What the law actually caps, and what it doesn’t
Two fees are legally capped, and both sit on the worker’s side of the arrangement: a registration fee charged on joining the agency, and a placement fee charged on accepting a placement. Whether the placement fee’s one-month-wage cap for a "non-citizen employee" explicitly covers a foreign domestic worker isn’t settled in the primary text this site has reviewed, so treat that specific figure as unconfirmed rather than a fixed number to check an agency against.
What isn’t capped, itemised, or even mentioned in Act 246 is the fee an agency charges your household for its own service: sourcing, coordination, paperwork handling, and everything else bundled into what’s often just called "the agency fee." That’s a commercial price the agency sets, the same way any service business prices its own work.
Separating the categories in a real quote
A single number an agency quotes you is likely several things at once: its own service fee, government or medical costs it’s coordinating on your behalf (FOMEMA, permit and visa processing, insurance), and potentially a worker-side fee the employer has agreed to cover directly. Ask for each of these broken out separately rather than accepting one lump sum.
This matters most when comparing two agencies: a lower headline figure from one agency and a higher one from another aren’t comparable unless you know each is measuring the same set of included items. A written, itemised breakdown, covered in more depth in this site’s guide on agency packages, is what makes that comparison real.