Developer Hiring Platform Rate Index
What nine developer hiring platforms actually charge a client, and which of them will tell you before a sales call. Every figure below is traced to the platform's own published page, with the date it was read.
What this round found
- Three of nine platforms publish a client rate on their own site: Match.dev at $50 to $80/hr, Lemon.io at $55 to $95/hr, and Arc.dev at $15 to $110+/hr for freelance hires. Arc.dev's pricing page was already live in July, when this index wrongly counted it as publishing nothing.
- Upwork's Basic-plan client fee is now 7.99% on its pricing page's plan card, up from 5% in July 2026. One answer on the same page still says 5%.
- Four of nine publish no client rate: Toptal, Turing, Andela and Gun.io. Index.dev states a rate only in its blog, and gives two different ranges there.
- The headline rate is rarely the bill. Upwork adds 7.99% plus a $0.99 to $14.99 fee per contract; Toptal adds $79 a month; Lemon.io bills a month ahead with a 160-hour minimum and charges $20,000 if you hire its developer directly; Arc.dev and Gun.io take 20% of first-year salary for a full-time hire.
- Turing has taken down its developer-hiring pages. Hiring now goes through one contact page, with no prices and a trial of unstated length.
Published rates, side by side
The full table
| Platform | Client rate | How it charges | Fees on top | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andela | not published | Quote after a discovery call | Set per statement of work. | none published www.andela.com read 2026-10-23 Homepage, /why-andela and /ai-native-talent read for a rate card on 2026-10-23. |
| Arc.dev | $15 to $110+/hr, freelance hires client-facing, on its pricing page | Published hourly range for freelancers; percentage fee for full-time hires | Full-time hires: 20% of the annual salary. Risk-free trial of up to two weeks. | verified arc.dev read 2026-10-23 The same figures appear in Internet Archive snapshots of 2026-06-17 and 2026-07-30; the first snapshot of the page is from 2025-11-17. |
| Gun.io | no standard prices, by its own statement | Retainer set per engagement | Full price shown upfront on each developer's profile, "no additional fees". Full-time placements: 20% of the developer's negotiated first-year salary. | verified gun.io read 2026-10-23 The FAQ answers sit in collapsed sections; read in a real browser on 2026-10-23, because Gun.io refuses scripts with HTTP 403. |
| Index.dev | $60 to $90/hr in two of its blog posts, $40 to $120 in a third stated in blog posts, never as a rate card | Quote after a call | "No upfront costs. Pay only when you hire." 30-day performance guarantee. | verified www.index.dev read 2026-10-23 Rates from index.dev/blog/toptal-turing-arcdev-bairesdev-indexdev-comparison and /blog/top-toptal-alternatives ($60 to $90) and /blog/choose-platform-hire-vetted-developers ($40 to $120). |
| Lemon.io | $55 to $95/hr client-facing, on its startups page | Published hourly rate, billed in advance | Prepaid: "you pay for the developer's working hours ahead of time", typically one month in advance. Minimum 160 hours per project. A $20,000 placement fee if a client hires a developer directly or pays one off the platform. LemonHire, its service for hiring in-house, sets a $20,000 placement fee and charges the developer's hourly rate plus a $2,000 management fee during a 4-week trial. | verified lemon.io read 2026-10-23 Rate from /startups/. Prepaid billing and the 160-hour minimum from the homepage FAQ. Placement and trial fees from /terms-of-use/, in force since 2026-09-24. |
| Match.dev publisher of this index; see disclosure | $50 to $80/hr senior engineers, client-facing | Published hourly rate | No fee until you hire. $150 credit for attending the intro call. Free replacement if a hire does not work out. | verified www.match.dev read 2026-10-23 The $150 credit is stated on https://www.match.dev/hire-a-developer-form/. |
| Toptal | not published (third-party estimates $60 to $150+/hr) third-party estimate only | Flat subscription plus hourly | Flat $79/month subscription, charged only if you proceed with matching, refundable on cancellation if Toptal cannot supply talent. Each engagement starts with a trial of up to two weeks, not billed if you are not satisfied. | estimate www.toptal.com read 2026-10-23 The $79/month subscription and the trial are primary (Toptal's own FAQ). The hourly range is a third-party estimate only and must be cited as one: https://www.hireinsouth.com/post/how-much-does-toptal-cost states "$60 to $150+ per hour" and $200+ for specialized talent, checked 2026-10-23. The same page still quotes the $500 deposit. |
| Turing | not published | Quote after contacting sales | Not published. | none published www.turing.com read 2026-10-23 turing.com/pricing status-checked (404); homepage, /hire-developers, /services and /intelligence/get-talent read for a rate card on 2026-10-23. |
| Upwork | $20 to $150+/hr freelancer-set; Upwork's cost guide: entry $20 to $40, intermediate $40 to $70, expert $70 to $150+ | Open marketplace with a client fee | Client fee 7.99% on Basic, per the plan card ("a $100 contract would cost $107.99"); one FAQ answer on the same page still says 5%, or 3% for eligible US clients paying by checking account. Contract Initiation Fee $0.99 to $14.99 per contract on Basic. Business Plus: 10% (8% discounted), no initiation fee except on fixed-price contracts of $100 or less, and $49/month per active Direct Contract. | verified www.upwork.com read 2026-10-23 Pricing page read in a real browser on 2026-10-23. Cost guide read from an Internet Archive snapshot of 2026-10-05: the live page sat behind a bot check, which this index does not get around. |
What changed since July 2026
Two kinds of entry. A change is a platform changing its own pages. A correction is an error in our previous round, found on re-checking: the figure was already on the platform's site and we missed or misread it. Earlier rounds stay as published, with the error, at their own address.
