For employers
What does a recruiter actually cost in Australia?
Written by Chris Tipper, Co-Founder and Director, TPG Construction and TPG Nursing. Updated 9 October 2026.
There are three ways to pay for recruiting, and they cost very different amounts per hire. An agency charges a percentage of the package for each placement, usually somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent, with 15 per cent a common rule of thumb. An in-house recruiter in Sydney costs around $125,000 a year loaded before tools and adverts. A managed desk is a flat monthly fee from $2,950 with no fee per hire. Which is cheapest depends almost entirely on how many people you hire a year.
An agency, per hire
Australian agencies charge permanent placement fees as a percentage of the first-year package. Published guides such as 9cv9's 2026 guide to agency fees put contingent fees between 10 and 25 per cent of total remuneration, with seniority and scarcity moving the rate. On a $120,000 package at 15 per cent that is $18,000 for one hire. Ten hires at the same rate is $180,000. The fee is only payable when someone starts, which is the point of the model: you pay nothing for a search that fails, and a lot for one that works.
An in-house recruiter, per year
PayScale puts the average Talent Acquisition Specialist salary in Sydney at $92,140 in 2026, with experienced people averaging $105,371 and a range up to about $124,000. Add 12 per cent superannuation, workers compensation, leave loading and a laptop and phone, and an experienced recruiter costs roughly $120,000 to $130,000 a year before they have made a call. Then the tools: a LinkedIn Recruiter seat, an applicant tracking system, and job adverts. Seek prices each advert individually, typically $250 to $460 at bundle rates and more for a single ad. A fair all-in figure for one in-house recruiter is $140,000 to $150,000 a year, and that person is on your payroll whether you have two roles open or nine.
A managed desk, per month
The third option is newer. A desk is a named consultant plus the search, record and approach systems, run for your business for a monthly fee with no fee per hire. Ours is priced by how many roles are live at once: $2,950 a month for up to three live roles with your person on the desk, $3,950 for up to six, and $8,495 or $13,495 if we supply the caller. There is no minimum term. Full prices and a comparison against agency fees are on the Partnership Desk page.
Which one is cheapest
It comes down to volume. Below ten hires a year, an agency is usually right: you only pay when someone starts and nobody sits idle. From ten hires a year, a desk with your own person on it is cheaper than an in-house recruiter and well under the agency. At twenty the desk and an in-house recruiter are level on cost, and the difference is whether you want to carry a payroll hire or give a month of notice. Above that, the per-hire cost of an agency stops making sense and the question becomes how you run your own recruiting well. The next guide walks through the maths at ten, twenty and thirty hires.