Project fee or placement fee? Put your own numbers in.
No email gate, no lead capture, no cookie. Move the inputs and watch the two commercial models diverge — including the cases where the agency model wins.
This calculator compares a percentage-of-salary placement fee with an indicative fixed project fee, using figures you enter yourself.
It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is transmitted, no email is required, and there are no cookies or analytics on this page. Figures are illustrative; real fees are quoted in writing against an agreed scope.
The comparison
Your figures, both models, side by side.
Your figures
Nothing here is transmitted. The arithmetic happens in this page.
Placement fee model
£80,000
Charged per hire, as a percentage of each successful candidate's salary. Payable on start. The market research goes back to the agency.
Audentia project fee
£42,500
Indicative fixed fee in pounds for the research and delivery work. Agreed before the project begins. Every record produced belongs to you.
Indicative difference
£37,500
a 47% reduction against a 20% placement fee
Illustrative only. A real fee is quoted in writing against an agreed scope. Ask for a proper number.
What the arithmetic does not capture
Three things sit outside the calculation and usually matter more than the headline difference.
The research has residual value. A placement fee buys one hire. A research project produces a market picture you still own in eighteen months, when the next requisition opens or someone asks whether the plan is still achievable. That asset does not appear in either column above.
The failed search costs nothing here and a great deal in practice. If a contingency search does not produce a hire you pay nothing, which sounds like protection. It is not: you have lost three months and learned nothing about why. A research project that concludes the role is unfillable as specified has told you something actionable for the same money.
The second hire is nearly free on one model and full price on the other. This is where the two models diverge most sharply, and it is why the difference widens as you move the role count upward.
When the placement model genuinely wins
We would rather say this than have you find out afterwards. A contingency fee can be the cheaper option when you are making a single hire at a modest salary in an abundant market with no interest in the underlying data — a mid-level generalist role in a large city, for instance. In that scenario the research overhead is not earning its keep, and we will tell you so on the scoping call rather than quoting you for it.
About this calculator
Where do your indicative project fees come from?
They are a simplified band drawn from typical research-and-delivery scope, tapering as volume rises. They are illustrative, not a quotation. A real fee is set by market breadth, seniority, geography and validation depth, and we put it in writing before anything starts.
Is anything sent to you when I use this?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser. There is no form, no email gate, no cookie and no analytics on this page or anywhere else on the site. You can check the page source.
What if the calculator says an agency is cheaper?
Then it is, and we would rather you knew. At low salaries and single hires, a percentage fee can genuinely cost less than a properly scoped research project. Our model wins on volume, on seniority and on the fact that you keep the research — not on every single transaction.
Does this include internal cost?
No, deliberately — internal cost varies too much between organisations for a generic figure to mean anything. If you want the full comparison including your own team's time, we will build it with your actual numbers during scoping.
Why does the project fee fall as role count rises?
Because the research does not repeat. Mapping a market once supports several hires from the same population, so the marginal cost of the fourth hire is far below the first. A percentage fee, by contrast, charges the fourth hire exactly as much as the first.
Want a real number instead of an indicative one?
Tell us the roles, the markets and the timescale. You get a fixed fee in pounds, in writing, before anything begins.