TL;DR: Arc is the strongest all-round pick for a US startup in 2026: AI sourcing and screening built in, freelancers at $15 to $110+ an hour, and 20% of salary for a full-time hire. Second Talent (our own service) employs vetted engineers from Asia for you at $3,000 to $6,000 a month, and Revelo does the same with Latin American engineers on a 2-week trial. Mercor and Turing now sell expert data to AI labs, so they only fit a startup that trains its own models.
Turing's old "hire developers" page now loads its pitch to frontier AI labs, and Mercor, valued at $10 billion last October, no longer markets a hiring product at all.
The two best-funded names in AI staffing have moved to selling expert data.
For a startup that needs engineers, the AI that matters now sits in screening and matching at smaller firms: Arc's auto sourcing, Braintrust's voice interviewer and Wisemonk's Mira AI scorecards.
The 10 Firms Compared
| Firm | What you get | Where the AI is | What you pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Arc | Vetted remote freelancers or full-time hires | AI applicant screening, AI auto sourcing, HireAI matching | $15 to $110+ an hour, or 20% of salary |
| 2. Second Talent | Vetted full-time engineers from Asia, employed for you | AI-assisted matching; AI-tool fluency tested in vetting | $3,000 to $6,000 a month, all-in |
| 3. Revelo | Full-time Latin American engineers, payroll handled | Match scores on shortlists | Quoted rate, month to month |
| 4. Lemon.io | Senior remote contractors or in-house hires | AI assistant runs the first screening call | Senior engineers from $55 an hour |
| 5. Wisemonk (Mira AI) | India hiring workspace plus employer of record | Scores every applicant against your scorecard | Free tier; EOR from $99 a month |
| 6. Andela | AI-native engineers, augmented or fully managed | Woven technical assessments | Quoted; sample profile $6,500 to $8,500 a month |
| 7. Braintrust | Freelance network plus the AIR AI interviewer | Voice interviews scored on a rubric | 15% client fee; AIR priced per interview |
| 8. Gun.io | Managed contract engineering teams | Algorithmic screen, then a senior engineer | Custom retainers; 20% for a full-time hire |
| 9. Mercor | Expert contractors for model training and evals | APEX benchmarks and evals | Not published |
| 10. Turing | AI lab data and enterprise AI builds | Turing Intelligence services | Not published |
- 1Ashby's 2026 benchmark puts the median time to first fill for a technical role at 75 days, so any firm that can hire in two weeks saves you about two months.
- 2Since 1 October 2025, California has treated automated screening tools as covered by its anti-discrimination rules, and a vendor can be liable as the employer's agent.
- 3Gartner expects 1 in 4 candidate profiles worldwide to be fake by 2028, which is why every firm here still ends with a human or live technical interview.
- 4Lemon.io now runs its first screening call with an AI assistant, and about 1% of applicants end up listed.
The 10 Firms, One by One
We ranked them by fit for a US startup that needs engineers now: how much of the hiring the firm does for you, what it publishes about price, and whether its AI does real work in the process.
I run Second Talent, so read our #2 with that in mind.
1. Arc
Arc suits a founder who wants to see candidates this week and decide later between a contractor and a full-time hire.
It began in 2019 as the rebrand of CodementorX, Codementor's hiring arm, and now says freelancers can start in 72 hours and full-time hires close in 14 days.
The AI is the clearest on this list. Arc's pricing page lists AI applicant screening and AI auto sourcing on both plans, and the full-time plan searches a worldwide pool of 20M+ candidates, well beyond the vetted network.
HireAI, launched in May 2023 on GPT-4, returns ranked matches the moment you paste a job description.
TechCrunch reported that it hides age, ethnicity and gender until it has made the matches, and that early users were twice as likely to interview HireAI-matched developers.
Arc publishes its prices, which is rare on this list. Our Arc alternatives page compares it with the other vetted networks.
- Best for: startups that want to browse vetted profiles themselves and pay nothing until they hire.
- Watch out: a full-time hire through Arc still needs a US payroll or an employer of record abroad, and that cost sits outside the 20%.
- What you pay: $15 to $110+ an hour for freelancers, with a trial of up to two weeks; 20% of annual salary for a full-time hire.
2. Second Talent
Second Talent is for a US startup that wants full-time engineers from Asia without setting up payroll abroad.
We source and vet the engineer, then employ them through our own entities in nine Asian markets, so you direct the work and pay one monthly rate.
A brief turns into 6 to 8 pre-vetted candidates within 24 hours, and most clients go from first call to a working engineer in one to two weeks.
The vetting has four stages: a technical assessment, a test of how the engineer works with AI tools such as Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot, an English check at C1 or above, and a behavioural interview.
