"What percentage should a recruiter charge?" is a question with a different right answer depending on the model, and vendors are not always upfront about which model they are quoting. Here is what each structure actually means and what counts as a fair fee in 2026.
Contingency search: 15-25%
You pay only if a hire is made, calculated as a percentage of first-year base salary. This is the most common agency model for mid-level roles. The fee reflects that the agency is taking on the risk of an unpaid search, and often running several similar searches for other clients at the same time, so attention on any single search is limited.
Retained search: 25-33% plus a retainer
A portion of the fee is paid upfront regardless of outcome, in exchange for dedicated, exclusive search effort. This is standard for senior leadership and highly specialized roles where a scarce candidate pool justifies paying for focus even before a placement happens. Applying retained pricing to a standard mid-level engineering hire is generally overpaying for a service level you do not need.
RPO (recruitment process outsourcing): ongoing monthly fee
A vendor embeds with your team and runs recruiting as an ongoing function, typically billed monthly rather than per hire. This suits companies hiring at high volume continuously, but it is a poor fit for occasional or one-off onshore hires, since the fixed monthly cost does not scale down when hiring slows.
Employee referral bonus: flat $2,000-$10,000, or 3-10% of salary
Cheapest per hire when it works, but limited entirely to your current employees' networks and prone to running dry after the first wave of obvious referrals.
Flat-fee direct hire: 5-8%, one-time
The candidate becomes your direct employee; the fee is a one-time cost for full end-to-end sourcing, screening, and interview coordination, with no ongoing salary markup or monthly charge. This is deliberately priced at or below typical referral-bonus economics, while still providing genuine external sourcing reach a referral program cannot offer once internal networks are exhausted.
What counts as fair in 2026
For a standard mid-to-senior individual contributor engineering role, a fair fee sits in the 5-10% range for a flat, one-time, direct-hire model, assuming:
- No additional monthly markup on top
- A genuine replacement guarantee covering a real probation window (60-90 days)
- Full end-to-end service: sourcing, screening, interviews, and offer support, not just resume forwarding
Anything charging retained-search-level percentages (25%+) for a standard IC engineering role, without dedicated exclusive effort or executive-level scarcity, is priced for a different service tier than what most onshore developer hires actually need.
Where this fits our own model
Our onshore developer hiring service charges a one-time fee of 5-8% of the candidate's annual salary — typically at or below a standard referral bonus — with no salary markup, no monthly management fee, and a free replacement guarantee if the candidate leaves during probation. Most roles are filled within two weeks from kickoff to a shortlisted candidate.
