Hiring Cost Calculator - In-House vs Agency

Compare the true cost of an internal crypto recruitment team against TechChain Talent. Adjust roles, salaries and fees to see your cost per hire.

What Does Your

Actually Cost?

Move the sliders to compare an internal recruitment team against working with TechChain Talent. Every assumption is editable, so you can model your own numbers.

Your hiring plan

Annual cost comparison

Internal team

TechChain Talent

At this volume an internal team looks cheaper on paper, which is exactly when an embedded model makes sense: you get our recruiters at a fixed monthly rate without carrying permanent headcount. This calculator ignores ramp time, unfilled roles and recruiter attrition, all of which land on the internal side.

Where the internal cost comes from

Want the numbers for your actual roles?

Tell us what you are hiring for and we will come back with a shortlist plan and a fixed cost within 48 hours.

See the embedded model

Roles you need to hire (per year)

Average base salary per hire

In-house recruiter base salary

Hires one in-house recruiter closes per year

TechChain Talent fee per placement

Hiring Cost Calculator - In-House vs TechChain Talent

Compare the true cost of an internal crypto recruitment team against TechChain Talent. Adjust roles, salaries and fees to see your cost per hire instantly.

Salary, NI, pension and benefits

Tooling, job boards and ATS

Hiring and onboarding the recruiters

Job advertising per open role

How the Hiring Cost Calculator works

Most founders compare a recruiter's salary with an agency fee and stop there. This tool adds the hidden costs of building a team in-house, so you can see the real number side by side.

Enter your hiring plan

Add how many roles you need to fill this year and the average salary for those roles.

Add your recruiter costs

Set what an internal recruiter would cost you and how many specialist crypto hires one person can realistically close per year.

Compare the totals

See your full internal cost next to TechChain Talent, plus the cost per hire and the difference between the two.

What the internal cost includes

Recruiter salaries plus 35% for employer taxes, pension and benefits, around £15k per recruiter each year for tools like LinkedIn Recruiter and an ATS, £8k to hire each recruiter, and £2,500 of job advertising per role.

Why capacity matters

Specialist crypto roles like Rust, ZK or protocol leads take far longer to fill than general hiring. One recruiter typically closes around 6 of these a year, so bigger hiring plans need more people.

What it leaves out

The time founders and hiring managers spend on sourcing and interviews, and the cost of a role sitting empty. Both make in-house hiring more expensive than shown here.

What to do with the result

If you are hiring several roles this year, book a call and we will build a plan around your real numbers, or try Design My Hiring Solution to see which model fits.

Embedded Recruitment

Your talent team, without the overhead

Contingency Hiring

Pay on placement, 20% fee

Retained Search

Senior and leadership hires

Business Development

By technology

Solidity Developers

Rust Developers

Stablecoins and Payments

RWA and Tokenization

United Kingdom

United States

For Employers

Design My Hiring Solution

Find a hiring model for your team and roles

Hiring Cost Calculator

Plan your budget: in-house vs contingency hiring

Hiring Benchmark

Spot delays in interviews, offers and feedback

Client results and reports

Crypto Hiring Report 2026

Discuss your hiring needs

For Candidates

Crypto roles we are hiring for now

Salary Calculator

Estimate base pay before your next negotiation

Crypto Salary Report 2026

Compare salary ranges by role and level

Career advice, editions and articles

Latest Edition

The Crypto Talent Wire, 23 September 2026

Who you will actually work with

Building the decentralized future, one placement at a time.

Crypto Recruitment

Blockchain Recruitment

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