One agency hire on a $150K role costs you about $30,000 in contingency fees. A single UPPER search costs $2,500 — fixed, published, and yours to run again. No percentage of salary, no opaque quote, no per-seat tool your team still has to operate.
Traditional contingency search bills 15–25% of first-year salary per hire — about 20% is the common benchmark, which is roughly $30,000 on a $150,000 role, for one person. That's the number every price on this page is measured against.
Autonomous doesn't mean impersonal. UPPER runs the entire source–score–reach loop without a human in the seat, but every candidate touchpoint reads like a person wrote it — specific to their background, warm in tone, respectful of their time. Never a robotic mass blast. That's what you're paying a premium over a $99 tool for: agency-grade candidate experience, delivered at machine scale. You get autonomous throughput; the candidate gets a genuinely human conversation.
A search is one complete autonomous sourcing run for one role — every channel scanned, every candidate scored, personalized outreach sent, a ranked shortlist delivered. Start with one and compare it to the $30,000 quote sitting in your inbox.
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Prepaid packs, fixed prices, no percentage of anyone's salary. Every pack is a fraction of what one contingency hire costs — and the per-search rate drops as you commit to more.
Three completed searches every month, on standing capacity. At $59,000/yr that's about $1,639 per search — roughly what a contingency agency charges to start a conversation about one hire, except it covers 36 roles and the candidate experience stays personal on every one of them.
All prices in USD and published as shown — no percentage of salary, no custom quote required. Early access: these are our launch rates and we honor them for the full term of any pack or subscription bought now. Pack searches are prepaid, valid for 12 months from the order date, and additional searches beyond a pack are $2,750 each. Subscriptions are billed in advance and auto-renew with 30-day opt-out. The ~$30,000 comparison figure reflects a 20% contingency fee on a $150,000 first-year salary — the mid-point of the industry-standard 15–25% range reported by SHRM and widely used across the search industry.
Two things a cheap sourcing seat can't give you: the agency fee you don't pay, and the weeks of vacancy you don't absorb. Move the inputs to match your hiring — every figure updates live, and every assumption is yours to edit.
Figures are illustrative estimates generated from the inputs you choose, not a quote or a guarantee. The agency comparison uses industry-standard contingency rates of 15–25% of first-year salary (about 20% typical), the benchmark published by SHRM and widely used across the search industry. Time-to-fill and vacancy-cost figures are your own editable assumptions; actual results vary by role, market and candidate availability. UPPER prices shown are our published rates: $2,500 for 1 search, $10,000 for 5, $21,000 for 12, and $2,750 per additional search beyond a pack.
A search is one complete, autonomous sourcing run for a single role. UPPER scans every connected channel, scores and ranks every candidate it finds, runs personalized outreach, and hands you a deduplicated, match-scored shortlist. You're buying completed searches — not seats, not credits, not access.
Traditional contingency search runs 15–25% of first-year salary — about 20% is the benchmark most commonly cited (including by SHRM) — which is roughly $30,000 on a $150,000 role, for one hire. A $2,500 Starter search is about 92% less than that, and the $10,000 Growth pack buys five searches for a third of one agency fee.
Because a per-seat tool sells your recruiter access — they still write the queries, screen the lists and send every message, and the real cost is their time. UPPER sells the completed outcome: the source–score–reach loop runs autonomously and you receive a ranked shortlist. The right comparison isn't the seat price you pay, it's the agency fee you no longer pay.
No — and this is deliberate. UPPER is built as a fully autonomous, humanized experience: automation carries the scale, but every candidate touchpoint is warm, specific to that person's background and written to read like a human wrote it. No robotic mass blasts, no template spam that damages your employer brand. Candidates get a personal conversation; you get autonomous throughput. That combination is what the premium over a cheap sourcing seat actually buys.
Additional searches beyond your pack are $2,750 each at the same published rate — no renegotiation, no surprise quote. Pack searches are prepaid and valid for 12 months from your order date.
Buy a pack if hiring comes in bursts — prepaid, no commitment, 12 months to use it. Move to the subscription once you're hiring continuously: $59,000/yr for 36 searches (or $5,900/mo for 3 a month) lands about 18% below pack-equivalent pricing. Talk to sales and we'll tell you which is cheaper for your volume.
Every candidate UPPER surfaces for your role is yours to keep, on every plan. We never resell candidate or client data — read more on our Trust page.
One $2,500 search instead of one $30,000 agency fee — with candidate outreach that still feels personal. Launch a single search and see your first ranked shortlist.