Kentel vs Toptal: Why a Dedicated Dev Team Beats a Talent Marketplace Every Time

Here's a scenario that plays out every single week somewhere in the world.

A startup founder or a business owner needs custom software built. They Google around, maybe ask a few friends, and eventually land on Toptal. The website is slick. "Top 3% of freelance talent." Big logos everywhere — Airbnb, Pfizer, Shopify. It feels like the safe choice.

So they sign up, get matched with a developer, and start the project. And for the first few weeks, everything seems fine.

Then reality kicks in.

What Toptal Actually Is (And Isn't)

Let's get the facts straight first because most people misunderstand what Toptal does.

Toptal is a talent marketplace. Founded in 2010 by Taso Du Val and Breanden Beneschott, it connects businesses with freelance developers, designers, and finance experts. They've served over 25,000 clients, received over 2.7 million talent applications, and their freelancers have been engaged for over 10 million cumulative working days.

Those are real numbers. Toptal is legitimate. This isn't an article trashing them.

But here's the thing most people miss: Toptal doesn't build your product. They rent you people.

That distinction matters more than you think.

According to Wikipedia, the company accepted a $1.4 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz and has reportedly been profitable since, generating over $100 million in annual revenue as early as 2016. They screen for the "top 3%" of applicants through personality, language, and skills testing.

Impressive operation. But an impressive staffing operation is still a staffing operation.

The "Top 3%" Problem

Toptal's entire brand is built on this claim: they only accept the top 3% of freelance applicants.

Let's think about what that actually means.

They received 2.7 million applications by 2023. 3% of that is roughly 81,000 freelancers in their network. That's not a small exclusive club. That's a small city.

More importantly, being a skilled individual developer and being the right person for your specific project are two completely different things. A brilliant React developer might be terrible for your Python-heavy backend project. A genius machine learning engineer might have zero understanding of your industry.

The screening process tests for technical competence. It doesn't test for whether a freelancer will care about your business, understand your users, or stick around when the project gets complicated.

The Real Cost of Toptal

Let's talk money because nobody else will be this transparent.

Toptal developers typically charge between $60 to $200+ per hour depending on the role and seniority. For a senior full-stack developer, you're looking at roughly $100-150/hour. That's $16,000 to $24,000 per month for a single full-time developer.

Need a designer too? Add another $10,000-15,000/month. Project manager? More on top of that.

For a typical 4-6 month project, you're looking at $80,000 to $200,000+ — and that's just for the people. You're still managing them yourself, defining the architecture yourself, and hoping all the pieces fit together yourself.

Now compare that with Kentel. We quote project-based pricing. You tell us what you need, we scope it, we give you a number. That number includes development, design, project management, testing, deployment, and post-launch support. No surprises. No hourly billing that incentivizes developers to work slower.

A project that might cost $120,000+ through Toptal (factoring in the management overhead, the trial-and-error of finding the right freelancer, and the inevitable scope adjustments) could be delivered for significantly less with a dedicated team that's done this before.

The 5 Ways the Marketplace Model Breaks Down

I've talked to dozens of business owners who've used Toptal, Turing, Andela, and similar platforms. The complaints are remarkably consistent.

1. You're the Project Manager Whether You Like It Or Not

When you hire through Toptal, you get a developer. You don't get a team. You don't get a project manager. You don't get someone who wakes up thinking about your product.

You become the project manager.

You're writing tickets, prioritizing features, reviewing code, making architecture decisions, and coordinating between the freelancer and your business stakeholders. If you're a technical founder, maybe that works. If you're a non-technical business owner — which is most of Toptal's target audience — you're in trouble.

One Trustpilot reviewer praised Toptal specifically because they had "almost no technical/programming background" and Toptal matched them with a good developer. Great. But that reviewer also noted that Toptal was "monitoring and helping me with every step." That's the exception, not the rule. Most clients don't get that level of hand-holding.

At Kentel, project management is built into every engagement. You have a single point of contact. We handle the technical decisions so you can focus on your business.

2. Freelancers Have Multiple Clients. You're Not Their Priority.

This is the fundamental tension of every talent marketplace.

A Toptal freelancer is, by definition, a freelancer. They might be working part-time on your project and part-time on someone else's. Even if they're "full-time" on your project, there's no guarantee they aren't fielding calls from other potential clients or planning their next gig.

One Toptal reviewer on Trustpilot mentioned their developer was "living in Australia while I am based in the United States, and with our business meetings centered in the Middle East." Three time zones. For a single freelancer.

When you work with Kentel, our developers are assigned to your project. Period. They're not splitting attention between three clients across three continents. They're in our office (or our remote setup), working on your product, talking to each other about your product, and accountable to a team lead who's watching the entire project.

