MyOutDesk is about $400 a month cheaper. Here is what the gap buys.

At a glance

MyOutDesk figures below come from their pricing and how-it-works pages, read on 17 September 2026. Where their site does not publish something, the cell says so. We have left out third-party claims about their contract terms, because they are not confirmed on their own pages.

Where MyOutDesk is the better choice

Start with the compliance stack, because it is the part of their offer we cannot match. MyOutDesk publishes its security certifications, HIPAA verification and PCI-DSS compliance, along with criminal, identity, employment and education verification on the people they place (read on their pricing page on 17 September 2026). Our answer is contractual rather than certified. If your auditor, your insurer or your largest customer requires a formal report from a staffing partner, this comparison is already over and MyOutDesk wins it.

The scale is the second thing. More than 8,500 businesses over 17-plus years is the largest client base of anyone we looked at. We have placed 22 seats across four companies, which is a sample of recent work rather than a track record at that scale, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Longevity buys process: payroll that works, HR administration that works, an account manager who has seen your problem before.

They are also full-time only, one person, eight hours a day, five days a week. We think that is the right way to sell this, and it is a point of agreement rather than a point of difference. Plenty of competitors sell you a share of somebody and let you find out later.

Bilingual Spanish and French support is a genuine capability we do not lead with, and for a contact centre or a customer service line it can decide the whole thing.

One more, and it is a credibility point rather than a feature. They say they place the top 1% of applicants out of more than two million screened. We make no acceptance-rate claim at all, because a percentage without a denominator means nothing, and MyOutDesk is the only company in our research that publishes the denominator, which is worth saying out loud on a page written by a competitor.

The core difference

They send you a match. We send you a slate.

MyOutDesk's model is that they do the choosing: you scope the role with an account manager, they screen against it, and a person arrives. Most clients are matched within days and placement can happen in as little as a week, which is fast by any standard in this category. For a buyer who wants the hiring off their desk entirely, that is the product working as designed.

Our model puts the choice back on you. Within 48 hours of the brief you get three candidates, named, with backgrounds, whose availability we confirmed that week. You talk to them. You pick. On recent placements it has run 4 to 7 days from brief to the first day of work, and we define time-to-fill that way rather than counting to the shortlist. Some buyers find three interviews a chore. Others will not hand over a seat that touches their cash or their customers without meeting the person first.

The second difference is what is written down. MyOutDesk publishes a price and publishes a replacement promise, but contract length and notice period are not on their site when we checked (17 September 2026). That is not a criticism of their terms, which we have not seen and will not characterise. It does mean you have to ask, and you should ask in writing before you sign. Ours are published: month to month, billed in advance, 30 days' written notice, nothing paid before the start date, and four conditions on the guarantee section.

The third is where our depth is. Their heritage is real estate, and a transaction coordinator who has closed hundreds of files is a specific, valuable thing. If your seat is a bookkeeper running AP, AR and the monthly close, or an operations hire managing vendors and systems, that is the middle of our list rather than the edge of it.

What you get for the money

The gap, stated plainly

MyOutDesk starts at $1,988 a month for managed outsourcing and $2,500 a month for specialised roles. We start at $2,400 a month for an executive or virtual assistant, $2,500 for operations and admin, $2,500 for SDR, BDR and CSR, and $2,800 for finance and accounting. Against their entry rate, the difference for an assistant is about $412 a month, or roughly $4,900 over a year. Against their specialised rate, the two of us are level or we are cheaper.

We are not going to argue that $412 a month is nothing. For a business with three employees, that is real money and it deserves a real answer.

What the difference pays for

Three availability-confirmed people in front of you within 48 hours, instead of one match after a scoping call. You interview, you choose, and if none of the three fit we go again. The featured people on our front page are public and dated, so you can see people who are actually free this week before you book anything.

Contract terms you can read before you commit. Month to month, 30 days' written notice, $0 until the person starts, published on the pricing section alongside the rates. You are not asking what the minimum term is; you are reading it.

