How much do recruiters charge? Every fee model, with real numbers

Here's the short answer. Contingency recruiters who publish rates charge 20 to 30 percent of the hire's first-year salary, paid when someone starts. Retained firms publish 30 to 35 percent, billed in stages. Flat monthly programs run $2,500 to $8,300 per month. Temp staffing marks up hourly pay instead. Sources for every number follow.

Those ranges aren't folklore. DAVRON publishes a tiered contingency schedule of 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary (davron.net, July 2026). TruPath Search publishes 23 to 25 percent for contingent searches and 30 to 35 percent for retained (trupathsearch.com, July 2026). Persevus, my firm, publishes flat engagements of $2,500 to $8,300 per month. Most firms publish nothing, which is why the answers you find online contradict each other.

This page walks through each model: how it works, who carries the risk, and what the fee pays the firm to do. I run a flat-fee firm, so read that section knowing it. The rest is mechanics you can verify.

Contingency: a percentage when someone starts

You hand the firm a role. If you hire its candidate, you owe a percentage of that person's first-year salary, due at offer acceptance or on the start date, depending on the contract. If you never hire, you owe nothing. The contract should also name a guarantee window: if the hire leaves inside it, you get a replacement search or part of the fee back.

The risk splits cleanly. The firm carries the search risk, since a dead search pays zero. You carry the per-hire cost, because the bill scales with whatever salary you land on.

Here's the math that matters. At a 20-30% rate, every $10,000 of first-year salary adds $2,000 to $3,000 to the fee. Negotiate the offer up and the fee climbs with it.

For published examples: DAVRON's schedule runs 20 to 30 percent, tiered by payment plan (davron.net, July 2026). TruPath Search runs 23 to 25 percent depending on role type (trupathsearch.com, July 2026). Hiring in construction? We priced that market specifically in how much does a construction recruiter cost.

Retained: paying for the search itself

Retained search bills the same percentage math in a different rhythm. The traditional structure is thirds: one third when the search kicks off, one third at an agreed milestone such as a presented shortlist, and the final third when your candidate signs. Published retained rates run higher than contingency; TruPath Search lists 30 to 35 percent by seniority (trupathsearch.com, July 2026).

The money is committed whether or not the seat fills, and in exchange the firm works your search exclusively. Retained fits one senior seat, a confidential replacement, or a role with a narrow candidate pool where you want a single firm accountable. It fits volume hiring poorly, since each seat carries its own full fee.

Container: a deposit plus a back end

Some firms split the difference. You pay a deposit up front, and the balance behaves like a contingency fee, due when the hire starts. The deposit is credited against the final bill in most versions of this model, which also gets called engaged or hybrid search.

Container pricing is rarely published anywhere; it's quoted per search. Settle two things before signing: whether the deposit is refundable if the search dies, and whether it's credited in full against the back end.

Flat monthly: embedded recruiters and subscriptions

The three models above price the outcome. This one prices the work. You pay a fixed monthly fee and the firm recruits: sourcing, screening, scheduling, offer support. Embedded firms put a recruiter inside your team and bill by the month. Subscription firms run the search from outside on the same clock.

The defining trait: the fee doesn't move with the salary. Hire a coordinator or hire a VP, same monthly number.

Persevus sits here. Engagements run $2,500 to $8,300 per month depending on scope, and $8,300 is the full active outreach program with a dedicated recruiter. Every candidate, applicant or sourced, goes through Career Gap screening before you meet them. Across 2022 through 2026, 97 percent of the offers our clients extended were accepted. The average search runs 29 days from kickoff to accepted offer and takes about six hours of your team's time.

Temp and staffing markups: a different animal

Staffing prices labor by the hour, not a search by the outcome. The agency employs the worker and pays the wage. You pay an hourly bill rate that covers that wage plus a markup for payroll taxes, workers' comp, insurance, and the agency's margin. Billing runs as long as the assignment does. Hire the worker permanently and expect a conversion fee written into the contract.