3. Knowledge Walks Out the Door When the Contract Ends

This is the silent killer of the freelancer model.

Your Toptal developer spends 6 months learning your codebase, understanding your business logic, memorizing the quirks of your infrastructure. Then the contract ends. They move on to the next gig. And all that knowledge? Gone.

Need a bug fix three months later? You're either rehiring the same person (if they're available) or onboarding a completely new developer who has to learn everything from scratch.

Toptal themselves highlight that they've had "64,000+ total talent engagements." That's a lot of engagements starting and stopping. Every single one of those transitions is a knowledge loss event.

With a dedicated dev shop like Kentel, institutional knowledge stays within the team. We maintain your codebase. We know the history of every decision. When you come back 6 months later for a new feature, we don't need a two-week ramp-up period.

4. Nobody Owns the Architecture

When you rent individual developers, who decides the tech stack? Who designs the system architecture? Who makes sure the frontend developer and the backend developer are building things that actually work together?

On Toptal, that's either you (the client) or it's left to the freelancer. And freelancers tend to build with what they know, not necessarily what's best for your project. A React developer will push for React. A Laravel developer will push for Laravel. Nobody is looking at the full picture and making decisions based on your specific business needs.

At Kentel we architect the solution before a single line of code is written. We choose the tech stack based on what your project needs, not what one developer happens to be comfortable with. That's a fundamentally different approach.

5. The Trial Period Is a Hidden Cost

Toptal offers a "no-risk trial period" — typically two weeks. Sounds great in theory. In practice, it takes at least 2-4 weeks just to onboard a developer on any non-trivial project. By the time you realize they're not the right fit, you've already invested significant time and energy.

And then what? You start over. New developer. New onboarding. More time lost.

According to the data from Toptal's own about page, they've facilitated over 10 million cumulative days of talent engagement. That's 10 million days of hourly billing. Every restart, every ramp-up period, every "let me get familiar with the codebase" conversation — that's on your tab.

When Toptal Actually Makes Sense

I'll be honest. There are scenarios where Toptal is the right choice.

Staff augmentation for technical teams. If you already have a CTO, a tech lead, and a clear architecture — and you just need an extra pair of hands — Toptal can work great. Multiple Trustpilot reviewers mention working as "part of our client's team," which is the ideal Toptal use case.

Short, well-defined tasks. Need someone to build a specific integration, fix a performance issue, or set up a CI/CD pipeline? A skilled freelancer can knock that out without needing deep business context.

When you need niche expertise fast. Need a Solidity developer for a two-week blockchain project? A TensorFlow specialist for a proof of concept? Toptal's network is deep enough to surface that talent quickly.

But if you're building a product from scratch? If you need someone to understand your business, make technical decisions on your behalf, and stick around for the long haul? That's not what a marketplace is designed for.

The Kentel Difference: What "Dedicated" Actually Means

Let me be specific about what working with Kentel looks like versus hiring through Toptal.

Discovery & Scoping. Before we write any code, we sit down with you and figure out what you actually need. Not what you think you need — what your business actually requires. This phase alone prevents half the problems that plague freelancer engagements.

Fixed Pricing. No hourly billing. No "the developer took 3 hours on something that should've taken 1." You get a scope, a timeline, and a price. If we underestimated something, that's on us — not on your invoice.

One Team, One Product. Your project gets a dedicated team — developer(s), designer, project manager. They talk to each other daily. They catch problems before you even know about them. Try getting that kind of coordination from three freelancers in three time zones.

Ownership After Launch. We don't disappear when the project ships. We handle deployment, monitoring, bug fixes, and feature additions. Your product is our reputation. We have every incentive to make sure it works.

Direct Communication. No account managers, no layers of bureaucracy. You talk directly to the people building your product. Got a question at 2pm on a Tuesday? You'll get an answer from someone who actually knows the codebase.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Let's do a real comparison for a typical mid-size project — say, a custom SaaS platform with user authentication, a dashboard, payment processing, and an admin panel.

The Bottom Line

Toptal built an incredible business. 4.7 stars on Trustpilot, $100M+ in revenue, 25,000+ clients served. They solved a real problem: making it easier to find skilled freelancers.

But finding skilled freelancers and building great software are not the same thing.

Software development is a team sport. It requires coordination, shared context, architectural vision, and long-term thinking. A marketplace optimized for individual talent placements is structurally not designed to provide that.

If you need a body in a seat who can write good code, Toptal is a solid choice.

If you need a partner who will understand your business, build your product the right way, and be there when you need them six months from now — that's what Kentel does.

We're not a marketplace. We don't have 81,000 freelancers. We have a team. And that team builds software like it's their own product. Because their reputation depends on it.

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Ready to build something real? Book a call with Kentel and let's talk about your project. No sales pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation about what you need and whether we're the right fit.