What GP recruitment actually costs in Australia (2026)

By Sam Gillette, Founder of Taro

Most clinics only count the invoice: the agency fee or the job-ad spend. The larger number is usually the one nobody sends a bill for: the weeks the room sits unused while you wait. This guide puts sourced figures on all four costs, so you can compare your options with real arithmetic instead of a recruiter's brochure.

Every number here has a named public source. Where a figure varies too much to state honestly, we say so. The process these numbers sit inside is covered in how to hire a GP in Australia.

What does it cost to fill a GP role in Australia?

Four costs: agency fees, job-board advertising, locum cover while you search, and the vacancy itself: the billings that don't happen while the room sits unused. Most clinics pay two or three of these at once, and the largest is the one nobody sends a bill for.

1. Agency fees: charged per placement, as a percentage.
2. Job boards and advertising: paid whether or not anyone suitable applies.
3. Locum cover: the holding cost while you search.
4. The vacancy itself: billings that don't happen. The one that compounds.

Here's each, with the maths.

What do recruitment agencies charge to place a GP?

Australian recruitment agencies typically charge 15–25% of the candidate's annual salary as a one-time placement fee, with healthcare roles at the premium end of that range because of talent scarcity (Manpower Australia, 2026; Scalesuite recruitment-cost guide, 2026).

Now apply that percentage to what a GP actually earns. Average full-time GP billings in Australia are $336,260 a year (Cubiko practice benchmark data); after a typical service-fee split, GP earnings commonly land in the $200,000–$250,000+ range (public GP salary calculators: Transition Medical, Aussie Clinicians).

Do the multiplication yourself:

Two structural features of this model matter more than the size of the fee:

• It's charged again on every hire. Your second GP costs the same as your first. So does your fifth. The fee buys you a doctor; it never buys you the capacity to find one.
• The machinery stays with the agency. The candidate list, the relationships, the market knowledge. When the invoice is paid, all of it walks out the door with the recruiter. You've hired a GP. You haven't gained the ability to hire the next one.

Some newer flat-fee services price below the percentage model. The structure is the same: pay per hire, own nothing after. Every non-agency option is compared in GP recruitment agency alternatives.

What do job boards cost, and who do they reach?

A listing on a major job board costs hundreds of dollars a month (specialist medical boards charge comparable rates, published on their own sites), and it reaches only the minority of GPs who are actively looking. That's the visible cost, and it's the smaller problem.

The structural problem: roughly 70% of professionals aren't actively job-hunting at any given moment (LinkedIn Talent Solutions research). A job ad, by definition, only reaches the minority who are looking. The GPs worth hiring are overwhelmingly employed, busy, and reasonably content. Your listing competes for the small active pool along with every hospital, corporate clinic and agency in the country, while the doctor who'd actually suit your practice never sees it.

That's why the common experience (months of ad spend, a handful of unsuitable applications) isn't bad luck or a bad ad. It's the tool working exactly as designed, on the wrong population.

What does locum cover cost while the role sits open?

Locum day rates are published openly by locum agencies and vary by state, season and specialty. Check current rate cards for your region rather than trusting any single figure. What doesn't vary is the structure:

• Locum cover costs a multiple of what the same sessions cost under a permanent GP's service arrangement.
• It's a bridge, not a fix: the day the locum leaves, the vacancy is exactly where it was.
• Long locum dependence quietly becomes the single largest line in the recruitment bill, because it's billed weekly while the "real" search drags.

Locums have a legitimate place: sudden departures, parental leave, burnout protection. As a recruitment strategy, they're the most expensive way to stand still.

What does an unfilled GP role cost your clinic?

An average full-time GP writes roughly $6,500 a week in billings ($336,260 a year, Cubiko). A vacant consulting room writes none, so a six-month vacancy represents around $168,000 in billings that never happened, before counting the patients who couldn't get an appointment and registered elsewhere.

The clinic's share depends on your service-fee percentage, but apply even a 30% share and a six-month vacancy has quietly cost more than any agency fee you were trying to avoid. Add the second-order costs, harder to number but real: patients who couldn't get an appointment and registered elsewhere, and the extra load carried by the GPs you already have, in a market where Australia is projected to be short 11,392 full-time GPs by 2032, almost one in three (Deloitte Access Economics × Cornerstone Health).

This is the number to hold every option against. Not "what does recruitment cost?" but "what does each additional month of vacancy cost?"

Agency, job boards, or a system you keep: which costs less?

Per invoice, job boards are cheapest and agencies most expensive; over more than one hire the difference is structural: agencies and boards charge again on every vacancy, a system you keep charges once, and only the system leaves the clinic holding the candidate pool afterwards.

Where Taro fits

Taro builds the recruitment system inside your clinic instead of selling you the output of someone else's: a map of every practitioner in reach of your postcode, outreach that goes out under your clinic's own name, and replies that land directly with you. When you hire, the database, the infrastructure and every conversation stay with you, which is why the second hire, and the tenth, cost nothing.

The fee is a fixed one-time figure (not a percentage of anyone's salary), with half of it due only when a practitioner found through your system starts at your clinic. The exact figure is stated on the call, before any commitment, and doesn't move afterwards.

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