Engineers overlap 4 to 6 hours with a US workday. We have placed 8,000+ engineers with 200+ companies, and a placement comes with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
- $13,000 to $25,000 a month
- You run payroll, benefits and equipment
- $3,000 to $6,000 a month
- Payroll, compliance and equipment included
That is 50% to 70% below a US hire. You can read how Second Talent works step by step, or see the AI agent developers we place for RAG and agent builds.
- Best for: startups past the freelance stage that want full-time engineers who stay.
- Watch out: the bench is engineering-heavy; design, sales development and operations roles are a smaller pool.
- What you pay: $3,000 to $6,000 a month per engineer, all-in, with $0 upfront.
3. Revelo
Revelo is for a US team that wants full-time engineers in its own time zone.
Its engineers work within 2 hours of US Eastern, and Revelo runs payroll, benefits, taxes and compliance for them in 18 countries, so you never set up a Latin American entity.
It sends 3 to 5 candidates in 72 hours and says the average hire closes in 14 days.
AI shows up on both sides of the business.
Shortlists carry match scores, and TechCrunch reported that LLM training work made up 22% of Revelo's 2024 revenue, with nearly every major hyperscale AI provider as a customer alongside Intuit, Oracle and Dell.
In May 2026 it bought Ideaware, a Colombian engineering firm founded in 2010.
The pricing page promises no hidden fees, no upfront contract and a 2-week trial you pay for only if you are happy.
- Best for: US startups that need real-time collaboration and full-time engineers without foreign payroll.
- Watch out: Revelo publishes no rates, so you compare quotes; its own claim is 30% to 50% below US talent.
- What you pay: a quoted monthly rate, cancel anytime, first two weeks risk-free.
4. Lemon.io
Lemon.io fits a seed-stage startup that needs one senior engineer this week and does not want a long contract. It hires from Europe, Latin America, the US and Canada, lists 1.5K+ vetted developers, and says it matches in about 24 hours.
There is no minimum project duration, and you can keep the engineer on contract or hire them in-house.
AI now runs the first gate. Lemon.io's vetting process opens with a CV and LinkedIn review, a screening call with its AI assistant and a role-specific task, which about 37% of applicants pass.
A recruiter interview cuts that to about 17%, and a technical interview with a senior engineer, which also checks how the candidate uses AI, cuts it to about 7%. Around 1% end up listed.
It made 1,200+ placements in 2025 and backs each hire with a 2-week trial and a money-back guarantee.
- Best for: early-stage teams that need a senior contractor fast, with no lock-in.
- Watch out: the pool is smaller than Arc's, and its site no longer promises free replacements.
- What you pay: senior engineers from $55 an hour; its Python page lists $64 to $85 for mid-level and $89 to $112 for senior.
5. Wisemonk (Mira AI, formerly TalentScout)
Wisemonk is the one firm here built for a single country: India. Its hiring workspace launched as TalentScout and Wisemonk renamed it Mira AI on 11 September 2026.
You post a role, it reaches a community of 40,000+ candidates, and you interview and decide in the same place, for tech or non-tech roles.
Wisemonk started in 2020 in a Bengaluru apartment and now runs payroll for 2K+ employees at 300+ global companies.
The AI is screening you can audit. Mira AI ranks every application against a scorecard you write, shows its reasoning on every score, and never rejects anyone on its own.
It scores applicants from your own careers page on the same scorecard, or in its words, "your applicants or ours".
For OneReach.ai it filled 8 senior roles in a marketing and growth team within four months.
Without an Indian entity, Wisemonk becomes the legal employer at offer stage, and payroll runs on its platform instead of a separate piece of HR software.
Its pricing page lists recruitment concierge at 10% of annual salary with a 90-day placement guarantee.
- Best for: US startups building an India team, technical or not, that want AI screening they can check.
- Watch out: India only; the Mira AI name is weeks old, so the product has a short public record.
- What you pay: Base plan free with monthly credits, Boost at $100 a month, contingent search at 10% to 15% of first-year salary, EOR from $99 per employee a month.
6. Andela
Andela is for a funded startup or scale-up that wants an embedded team for an AI build rather than one hire.
It deploys AI-native engineers to augment your team, or a fully managed team, and sells AI work too: data readiness, retrieval, fine-tuning and RLHF, and production deployment.
Clients on its homepage include GitHub, Goldman Sachs, SoFi, Coursera and Capital One.
Founded in 2014, it has trained 200K+ technologists and reached a $1.5 billion valuation after a $200 million round in June 2021. In January 2026 it acquired Woven, a technical assessment company, to test AI engineers before placement.
Andela groups them as builders, integrators and scalers and releases them in quarterly cohorts.
There is no rate card; pricing comes from a discovery call. The one figure Andela shows is a sample senior data analyst profile at $6,500 to $8,500 a month.
- Best for: scale-ups that want a managed AI team with an enterprise-grade vendor behind it.
