Direct Hire Recruiting Fees: What Agencies Charge in 2026

The short answer

A direct hire fee is a one-time charge. It is nearly always a percentage of the person's first-year salary, and you pay it once, not every year. What changes from agency to agency is when you have to pay it, and what happens if the person does not work out.

• Contingency: you pay nothing unless you hire one of their people, and the bill comes when that person starts.
• Retained: you pay them to go looking, a bit at a time, even if they never find anyone.
• Flat rate: one percentage on every role. A junior coordinator costs the same to fill as a senior developer.
• Ours is a flat 25 percent of first-year salary. You pay it once, and we replace the person free if they leave in the first 30 days.

I am not asking you to take my word for any of this. The biggest recruiting firms have to publish what they charge, and I quote two of them below.

Key takeaways

• You are paying them to go find people, reach out to them, and check them before you ever see a resume.
• Deciding what the job is, interviewing, and training the person stay your job, no matter who you hire.
• With a contingency agency you pay nothing until someone starts. With a retained one you pay either way.
• The replacement guarantee is short. When it starts counting matters as much as how long it lasts.

How a direct hire search runs, and who does what

Before the money makes sense, it helps to see who does what. Hiring this way has six stages. You handle some of them and the agency handles the rest.

Two of those stages are where hiring usually goes wrong, and both of them are yours. The first is deciding what you want. If you cannot say what the person will do in their first month, nobody can go and find them. You will spend six weeks saying no to resumes just to work out what you wanted. The second is how fast you move. A good candidate is talking to three companies at once, so leave a week between interviews and you will lose them.

That last row is the one nobody can take off you. Training is the thing people underestimate most on a first remote hire. You have to explain how your company works, give them logins, and tell them what a good job looks like. Expect about two weeks before they are up to speed. How to build and manage a remote team covers that.

What you are really paying for, and the charges on top

With a contingency agency, the fee pays for rows two, three and five of that table, and no money moves until somebody starts. The agency takes the risk, so the same job is often out with two or three agencies at once.

A retained agency works differently, and this is the one that surprises people. Heidrick & Struggles is one of the big search firms. In its 2024 report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, it says firms like it usually get paid "approximately one-third of the estimated first year compensation for the position to be filled." You pay that in three pieces over three months, and the money is gone whether or not you hire anyone.

That is not the whole bill either. The same report says they also charge "indirect expenses, equal to a specified percentage of the retainer." That is a second charge on top of the first. Then there can be a third. The fee starts from a guess at what the job will pay, and if you end up paying the person more, the firm is "often authorized to bill the client for one-third of the excess."

The guarantee is the clause worth reading twice

Every agency says it stands behind the person it places. The agreement tells you for how long, and across this whole industry the honest answer is not very long.

Kforce is another big staffing company, and it has to keep track of the hires that do not work out. Its 2025 annual report says this happens "when a candidate does not remain employed with the client through the respective contingency period (typically 90 days or less)." So you get 90 days or less. After that, if the person leaves, it is your problem.

Two things decide whether that promise is worth anything. First, do they find you somebody else, or give you your money back? Most agreements do the first. Second, when does the countdown start? One that starts at the offer letter is shorter than one that starts on the first day, and there can be a month between those dates.

Five questions to ask before you sign

These are the ones I would want answered in writing. A good agency answers all five in about two minutes.

• "Is this contingency or retained?": You want to know whether you can walk away without paying anything. If they say retained, ask what happens if they never find anyone.
• "When is the fee due, and what is it a percentage of?": You want the first day of work, not the day they sign the offer. And you want base salary, unless you are happy paying a percentage of a bonus the person might never earn.
• "How long is the guarantee, and do I get a replacement or my money back?": Get the number of days, and the date it starts counting. Ninety days from their first day of work beats ninety days from the offer.
• "What gets billed on top of the percentage?": Expenses, background checks, tests, travel. Ask them to list everything. If they say nothing else is billed, ask them to put that in the agreement.
• "How much of what I pay reaches the person doing the work?": This matters most when you are paying every month, rather than once. Some firms pay the worker a small slice of what they bill and keep the rest. Taking a fair cut is normal, so if they will not tell you the number, that is what should worry you.

When a contractor costs less than a placement fee

A one-time fee makes sense when you are sure about the role, and you expect this person to still be there in three years.

Plenty of hiring is not like that. Maybe you are still working out whether you need the role at all. Maybe the work dries up in six months. Maybe you need somebody next month and cannot get the job approved until January. In all of those, paying a quarter of a year's salary up front is the wrong thing to spend money on.

The other way is to bring the person on as a contractor, month to month, with no fee at the start. You pay a monthly rate, you can stop whenever you want, and if the role works out you can buy them out later. Our monthly rates by role are on the pricing page, and direct hire is there too if you already want the permanent version. Which of those two a country's law will accept is a separate question, and contractor vs employee in Latin America works through it.

What we take off your plate

Look back at the table. Rows two, three and five take up a hiring manager's whole month, and those are the ones we do.

• You never have to go looking: We find the people and talk to them on video before you see a resume. My team checks who they are, calls their references, runs a background check, and listens to how they speak English. You get a short list back.
• One agreement, and we pay the person: You sign one agreement with us. We sign with the person and pay them each month, and they work directly with your team. No separate contract in another country, and no working out how to send money there.
• You can start month to month: You do not have to commit to a permanent hire just to find out whether the role works. Most roles cost $1,500 to $3,500 a month, and you can buy the person out later if you want them on your own payroll.
• There is somebody to call in month two: If something feels off after the person starts, you can call us. We talk to both sides. Most of what goes wrong at that point can be fixed, and almost never over email.

The last row is still yours. You train the person and get them up to speed. I would rather tell you that now than after you sign.

Get a real number on your role

Tell us the role and the salary you had in mind. We will tell you what the fee comes to, what the monthly option would cost instead, and how fast we can fill it. If you would be better off hiring locally, we will say so. Send us the role and you get a straight number back.