None of the percentage logic above applies here, so don't compare a bill rate to a search fee. Ask for the pay rate and the bill rate side by side. The gap between them is the markup, and it's the only number worth negotiating.

Every model on one table

What each fee structure pays a firm to do

Read a fee model as a job description for the firm you're hiring. Each one rewards something different.

Contingency pays for speed. The firm eats every search that dies, so the searches that close fund the ones that don't, and effort flows toward whichever role looks closest to filling. The percentage also ties revenue to salary: a bigger offer means a bigger fee. That's what the model sells, and urgency is worth paying for when you need it.

Retained pays for depth. The money is committed, so the firm can spend the hours a hard search demands without watching the meter. The risk now sits with you, which is why the milestone definitions matter more than the percentage.

Flat monthly pays for the work itself. The fee ignores salary, so the firm gains nothing by steering you toward the more expensive candidate. And because no single hire produces a windfall, walking away from a weak candidate costs the firm nothing. A percentage model makes every live candidate potential revenue; a flat model makes disqualifying free.

The critics of flat monthly have a fair point, and you should hear it: the fee bills whether or not that month produces a hire. A slow firm on this model costs you real money, where a slow contingency firm costs you nothing until it delivers. The counter is speed you can verify. We publish ours, 29 days average from kickoff to accepted offer, and you should hold any monthly firm to the same disclosure. We answered the doubt at full length in is a flat fee recruiter worth it.

The longer version of this comparison lives in flat fee vs contingency vs subscription. And our roundup of the best construction recruiting firms flags which firms publish pricing and which quote by phone.

Questions to ask before you sign

Get the full schedule in writing. The rate and its base: does the percentage apply to base salary alone, or to bonus and allowances too? On monthly models, what's in scope and what bills extra?

Pin down the guarantee. How long is the window, is it a replacement search or a refund, and what voids it?

Ask who owns the candidates. How long can the firm claim a fee on someone it introduced? If you hire a second person from the same search, is that a second fee?

Ask what stops the clock. On contingency, is the fee due at signature or on the start date? On retained, what happens if the search stalls between milestones? On monthly, how do you pause or end the engagement, and with how much notice?

Recruiter fee FAQ

What percentage do headhunters take?

Firms that publish rates charge 20 to 35 percent of the hire's first-year salary, paid by the employer. DAVRON publishes 20 to 30 percent tiered contingency (davron.net, July 2026). TruPath Search publishes 23 to 25 percent contingent and 30 to 35 percent retained (trupathsearch.com, July 2026). Headhunters take nothing from the candidate's pay.

Who pays the recruiter fee, the employer or the candidate?

The employer. In permanent recruiting the candidate pays nothing, and the fee doesn't come out of their salary. Temp staffing works differently: the agency employs the worker, pays the wage, and bills the client an hourly rate above it.

How much do recruiters charge on flat-fee or monthly models?

Persevus publishes $2,500 to $8,300 per month depending on scope, with $8,300 buying the full active outreach program. Most monthly firms quote by scope instead of publishing. The number to compare is total cost per hire: the monthly fee times the months a search takes, which is why average time to hire is the first thing to ask.

Are recruiter fees negotiable?

Yes, at the edges. The base the percentage applies to, guarantee length, payment timing, and multi-hire pricing all move. Every published range has a bottom end, which tells you rates flex by role and plan. Get the final schedule in writing before the first candidate call.

Is a flat fee cheaper than a percentage fee?

It depends on the salary and the search. At a 20-30% contingency rate, every $10,000 of first-year salary adds $2,000 to $3,000 to the fee, while a flat monthly fee stays fixed no matter what the hire earns. Higher salaries and faster searches favor flat. A search that drags erodes that edge month by month, so ask for the firm's average time to hire.

You now know more about recruiter pricing than most firms will volunteer, so put it to work: book 30 minutes with Alex and we'll talk through your specific search.