What is The Booking Agency?
The Booking Agency is a booking platform for finding and hiring independent talent and creative professionals across 160+ countries and 340K+ cities. Talent list themselves for free. Clients browse, post jobs, and send inquiries at no cost, and pay exactly the price on a quote they accept.
Is The Booking Agency free for clients?
Yes, completely. Browsing talent, posting jobs, and sending inquiries are all free, and when you accept a quote you pay exactly that amount with nothing added on top. There is no client-side service fee and no markup. Our fee is charged to the talent, not to you.
Do talent have to pay a subscription to be listed?
No. Creating and publishing a profile is free and stays free, and free profiles appear in search, city, and category pages like any other. Paid tiers exist for extra visibility and tools, starting at 9.99 USD per month, and Premium is free during our launch period. A subscription is never required to be listed or found.
Does The Booking Agency take a cut of bookings?
Yes, from the talent's side: a 15% total fee (10% platform fee plus 5% payment and payout services) deducted from the talent's payout on each facilitated booking. Clients pay exactly the price shown, nothing added on top.
How do I find talent?
Browse by city at /cities, by profession at /hire, or search /talent directly. Filter by category, city, and availability to shortlist professionals.
How do I post a job or gig?
Go to /jobs to browse open roles or post your own. Your listing reaches independent professionals across the platform, and posting is free.
What kinds of professionals are listed?
34 industries spanning photographers, DJs, videographers, event planners, designers, developers, and more across creative, technical, and event categories.
Where is The Booking Agency available?
Worldwide. The platform covers 160+ countries and 340K+ cities, with talent, venues, and city guides for each location.
How do I get listed as talent?
Create a profile at /for-talent and publish it. That is free and there is no approval queue. Your profile then appears on the relevant city and category pages. Add a photo before anything else, it carries real weight in how you rank, and set up payouts so clients can book you rather than only browse you.
How does booking work?
Booking follows six steps: the client sends an inquiry to the talent, the talent replies with an itemized quote, the client accepts the quote to form a booking, a contract is generated between talent and client with The Booking Agency acting as agent and facilitator, the client pays the price shown on the quote, and the talent is paid out after the gig.
What does it cost me as a client?
Exactly the price shown on the accepted quote. Nothing is added on top for the client.
What does it cost me as a talent?
A 15% total fee: 10% platform fee plus 5% for payment handling, payout and dispute management services, deducted from your payout after the gig. The client pays the price you quote, you receive that price minus the 15% fee, an 85% net payout.
When do I get paid?
We hold the client payment until the engagement has taken place, then release your payout 5 to 7 business days after the gig date, minus the 15 percent fee. The release runs through Stripe Connect; how quickly it then lands depends on your bank, usually a few working days. You need completed payout onboarding before we can transfer.
How is the contract formed?
The client accepts the talent's itemized quote. That acceptance forms the booking and generates the contract between talent and client, with The Booking Agency facilitating as agent.
What if someone cancels a booking?
Cancellation policy: if the client cancels more than 14 days before the gig, the talent fee is refunded in full and the 10 percent platform fee is retained. Between 14 days and 48 hours before, 50 percent goes to the talent and the rest is refunded, platform fee retained. Within 48 hours of the gig, there is no refund and the talent receives the full amount minus 15 percent. If the talent cancels at any point, the client is refunded in full including the platform fee, and the talent receives a strike.
How is talent ranked in search results and on city pages?
Every published profile gets a single ranking score. The main parameters, in order of weight: whether the talent can actually be booked right now, which means they are open for bookings, have accepted our current terms, and are based in a country we can pay out to; membership of our Elite managed roster; whether the profile has a photo; an active paid boost; and subscription tier. On top of that, how well a profile matches your search terms, city, and category decides which profiles are shown at all. We rank bookable talent above everyone else on purpose: a top result you cannot actually hire is the worst possible outcome for you.
Can talent pay to appear higher in the results?
Partly, and we would rather say so plainly than hide it. A paid boost and a higher subscription tier both raise a profile ranking score. What they cannot do is more important: paid placement never lets a profile outrank talent who are bookable when it is not, and it has no effect on whether a profile matches your search terms, city, or category in the first place. Money moves a profile up within its group, never past a talent you can actually hire.
My profile ranks low. What can I change?
The four most common reasons, in the order they cost you the most: no profile photo, not having accepted the current terms, being based in a country we cannot pay out to yet, and an incomplete profile. Adding a photo and finishing your profile are the two fastest fixes and both are free. Neither a subscription nor a boost will make up for a missing photo.
