Checkr
Background check platform priced per report, with third-party court fees passed through separately
Pricing on request
Category
The best Recruitment software
Recruitment & ATS software and applications
- Tools listed
- 38
All 38 recruitment tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What recruitment software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 38 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $5Factorial
- Median entry price
- $107.50across 20 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $14,995SmartRecruiters
- Publish a $0 plan
- 8of 38
Paid recruitment plans in this set start anywhere from $5 a month for Factorial to $14,995 for SmartRecruiters. The median entry price across the 20 tools that publish one is $107.50, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
8 of 38 publish a $0 plan, and 3 of those charge nothing at all. 15 tools have no free tier of any kind.
26 of 38 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
Factorial pricingSmartRecruiters pricingSmartRecruiters plans
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 38 recruitment listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 13
- subscription
- 9
- Free for job seekers, employers pay for branding and recruiting products
- 1
- Free for job seekers, employers pay for sponsored listings
- 1
- Per active job slot per month, quoted individually
- 1
- Per month by tier, with a metered annual candidate attempt allowance and per-attempt overage on Starter
- 1
- Per report, plus pass-through court and database fees
- 1
- Per user per month
- 1
- Per user per month, by company size and seat type
- 1
- Per user per month, per agent
- 1
- Per user per month, self-serve entry tier then per seat by quote
- 1
- Per user per month, tiered by lead volume and sourcer support
- 1
- Per year by candidate invite volume, with platform user limits per tier
- 1
- quote, enterprise pricing set against the tool stack replaced
- 1
- usage-based
- 1
Separately, 26 of 38 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 34 recruitment tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Analytics , 6 of 34
- Onboarding , 5 of 34
- Integrations , 4 of 34
- ATS , 3 of 34
- CRM , 2 of 34
Named by fewer
- Custom quote , 2 of 34
- Payroll , 2 of 34
- Scheduling , 2 of 34
Named by exactly one vendor: Additional job slots, ATS integrations included, Contractor of Record benefits, Enhanced candidate reach and visibility, Minimum user counts apply, SMS Messaging. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Recruitment” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 38 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- ats16
- Recruitment11
- recruiting10
- sourcing6
- Enterprise4
- talent-acquisition4
- Agency Recruitment3
- Applicant Tracking3
- hiring3
- Recruiting Crm3
- Recruitment Crm3
- talent-management3
Carried by a single tool: affordable, career-site, employer-branding, Interview Outsourcing, learning-management, Remote Work, Sourcing Service, Technical Hiring. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
8 of 38 recruitment tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with analytics, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$5 to $14,995 is a $14,990 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $14,995 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
16 of 38 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, analytics, onboarding, integrations, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 15 billing models: quote on 13 listings, subscription on 9, and 13 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare recruitment tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Checkr vs Codility
- Codility vs Fetcher
- Fetcher vs Findem
- Findem vs Gem
- Gem vs Glassdoor
- Glassdoor vs HackerRank
- HackerRank vs hireEZ
- hireEZ vs Indeed
Go straight to the numbers
- Checkrpricingalternatives
- Codilitypricingalternatives
- Fetcherpricingalternatives
- Findempricingalternatives
- Gempricingalternatives
- Glassdoorpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about recruitment software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does recruitment software cost?
- Across the 38 recruitment tools listed here, paid plans start between $5 and $14,995 a month, with a median entry price of $107.50. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $14,995 a month (SmartRecruiters). 8 of 38 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest recruitment software?
- 3 of the 38 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Factorial has the lowest published entry price at $5 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free recruitment software?
- Yes, 8 of 38 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 3 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should recruitment software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are analytics (6 of 34 tools that publish plan detail), onboarding (5) and integrations (4). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as additional job slots or ats integrations included, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is recruitment software usually billed?
- quote (13), subscription (9), Free for job seekers, employers pay for branding and recruiting products (1), Free for job seekers, employers pay for sponsored listings (1), plus 11 less common arrangements, counted across the 38 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 26 of 38 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does recruitment software actually cover?
- The 38 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ats (16), recruitment (11), recruiting (10), sourcing (6), enterprise (4). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under recruitment may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do recruitment tools offer?
- 36 of 38 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 16 of 38 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many recruitment tools are listed on Softwr?
- 38 approved recruitment listings appear on this page, including Checkr, Codility, Fetcher, Findem. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/recruitment, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 38 picks
The shortlist for “Recruitment”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
More on Recruitment
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.