TL;DR: For one senior engineer working 160 hours, Arc freelance runs $2,400 to $17,600+ a month, Toptal adds a $79 monthly subscription to an hourly rate it quotes per role, and Andela's own sample profile shows $6,500 to $8,500 a month. Turing no longer sells developer hiring to startups. Second Talent costs $4,599 to $5,999 a month, billed monthly at $29 to $39 an hour.
Open turing.com/hire/python-developers today and you land on a page recruiting experts to train AI models, not on a developer hiring form.
That leaves three of these four names still selling engineers to US startups, and only one of them, Arc, prints an hourly rate on its pricing page. Toptal quotes after a call, and Andela prices after a discovery call.
Toptal vs Turing vs Arc vs Andela: quick comparison
| Platform | Pricing model | Fees on top | Trial or guarantee | First candidates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toptal | Hourly rate, quoted per role | $79 a month subscription | Trial up to 2 weeks, not billed if unhappy | Within 24 hours in almost all cases |
| Arc | $15 to $110+/hr freelance | 20% of annual salary for a full-time hire | Trial up to 2 weeks; free re-match for 3 months | 72 hours freelance, about 14 days full-time |
| Turing | No developer hiring offer for startups | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Andela | Monthly, quoted after a discovery call | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Second Talent | $29 to $39/hr, billed monthly | None; $0 until you hire | 90-day, one-time replacement | 6 to 8 profiles within 24 hours |
- 1Toptal no longer asks for a deposit; its FAQ lists the subscription, a trial with up to three candidates per position, and invoices twice a month on Net 10 terms.
- 2Arc's full-time fee is 20% of the annual salary, and the engineer then goes on your own payroll.
- 3A US software developer at the median wage costs about $194,000 a year once benefits are added, the figure every platform price should be read against.
- 4Andela now sells to enterprises building AI teams, with 17,000 engineers it calls AI-native.
Toptal: a $79 subscription and a rate you learn on a call
Toptal is for a startup that needs a senior contractor fast and will pay a premium to skip the screening work.
Its client FAQ says 90% of clients hire the first candidate it introduces, and that it introduces candidates within 24 hours in almost all cases.
The fixed costs are short. A flat $79 a month subscription applies once you go ahead with matching, and you can cancel at any time. The deposit that older reviews mention is gone from the FAQ.
Each engagement starts with a trial of up to two weeks, with up to three candidates per position, and you are not billed if you are not satisfied. After that, Toptal invoices twice a month on Net 10 terms.
The FAQ leaves out the hourly rate. Toptal sets it per engagement after you describe the role, so you cannot budget a hire before a call.
Third-party guides such as South's Toptal pricing breakdown put typical rates at $60 to $150+ an hour, with specialists above $200. Those are estimates, not Toptal's numbers.
The premium buys a narrow funnel.
Toptal's screening page lists five stages: language and personality (26.4% pass), an in-depth skill review (7.4%), live screening (3.6%), a test project lasting one to three weeks (3.2%) and continued excellence (3%).
The whole process takes the applicant three to eight weeks.
Toptal's developer hiring page also claims a 98% trial-to-hire rate. If you want to keep a Toptal engineer full-time, the FAQ says that is possible "for the most part", on terms agreed case by case.
- Best for: A senior contractor on a defined project, starting this week.
- Watch out: No published rate, so the real cost only arrives after the call; overlap with US hours depends on where the expert lives.
- Price: $79 a month plus the quoted hourly rate.
Our Toptal alternatives guide compares it with nine other platforms.
Arc: the only one of the four with a public rate card
Arc suits a team that wants to see a price before talking to anyone, and that may hire either a contractor or a permanent employee.
Its pricing page shows two plans: freelance hires at $15 to $110+ an hour with a risk-free trial of up to two weeks, and full-time hires at 20% of the annual salary.
The Arc homepage says $0 until you hire, a freelance hire in 72 hours and a full-time hire in 14 days.
Arc spells out its screening on how Arc works: 55% of applicants pass the profile screen, 14% the communication assessment and 2% the technical interview.
The same page promises that during the first three months Arc will match you with another engineer free of charge if you are unhappy.
- Pay per hour, $15 to $110+
- Arc invoices you; no benefits on your side
- Trial of up to 2 weeks
- One-off fee of 20% of annual salary
- Salary, payroll and benefits are yours
- Free re-match in the first 3 months
The 20% fee looks small next to a Toptal rate, until you add what a full-time US employee costs. At the US median for software developers, $135,980 in May 2025 per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fee alone is $27,196.
Benefits made up 30.0% of private-industry compensation in June 2026, according to the BLS employer cost survey.
Put together, year one of that hire comes to about $221,500 in our calculation. You pay the fee once; from year two the cost falls back to salary plus benefits.
- Best for: Teams that want published rates and both freelance and permanent options on one platform.
- Watch out: The $15 to $110+ range is wide, so a senior quote will sit near the top; full-time hires carry your own payroll costs.
- Price: Hourly for freelancers, 20% of salary for full-time.
For a head-to-head, see Arc.dev vs Toptal.
Turing: no longer a developer hiring option for startups
Turing is in this comparison because founders still search for it, but it is not a place to hire a remote engineer in 2026. Its old role pages, such as Python developers, now redirect to a page that recruits experts to evaluate AI output.
Its hire-developers address now opens a page headed "Accelerate superintelligence".
The services page describes two businesses. Frontier AI sells datasets, reinforcement learning environments, experts and research to AI labs. Enterprise AI helps large companies deploy agentic systems.
Neither lists a staffing offer, a trial or a price for a startup that wants one engineer on its team.
That changes the comparison. Older articles that put Turing at $100 to $200 an hour describe a product you cannot buy today, so there is no Turing column in the cost tables below.
