Frequently Asked Questions

We have a flat monthly subscription fee of $79 that is charged if you decide to proceed with a talent search. Your subscription gives you access to Toptal's platform and is activated according to Platform Subscription Terms. You may cancel at any time, and, if Toptal can't provide you with talent, you can request a refund on cancellation.

We make sure to start each engagement with a trial period of up to two weeks. This means that you have time to help ensure the engagement will be successful. If you’re completely satisfied with the results, we’ll bill you for the time and continue the engagement for as long as you’d like. If you’re not completely satisfied, you won’t be billed. From there, we can either part ways, or we can provide you with another expert who may be a better fit and with whom we will begin a second, no-risk trial.

We allow our clients to begin a trial period with up to three individuals from our network per position. While we rigorously screen all applicants to provide you with top-tier talent, we understand that not every person will be a perfect fit for every company. For this reason, we allow our clients to work with multiple professionals for each position before they decide on a candidate with whom they are confident and comfortable.

Many organizations are faced with the issue of finding reliable engineers, designers, and other specialized talent. At Toptal, we leverage smart infrastructure and a rigorous screening process to curate the best talent the world has to offer. In a typical Toptal engagement, in almost all cases we’ll introduce you to candidates within 24 hours, and 90% of our clients hire the first candidate we introduce.

These aren’t just any candidates either. At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our experts (please see “Testing & Screening” below) to ensure we only supply experts of the highest caliber. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, we accept fewer than 3%. You’ll work with experts in design, technology, or business (never generalized recruiters or HR reps) who hand-select the right match for you from our network.

No. Each and every Toptal expert writes and speaks fluent English. In fact, before we invite candidates to tackle our rigorous domain-specific tests, we conduct lengthy interviews to ensure they have a high level of proficiency in English and have personalities well-suited to working with western technical teams.

We screen for communication skills, personality, domain-specific knowledge, and a high level of professionalism. Approximately 3% of applicants pass the screening process.

Our process includes a variety of ways to determine skill and proficiency, including portfolio reviews, technical coding challenges, user or market research, business cases, project management backlog grooming, formal assessments, as well as live problem-solving sessions as appropriate to the candidate and vertical.

We match all candidates with senior Toptal domain experts for each and every interview, and all applicants complete a test project to demonstrate live proficiency with a project similar to what they would work on in a typical engagement.

Currently, we have experts in over 100 countries, most being located in the Americas and Europe.

The vast majority work remotely from their home office or a co-working space.

In practice, there have only been a few instances where clients have felt it absolutely necessary to bring a Toptal expert physically on-site. If this truly is a requirement, we can work with you to coordinate relocating an individual or team to your location for a specified period of time.

It takes us one to three weeks to locate, fully screen, and work with every expert before we feel confident enough to admit them to our network and introduce them to a client. We understand your need for expediency, but we also understand the even greater need for quality. At Toptal, even if we have an extremely promising prospective candidate, we will not place them until we are 100% confident in their ability. Toptal’s stringent screening process is the most important reason we’re able to maintain a network of the highest caliber talent.

Toptal goes to every possible length to ensure that this doesn’t happen. At Toptal, we completely understand dependability is of the utmost importance. We take measures to ensure that availability and reliability is a top priority for our experts. However, in the extremely unlikely circumstance that such a situation arises, Toptal will credit back the time billed to the client.

For the most part, yes. We will work with you to fully understand your specific requirements so that we can establish a mutually beneficial arrangement.

While we currently do not supply these services, we plan on offering them in the future.

The client. Toptal’s only business is connecting world-class experts to the clients who want to work with them - not intellectual property. Our contracts provide that all work created by a Toptal expert is the property of the client, not Toptal.

Toptal enters into talent agreements with every member of the talent network. Through these agreements, Toptal obtains exclusive ownership of the work created by the Toptal talent that works with you. We then provide you with the intellectual property for the work that the Toptal talent creates for you under our client agreement. This clean, simple, pass-through arrangement has worked well for our clients for many years. However, if you would like the expert to enter into a direct agreement with you to effect the direct transfer of IP property, we can work with you to ensure that your needs are met.

We have a standard mutual agreement that outlines the working relationship of the parties. This agreement, the Sourced Talent Matching Agreement ("STA"), accepted at the outset of the onboarding process, will be shared with you again in the client onboarding steps that follow. The STA, together with the Platform Subscription Terms of Service, and the Client Platform Access Agreement, govern your access to the Toptal platform and use of the Toptal Service.

We typically invoice our clients twice a month, though there is some flexibility here. Invoices are generated with Net 10 terms, so our clients have an opportunity to review the charges prior to processing.

We currently accept all major credit cards, ACH, bank wires, and PayPal.