Recruitment Agency Fee Calculator
Agency fees work two ways. Permanent placements are a percentage of first-year salary; contract work is a markup on the pay rate that produces a bill rate and a gross margin. Enter your own numbers to see what each costs, what it earns, and how markup and margin differ.
Last updated
Permanent placement
A permanent fee is almost always a percentage of the candidate's first-year salary. Enter the salary and the percentage on the table. Everything runs in your browser.
Check what your agreement counts as "salary" before you sign — whether guaranteed bonus, sign-on or relocation sits inside the fee base is the single most common source of invoice disputes, and it varies by agreement.
The fee
$18,000
Fee per placement
$108,000
Across 6 placements
Method: $90,000 × 20% = $18,000, × 6. No default percentage is applied — agency rates vary widely by market, seniority, exclusivity and volume, so the only defensible number is the one in your own terms of business.
Working out whether the fee is worth it?
Agency spend usually tracks how long roles stay open and how much of the funnel your own team can carry. See how Pitch N Hire shortens sourcing, screening and scheduling so more of the work stays in-house.
Why there are no default rates in this tool
Most fee calculators arrive pre-filled with a "typical" percentage or markup. We deliberately do not, because there is no such thing in any way you could use. Agency economics move with country, seniority, exclusivity, volume commitment, guarantee length and how hard the role is to fill, and the ranges circulated online are usually one blog quoting another with no primary source underneath. A number you cannot trace is worthless in a negotiation, which is precisely where you would want to use one. Put in the rate that is actually on your terms of business and the arithmetic here will match your invoice. If you are on the agency side setting rates rather than checking them, the honest approach is to work backwards from the margin your business needs to run, not forwards from a figure someone said was standard.
When agency spend is worth it, and when it is drift
Agencies earn their fee on genuinely hard roles: scarce skills, confidential searches, a market you have no network in, or a sudden burst of demand your team cannot absorb. That is a deliberate decision and usually a good one. What is worth watching is the other pattern, where agency spend grows because roles sit open too long and using an agency is the only lever that does not need an approval cycle. That is not a sourcing problem, it is a process one, and the fee is paying for days lost to scheduling gaps and slow screening rather than for access to candidates. The cost of vacancy calculator puts a daily figure on those open days, and an ATS built for staffing agencies covers the same arithmetic from the agency side, where the margin above is the whole business model.
Related free tools
Go deeper
For agencies and in-house teams
Agency fee calculator — FAQs
How are recruitment agency fees calculated?
What is the difference between markup and margin?
What counts as salary for a permanent placement fee?
What is a contingency fee versus a retained fee?
What is a rebate or guarantee period?
Is the margin on a contract placement profit?
Is this agency fee calculator free?
Track these numbers automatically instead of recalculating them
Pitch N Hire is an applicant tracking system with recruitment analytics. Time to hire, pipeline conversion, and source performance come from your own hiring data rather than a manual estimate.
Free for 1 user · No credit card · Talk to a real hiring expert
Bring more of the funnel in-house
Agency spend usually tracks how long roles stay open. See how Pitch N Hire shortens sourcing, screening and scheduling so your own team can carry more of the work.
Prefer to talk? Book a demo Talk to sales View pricing
Free 1-user plan · No credit card · Talk to a real hiring expert