The AI layer, which is the part that compounds. Before day one the person is trained on the AI tooling for the seat, Claude Code included where the work suits it. Once they start, an AI captures how the seat is actually run into a living playbook for that seat and coaches the person weekly against it. It is knowledge capture, not monitoring, and the practical payoff arrives on the worst day: when someone leaves, their replacement inherits how your month-end close is done instead of learning it from you again.

And headhunting rather than assignment. We go and find someone for your specific role rather than allocating from a bench, which is slower to build and is the reason our rate sits where it does. If you want to compare either number against a US hire on payroll, the cost calculator does the loaded-cost maths.

Speed, and who you actually meet

This is the one comparison in our set where speed is close to a tie. MyOutDesk says most clients are matched within days and placement can happen in as little as one week, contrasted on their how-it-works page with the four to eight weeks a traditional hire takes. We give you three candidates within 48 hours of the brief and, on recent placements, 4 to 7 days from brief to first day of work. Both of those beat posting a job.

The difference is what the clock is measuring. Theirs runs to a match: the point at which a person has been chosen for you. Ours runs to a shortlist you assess yourself, and then to a start date. If you count only the calendar, there is little in it. If you count how much say you had, they are different products.

There is also the question of what you can check before you talk to anyone. MyOutDesk shows no profiles publicly, which is normal, every company in this research except three does the same. Our front page features a selection of people who are free this week, each with the date the availability was last confirmed, and we re-check it every week rather than letting it rot. A stale card would be worse than no card, which is why the dates are on them.

One thing worth saying for both of us: a fast placement that does not last is not a fast placement. Someone who starts on the 3rd and leaves on the 28th has cost you a month whoever sourced them, so read the replacement terms alongside the speed numbers.

How your risk is covered

MyOutDesk publishes a replacement at no additional cost if the person is not working out, with transition support. That is a clear promise and they have been making good on things like it for 17-plus years. The window, the conditions and what happens to the month you already paid are not published on their site, so ask for the written terms. Their contract length and notice period are not published either, and the same applies: get them in writing before you sign. We are not going to guess at them, and you should be wary of any comparison page that does.

Our terms are on the page because we would rather argue about them now than later. Free replacement, as many times as it takes, no cap and no expiry window. The four published conditions on our guarantee section are: same role and scope, you gave the person defined work and written feedback, you tell us at least 10 working days before you need the change, and after three replacements either side can walk away on the standard 30 days' written notice. Month to month otherwise, 30 days' written notice, nothing paid before the start date.

Security, where they are ahead of us

We are not going to soften this. MyOutDesk publishes its security certifications, is HIPAA-verified and is PCI-DSS compliant. What we do is narrow and specific: an NDA signed before anyone gets access to anything, logins that you own and issue rather than credentials we hold, and same-day offboarding when someone leaves the seat. For a lot of small businesses that is proportionate. For a healthcare client handling patient records, or anyone whose own contracts flow those obligations down, it is not, and MyOutDesk is the safer choice.

The background checks are worth a line too. They publish criminal, identity, employment and education verification on the people they place. We verify identity and references and we check work history against what the person tells us. Theirs is the more formal programme, and they publish it.

Which one should you pick?

Questions people ask when comparing

Sources and how this page was written

We read MyOutDesk's public pages ourselves on 17 September 2026 and quote what they publish, not what a third party says about them. We describe their claims rather than reproduce their copy. If something here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it. Our own numbers come from our pricing section and our published guarantee.

1. 01MyOutDesk pricing, plan inclusions, compliance and replacement statement, myoutdesk.com/pricing, read 17 September 2026
2. 02MyOutDesk screening, training and time to placement, myoutdesk.com/how-it-works, read 17 September 2026
3. 03Our own rates, terms and guarantee, contractanaut.com/#pricing, current on 17 September 2026