Ask what a recruiting agency charges and you get the same answer everywhere: 15 to 30 percent of first-year salary. True, and useless. The number that matters is what sits behind the percentage: which model, calculated on what base, with what guarantee, and whether the rate survives negotiation. This is the reference page for both sides of that conversation, whether you are a client deciding if a fee is fair or a recruiter deciding what your search is worth.
The four fee models, side by side
US recruiting fees in 2026 cluster into four structures. The staffing industry behind them did about $189 billion in US revenue in 2024, per Staffing Industry Analysts' September 2024 forecast, so these are not boutique conventions; they are how a very large market prices itself.
| Model | Typical 2026 rate | Paid when | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contingency | 15 to 25% of first-year base (20% is the working benchmark; 25 to 30% for senior or scarce specialties) | Only on a successful hire | Mid-level and specialist roles with a reachable candidate pool |
| Retained | 25 to 33% at large firms, 15 to 20% at boutiques; usually in thirds (kickoff, shortlist, placement) | In stages, regardless of outcome | Executive, confidential, or hard-to-close searches |
| Engaged (container) | Contingency-level rate plus an upfront engagement deposit credited against the final fee | Deposit upfront, balance on hire | Priority searches where the client wants commitment without full retained pricing |
| Contract staffing | Markup of 30 to 75% on the contractor's hourly pay rate; specialized IT and technical contracts often run 50 to 85% | Ongoing, per hour billed | Temp, contract-to-hire, project staffing |
Rates and structures per Valuable Recruitment's May 2026 fee breakdown, Leonar's 2026 agency pricing guide, and Frontline Source Group's March 2026 staffing fee data. A fifth structure, embedded recruiting at a flat $5,000 to $20,000 per month, competes with all four when a client is filling several roles a quarter.
The engaged model deserves more attention than it gets. Most fee guides skip it entirely, yet for a solo recruiter it is often the right answer: the deposit (commonly a few thousand dollars, credited against the placement fee) filters out clients who would have treated you as one of four agencies racing on the same req. You get commitment; the client keeps most of the pay-on-delivery economics.
What the percentage means in dollars
Percentages hide the actual invoice. Here is the same math in dollars, at illustrative base salaries for common searches. For live salary benchmarks by role, seniority, and metro, run the numbers against Glozo Intelligence rather than a static table; fee conversations go better when both sides look at current market pay, and our hiring cost by tech stack data shows how much the base itself moves by technology.
| Search (illustrative base) | Fee at 20% | Fee at 25% | Fee at 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales AE, $90,000 | $18,000 | $22,500 | $27,000 |
| RevOps manager, $130,000 | $26,000 | $32,500 | $39,000 |
| Senior software engineer, $160,000 | $32,000 | $40,000 | $48,000 |
| Head of engineering, $220,000 | $44,000 | $55,000 | $66,000 |
Two contract details move these numbers more than the headline rate. First, the calculation base: most agreements use first-year base salary, but some senior searches are priced on total target compensation, which can add tens of thousands to the fee on a heavy-variable role. Pin down which basis applies before signing. Second, the guarantee: the standard is a 90-day replacement (the agency reruns the search free if the hire leaves), and it is worth clarifying whether you get a replacement search or a fee refund, because those are very different promises.
What actually moves the rate
The percentage is a price for risk and scarcity, so it moves with both. Rates drift up with seniority, confidentiality, niche skills, and exclusivity; they drift down with volume commitments, repeat business, and easy-to-source roles. A client hiring six sales reps this year has every right to ask for two or three points off. A client asking for a fintech CISO who must not know the search exists should expect to pay retained rates, in thirds, with a minimum.
For clients, the negotiation lever most people miss is structure, not rate. Agencies defend the headline percentage hard because it anchors every future deal, but they flex readily on exclusivity windows, guarantee length, payment terms, and volume discounts. Asking "what does the fee include" (market data, reference checks, offer management) tells you more about value than grinding 25% down to 23%.
For recruiters, the same logic in reverse: never discount the number, trade it. A point off in exchange for exclusivity, a signed multi-role agreement, or faster payment terms preserves your anchor. If a client opens with "another agency does it for 15%", the honest answer is that a contingency recruiter at 15% working four competing agencies will rationally spend their hours elsewhere, and the client will get exactly the effort they paid for. Winning clients when hiring is slow is mostly the art of selling that difference.
The margin math nobody shows clients
A $32,000 placement fee sounds like profit until you run a desk for a year. Every fee has to absorb the searches that die at offer stage, the months a client freezes a req after you have done the mapping, and the fixed costs that bill you whether or not anything closes: sourcing tools, job boards, your ATS, insurance. That cost structure is why recruiter earnings vary so widely, and why fee discipline matters more for a solo desk than for an agency that can average across thirty recruiters.
The controllable variable is the cost side. A traditional stack (LinkedIn Recruiter seat, a sourcing database, an outreach tool, market data subscriptions) runs four figures a month before you place anyone. Consolidating and moving to pay-as-you-go pricing is the fastest margin gain available to a solo recruiter this year; see Glozo's pricing for what the consolidated version costs.
If you are setting fees for the first time, anchor on the work, not the market average. A search that needs 80 hours of mapping, outreach, and process management at 20% on a $90K role pays you $225 an hour before costs; the same hours at 20% on a $60K role pay half that. This is why experienced recruiters either price low-salary searches at a higher percentage, set a flat minimum fee, or decline them. Our guide to starting a US recruiting agency covers the fee schedule question in the context of everything else a new desk has to decide.
A note for founders reading this
If you are deciding whether the fee is worth paying at all, the alternatives have their own price tags: an in-house recruiter is a salary plus tools, and doing it yourself costs founder hours, which are rarely free. The honest comparison is in our in-house vs freelance recruiter breakdown. For context, SHRM's 2025 benchmarking data puts the average internal cost per non-executive hire at $5,475 and typical time to fill at around 44 days; an agency fee buys speed and reach on top of that baseline, not instead of it.