How Much Do Staffing Agencies Charge? 2026 Fees, Markups and Rates
August 27, 2026
Staffing agencies charge in one of three ways: a markup of 25% to 85% on a contract worker's hourly pay, a direct hire placement fee of 15% to 30% of first-year salary, or a single all-in hourly rate. Staffing Industry Analysts reports the most common direct hire fee is 20% of first-year salary, cited by 42% of staffing firms. On the contract side, published markups cluster between 30% and 75% depending on the role, which turns a $25 hourly pay rate into a bill rate somewhere between $32.50 and $46.25 for the same person.
That spread is the whole problem. A markup is a percentage of a number most buyers never see, so two agencies can quote what looks like the same service and bill 40% apart. This page normalizes every model to a figure you can compare: cost per hour, and cost per year of tenure.
Third-party figures are those each source or provider publishes on its own site, checked in August 2026. Virtustant figures are first-party.
Every quote you will receive is a variant of one of three structures. They are not interchangeable, and the difference is not price: it is who employs the person, and whether you pay once or every hour.
| Structure | What you pay | Who engages the worker | Recurring or one-time | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contract / temp markup | The worker's pay rate plus a markup of 25% to 85% | The agency | Recurring, every hour worked | Coverage is temporary, seasonal or project-bound |
| Direct hire placement fee | 15% to 30% of first-year salary, or a flat fee | You do, on your payroll | One-time, at placement | You want the person on staff permanently |
| Managed all-in hourly | One published hourly rate covering contracting, payroll and compliance | The agency | Recurring, but there is no separate markup to calculate | You want dedicated capacity without building employment infrastructure |
A fourth arrangement, temp-to-hire, sits between the first two: you pay the markup while the person is on contract, then a conversion fee if you bring them onto your payroll. Kore1 publishes that conversion fee at 10% to 25% of projected first-year salary, typically reduced the longer the contract has run.
The critical distinction is the one buyers most often miss. A placement fee is a transaction cost. A markup is an operating cost. One appears on a single invoice; the other compounds for as long as the person stays. That is why comparing "20% versus 50%" tells you nothing until you fix a time horizon, which is what the breakeven section below does.
Agencies rarely quote an hourly figure directly. They quote a markup, and the hourly cost falls out of it. Here is what published markup ranges do to a bill rate, using a $25 pay rate as the constant.
| Markup applied | Bill rate on a $25 pay rate | Agency's share per hour | Annual cost at 2,080 hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25% (low end, clerical) | $31.25 | $6.25 | $65,000 |
| 35% | $33.75 | $8.75 | $70,200 |
| 50% (common midpoint) | $37.50 | $12.50 | $78,000 |
| 65% | $41.25 | $16.25 | $85,800 |
| 75% (high end, specialized) | $43.75 | $18.75 | $91,000 |
| 85% (top of published range) | $46.25 | $21.25 | $96,200 |
The same worker, at the same pay, costs between $65,000 and $96,200 a year depending only on which agency you signed with. That is a $31,200 swing on one placement, and nothing about the work changed.
Markups are not arbitrary. They track how hard the role is to fill and how much statutory cost the agency carries. Human Cloud published this breakdown in March 2026:
| Role category | Typical markup | Bill rate on a $25 pay rate |
|---|---|---|
| Light industrial and clerical | 25% to 40% | $31.25 to $35.00 |
| General professional | 35% to 50% | $33.75 to $37.50 |
| Executive and leadership | 40% to 60% | $35.00 to $40.00 |
| IT staffing | 40% to 65% | $35.00 to $41.25 |
| Specialized technology | 50% to 75% | $37.50 to $43.75 |
Other published sources bracket the same territory from different angles. altLINE puts temporary and contract markups at 20% to 75% and permanent placements at 10% to 20%. Frontline Source Group publishes 50% to 85% for contract work. Kore1 puts IT contract markups at 25% to 75%, with 35% to 50% typical.
Operator rule: a markup percentage is meaningless without the pay rate it is applied to. Ask for both numbers in writing, or ask for the bill rate directly. An agency that will quote a markup but not the pay rate is quoting you a percentage of a secret.
