What is a good cost per applicant for a staffing agency?
Almost every search result for this question answers something else: the fee percentage staffing agencies charge their clients. That is a different question. This one is about what a single applicant costs inside an advertising campaign.
Cost per applicant is a campaign's ad budget divided by the number of applicants it produces. In our own campaigns for staffing and contract staffing firms it sat between €8.96 to €30.51 per candidate. That is a Leadstars figure from our own campaign data, not a market average or an industry benchmark. The bottom belongs to broad function groups such as logistics, production and hospitality; the top to engineering, healthcare and certified profiles in a small search area. A number is only "good" once it fits your margin per placement and the share of applicants who actually show up for intake.
Last updated: 4 September 2026
Key takeaways
- Our own campaigns produced candidates at €8.96 to €30.51. Leadstars data, explicitly not an industry benchmark.
- Cost per applicant is ad budget divided by applicants; cost per hire always lands a multiple higher.
- Function group, search area, season and competition explain nearly the entire spread.
- A low cost per applicant with no intake show-up is more expensive than a high one with good follow-up.
- Only judge the figure after the 10 to 14 day learning phase.
What cost per applicant is, and what it is not
Cost per applicant is the amount you spend on advertising divided by the number of applications you get back. It says nothing about quality, intake show-up or placements. It is a media metric, not a hiring metric.
Do not confuse it with three other numbers. Cost per hire counts every cost up to and including placement and therefore always lands far higher. Cost per lead is often used interchangeably with cost per applicant in staffing, while a lead can also be a half-filled form. And the fee percentage an agency charges a client is entirely unrelated.
What we see in our own campaigns
Across our campaigns for staffing and contract staffing firms the cost per candidate sat between €8.96 to €30.51. We deliberately do not present that as a market average: it is the spread within our own client base, with our own channel choices, in our own niches. Anyone promising you a national average cost per applicant without asking about the function group is selling you a meaningless number.
The figure only becomes practically useful next to two others: the share of applicants who show up for intake, and your margin per placement. €9 per applicant where one in twenty shows up is more expensive than €30 per applicant where half of them do.
What moves cost per applicant up or down
The spread is almost never random. Five factors explain most of it.
- Function group: the scarcer and the more heavily certified, the higher the price per applicant.
- Search area: a small radius limits reach and pushes cost per click up.
- The offer: hourly rate, travel time, rosters and contract type determine landing page conversion.
- Application friction: every extra form field lowers applicant count and raises the price per applicant.
- Season and competition: in peak periods more agencies advertise to the same audience, lifting media costs.
How to decide which figure is good for you
Work back from your margin. Suppose one placement earns you a known gross margin over its term, and twenty applicants produce one placement. Your maximum cost per applicant is that margin divided by twenty, minus a safety margin. That number matters more for your agency than any published average.
Then measure the same three numbers monthly: cost per applicant, intake show-up, and placements per hundred applicants. If the second or third improves, the first is allowed to rise. That is the only sensible way to answer this question.
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