Near does its pricing on a call. Ours is on the page.

At a glance

Near (hirewithnear.com) recruits in Latin America and sells two things: a direct hire, where you pay a one-time placement fee and the person is employed by themselves or through an employer of record, and a staffing arrangement, where Near invoices you monthly for the person's salary plus their fee and handles payroll and compliance. The staffing model is the one that does the same job we do. Everything in the table comes from their pricing page, read on 17 September 2026.

Where Near is the better choice

Four things about Near are better than what most of this category offers, including us in places.

The longest direct-hire guarantee we found

Their pricing page, read on 17 September 2026, publishes a 180-day replacement guarantee on direct hire. We compared 27 companies for this set of pages and nothing beat it. Six months is the common ceiling and most managed providers sit far below that, at 30 days or 14. If you are buying a direct hire and the guarantee is what you are weighing, theirs is the strongest published number in the market.

They publish salary bands, which almost nobody does

Near puts Latin American salary data on their own site: a mid-level SDR or BDR at $24,000 to $30,000 a year, a senior accountant at $42,000 to $60,000, a mid-level software engineer at $54,000 to $72,000. That is the number a buyer actually needs to plan a budget, and publishing it invites you to check their quote against the market. Very few staffing companies will hand you that.

Three to five days to candidates

They quote first candidates within three to five days of the kickoff call and about 21 days for the full hiring process. That is fast for a recruiting firm and it is a real number, not a range so wide it means nothing.

Latin America is the right answer for a lot of roles

A person in Bogota or Medellin is working your hours without anyone staying up. For roles that live on calls, an SDR dialling US prospects, a customer success rep answering at 9am Eastern, a controller who joins your Monday meeting, that overlap matters more than the hourly rate. We place in Latin America too, but LatAm is their whole business and their network there is deeper than ours.

The core difference

The difference is what you can find out before you speak to a salesperson.

Near's pricing page explains both models clearly and then stops. No percentage for the placement fee. No flat amount. No margin figure on the staffing model. No minimum term, no notice period. Their position is that pricing depends on the role and the seniority, which is true, and every company in this category could say the same thing.

We publish ours anyway. An executive or virtual assistant from $2,400 a month. Operations and admin from $2,500. SDR, BDR and CSR from $2,500. Finance and accounting from $2,800. Full-time, dedicated, working your hours, with the word from in front of every figure because a senior seat costs more. Engineering and AI roles we scope on the call, and we say that rather than implying a number we cannot stand behind. It is all on the pricing section.

Where the margin sits

On Near's staffing model, your monthly invoice covers the person's salary plus Near's fee. Because the fee is not published, the salary bands on their site tell you one half of the equation and not the other. A mid-level SDR at $24,000 to $30,000 a year is $2,000 to $2,500 a month in salary before Near adds anything. What the total comes to is a question for the call.

Our SDR, BDR and CSR seats start at $2,500 a month, and that figure is the whole invoice: the person's pay, payroll, admin, tooling and our margin. We contract and pay the person. You get one line item. If you want to work out what either option costs against a US hire, the cost calculator handles the fully loaded arithmetic.

What you get for the money

Direct hire and a monthly seat are not the same purchase, and the right one depends on how long the role lasts.

When a one-time fee wins

If you hire a senior accountant through Near's direct-hire line and they stay four years, a placement fee amortised over four years is cheap, and you own the relationship. You are then the employer, or you are running an employer of record, and the salary, the raises, the equipment and the local compliance are yours. For a company with an HR function and an existing entity, that is the sensible structure and we would say so on a call.

When a monthly seat wins

If the role might change shape in six months, or you have never employed anyone outside the US, or you would rather one invoice than a payroll problem in another country, the monthly seat is the calmer purchase. Near offers that too. Ours is month to month with 30 days' written notice and nothing to pay until the person starts, so your maximum exposure to a bad decision is one month.

What is in our number

The monthly rate covers the person's compensation, payroll, admin and our margin, and it also covers the part we built the company around. Every person we place is trained on AI tooling, including Claude Code, before day one. An AI layer captures how the seat is actually being done into a living playbook for that seat and coaches the person on it every week. When someone leaves, the next person inherits the playbook instead of learning your close process from scratch.

We are not the cheap option in this comparison and we do not know whether we are cheaper than Near, because Near does not publish a number. What we can tell you is exactly what ours is before you spend an hour on a call.

Speed, and who you actually meet

Near quotes three to five days from the kickoff call to first candidates, and about 21 days for the whole hiring process. We quote three availability-confirmed candidates within 48 hours of the brief, and on recent placements 4 to 7 days from brief to first day of work.

Those two sets of numbers are measuring slightly different things and it is worth being precise about it. Their 21 days is a full search. Our 4 to 7 days is brief to first day, which is the number we define as time to fill, and we say so on the page because plenty of companies quote time to shortlist and let you read it as time to working.

Availability is the part that slips

A candidate list goes stale faster than anyone admits. Someone who was open on Monday has accepted something else by Thursday, and a shortlist built three weeks ago is mostly a list of people who are now employed. The featured people on our front page are public, and every person there has had their availability re-confirmed that week, with the date next to the name. No call needed to look.

Near does not publish candidate profiles before a call, which is normal; only three companies in 27 publish any, and none of those show dates. It does mean the first time you see a real person is after the kickoff call rather than before you book one.

How your risk is covered

Near's direct-hire guarantee is the best number on their page and we will not argue with it. A 180-day replacement window means that if the accountant you hired in January is gone in June, they find you another one. Nothing else in our research published a longer direct-hire window.

Their staffing model is described as covered for the duration of the engagement, which is the same structure most managed providers use. How long that engagement runs, and how much notice ends it, is not published on their site (checked 17 September 2026). Those two terms decide what the coverage is actually worth, so put them on the list of things to get in writing.

What ours says

Free replacement, as many times as it takes, with four conditions published on the guarantee section rather than left to a terms page. The replacement is for the same role and scope. You need to have given the person defined work and written feedback. We need at least 10 working days before a request. And after three replacements either side can walk away on the standard 30 days' written notice.

That last condition is there on purpose. An unlimited guarantee with no exit is a way of keeping a client who should have left, and we would rather write down what happens when it is not working than discover it with you in month five.

Which one should you pick?

Questions people ask when comparing

Sources and how this page was written

We read Near'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. 01Near pricing page, both models, guarantee terms, speed and LatAm salary bands, hirewithnear.com/pricing, read 17 September 2026
2. 02Contractanaut rates, replacement conditions and availability, contractanaut.com/#pricing, published 17 September 2026