Contract markups are only half the market. The other half is managed providers who quote monthly packages, hourly rates, per-unit blocks or nothing at all. Those units are not comparable as published, so the table below converts every one to an effective hourly cost using each provider's own figures, checked in August 2026. Monthly plans are divided by 173.3 hours, which is 40 hours a week across 52 weeks divided by 12. Blank figures mean the provider does not publish one.
| Provider | Model | Published price | Effective cost per hour | Fee to hire | Replacement | Talent base |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belay | US managed assistant service | Not published; consultation required | Not calculable | Not published | Not published | US |
| Boldly | Subscription, own staff | $2,600 for 40 hrs/mo; $3,900 for 60; $5,200 for 80; $6,500 for 100 | $65.00 flat across tiers; $79.00 for specialist tasks | Not published | Not published | US |
| HireLATAM | Recruiter, flat fee | $3,500 per placement ($500 deposit, $3,000 on placement) | Not applicable; one-time | $3,500 | 90 days; 6 months with the $149/mo payroll add-on | LATAM |
| MyOutDesk | Managed, full-time only | From $1,988/mo; specialized from $2,500/mo | ≈$11.47 ($1,988 ÷ 173.3) | No setup fee | At no additional cost | Philippines, Peru, Morocco |
| Prialto | Managed units | From $1,500/mo per 55-hour unit | ≈$27.27 ($1,500 ÷ 55) | $250 setup, waived on annual | Not published | Not stated; US and UK hours |
| Somewhere | Recruiter and Talent On-Demand | Not published; a percentage of first-year salary plus a refundable deposit, amounts not disclosed | Not calculable | Not published | 6 months, one free replacement | LATAM and global |
| Time Etc | Monthly hour bundles | $390 for 10 hrs; $760 for 20; $1,480 for 40; $2,160 for 60 | $36 to $39, published by Time Etc | No setup fee | Free replacement | US |
| Upwork | Self-serve marketplace | Freelancer's rate plus a 5% client marketplace fee on Basic, 10% on Business Plus, and a contract initiation fee of $0.99 to $14.99 | Variable | Platform fees | None | Global |
| Valatam | Monthly, LATAM | Core from $2,000/mo; Advanced from $2,500; Specialized from $3,500 (40 hrs/week) | ≈$11.54 ($2,000 ÷ 173.3) | No setup fee | First week: refund or free replacement | Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina |
| Virtual Latinos | Hourly, LATAM | $8 to $10 entry; $11 to $15 mid; $16+ expert, plus $1/hr for 20 to 30 hrs/week | $8 to $16+ | No recruitment or setup fees | At no cost, conditions apply | LATAM |
| Virtustant | Managed nearshore staffing | From $7.00/hr all-in; median $8.00 across verified placements | $7.00 | $0 | Lifetime, no time cap | LATAM, global bench |
| Wing Assistant | Managed | Not published; consultation required | Not calculable | Not published | Not published | Not stated |
| Wishup | Monthly plans | Prime $1,999; Elite $2,999; US-based $5,400, at 4 or 8 hours a day | ≈$11.53 at 8 hrs/day; ≈$23.07 at 4 | Not published | Free replacement | India, or a US option |
None of these are visible from the providers' own pricing pages, because each one requires converting somebody else's unit into yours.
Monthly plans that look cheaper in absolute terms often carry the highest hourly cost, because the hours are capped. Boldly's $2,600 plan is a smaller invoice than MyOutDesk's $1,988 is a larger one, but Boldly buys 40 hours a month and MyOutDesk buys full-time. Per hour that is $65.00 against $11.47, a 5.7x difference that the headline prices actively hide.
Three of the most frequently recommended providers in this category publish no figure at all. Belay, Wing Assistant and Somewhere all require a consultation before a number exists, which means no buyer can run this comparison before a sales call. Boldly published rates during 2026 and is now the transparency exception among US services.
The fee to hire is where the models diverge most, and it is the easiest number to forget. A recruiter's $3,500 is a real cost that never appears in an hourly comparison. On published figures, Virtustant has the lowest entry rate and the only $0 placement fee in this table.
Virtustant publishes an all-in rate from $7.00 per hour, with a median of $8.00 across verified placements and no placement fee (August 2026). Payroll administration, cross-border contracting and compliance sit inside that rate, so there is no separate markup to calculate: the published rate is the rate you pay. Current rates by role are on the Virtustant pricing page.