- Watch out: the sales motion is enterprise, so a two-person seed team may find it heavy.
- What you pay: quoted per engagement; its public sample profile sits at $6,500 to $8,500 a month.
7. Braintrust
Braintrust suits a startup that either needs freelance talent from a large network or wants AI to run first-round interviews for its own hiring. Talent pays no platform fee.
Its fee terms charge clients 15% on payments and 15% of first-year salary when a contractor converts to a direct hire.
The AI product is AIR, its AI recruiter. It runs conversational voice interviews, scores answers against a role-specific rubric and sends a ranked evidence pack to your team and your ATS.
Braintrust says AIR handles 1,000+ interviews a day in 16+ languages, cuts screening time by 80% and plugs into 50+ ATSs. It prices AIR by interview volume and publishes no per-interview figure.
An AI interviewer brings rules with it. These are the ones a US startup screening with AI now works under:
- Best for: teams that screen high volumes and want AI first-round interviews feeding their ATS.
- Watch out: AIR is sold to enterprises, and the freelance network is broad rather than engineering-only.
- What you pay: 15% on contractor payments, 15% of first-year salary on conversions; AIR quoted by volume.
8. Gun.io
Gun.io is for a startup with high-stakes engineering work, such as a payments system or a regulated product, that wants a governed contract team rather than a marketplace.
It began in 2013 as a community for paid open-source bounties and now calls itself a delivery-first engineering guild, with payroll and tax compliance across 100+ countries.
About 1,000 developers apply each month, and Gun.io approves about 100. The FAQ describes an algorithmic screen, a work history and background review, and a live technical interview with a senior engineer.
Clients sign a two-year non-solicitation agreement.
Its 20% full-time fee matches Arc's, while Braintrust and Wisemonk's concierge charge less. Our guide to staffing agency fees shows where those numbers sit against US agencies.
- Best for: mission-critical builds that need senior contractors and delivery oversight.
- Watch out: the AI is a screening filter, not a product you use, and there is no public rate card.
- What you pay: custom retainers for contract work; 20% of the negotiated first-year salary for a full-time hire.
9. Mercor
Mercor fits only one kind of startup here: one training or evaluating its own model that needs doctors, lawyers or senior engineers to grade output.
It started in 2023 as an AI hiring platform and now supplies experts to AI labs and enterprises. Nothing on its main site sells a tool for hiring your own team any more.
It raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation in October 2025, and TechCrunch reported in July 2026 that it was in talks at $20 billion with run-rate revenue above $2 billion.
It publishes the APEX benchmarks for agents, accounting and software work.
One risk to weigh: a supply-chain attack through LiteLLM exposed contractor data in March 2026, and class actions followed.
- Use it when: AI startups that need expert human data and evaluations at scale.
- Watch out: no hiring product for your own team, and a 2026 data breach still in court.
- What you pay: not published; engagements are scoped with sales.
10. Turing
Turing no longer sells self-serve developer hiring.
Its old hire-developers page now shows the frontier-lab pitch, and staffing lives inside Turing Intelligence as an enterprise service called Augment, which embeds what it calls the top 1 to 3% of AI-native talent in client workflows.
Enterprise clients shown there include Disney, Pepsi, Reddit, Volvo and Dell.
The lab business is the larger one. Turing says it works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta and NVIDIA, supplying coding and reasoning data and RL environments from a network of 5M+ experts.
Its $111 million Series E in March 2025 valued it at $2.2 billion on $167 million of annual revenue.
For a startup, Turing makes sense only at enterprise scale or when you are building a model. Our Turing alternatives page covers firms that still sell developer hiring.
- Use it when: well-funded AI companies that need model training data or an enterprise AI build.
- Watch out: no published pricing and no self-serve route for a small team hiring engineers.
- What you pay: quoted per engagement.
Hire Full-Time Engineers from Asia
If the list pointed you to full-time engineers rather than contractors, tell us the role and stack. We send 6 to 8 pre-vetted candidates within 24 hours, employ the engineer for you, and charge nothing until you hire.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is an AI recruitment and staffing firm?
It is a staffing or talent platform that uses AI to source, screen or match candidates, then places them with you as contractors or employees.
Most still finish with a human technical interview, because AI screening alone cannot catch fake candidates or judge senior engineering work.
Which of these firms employs the engineer for you?
Second Talent, Revelo and Wisemonk act as the legal employer, so you need no entity abroad.
Arc, Lemon.io, Gun.io and Braintrust introduce or contract the talent, and a full-time hire abroad then needs your own entity or an employer of record.
Do I need to tell candidates that AI screens them?
In several places, yes. New York City requires notice and a bias audit, Illinois has required notice since January 2026, and California's rules cover automated tools used in hiring decisions.
Ask any vendor whose AI scores your applicants how it supports audits and notices.
