Directory, marketplace, or agency

These are three different products that all end with a person doing your work. They are usually compared on price, which tells you almost nothing. Compare them on one question instead: when the work goes wrong, who is holding the problem?

A marketplace

The transaction happens on the platform. You post or search, agree terms in the platform’s own account, and the money moves through its rails. Because the money is on the platform, the platform can hold it, release it, and take a view when the two sides disagree.

What it is genuinely good at: protecting a buyer who has no other recourse. If you have never worked with this person, have no contract of your own, and no practical way to withhold payment from someone in another country, then money held until you accept the work is a real protection and the commission is what pays for it. A marketplace also leaves a record — of the engagement, of the money, of the disagreement — and that record is worth something the day you need it.

What you are trading for it: the platform is a party to the relationship. Its rules govern what you can agree, and its fee is attached to the work rather than to the introduction.

An agency

You describe an outcome and the agency supplies people to produce it. It carries the staffing risk: if the person it assigned is wrong, it is the agency’s job to replace them, and if the person leaves, that is the agency’s problem rather than yours.

What it is genuinely good at: continuity and accountability. There is one contract, one invoice, and one organisation answerable for delivery. When you cannot afford to carry a staffing problem yourself — a deadline that will not move, a client of your own waiting behind it — that is worth paying for, and it is the thing neither of the other two models sells.

What you are trading for it: you usually do not choose the individual, the relationship is with the agency rather than the person, and you are paying for the bench as well as for the work.

A directory

A directory does one thing: it tells you who exists and how to reach them. There is no transaction to run, so there is no escrow, no dispute process and no commission. You contract and pay directly, on your terms.

What it is genuinely good at: cost, directness, and ownership of the relationship. If you can write your own agreement, judge work yourself, and pay someone in another country without needing an intermediary, then everything a marketplace adds is overhead — and a directory is the model that charges you least for the part you actually needed, which was finding the person.

What you are trading for it: all of the risk. Nobody is holding the money. Nobody will replace anyone. If it goes wrong, it is between you and them.

Free directories, and what separates one from another

Free directories are real competition. A free list can be perfectly good, and if you are content to do the screening yourself, it may be all you need.

What varies between directories is not price. It is two things: whether the entries are checked against anything written down, and whether an entry that has gone stale disappears by itself. A list of people who signed up once and never came back is the failure mode of the model. Ask a directory those two questions before you judge it on cost.

What each model charges, with one named vendor apiece

Read on each vendor’s own page on 2026-08-14, and linked so you can re-read it.

A marketplace charges on both sides of the same transaction. Freelancer.com charges the employer “a fee of 3% or $3.00 USD (whichever is greater)” at award on fixed-price work and “a fee of 3%” on each hourly payment, and the freelancer “10% or $5.00 USD, whichever is greater” on fixed price and 10% on hourly (Freelancer.com’s fees and charges page, read 2026-08-14). Upwork publishes ranges rather than rates: a Client Marketplace Fee of “up to 7.99%” on the free Basic plan, reduced to 3% for qualifying U.S. clients paying from a bank account (Upwork’s Client Marketplace Fee article, read 2026-08-14), a one-time Contract Initiation Fee “ranging from $0.99 to $14.99 USD” per contract (Upwork’s Contract Initiation Fee article, read 2026-08-14), and a Freelancer Service Fee that “ranges from 0% to 15% per contract” (Upwork’s Freelancer Service Fee article, read 2026-08-14). Those three are from Upwork’s help centre because `www.upwork.com` refused this browser outright.

A managed vendor charges for the management and mostly does not publish the rate. Toptal charges “a flat monthly subscription fee of $79 that is charged if you decide to proceed with talent matching”, invoices for the work on top of it twice a month on Net 10 terms, and publishes no rate for the work on that page, its terms of service or its Platform Subscription Terms (toptal.com/faq, read 2026-08-14). Arc.dev publishes one figure for the other end of the same model: “Full-time hires — 20% — of the annual salary” (arc.dev/pricing, read 2026-08-14). Agencies proper were not part of this reading, so no agency rate card is quoted here.

A directory charges for access, and somebody else already charges for it this way. OnlineJobs.ph charges $69 a month for Pro and $99 a month for Premium, each carrying a capped allowance of worker contacts per month, and states “Hire direct. No salary markups or ongoing fees.” (onlinejobs.ph/pricing, read 2026-08-14). That is a subscription metered by contacts, which is the same shape as the one described below. A directory charging for access rather than for the work is not a new idea and this is not the only one doing it.

Where Mainstay sits

Mainstay is a directory, built to answer the two questions above with something you can check.

Every record is read against the standard before it is published — seven numbered clauses, versioned and dated, published in full and free to quote. Every record prints which of those clauses it cleared and when. A record reaches the register only after the person behind it has been checked against a government-issued document, and the record carries the method: an automatic check, run by Stripe, or a check made here by a person. And every Mainstayer answers a check every week: miss one and the record leaves every list a client sees, automatically (how we verify).

Money never passes through this site. Reading it is free; $49 a month buys 100 contact reveals (pricing), and that is the only thing metered here.

When Mainstay is the wrong choice

You want a managed vendor who replaces the person if it goes wrong. That is an agency, and this is not one. Nobody here will find you a substitute, chase a missed deadline, or answer for someone else’s work. If the cost of a bad hire is a deadline you cannot move, buy the accountability.

You want the platform to hold the money until you accept the work. Use a marketplace with escrow. We hold nothing and mediate nothing.

You want to describe the job and have someone else produce a shortlist. There is no matching service here. You read records and you choose. That is faster for some people and considerably slower for others, and only you know which you are.