The best Hiring tools
About Hiring
Hiring is the decision about who does the work once you cannot do all of it yourself. That decision is a lever long before it becomes a job advert: it starts with knowing which parts of the work only you can do, and which parts a freelancer, an agent or a piece of software can carry instead. Get that split right and headcount stops being the only way to grow capacity. The lever that matters most here is leadership, not payroll. Someone still has to own the direction of the function and decide what gets attention this quarter, whether that person runs it alone, with contractors, or eventually with a team. Waiting for a full department before anyone leads the function is how growth stalls before it starts. - Lead your own growth function: how to run and lead a growth function as a solo founder, before or instead of building out a team.
Top picks
Upwork
A freelance marketplace where you post a job, compare proposals and pay independent specialists through escrow.
Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses that need a specialist for a defined project or ongoing part-time work and want proposals, contracts and payments handled in one place.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Price
- Not listed
- MCP server
- Yes
- API
- Yes
Toptal
A vetted network of freelance developers, designers and finance experts that you hire on a trial basis.
Best for: Companies that need a senior freelancer or fractional expert quickly and would rather pay for a vetted match than review dozens of open marketplace proposals themselves.
- Free plan
- Price
- From $79/mo
- MCP server
- API
Fiverr
Connect with freelancers for fixed-price gigs and hourly work across dozens of service categories.
Best for: Founders and small teams that need a one-off piece of work done fast, such as a logo, a translation or a video edit, and have no one in-house to do it.
- Free plan
- Yes
- Price
- Not listed
- MCP server
- No
- API
- No
The top 4 side by side
| 6 points compared | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $79/mo | $157/mo | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| API | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Freelancer-to-employee conversion | Yes | Yes | ||
| Hand-matched shortlist | Yes | Yes | ||
| Links |
All Hiring tools
- A freelance marketplace where you post a job, compare proposals and pay independent specialists through escrow.
- A vetted network of freelance developers, designers and finance experts that you hire on a trial basis.
- Connect with freelancers for fixed-price gigs and hourly work across dozens of service categories.
Put Hiring to work
How we rank
Every tool in a category is ranked by the same rule, worked out from the data we hold, not by who pays us. In order:
- How many of the category's shared features it has.
- Whether there is a free plan to start on.
- How open it is to AI: an API and an MCP server.
- Whether its pricing is public.
- Name, A to Z, when all else is equal.
When we add a tool or learn more about one, the ranking updates by itself.