i never heard the purpose of freelancing being free of middlemen, its being free of a direct employee relationship and having a middleman does not mean you have

i never heard the purpose of freelancing being free of middlemen, its being free of a direct employee relationship and having a middleman does not mean you have to be employed by them, only that the contracts, accounting, invoicing, and payments go through them. in my experience this is mostly a function of how big the company is you want to work for, startups to mid size companies are completely fine and possible to do directly as long as you trust their payments be reliable, certain clients might make sense to take the 10% to 20% cut just to not be in risk of running after your money, but usually its better to just not work with such clients. companies after maybe a few 100 employees and 10+ freelancers don’t want to deal with individual contracts and outsource ramping up and down, freelance recruiting etc. at this size they still pay so much more than small startups that freelancers get a significant extra. the only exception i know are absolute superstar consultants with an own brand around their name, personal friendships to the relevant managers or niche skills that are so specific that the agency they use cannot provide them.