Hiring cost calculator
- RemoteHire.ph$12,228
- OnlineJobs.ph$12,299
- VirtualStaff.ph$13,188
- HireTalent.ph$13,056
- Upwork$12,608
- Fiverr$12,660
- Freelancer.com$12,360
Figures last checked 30 Aug 2026. Assumptions are below, in full.
Where every number comes from
RemoteHire.ph: $228 for the year, which is the yearly plan and the cheaper of our two. Month to month for all twelve is $468 instead. Either way the freelancer keeps everything, because we never take a cut of what you pay them.
OnlineJobs.ph: Job board and worker database, Philippines only.
- Pro, paid annually. Monthly is $69; Premium is $99 a month or $349 a year. source
- “No salary markups or ongoing fees.” Their jobseeker pages describe no charge, though no page says “workers pay nothing” in those words. source
- Their own FAQ says the subscription is only needed while you are recruiting, so a single month at $69 is a real option once you have hired.
- Pro includes 3 job posts and 75 worker contacts a month; Premium is $349 a year for 10 and 500. Those are capacity limits, not fees.
VirtualStaff.ph: Hiring platform with payroll and compliance admin.
- $99 a month per person hired. One seat assumed here. source
- “Zero markups: staff receive 100% of the monthly pay.” source
- The price is per seat: hiring a second person doubles it, which is the opposite shape to a flat fee.
- Payment runs through their invoice, so the platform sits in the middle of the relationship rather than beside it.
HireTalent.ph: Direct-hire platform with a payroll add-on, Philippines.
- Employer at $88 a month. The Free plan is real: full search, with job posts at $48 each. source
- “No markups on contractor pay.” No talent-facing fee is stated anywhere on their site. source
- On the Free plan a job post is $48 and contact is applicants-only; the $88 Employer plan caps outreach at 10 candidates a day.
- Their homepage advertises “24+ tool certifications”; their own certifications page and FAQ say 14 are live today.
Upwork: General freelance marketplace.
- Marketplace plan. 3% for eligible US clients paying by bank account; Business Plus is 10%. source
- One-off contract initiation fee, non-refundable. source
- Set per contract and fixed for that contract's life. The old flat 10% no longer exists. source
- The freelancer's fee is a range set per contract, so it is drawn as a band. Anyone showing you one Upwork number for this is showing you a number they chose.
- Taking the relationship off-platform inside two years requires a conversion fee of 13.5% of the freelancer's annualised rate: their own worked example is $8,424 for a $30/hr freelancer.
Fiverr: Gig marketplace.
- Buyer service fee on every transaction, tips included. source
- The seller keeps 80%, on gig extras and tips as well. source
- Orders under $200 carry a further $3.50 each, so a year made of small orders costs the buyer noticeably more than the percentage suggests.
- The buyer fee applies to every transaction separately, including tips.
Freelancer.com: Bid and contest marketplace.
- 3% or $3, whichever is greater, on fixed-price projects; 3% on each hourly payment. source
- 10% or $5, whichever is greater, on projects; 15% on Recruiter projects. source
- The headline percentages sit on a long tail of smaller fees: deposit transaction fees, withdrawal fees, a dormancy fee, paid NDAs, and paid dispute arbitration.
- Identity verification is a paid badge, not a default: most profiles have not been through it.
One hire a year is assumed, which is what the per-contract fees are counted against. Payment-method surcharges, currency conversion and anything either side negotiates are excluded on all rows, ours included. If you find one of these wrong, it is wrong in one file and we would rather fix it than keep it.
How to use this
- Put in what you plan to pay the person over a year, before any platform takes anything.
- Read the totals. Each bar is what that platform costs you on top of that pay, over the same year.
- Switch to the second view for what the freelancer is left with. On a platform that charges them, the two numbers are different and only one of them is usually advertised.
- Open the sources below any figure you want to check. Every one links to the page it was read from.
What is actually being compared
One year, one hire, and the pay you typed. On top of that: whatever the platform charges the hiring side, worked out under its own model: a flat subscription counted for twelve months, a percentage applied to the pay, a per-hire or per-seat charge multiplied out.
Our own price is counted as a FULL year even though hiring usually takes fewer months, because counting it favourably is the sort of thumb on the scale that makes a comparison page worth nothing. A platform whose fee is genuinely variable is drawn as a band rather than as the worst number in its range, for the same reason.
The managed agencies are deliberately absent from the chart: their monthly figures include the worker’s pay, so putting them on a chart of fees ON TOP of pay would compare two different kinds of number. They are on the comparison page with what their own sites say.
The half that usually goes unmentioned
Most platform pricing pages answer “what do I pay”. On a marketplace that also charges the freelancer, that is only half the cost of the arrangement: the same hour is billed once to you and taxed again on the way out, and the person doing the work absorbs the difference.
That is why the second view exists. It is the number that decides what somebody can afford to charge you, and a comparison that leaves it out is comparing invoices rather than costs.
What this cannot tell you
These are list prices under stated assumptions, not quotes. Nothing here accounts for payment or transfer fees, currency spread, tax in either country, or a rate negotiated off a platform’s published one.
Figures move. Every one was checked on 30 Aug 2026against the company’s own pages and carries a link to where it was read; anything widely repeated but not stated on their own site says so and is left out of the arithmetic.
Questions
- Do you take a cut of what I pay the freelancer?
- No. RemoteHire.ph charges a flat $39/month to the hiring side, or $228/year, and nothing else. Money moves directly between you and the person you hire; we never hold it, never route it and never take a percentage of it.
- Does the freelancer pay anything?
- No, and there is no plan under which they will. That is why the second view on this page exists: on a marketplace that charges the freelancer, what you pay and what they receive are two different numbers, and only one of them usually gets advertised.
- Why is Upwork drawn as a range?
- Because their freelancer fee is set per contract and can be anywhere from 0% to 15%. Any single number would be a number we picked, and picking the worst one on a page that competes with them would make this page not worth reading.
- How current are these figures?
- Every one was checked on 30 Aug 2026 against the company's own pricing or help pages, and each carries a link to where it was read. Where a figure is widely repeated but not on their own site, it says so and is left out of the arithmetic.
- Why are the managed agencies not on the chart?
- Their monthly figures include the worker's pay, so adding them to a chart of fees on top of pay would compare two different kinds of number. They are on the comparison page instead, with what their own sites say.
Next
Hire the person, not the platform
RemoteHire.ph is a directory of ID-verified Filipino freelancers. Searching is free; Premium is $39/month or $228/year flat to reach out, and we never take a cut of what you pay.