off:read) for a read-only agent. Rejecting a time-off request is irreversible

### HiBob

1. Send `Authorization: Basic base64(SERVICE-USER-ID:TOKEN)` to https://api.hibob.com/v1. Ask the Bob admin to put the service user in a permission group first, because it starts with none
2. Request only the fields needed in `fields` on POST /people/search (maximum 400). The call returns all matching employees at once, so batch by `root.id` in large companies
3. Compare returned fields with requested ones. Missing permission or a wrong field ID yields 200 with the field omitted
4. Stop on 401 or 403. More than 50 in 10 seconds blocks the IP for 5 minutes
5. Back off on 429 using Retry-After. Writes such as update, create and terminate employee allow 10 calls a minute, and no idempotency key exists, so check state before retrying a write

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Deel or HiBob?

Deel scores 69.1 (B) on agent readiness against HiBob's 57 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Deel and HiBob need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Deel and HiBob without installing anything?

Yes. Deel has a hosted endpoint at https://api.letsdeel.com/rest and HiBob at https://api.hibob.com/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-hibob.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "deel", "b": "hibob"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare deel hibob`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/deel.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/hibob.json

## Other comparisons with Deel or HiBob

- [BambooHR vs Deel](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bamboohr-vs-deel.md)
- [BambooHR vs HiBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bamboohr-vs-hibob.md)
- [Deel vs Factorial](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-factorial.md)
- [Deel vs Humaans](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-humaans.md)
- [Deel vs Rippling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-rippling.md)
- [Deel vs Zoho People](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deel-vs-zoho-people.md)
- [Factorial vs HiBob](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/factorial-vs-hibob.md)
- [HiBob vs Humaans](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hibob-vs-humaans.md)
- [HiBob vs Rippling](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hibob-vs-rippling.md)
- [HiBob vs Zoho People](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hibob-vs-zoho-people.md)