Proxify alternative — AI-native engineering recruitment for European scale-ups.

The honest answer: Proxify is good at a related but different job. Proxify is optimised for "I need a solid European senior backend engineer, flexible on contract or full-time, and I want a curated platform that delivers a shortlist in a week or two". Its product-market fit is generalist engineering placement, and its matching speed and CEE/Nordic supply are built around that. Recruo is optimised for "I need a full-time senior LLM engineer into my platform team this quarter, and I need structured AI-engineering signals — not generalist coding tests — to separate real production builders from LinkedIn-keyword candidates".

Two structural differences drive the rest. First, Recruo charges an 18% total recruitment fee, with $2,000 credited at launch and the balance due when your hire starts, not an ongoing margin on an engineer's contract rate. On a €85K engineer placed for 2+ years, Recruo charges €15,300 in agency fees; a platform with a 35–50% rate margin adds €29.75–42.5K per year to the same annual salary base. That delta vanishes for short contracts or contract-to-hire trial periods, which is exactly when Proxify makes sense and we do not. Second, every Recruo shortlist is reviewed by a human recruiter before you see it, and our AI interview framework was built by AI engineers against production signals — inference tail latency, retrieval chunking tradeoffs, eval methodology on open-ended outputs — not a generic coding test.

Proxify's screening is a curated three-step pipeline: coding test, live technical interview and soft-skills interview, refined against a claimed top-2% acceptance rate. It is a strong process for generalist engineering and produces consistent candidate quality across backend, frontend and mobile. What it is not is AI-native — the rubric targets broad engineering competence rather than production-AI signals, and public documentation does not indicate LLM-specific output evaluation, retrieval-architecture probing, or evals methodology in the flow.

Recruo's screening was built by AI engineers for AI engineers. When you are hiring an LLM engineer, the 12-minute structured AI interview probes production signals generalist screens miss — inference p95 before and after speculative decoding, how you score output quality on open-ended tasks, why you picked X over Y on retrieval chunking, how you catch RAG regressions before they reach users. A human recruiter reviews every transcript before a shortlist reaches you. For non-AI roles, the same structured approach filters unqualified candidates so your team's interview time goes to final-round decisions, not triage. See our AI interview agents vs traditional screening post.

The European Commission identifies employment-related AI uses among the high-risk categories. The system, intended use and applicable exceptions determine the obligations. Recruo supplies assessment evidence with recruiter review of the shortlist. Before deployment, agree data handling, candidate notices, oversight and the responsibilities of each party. Assess the actual documentation and contractual scope rather than treating a marketing label as proof of compliance.

Proxify is a Swedish company and privacy-aware, with a public privacy policy and DPA framework. As of 2026-Q1, we did not find public EU AI Act compliance documentation at the vendor level for Proxify's screening flow. That is not a criticism — most agencies and platforms do not yet — but if you are buying to get compliance off your plate, confirm the vendor has a roadmap before signing. Our EU AI Act hiring checklist covers the 12-point diligence pattern.

Standard costs 18% of first-year salary: $2,000 credited at launch, the balance when your hire starts. Search lasts 60 calendar days from the agreed launch. No qualifying finalist by business day 15? Stop for a full $2,000 refund. Milestone met but no hire? The launch payment is retained; no balance is due. Currency and conversion are agreed before launch. The 90-day replacement guarantee is detailed below. See Standard terms.

Proxify: its published pricing points to a subscription-style placement model. For contract engagements, a margin is layered on the engineer's rate — third-party analyses of 2024–2026 Proxify placements consistently report an effective markup in the 35–50% range above engineer take-home. For permanent placements, public guidance and third-party reviews cite a flat fee around £12K–18K depending on seniority. On a €85K engineer engaged for 2+ years through a rate-margin model, cumulative client-side cost sits materially above Recruo's 18% one-time fee; on a 6-month contract-to-hire pilot where the client wants the option to walk away, Proxify's model is often more sensible.

Choose Proxify when: (1) you are hiring a generalist senior engineer — backend, frontend, mobile, data — where broad competence matters more than AI-native production signals, (2) you want a contract-to-hire pathway with a built-in trial period and the option to convert later, (3) you want a European platform with strong CEE and Nordic supply and are comfortable paying a rate-based margin for a faster match, (4) your engagement horizon is under 9 months.

Proxify's platform speed, vetted CEE/Nordic supply and contract-to-hire flexibility make it a credible tool for those jobs. We would pick it ourselves over a slow in-house search for a generalist backend hire on a tight timeline.

Choose Recruo when: (1) you are hiring full-time (6+ months, typically 2+ years tenure), (2) the role is AI-native — LLM, RAG, evals, agentic AI, ML platform, AI/ML engineer — where generalist coding tests do not separate real production builders from keyword-matched candidates, (3) you need clear human-review responsibilities because you ship into enterprise EU buyers, (4) you prefer one-time success-fee economics over an ongoing rate margin that compounds over a 2-year engagement.

At 18%, two years of an €85K salary plus our one-time fee total €185.3K. A 35–50% ongoing markup on that same base totals €229.5–255K over two years, before adjusting for differences in employer costs and included services. Book a discovery call to scope your role.