Direct hire, sometimes called permanent placement, is the model where you pay once and the person joins your payroll. It is the most standardized fee in staffing, and the published ranges agree closely.
| Source | Published direct hire fee | Basis | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staffing Industry Analysts, via SPECTRAFORCE | 20% is the most common fee, reported by 42% of staffing firms; professional staffing midrange 18% to 22%; direct hire firms 20% to 25% | Industry survey | May 2025 |
| SPECTRAFORCE | 15% to 25% of first-year salary | Own published range | May 2025 |
| Kore1 | 15% to 30%: entry 15% to 18%, mid 20% to 22%, senior 25% to 30%, executive IT 25% to 33% | IT staffing, by seniority | Feb 2026, updated Jul 2026 |
| Frontline Source Group | 20% to 30% of first-year base salary; executive search 25% to 35% of first-year compensation | Own published range | Mar 2026, updated May 2026 |
| altLINE | 10% to 20% for permanent placements | Market range | Checked Aug 2026 |
| HireLATAM | $3,500 flat per placement, structured as a $500 deposit and $3,000 on placement | Own published fee, LATAM | Checked Aug 2026 |
Two observations worth carrying into a negotiation. The percentages converge tightly around 20%, so a quote materially above 25% for a non-executive role deserves a question rather than an assumption. And a flat fee behaves differently from a percentage as salary rises: HireLATAM's $3,500 is 11.7% of a $30,000 salary but only 5.8% of a $60,000 one, while a 20% fee scales with the hire.
| First-year salary | Fee at 15% | Fee at 20% (most common) | Fee at 30% | Flat $3,500 as a % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $6,000 | $8,000 | $12,000 | 8.8% |
| $60,000 | $9,000 | $12,000 | $18,000 | 5.8% |
| $80,000 | $12,000 | $16,000 | $24,000 | 4.4% |
| $120,000 | $18,000 | $24,000 | $36,000 | 2.9% |
Ask what the fee is calculated on, because "first-year compensation" and "first-year base salary" are different numbers when the role carries commission, a bonus or a signing payment. Frontline publishes its executive figure against compensation; most professional fees are quoted against base.
This is the comparison nobody publishes, and it is the one that decides the model. A placement fee is paid once. A markup is paid every hour, forever. So the honest question is not which percentage is lower, but how long the person has to stay before the recurring cost overtakes the one-time cost.
The arithmetic below uses a $60,000-a-year role, which is $28.85 an hour across 2,080 hours, against the most common direct hire fee of 20%, or $12,000. Every input is on the page so you can substitute your own.
| Markup on contract | Bill rate per hour | Annual cost above the wage | Per month above the wage | Breakeven vs a $12,000 placement fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% | $37.50 | $18,000 | $1,500 | 8.0 months |
| 40% | $40.38 | $24,000 | $2,000 | 6.0 months |
| 50% | $43.27 | $30,000 | $2,500 | 4.8 months |
| 65% | $47.60 | $39,000 | $3,250 | 3.7 months |
| 75% | $50.48 | $45,000 | $3,750 | 3.2 months |
At a 50% markup, a contract placement costs more than a direct hire fee after roughly five months. At the top of the published range it happens in under fourteen weeks. Since the median tenure of a professional hire is measured in years, not months, the recurring model is almost always the more expensive way to fill a permanent seat, and almost always the cheaper way to fill a temporary one.
Two caveats keep this honest. The breakeven ignores the employer costs you take on with a direct hire, which are real: payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and management time typically add 1.25x to 1.4x on top of salary. And it ignores replacement risk, which is exactly what the guarantee period is for. The point is not that one model wins, but that the answer depends entirely on expected tenure, and a fee comparison that omits tenure is not a comparison at all.
A managed all-in rate sits outside this table by design, because there is no separate markup and no placement fee to amortize. At $7.00 an hour all-in, a full-time placement is about $1,213 a month at 173.3 hours; the typical full-time band across roles and seniority is $1,500 to $5,000 a month. Against a comparable US hire, that can save up to 70% once payroll, benefits and overhead are counted rather than just the hourly rate. See the US versus LATAM salary guide for the underlying rate data.
A 50% markup sounds like a 50% profit. It is not, and knowing the composition is what makes a negotiation productive rather than adversarial. Human Cloud published this breakdown of a typical 50% markup in March 2026:
| Component | Share of the markup | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| FICA taxes | 7.65% | Statutory employer contribution, not optional |
| Federal and state unemployment insurance | 2% to 5% | Statutory, varies by state and claims history |
| Benefits and paid time off | 5% to 15% | Health coverage, PTO accrual |
| Recruiting and sales overhead | 8% to 15% | Sourcing, screening, account management |
| General overhead | 5% to 8% | Software, insurance, back office |
| Net profit | 3% to 5% | What the agency keeps |
Kore1 publishes a comparable net margin figure of 3% to 8% on bill rates. altLINE's worked example lands in the same place: a $30 pay rate plus $15 of burden and operating cost produces a $45 bill rate, a 50% markup, of which most is cost rather than margin.
