I'm fairly certain that Toptal's "long selection process" is designed to weed out anyone who has other options, because they're harder to bully into putting their rates down.

That turned me off, but at the same time, they do do the hardest part of the contracting/freelancing world - finding clients. If you're willing to jump through their hoops and accept a lower rate than you'd get on the open market, then it's a decent arrangement.

I've been both a Toptal contractor and a client. While they're an arguably high fee, they provide valuable services for the contractor, first and foremost access to high paying markets and clients. For a high skilled dev in developing countries this means rates that are still much higher than local rates, thus they tend to attract good talent. Also they handle all burocracy and ensure you get paid, very important when working overseas.

For clients they provide very good corporate customer service, and generally do a good job of screening people. My rate of "bad" contractors coming from Toptal is low and replacing them is quick. And every now and then you find some amazing devs.

There is no effort outside of the elimination interview that you have to put in to find a client. You don’t have to spend a minute to find work.

Despite them pressuring you to put your rate as low as possible they still have a lot of room to negotiate with the client.

Probably the pressure to find a project to work on. There are many platforms like toptal. Some screen their people others don't. They are all similar in that respect. Same goes for recruiters. Are there good recruiters? very positive but they are so rare that it's impossible to find them.

Toptal: Give us your personal details, we'll hook you up with clients.

Me: OK, here.

Toptal: We're not taking on any more contractors right now, thanks for the data though.