If you had Turing on a shortlist, the useful question is which of the other three, or a service like ours, replaces it. Our Turing alternatives guide covers ten options, and Toptal vs Turing explains what changed.
- Best for: AI labs buying training data and expert evaluation, not startups hiring developers.
- Watch out: Comparison sites still quote its old developer rates.
- Price: Not published.
Andela: enterprise AI teams, priced after a discovery call
Andela is for a larger company building an AI team that also wants to train its own engineers.
It calls itself "the Human Compute Layer for AI" and sells three things: engineers to augment your team or a fully managed team, AI system builds, and training for in-house engineers.
Its why-Andela page gives the scale: 17,000 engineers it calls AI-native, 200,000+ technologists trained since 2014, 2,000+ global client MSAs and a 4.7 rating from 329 G2 reviews.
New engineers arrive in cohorts released quarterly, according to its AI engineers page, which groups them as Builders, Integrators and Scalers.
Andela publishes no rate card. The only price on its site is a sample profile: a senior data analyst in Brazil, with four hours of overlap, at $6,500 to $8,500 a month. Treat that as a reference point, not a quote for an engineer.
Time to match, minimum term, trial period and the vetting steps are not stated either; the site describes engineers as "trained and assessed" for production AI work. The path to a price is the "Book a discovery call" button.
For a seed-stage team hiring one developer, that sales process is the main cost. For a company standing up several AI engineers plus training, it is the point.
- Best for: Enterprises building AI teams that want upskilling in the same contract.
- Watch out: No public price, minimum or trial terms; ask about each in writing before you sign.
- Price: Quoted; the sample profile on its site shows $6,500 to $8,500 a month.
See also our Andela alternatives guide.
What a senior engineer costs: 160 hours a month and a full year
At 160 hours a month, Toptal's estimated range starts at $9,679, above the top of Andela's sample and Second Talent's price. The chart multiplies each hourly figure by 160.
An Arc freelancer at the top of the published range, $110 an hour, comes to $17,600 a month. Annualized, the gaps widen:
| Option | Per month (160 hours) | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Toptal, at $60 to $150/hr (estimate) + $79 | $9,679 to $24,079 | $116,148 to $288,948 |
| Arc freelance, at $15 to $110/hr | $2,400 to $17,600 | $28,800 to $211,200 |
| Arc full-time, US median salary, year one | about $18,454 | about $221,453 |
| Andela, sample profile | $6,500 to $8,500 | $78,000 to $102,000 |
| Turing | Not offered | Not offered |
| US employee at the median wage, with benefits | about $16,188 | about $194,257 |
| Second Talent, at $29 to $39/hr | $4,599 to $5,999 | $55,188 to $71,988 |
For a fuller view of US rates by role, our US cost-to-hire page breaks hourly pay down by seniority.
Hidden costs that do not show on the rate
The rate is the smallest surprise on most of these invoices. Five items change the real number:
- Toptal's subscription and billing cycle. The $79 runs every month you keep matching, and invoices land twice a month on Net 10, which matters for a startup managing cash week to week.
- Arc's placement fee. The 20% is due on a full-time placement on top of salary. A hire who leaves after month four still cost the full fee, though Arc's three-month re-match softens an early miss.
- Employer costs on a direct hire. Payroll taxes, health cover and paid leave come to 30% of total compensation for the average private employer, per the BLS survey above.
- Contractor classification. A freelancer who works full-time hours inside your team can look like an employee to the IRS, which sets out its tests for contractor status. The risk sits with you, not the platform.
- Your own time. Andela's discovery call and Toptal's quote call are free, but no price exists until they happen, so comparing options takes weeks of founder or CTO time.
Which to pick, and when
The choice follows the shape of the hire more than the hourly rate:
- A senior contractor for a short, defined project: Toptal for speed and screening, Arc if you want to see a rate first.
- A permanent US employee: Arc full-time, budgeting for the 20% fee plus salary and benefits.
- A multi-engineer AI build with training: Andela, through its sales process.
- A full-time engineer at a fixed monthly cost: a service that employs the engineer for you, which is where Second Talent fits.
Second Talent as an alternative
Second Talent is our own service, so weigh this section with that in mind. We place full-time engineers from Asia at $29 to $39 USD an hour, billed monthly: $4,599 to $5,999 for a 160-hour month, or $55,188 to $71,988 a year.
That price includes the engineer's employment and payroll. It runs 50 to 70% below hiring the same seniority in the US, and there is $0 cost until you hire.
We send a shortlist of 6 to 8 pre-vetted profiles within 24 hours, drawn from the top 1% of applicants. Our engineers ship with AI agents from week one and work 4 to 6 hours a day inside US business hours.
If a hire does not work out, a 90-day, one-time replacement guarantee covers it.
The trade-offs are real. Overlap is 4 to 6 hours, not a full US day, and a two-week contract fits Toptal or Arc better than a monthly engagement. See our pricing or tell us the role you need to fill.
FAQ
Does Toptal still require a $500 deposit?
No. Toptal's FAQ lists a $79 monthly subscription that applies once you proceed with matching, cancellable at any time, and no deposit.
Is Turing cheaper than Toptal?
Turing no longer sells developer hiring to startups, so there is no current Turing price to compare. Its site sells AI training data and agentic AI services to labs and enterprises.
Can I convert an Arc or Toptal contractor to full-time?
Arc charges 20% of the annual salary for a full-time hire. Toptal's FAQ says converting is possible "for the most part", on a custom arrangement agreed with Toptal.
How many hours overlap with a US team?
Toptal and Arc do not state overlap, because talent works from many countries. Andela's sample profile shows four hours. Second Talent engineers overlap 4 to 6 hours a day; our US and Asia time zone guide shows how teams schedule it.
