Comparison
Teams deciding between posting a project on a marketplace and filling a role with someone who stays.
Checked against published pricing on September 20, 2026
A marketplace is a fast, liquid market for defined work. Post a brief, get bids within hours, pick someone, pay through escrow. For a landing page, a data migration or a month of design, that is hard to beat and we do not try to.
A role is a different purchase. It is someone who learns your systems, holds context, sits in your standup and is still there in a year. Marketplaces are not built for that, and the pricing tells you: they earn on transaction volume, not on whether the person is still with you next quarter.
| Freelance marketplace | Dexee | |
|---|---|---|
| Best unit of work | A project | A role |
| Time to someone starting | Hours to days | Ten business days to a shortlist |
| Who verifies the person | Platform badges and reviews | Identity checked live, English graded against CEFR by a reviewer |
| Exclusivity | None. They work for others at the same time | Full-time if you want it |
| Continuity | Ends with the project | Employment relationship, with notice |
| Legal employment | Contractor, risk on you | Dexee's entity, or a contractor agreement we draft |
| Cost of a bad match | Rehire and re-onboard | Replacement at no fee within 90 days |
| Cheapest possible option | Usually yes | No |
Take the marketplace when the work has an end. A defined deliverable, a fixed budget, a skill you need once. Take it also when you genuinely do not know what you need yet and want to try three people for a week each before committing to anyone. That is cheap, fast discovery, and hiring is a slow and expensive way to do it.
And if the budget is a few hundred dollars, we are the wrong answer. Our published prices start well above that.
When the same work keeps coming back every week. When the cost of turnover is the thing that hurts, not the hourly rate. When someone needs access to customer data or financial systems and you want to know who they actually are, which is why we verify identity on a live call rather than trust a badge.
A useful test: if you would be annoyed to re-explain the context in three months, you are hiring a role, not buying a project.