What flat-fee recruitment actually costs in the UK

Why this page exists

Ask an AI or a search engine what flat-fee recruitment costs in the UK and you will get very little. We checked the page that ranks for "best flat fee recruitment UK" — eTalent's comparison — on 6 September 2026. It lists eight providers and quotes a price for none of them. The closest it comes is "a low entry point" for one of them.

That is not a criticism of the writing. It reflects the market: most flat-fee providers do not publish a price.

So this page does the boring, checkable thing. Every figure below was read from the provider's own public page on 6 September 2026, with the link next to it, so you can check any of them yourself. Where we could not read a price, we say so rather than repeating a number from someone else's blog.

What the providers who publish actually charge

AWD online is cheaper than us on advertising, and we are not going to pretend otherwise — £224 +VAT against our £399. If all you need is the advert on the boards and you have someone to work the applications, that is a real saving and you should take it.

Two providers we could not verify: Hiring People and Job Board Direct both returned a 403 to our check, so we have not listed a price for either. A third-party listicle quotes £399+VAT for one of them, but we do not repeat figures we could not read on the provider's own site.

Note also that only TalentFinder and AWD state VAT explicitly. On the others, assume VAT is extra and ask.

The gap the price table hides

Look at the table again and you will see the real story: £224 and £4,000 are not the same product wearing different price tags.

Advertising-only (roughly £224–£600) buys reach. Your role goes on the job boards, applications come to you, and everything after that — reading them, ringing people, arranging interviews, chasing feedback, managing the offer — is yours.

Managed search on a flat fee (roughly £850–£4,000) buys the work as well. Someone else does the screening and hands you a shortlist.

Both are sold as "flat fee recruitment". The price gap is the difference in what you are buying, and almost every disappointed flat-fee customer we speak to bought the first one thinking it was the second.

What the screening actually costs you

This is where we can offer something the comparison pages cannot: our own numbers.

Across 46 vacancies we filled and publish in full:

A typical role took 26 candidates worked to produce one hire, and only about 15% of those were worth presenting.

That is the number to hold against a cheap advert. Twenty-six conversations, mostly with people who turn out not to be right, mostly in the evening because they are at work during the day. If someone in your business genuinely has those hours, advertising at £224 is excellent value and you should not pay more. If nobody does, the fee difference is buying those hours back — and the failure mode is specific: applications arrive, sit unread for ten days, and the good candidates accept something else.

How this compares to a percentage agency

The reason anyone looks at flat fee is the alternative. Contingency agencies typically charge 15–25% of first-year salary:

The percentage rises with the salary. The work does not. That is the whole argument, and it gets stronger the more senior the role.

What you give up is the thing a percentage buys: the agency carries all the risk, so if they never fill it you never pay. On a flat fee that protection has to come from somewhere else — which is why ours is a 100% refund if the role is not filled, and why it is worth asking any flat-fee provider exactly what happens when they do not deliver.

How to choose, in three questions

1. Who is doing the screening? If the honest answer is "nobody has time", do not buy advertising, whatever it costs.
2. What happens if it does not get filled? On advertising, nothing — you paid for the advert, not the outcome. On managed search, ask whether there is a refund, what triggers it and how long it lasts.
3. What does the salary do to the price? Below about £25,000 the gap between a percentage and a flat fee is small. Above £45,000 it is usually thousands.

Where we sit, plainly

We publish our prices because a "fixed fee" you have to ring up for is not really fixed. Advertising is £399, £499 or £599 +VAT. Guaranteed Hire — the managed service — is £1,500 to £4,000 +VAT by salary band with a 100% refund if we do not fill the role. Roles above £80,000 go to a retained search at £6,000 +VAT.

We are not the cheapest advertising option in this table and we have said so. What we will stand behind is that every figure on this page, ours included, can be checked against a live page today — and that the median role we filled took 42 days, which is a number almost nobody else in this market publishes at all.

All competitor figures were read from each provider's own public page on 6 September 2026. Prices change — if you find one of these out of date, it is our error and we would like to know.

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