[vekker]

Indeed, this sounds highly inefficient. Say, 15% of a daily rate of 800 euro for 200 working days equals 24,000 euro, recurring every year. Seems like a ton of money for just matching a candidate with a job, given that the freelancer still has to sell themselves and do all of the actual work.

Being a freelancer myself, I've often asked recruiters about this, and they always dodge the question or reply something like "there's much more to our job than you think". I have not yet figured out what that is exactly.

My best guess, from personal experience, is that they charge 15% and upwards because... they can. Because a lot of (especially technical) contractors are really bad negotiators and just accept whatever is offered.

Given the huge competition between recruiting agencies nowadays (at least where I live in Europe, it seems like there's 10 recruiters for every senior developer), I would think that a new recruiting agency could gain a huge competitive advantage by simply advertising clear & fair commissions.