Recruiter Commission & OTE Calculator

It depends on the placement fee and the commission scheme. A typical perm contingency fee runs 15-25% of the placed candidate's first-year salary (20% is the most common rate), and the recruiter keeps a share of that fee as commission. On a flat scheme that share is often 20-30% of the fee in the US, though lower-volume and in-house-adjacent desks pay less. On a threshold scheme you earn nothing until your billings clear a target (the 'desk cost'), then a rate applies to everything above it. So a placement billed before you have cleared the threshold can pay zero commission, while the same placement after you clear it pays the full rate. This calculator models perm desks; temp and contract desks pay on hourly margin (bill rate minus pay rate), which works differently. Use the calculator above to model your own fee, volume, and scheme rather than relying on a single average.

OTE stands for on-target earnings: your base salary plus the commission you are expected to earn if you hit target. For an agency recruiter, OTE is base plus projected placement commission across the year. A common structure is a modest base (for example $40,000-$60,000 at entry level) with OTE in the region of $70,000-$110,000 in a productive year once placements are factored in, and experienced billers can clear $150,000. A frequently cited rule of thumb is that a recruiter's total earnings work out near a third of what they bill. OTE is a projection, not a guarantee: commission depends on placements actually closing, and early-career recruiters on a recoverable draw can take home close to base in a slow year. The calculator works out your OTE from your base, average fee, placements per year, and commission scheme.

On a threshold (or 'desk cost') scheme, you have to bill a set amount before commission starts. That threshold is the revenue your seat costs the agency to run, and commission only applies to billings above it. For example, with a $135,000 threshold, billing $200,000 leaves $65,000 of commissionable revenue; the rest covered the desk. Thresholds are most commonly quoted per quarter, with a widely cited market standard of about nine times your monthly base each quarter, which annualises to roughly three times your annual base over a full year (nine times monthly base, across four quarters, is thirty-six times monthly base, or about three times annual base). Some firms instead set a lower or higher annual target, and the multiple varies widely by employer, so the calculator lets you enter the threshold in dollars and set it to whatever your contract actually says. This calculator settles on an annual basis; if your scheme resets the threshold quarterly or monthly, enter the equivalent annual figure. Some firms add escalating tiers, paying a higher percentage on each band of billings above the threshold.

A 360 desk means one recruiter handles both sides of a deal: winning the client and sourcing the candidate, and on a true 360 desk that recruiter keeps their whole commission with no split. A 180 or split desk divides the work between two people, so the commission on a placement is shared, commonly 50/50 but sometimes weighted toward whoever owns the client relationship (60/40 and 70/30 also appear). If you work a split desk, you keep your agreed share of the commission a full-desk biller would have earned on the same placement. Leave the split-desk lever off to model a 360 desk where you take the full commission, or turn it on and set your agreed share on a 180 desk.

Fall-offs are handled with an optional fall-off / clawback allowance: enter the share of commission you expect to lose when a placed candidate leaves inside the rebate period (commonly the first one to three months, sometimes up to six), and the tool subtracts that from your final commission and OTE. Leave it at 0% to see gross commission, or set roughly 10-20% to be conservative. Other real-world factors are still deliberately out of scope to keep the model transparent: many recruiters are paid a draw against commission (recoverable or non-recoverable), and commission is often paid when the invoice is collected rather than the day the placement is made, so timing differs from this annualised view. Temp and contract desks are not modelled at all, because they pay on hourly margin (bill rate minus pay rate, typically a 25-35% gross margin) rather than a placement fee.

No. The calculator is a modelling tool. The commission and OTE it shows are based entirely on the inputs you provide (your base, average fee, placement volume, and scheme), not on guaranteed earnings. Real commission depends on placements closing, fees being collected, clawbacks on early leavers, and the exact terms of your contract. The 'you vs market' comparison uses indicative US base-salary ranges by seniority: broad market reference figures, not numbers derived from our own listings. For salary figures computed from live RecruiterRoles job postings, see our recruiter salary report.