Superposition vs Toptal
One rents you a vetted contractor this week. The other finds someone who joins.
You are choosing between renting and hiring
- Hourly rates that never end.
- Contractors stretched into founding roles.
- Vetting badges with no reasoning.
- Benches that never held your person.
Toptal keeps a pre-vetted bench of freelancers and matches you to one quickly, on an hourly or weekly rate. For a defined piece of work with a deadline, that is the fastest path there is, and the vetting means you skip most of the screening.
A founding hire is a different transaction. You are asking someone to leave a job, take equity, and own a part of the company for years. Nobody on a freelance bench is optimising for that, and the people who are do not sit on benches.
Teams get into trouble when they use one as a cheaper version of the other: a contractor stretched into a permanent role nobody defined, or a six-month search for something that needed doing this quarter.
Pick by what the work actually is
Contract work with a deadline goes to a marketplace
A bench and an hourly rate is the right instrument for a defined project. Do not run a headhunt for it.
Ownership goes to a search
For the person who will own the system, hire the culture and still be there in two years, you need someone approached about your specific company, not matched from a bench.
The agent argues its case in writing
Every candidate arrives with a written read against your requirements and the evidence behind it, so you are not trusting a vetting badge.
Cost shape is different
An hourly rate runs forever. A search costs a flat monthly fee while it runs, plus a success fee on base salary once, and then it stops.
Side-by-side
Compare the workflow, not just the feature list.
Pricing and features checked 21 September 2026. Tell us if something is out of date.
Questions.
Answered.
It can, but that is not what it is built for. If you need someone on a defined project next week, a freelance marketplace will beat a search.
Differently. Rather than one standardised bar, the agent reads each person against your requirements and writes down where they exceed, meet or fall short.
Some teams trial a candidate on a short project first. The agent will run the search and you can structure the offer however you like.
No. The success fee is 15 percent of first-year base salary. Not equity, not bonus.
A Toptal alternative for permanent hires
A freelance bench is the wrong instrument for a founding hire.
Superposition vs a recruiting agency
An agency runs your search alongside six others. An agent runs only yours.
Hire a Backend Engineer
The engineer who owns the systems your company runs on.
Hire, do not rent.
Tell us the role and the agent will show you who it would go after first.