- Upwork. The Basic plan card now shows a 7.99% client fee ("a $100 contract would cost $107.99"). In July 2026 it showed 5%. One FAQ answer on the same page still says 5%, or 3% by checking account.
- Lemon.io. The homepage no longer offers month-to-month terms or a direct-hire buyout "for just a recruiting fee". Its FAQ now states prepaid billing, typically a month in advance, and a 160-hour minimum per project.
- Lemon.io. correction The July round said Lemon.io does not publish its direct-hire fee. Its terms of use already set a $20,000 placement fee and, for LemonHire, a $2,000 trial management fee (Internet Archive snapshot of 2026-06-27).
- Arc.dev. correction The July round listed Arc.dev as publishing no rate. arc.dev/pricing, linked from the main menu of its site, has shown $15 to $110+ per hour for freelance hires and 20% of annual salary for full-time hires since at least November 2025. The July check read three other pages and missed it.
- Turing. Its developer-hiring pages now show its AI-training-data homepage (changed between July 24 and August 14, 2026). The 2-week free trial they advertised is gone; the contact page that replaced them promises profiles in as little as 72 hours and a no-risk trial of unstated length.
- Index.dev. Its homepage now says it filters for the top 2% (top 1% in July). A third blog post gives a $40 to $120 hourly range beside the $60 to $90 in two others.
- Gun.io. "Developers set their own rates" no longer appears on its FAQ or homepage. The FAQ says Gun.io negotiates the rate on the developer's behalf and has no standard prices. Its 20% fee on full-time placements is now recorded here.
Where platforms contradict themselves
Resolving these quietly would be editorialising, so both readings are published. All of the sources below are the platform's own pages.
- Upwork: Client fee. 7.99% on the Basic plan card ("a $100 contract would cost $107.99") 7.99% in two FAQ answers on the same page 5%, or 3% for eligible US clients paying by checking account, in a third FAQ answer on the same page 7.99% is recorded as the Basic fee, because the plan card and two of the three answers give it. The 5% reading is reported, not dropped. In July 2026 the plan card itself said 5%.
- Index.dev: Hourly rate. "rates from $60 to $90 an hour" (two blog posts) $40 to $120 per hour (a comparison table in a third blog post) Both are reported. Neither is a rate card.
- Index.dev: Acceptance rate. top 7% of applicants who survive all five verification steps (its verification page) Top 1% (its how-it-works page) top 2% (its homepage, which said top 1% in July 2026) sub-3% (its blog) 5% (a comparison table in its blog) All five are on index.dev and mutually inconsistent. The spread is reported; no single number is treated as reliable.
- Index.dev: Network size. 30,000+ human-vetted engineers (how-it-works page) 27,000+ human-interviewed engineers (its blog) Both figures are Index.dev's own and are reported as such.
- Index.dev: Replacement terms. a 30-day performance guarantee and a replacement "immediately" if the fit is wrong (how-it-works page) a "candidate replacement discount" (its own comparison blog) Both readings noted.
- Lemon.io: Network size. 1,500+ vetted developers (about-us page; the homepage said the same in July and no longer does) 1264 on-demand devs, and 1200+ elsewhere on the same page (startups page) All figures are Lemon.io's own and are reported as such.
Figures we refuse to publish
These numbers circulate widely. None of them survived verification, so none of them appear in the table above.
- Gun.io at $75 to $175/hr circulates in other comparison articles. Matches no source we could find, primary or secondary. Gun.io itself states it has no standard prices.
- Index.dev acceptance rate of 1.2% circulates in AI-generated summaries. Appears in no page HTML on index.dev. 1.2% is the acceptance rate Lemon.io publishes.
- Turing at $30 to $200/hr circulates in third-party estimates. A spread that wide carries no information. The honest statement is "quote-based, undisclosed".
- Index.dev 97% trial-to-placement conversion circulates in automated page summaries. Could not be reproduced in the raw HTML. Index.dev's homepage does say "97% of clients come back for a second engagement", a different claim.
- Toptal accepting fewer than 3% of 200,000+ applicants a year circulates in comparison articles, including earlier versions of Match.dev's own posts. Toptal's screening page says "thousands of applications" each month and gives no annual total. The "fewer than 3%" is Toptal's own and stays.
How to cite this
Free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution.
Match.dev (2026). Developer Hiring Platform Rate Index: October 2026. Retrieved from https://www.match.dev/developer-rate-index/2026-10/
Or link it directly:
<a href="https://www.match.dev/developer-rate-index/2026-10/">Developer Hiring Platform Rate Index: October 2026, Match.dev</a>
Disclosure. Match.dev is one of the nine platforms in this index and competes with the other eight. Its own figures are marked self-disclosed and are held to the same standard: published on its own site and checkable there. The method is built so the reader does not have to trust the publisher: only a platform's own pages count as primary evidence, conflicting claims are shown side by side rather than resolved, and figures that cannot be reproduced in a source are dropped, including flattering ones. Errors in an earlier round are corrected openly in the next one.
How the figures were checked
A claim about a platform is checked against that platform's own pages, not against review sites repeating each other. Where a site blocks automated access, dated Internet Archive snapshots of its own pages are used and the snapshot date recorded. Absence is verified, not assumed: when this index says a platform publishes no rate, that rests on named pages searched for a rate card. The full method, including how conflicting claims are handled, is documented in How We Verify Developer Platform Pricing.