What is Fractionus, and what do they publish?

Fractionus is a marketplace of vetted fractional executives operating across the US, UK, EU and Australia. Their published promise is same-day search from a pre-vetted network with your matches in 48 hours, headlined as hiring a fractional executive by Monday. Four numbers sit on their front page: zero fees with free search and placement, an acceptance rate into the network of under 3%, more than 5,000 leaders, and placements on the ground across those four regions. The bench they feature spans product, technology, finance, operations, revenue, people, security and AI leadership.

The process they publish is a brief in, a shortlist out, and then the platform handling agreements, contracts, payments and onboarding, with no long-term contracts required. No pricing is published, which is unsurprising given the model: the rate is set inside each individual engagement rather than by the platform. The commercial claim that is published, and which matters most for comparison, is that search and placement cost the hiring company nothing.

Verified 2026-08-21. Every claim about Fractionus on this page was read on their own site in a browser and is recorded as CONFIRMED in our verification log. Three claims that circulate about them were corrected against their own page: the shortlist window, the revenue-split model, and the list of regions they cover.

When is Fractionus the right choice?

A managed marketplace earns its place when the cost of getting the search wrong is higher than the cost of adding a layer between you and the operator. That is genuinely often the case, particularly for a first fractional hire, where a founder has no reference points and no network in the category. Handing the sourcing, the vetting and the contracting to a platform that does it weekly is a reasonable trade, and their published terms make the trade cheap to test.

• You want a done-for-you shortlist in a day or two rather than a search project.
• You are hiring across geographies, particularly where UK, EU or Australian time zones matter.
• The cost of a bad self-sourced hire worries you more than the presence of a platform layer.
• You want someone else to manage the agreements, contracts, payments and onboarding.
• No long-term contract is a requirement rather than a preference.

When is a managed marketplace the wrong instrument?

The three situations below are not criticisms of the model. They are the boundaries of what any matching layer can do, and each one is easy to check before you start. The general shape of the problem is that a platform can screen for seniority and function far better than you can, and cannot screen for the thing that most often decides a product engagement, which is whether this person has solved your specific problem in your specific market before.

You already know the operator profile you need. A managed shortlist adds a layer between you and the person, and if the search is not the hard part, the layer is overhead rather than service.

Vertical depth is your actual criterion. Platform vetting screens seniority and function. It does not encode whether someone has run product inside hospitality, events or travel software, and that pattern library is either present or it is not.

You want the engagement relationship to be direct from day one. With platform-managed contracting, the agreement structure and the escalation path run through the platform. Some buyers prefer that. Others want one relationship and one invoice, and our guide to independent operators versus firms covers what changes either way. Our diagnostic on what to screen for in your own interviews covers it in detail.

What are the four types of provider?

Before comparing named providers it is worth knowing which shape you are shopping for, because most bad hires happen when a company buys one shape while needing another. Fractionus sits in the marketplace column, at the managed end of it, closer to a search service than to a job board. The table below is the same taxonomy used across this site, so a provider's column is comparable from page to page.

Swipe the table sideways to compare →

How does Fractionus compare with going direct?

Sivan Kadosh, a fractional Chief Product Officer for B2B SaaS companies between $2M and $15M ARR, is the direct column below. The two routes differ on almost every dimension except the one buyers fixate on, which is price: the platform is free to the company and the operator's rate is negotiated inside the engagement either way, so the real comparison is about coverage, specificity and who holds the relationship.

Swipe the table sideways to compare →

Frequently asked questions

These come up once a brief has been submitted and a shortlist is due. They cover how fast each route really starts, what an acceptance rate does and does not guarantee, how to compare costs when only one side publishes a number, and what a free platform is actually being paid for.

How quickly can each route start?

Fractionus states matches in 48 hours, after which interviewing and contracting add their own time. Our own engagement typically starts within 2–3 weeks of a decision. Both beat a permanent executive search, which commonly takes 4–6 months before anyone begins work.

Does an acceptance rate of under 3% guarantee fit?

It screens for seniority and quality signals, which is genuinely useful and genuinely not the same thing. Fit with your stage, your vertical and your specific problem still comes out of your own interviews, on any platform, and that part of the work cannot be delegated to a filter.

Platform or direct: which costs less?

Fractionus publishes zero fees for the hiring company, so the platform layer is not an added line on your invoice. What you cannot do on either route is compare rates in advance across the market, because at least 17.5% of the 736 providers in our Fractional Rates Index publish a price, about one in six. Compare the all-in monthly cost for the same hours.

If the search is free, what is the platform being paid for?

Ask them directly, and ask the operator too. It is a fair question with a straightforward answer at any well-run marketplace, and the answer tells you where the platform's incentives sit when a match starts to wobble. Our overview of where to hire a fractional CPO compares the routes on exactly this point.

A managed marketplace sells you a search you do not have to run. A direct engagement sells you a person whose terms you can read before you call. If you cannot yet describe the profile you need, the search is worth buying. If you can, it is worth skipping.