A Toptal alternative: senior engineers on your team

Why teams choose Ryz as a Toptal alternative

Engineers on your team, not freelancers to coordinate

Toptal is a global network of freelancers you hire one at a time and direct yourself. Ryz senior engineers join your standups and repos, own parts of your system, and keep the knowledge on your team.

AI pod teams that ship to production

When you need AI built, a Ryz AI pod builds it in your cloud and repos, with weekly demos, across AWS, Azure, Postgres and Anthropic and OpenAI models.

US business hours, every day

Our engineers work on US business hours, including New York hours, so code review happens the same day.

A plan, a price and names before you start

Our rates are public by seniority. After one conversation you get a scoped plan, a price and the names of the people who would do the work.

How it works

• Talk. Tell us the roles, the stack and how your team works.
• Match. Recruiters source, our ARC system ranks the pipeline and structured NTRVSTA interviews test real skill. You meet a short, curated list.
• Join. Your engineers join your standups, repos and roadmap.
• Grow. Add people or an AI pod as the roadmap grows, and scale back when the work is done.

Ryz and Toptal, side by side

• What you get. Ryz: senior engineers on your team, a dedicated team or an AI pod. Toptal: individual freelancers, including developers, designers, finance experts and product managers.
• Who runs the work. Ryz: your leads, in your standups and repos. Toptal: you direct and coordinate each freelancer.
• Time zones. Ryz: US business hours, including New York hours. Toptal: a global network, so overlap depends on the freelancer.
• Pricing. Ryz: public rates by seniority and a quote scoped per team. Toptal: hourly rates are not published.

Three ways to work with Ryz

• Staff augmentation. Add senior engineers to the team you have.
• Dedicated team. A Ryz team owns delivery of a scoped system.
• AI pod. Senior engineers who build AI systems in your cloud and ship them to production.

Proof

Ryz is trusted by Fortune 500 engineering teams, and only the top 1% of the tens of thousands of engineers we have interviewed make it. Two systems our teams built are in production: an AI voice platform that has placed 1M+ outbound calls, and fraud detection for a global fleet company that has scored 244K+ invoices and surfaced $5.94M in fraud confirmed by the client's fraud team. See our case studies page.

Toptal is a trademark of its owner. Facts about Toptal are from its website, October 2026.

Questions

How do Ryz engineers join our team, and who owns the work?

Ryz engineers work on your team, reporting to your leads. Talk to us to scope your team. They work US business hours, including New York hours, in your accounts, and you control and can revoke access at any time. You own all code and IP they produce, and we will sign your NDA before we share profiles or start work.

What does a Ryz team cost compared with Toptal?

Custom quote, scoped per team. Rates are public by seniority; your price depends on the roles, seniority mix, team shape and duration. Toptal does not publish hourly rates, so compare written quotes for the same roles and hours.

How fast do we see a shortlist?

It depends on the roles, the seniority and how many people you need. After the first call we come back with a scoped plan and named people. We do not promise a start date before the team is scoped.

When is Toptal the better fit?

If you want self-serve hourly freelancers, short gigs or a trial before you talk to anyone, Toptal may fit better, as it may for Europe or Asia time zones. Ryz is for teams that want senior engineers, or an AI pod, on their own team on US hours, with a free replacement if an engineer isn't the right fit.