The practical consequence: roughly two-thirds of a typical markup is statutory and operational cost the agency cannot remove. Asking an agency to cut 50% to 35% is asking it to operate below the cost of employing the person. Asking what sits inside the markup, and which of those items you are already paying for elsewhere, is a better conversation.
This is also why an all-in hourly rate is structurally different rather than just cheaper. The costs in that table still exist; they are priced into one number instead of being expressed as a percentage of a pay rate you do not see. Virtustant's model is described the same way to every client: if you pay your agent $10 an hour, we give them $9 and keep the dollar in the middle.
The markup or placement fee is the headline. These seven are where a quoted rate and an actual invoice diverge, and each one should be answered in writing before signature.
Operator rule: ask for a sample invoice for a normal month and for an exception month, with overtime and a mid-month start. A rate card describes the plan; a sample invoice describes the bill.
A staffing agency sources, screens and presents candidates, and in the contract and managed models it also employs or contracts the worker, which is what moves payroll, taxes and compliance off your books. You define the role and make the hiring decision; the agency carries the search and, depending on the model, the employment relationship.
The sequence is consistent across the industry: intake and role definition, sourcing, screening, shortlist, your interviews, offer, and then either placement onto your payroll (direct hire) or onto the agency's (contract and managed staffing). What varies is where the agency's responsibility ends. A recruiter's ends at the offer. A managed provider's continues for as long as the placement does, which is why replacement guarantees only exist in that second group.
For a fuller walkthrough of the model and its variants, see what a staffing agency is and how the types differ. For how the managed nearshore version works specifically, see nearshore staffing for US companies.
Fees are more negotiable than rate cards imply, but the leverage is rarely in the percentage itself, because two-thirds of a markup is cost. It is in the terms around it.
Volume is the strongest lever: multiple concurrent placements or a committed pipeline justifies a lower markup because the agency's sourcing cost per placement falls. Exclusivity is the second, and it costs you optionality. Payment timing is the third, and it is often the easiest win: faster payment terms improve the agency's working capital, which is worth real basis points to them and nothing to you if you were paying on time anyway.
Four asks that are usually available even when the headline rate is not:
Publishing this makes the rest of the page more useful, not less. There are four situations where an agency of any kind is the wrong tool.
The work is under about five hours a month. Below that, the coordination cost exceeds the value of dedicated capacity, and a marketplace or a one-off contractor is a better fit.
The role requires physical presence. Anything tied to a location, equipment on site or in-person supervision is not a remote staffing question, and a local temp agency will serve it better than any remote provider.
The role requires US licensure or on-soil compliance. Certain financial, legal, healthcare and government-adjacent functions carry requirements that a remote professional outside the US cannot satisfy, regardless of skill.
You need the person on your payroll for a strategic reason, such as equity participation, a formal management line or a client-facing title that must sit inside your entity. That is a direct hire, and the right question is which fee model, not whether to use contract capacity.
If none of those apply and the work is recurring, remote-viable and more than a few hours a week, the comparison is the one this page has run: cost per hour, cost per year of tenure, and what sits inside the rate.
It depends on the model. For contract and temporary placements, agencies charge a markup on the worker's hourly pay, published between 25% and 85% and most commonly between 30% and 75% depending on the role. For direct hire, they charge a one-time placement fee of 15% to 30% of first-year salary, with 20% the most common figure according to Staffing Industry Analysts. Managed staffing providers instead quote a single all-in hourly or monthly rate: Virtustant publishes from $7.00 an hour with no placement fee, MyOutDesk from $1,988 a month, Time Etc from $390 for 10 hours.
Agencies quote a markup rather than an hourly figure, so the hourly cost is the pay rate plus that markup. On a $25 pay rate, a 30% markup bills $32.50 an hour and an 85% markup bills $46.25 for the same person. Among managed providers publishing rates in August 2026, effective hourly costs run from $7.00 (Virtustant, all-in) and about $11.47 (MyOutDesk) up to about $27.27 (Prialto), $36 to $39 (Time Etc) and $65.00 (Boldly).
