Short answer
A commission agency charges 15-25% of the hire's first-year salary, paid on success: $22,500-37,500 on a $150,000 engineer. A flat fee agency charges a set price per role whatever the salary. Ranked.I's flat fee is $4,500 per new role ($6,000 for ML/LLM roles), about 3-4% of a $150,000 salary. The two are not like for like: a flat fee buys a ranked shortlist, while interviews, the offer and closing stay with your team.
How each fee works
Commission (contingency) fees
The recruiter is paid a percentage of first-year salary when a candidate you hire starts. US tech recruiters typically charge 15-25% (Dover). Agencies in the CIS IT market quote 15-20%, up to 30% for rare roles (Lucky Hunter). You pay mainly on success, and the fee grows with the salary.
Flat fee
A set price per role, agreed before the search starts. Ranked.I charges $4,500 for backend, DevOps and data science roles, $6,000 for ML/LLM roles and ML team leads, and $1,500-2,000 to re-open a role it has already scoped. A $7,000-9,000 tier adds GitHub code scans, task recordings and written scoring rubrics, and a $3,000 monthly retainer covers continuous hiring with up to 2 repeat roles a month.
Side-by-side comparison
| Commission agency | Flat fee (Ranked.I) | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | A completed hire | A ranked shortlist of 40 named candidates |
| Fee on a $150,000 engineer | $22,500-37,500 (15-25%) | $4,500 ($6,000 for ML/LLM) |
| Fee on a $200,000 engineer | $30,000-50,000 (15-25%) | $4,500 ($6,000 for ML/LLM) |
| Does the fee grow with salary | Yes | No |
| Repeat role | Full fee again | $1,500-2,000, in 24-48 hours |
| Who runs interviews and closing | The recruiter helps | Your team |
A worked example
Take a $150,000 backend engineer. At 15-25%, a commission agency invoices $22,500-37,500. Ranked.I's flat fee is $4,500, which is 12-20% of that bill. For an ML/LLM role at $6,000 it is 16-27%. The gap widens with seniority: at $200,000 the commission is $30,000-50,000 and the flat fee does not move.
The comparison is not a straight saving. The commission covers screening and closing; the flat fee covers sourcing and first-pass screening only. If you would rather hand off the whole process and pay only when someone starts, commission can fit. If your engineers run interviews anyway, or you hire repeatedly, the flat fee usually costs less.
When a flat fee makes sense
It fits when you hire senior engineers, where percentage fees are largest, when you re-open similar roles, and when you want to see how good the candidates are before committing to a full search. The $499 Calibration Audit does that: one stalled vacancy, a custom grading matrix and a test batch, credited in full toward the search. See how the service works, how it compares with AI sourcing tools and how we measure shortlist accuracy.