Both of us screen hard and both of us put engineers in front of you quickly. The difference is what you can see before you commit, and what happens to the money.
A matcher speaks to you, then proposes candidates from a screened freelance network. You pay an hourly or weekly rate with their margin built into it, plus an initial deposit that is credited against your first invoice.
You search the network yourself and see a vetting score, a communication score and verified history on every profile before you spend anything. Credits reveal the profiles you want. Nothing is taken as a percentage of salary or rate.
Green means the row favours us, grey means it favours them or the two are level. Both appear below.
| Toptal | Talent Navigator | |
|---|---|---|
| See the candidate's assessment score before paying | Not published up front | On every profile, before you spend a credit |
| Search the network yourself | Matcher led | Self serve search and filters, free |
| Fee structure | Margin inside the hourly rate | Credits per profile, flat payroll fee |
| Percentage of salary | None charged directly | None |
| Hire them permanently | Possible after a qualifying period | Yours from day one, no conversion fee |
| Employ them in their own country | Not the core offer | Our payroll, flat monthly fee |
| Network size | Screened freelance pool | 50,000+ developers in our network |
| Brand recognition with your board | Very strong | Growing |
| Connect from Claude, Cursor or your ATS | No public MCP server | MCP server and REST API |
A blended hourly rate carries the network margin for as long as the engagement runs.
A credit to unlock the profile, then either you employ them directly or we do it for a flat monthly fee.
The gap widens the longer the engagement lasts, because our fee does not scale with their rate.
For a long engagement, almost always, because our fee does not sit inside the engineer's rate for the life of the contract. For a two week specialist sprint the difference is much smaller. Run your own numbers on the pricing page before you decide.
There is nothing to convert. You hire them directly onto your payroll, or onto ours, from the first day. We do not charge a conversion fee.
Five stages, and every candidate you see has cleared a proctored technical assessment. The difference is that we show you the report rather than asking you to trust the badge.
Everything described about other companies comes from their own public pricing and product pages, and reflects what they published at the time of writing. Rates vary by role, seniority and region. Check their current terms before you decide, and tell us if anything here has gone out of date.
Searching is free and needs no account. Look at real scores on real engineers, then judge for yourself.