Updated September 2026
Alternatives to OnHires for startup tech recruiting include contingency recruiters, recruiter marketplaces, an applicant tracking system with on-demand recruiters, a job marketplace you screen yourself, an in-house recruiter, or a fixed-fee recruiting partner such as Funded.club. OnHires is a recruitment firm offering tech and startup recruiting, so the useful comparison is between models: how candidates are found, who screens them, and how the fee is set. Check each provider's own site for current pricing.
| Model | How it works | Worth asking |
|---|---|---|
| Contingency recruiter | Percentage of first-year salary, charged when a hire is made | How many other roles is the recruiter working in parallel? |
| Recruiter marketplace | Many independent recruiters can submit candidates to one role (Paraform is one example) | Who owns the candidate experience and the feedback loop? |
| ATS plus on-demand recruiters | Software to run the pipeline with recruiters you can add (Dover is one example) | Who does the outbound sourcing day to day? |
| Jobs marketplace | You post roles and screen applicants yourself (Wellfound is one example) | Do you have the hours to screen and reach out? |
| Fixed-fee recruiting partner | One set fee per hire agreed upfront, one dedicated recruiter | What does the fee include, and what happens if the shortlist is thin? |
For a fuller list of providers across these models, see recruiting companies for startups and Dover alternatives.
Tech recruiting lives or dies on screening. A recruiter who cannot tell a backend engineer who has scaled a system from one who has maintained one will fill your calendar with the wrong interviews. In your first call, try this:
The best model can change with volume. For a single senior hire, you want depth: one person who knows the role inside out. For four or five engineers after a round, you also want consistency, so every candidate is judged against the same scorecard and your team is not re-explaining the company to a different recruiter each week.
If you are planning several hires, agree the order first. A lead engineer who can help interview the next hires changes how quickly the rest of the team comes together. Our guide on the first 10 hires after funding covers sequencing.
A worked example: for a senior engineer on $140,000, a 20 to 25% contingency fee is $28,000 to $35,000. Funded.club's fixed fee for a role up to $150,000 is $11,500. For a mid-level engineer up to $110,000 it is $7,500. Across five hires the gap adds up quickly, which is why many founders now compare flat-fee recruiters with percentage models before a hiring push.
Funded.club is a fixed-fee recruiting partner for funded startups and fast-growing teams across North America, Europe and APAC, with a fully remote team of recruiters. Since 2019 it has helped 500+ startups from Seed to Series D.
Supernova.io (YC W19) made 22 hires with Funded.club, with a 27 day average time to hire and about EUR 210k saved versus percentage fees.
OnHires is a recruitment firm offering tech and startup recruiting. For its current services and pricing, check the OnHires website directly.
It depends on volume, budget and how much screening your team can take on. Founders who want one accountable person and a known cost often choose a dedicated recruiter on a fixed fee. Teams with spare interviewing capacity may prefer a jobs marketplace or an ATS with on-demand help.
Ask them to review a real anonymised CV, explain what they would probe in a first screen and share a sample screening note. Strong tech recruiters also challenge bloated job descriptions.
A fixed fee set by salary band: $7,500 for roles up to $110,000, $11,500 up to $150,000, and $15,900 to $21,900 above $150,000. The fee is agreed before the search starts.
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