Between 25% and 85% of the pay rate on contract work, and 15% to 30% of first-year salary on a direct hire. But little of that is profit: Human Cloud's breakdown of a typical 50% markup puts 7.65% into FICA, 2% to 5% into unemployment insurance, 5% to 15% into benefits and PTO, 8% to 15% into recruiting overhead and 5% to 8% into general overhead, leaving a net margin of 3% to 5%. Kore1 publishes a comparable net margin of 3% to 8%.
15% to 30% of first-year salary is the published range, and the distribution is tight around 20%: Staffing Industry Analysts reports 20% as the most common fee, cited by 42% of staffing firms, with professional staffing firms reporting an 18% to 22% midrange. On a $60,000 salary, 20% is $12,000. Some providers charge a flat fee instead, which changes the economics at higher salaries: HireLATAM publishes $3,500 per placement, which is 5.8% of a $60,000 hire and 2.9% of a $120,000 one.
The agency defines the role with you, sources and screens candidates, and presents a shortlist; you interview and decide. What happens next depends on the model. In direct hire, the person joins your payroll and the agency's involvement ends after the guarantee period. In contract and managed staffing, the agency employs or contracts the person, so payroll, taxes and compliance sit with them for as long as the placement runs, which is why replacement guarantees exist in that model and not in the other.
Among providers publishing figures in August 2026, Virtustant charges $0 to hire, with no placement, setup or recruitment fee, and runs month to month. Virtual Latinos and Valatam also publish no recruitment or setup fees on their hourly and monthly models. Recruiters charge one by design: HireLATAM publishes $3,500 per placement, and Somewhere charges a percentage of first-year salary plus a refundable deposit without publishing the amounts.
For a permanent role, a one-time placement fee is usually cheaper than a recurring markup, and the crossover is faster than most buyers expect. On a $60,000 role with a $12,000 placement fee, a 50% contract markup costs more after about 4.8 months, and a 75% markup after about 3.2 months. For temporary or uncertain work the markup is the cheaper structure precisely because it stops when the work does. The variable that decides it is expected tenure, not the percentage.
Human Cloud publishes 30% to 75% as the overall market range, broken down as 25% to 40% for light industrial and clerical, 35% to 50% for general professional, 40% to 60% for executive and leadership, 40% to 65% for IT and 50% to 75% for specialized technology. altLINE puts temporary and contract markups at 20% to 75%. Frontline Source Group publishes 50% to 85% for contract work, at the higher end of the published spread.
It is what you pay to move a contract worker onto your own payroll. Kore1 publishes 10% to 25% of projected first-year salary, and the figure is often reduced on a sliding scale the longer the contract has run, on the reasoning that the agency has already recovered its sourcing cost through the markup. Agree the scale in writing at the start of the contract rather than at the point you want to convert, which is when your leverage is lowest.
Yes, though rarely much on the percentage itself, because roughly two-thirds of a markup is statutory and operating cost. The available levers are volume, exclusivity and payment timing, and the terms around the fee are usually more negotiable than the fee: extending the guarantee period, capping the conversion fee on a published scale, fixing the markup for the contract term, and splitting a placement fee into installments tied to the guarantee window.
If you are comparing quotes, the two numbers to extract from each one are the bill rate per hour and the fee to hire, because those are the only figures that survive the differences between models. Ask for both in writing, then run the breakeven against your expected tenure.
If you want dedicated capacity rather than a search, the fastest way to replace a range with a number is a scoping call: you leave with a rate for your specific role, a timeline and example profiles, whether or not you hire. Virtustant sends a first shortlist of 3 to 5 vetted bilingual candidates within 48 hours, averages 3 days to placement, charges zero recruitment fees, and runs month to month with a lifetime replacement guarantee and no time cap. Candidates reach that shortlist through a vetting funnel of a live English screen, a cognitive assessment, a role-specific skills test and experience and reference verification, which is what the top 1% figure refers to. Book a discovery call, or check what your role costs first.
Sources for the third-party figures above, each publisher's own page checked in August 2026: Human Cloud's 2026 staffing markup analysis (March 2026), altLINE's staffing agency markup guide, Frontline Source Group's published fee structure (March 2026, updated May 2026), Kore1's IT staffing pricing guide (February 2026, updated July 2026), SPECTRAFORCE's direct hire fee analysis citing Staffing Industry Analysts (May 2025), and the public pricing pages of Boldly, HireLATAM, MyOutDesk, Prialto, Somewhere, Time Etc, Upwork, Valatam, Virtual Latinos and Wishup. Belay and Wing Assistant publish no figures.
