Applicant tracking software compared

Applicant tracking software holds every job opening, application and interview note in one place, so a hiring team can see who applied, who has been contacted and who is waiting on a decision. The nine products on this page each post jobs to outside boards, move candidates through stages and handle interview scheduling and feedback. We read every price and claim on the vendor's own website, and each product page links to the pages we used. Prices below are in US dollars unless a sentence says otherwise, and several vendors change what they show by company size or location.

Who buys this and what they pay for

A ten-person company hiring two people a year needs a place to collect resumes and keep notes, and a spreadsheet can do that for a while. A growing company hiring every month has different problems. Applications arrive from several boards at once, interviewers forget to write feedback, and nobody can say how many candidates are stuck at the phone screen. An applicant tracking system, usually shortened to ATS, fixes those problems and also becomes the record that a regulator or a lawyer may later ask to see.

Two kinds of buyer shop in this category, and they need different products. In-house teams hire for their own company, so they care about career pages, hiring manager access and scorecards. Recruiting agencies hire for clients, so they care about client records, candidate databases and billing. Recruiterflow is built for agencies, while Workable, Breezy HR, JazzHR, ApplicantStack, Greenhouse, Teamtailor, Recruitee and Ashby are aimed mainly at in-house teams.

Prices are shown in three different ways

Six of the nine products publish a price, and they do it in ways that cannot be compared without arithmetic. Workable charges by company size, and its page shows only the 1 to 20 employee band: $299 a month for Standard, $599 for Premier and $719 for Enterprise. Breezy HR charges a flat plan price with unlimited users and positions, at $157, $273 and $439 a month when billed annually, or $189, $329 and $529 when billed monthly. JazzHR sells yearly plans only, at $1,000 for Hero, $3,480 for Plus and $5,508 for Pro.

ApplicantStack is the cheapest to start with. Its Starter plan costs $29.99 a month for one open job at a time, Growth costs $49.99 for three, and the Recruit plan costs $109.99 for unlimited jobs. Recruiterflow charges per user instead, at $149 a month, so a team of five recruiters pays $745 a month, or $8,940 over twelve months, before any discount. Ashby shows $400 a month for companies up to 100 employees, though its page does not name the currency beside the dollar sign.

Greenhouse, Teamtailor and Recruitee publish no price at all. Greenhouse says pricing is customized to the company's hiring needs, Teamtailor asks for company details before quoting, and Recruitee ties cost to plan, company size and billing period with a one-year minimum commitment. A buyer comparing these three with the others has to book a call first.

Take a small company hiring steadily. Breezy HR's Growth plan costs about $3,276 over a year if billed annually, and JazzHR's Plus plan costs $3,480. Workable's Standard plan costs $3,588 for the smallest size band, and ApplicantStack's Recruit plan comes to about $1,320. The cheaper plans differ in what they include, which the next sections cover.

Costs that sit outside the plan price

Add-ons change the bill more than the plan names suggest. On Workable's Standard plan, texting costs $89 a month, video interviews $109, assessments $59 and performance and engagement tools $39, while Premier and Enterprise include them. Workable also sells AI credits in packs, such as 5,000 credits for $600, and the credits expire a year after purchase.

Breezy HR sells AI credits from $30 for 100,000, SMS credits from $41 a month and an onboarding add-on from $49 a month. API access and data export or import appear only on its Custom Pro plan. Ashby lists SSO at $100 a month and extra candidate texts at $90 per 1,000, and it puts calendar holds and automatic replacement of declined interviewers into an advanced scheduling add-on.

JazzHR bills some add-ons by usage but does not say which ones or at what rate. Its page also says standard pricing may not apply to staffing agencies, franchises, multi-location businesses or organizations with over 250 employees. ApplicantStack charges extra for candidate texting without listing an amount. In every case, ask for the add-on list in writing before signing.

Job posting works differently from vendor to vendor

All nine products can send a job to outside boards, but they differ in how much happens automatically. Workable advertises one-click posting to 200+ sites, and Breezy HR advertises 50+ top job sites. Recruitee sends every published job to Indeed and Google for Jobs by default and lets a recruiter add other boards from a Promote tab. Greenhouse has the recruiter choose boards in a Post To dropdown on each job.

JazzHR shows jobs auto-posted to Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Monster and Facebook, but its Hero plan limits job posting to eligible accounts at its discretion. Teamtailor forwards postings to free job boards integrated with its system and includes a career site. Many boards take a few days to show a new listing, so test one posting before a real opening depends on it.

Interview scheduling and feedback

Scheduling is where the products diverge most. Teamtailor's Smart schedule picks meeting times and sends candidates a choice, Ashby offers a direct booking link that shows the interview panel's availability, and Recruiterflow schedules from the Schedule tab on a candidate profile. JazzHR describes automatic reminders and candidate self-scheduling, and Breezy HR schedules from the candidate profile with a check on interviewer availability.

Feedback is usually collected through scorecards. Workable scorecards use a 3-point scale, Greenhouse scorecards carry attribute ratings and an overall recommendation, and Recruiterflow lets each interview stage have its own scorecard. Breezy HR limits custom scorecards to its Growth, Business and Pro plans, so the cheapest plan does not have them.

Structured scorecards matter for more than convenience. When every interviewer rates the same attributes, a company can explain a hiring decision later without relying on memory. The next sections explain why that matters.

Hiring law shapes what you keep

Records are the first legal concern. Under the federal EEOC recordkeeping rule, an employer must keep job application forms and other personnel records for one year. When a discrimination charge is filed, the employer must preserve all relevant records, including those of unsuccessful applicants for the same position, until the matter is finally resolved. Federal contractors face a longer period of two years if they have at least 150 employees and a contract of at least $150,000, and one year otherwise.

That rule makes deletion settings a buying question. An ATS that automatically deletes candidate data after a short window can cause trouble if a charge is pending, and one that never deletes can create privacy exposure. Ask whether a retention rule can be paused for a single job or candidate, and whether the audit trail survives the deletion. Workable describes automated data retention and candidate deletion requests for GDPR, and only Workable and Recruiterflow state SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on their own pages.

Automated screening is the second concern. New York City's Local Law 144 bars employers from using an automated employment decision tool unless it has had a bias audit within one year, with a summary of the results posted publicly. The city also requires notice to candidates ten business days before the tool is used, and enforcement began on July 5, 2023. The law applies to candidates for jobs in the city, so a remote employer can be caught by it.

Lawsuits add pressure. In May 2025 a federal court in California preliminarily certified an age discrimination collective action in Mobley v. Workday, which challenges an AI screening tool sold to employers. The case is a claim, not a finding, and Workday is not a product on this page. It does show that a software vendor can be sued over how its tool ranks applicants.

Outside the US, the EU's AI Act lists AI systems used to place targeted job ads, filter applications and evaluate candidates among its high-risk uses in Annex III. An employer hiring in the EU should ask each vendor how it classifies its AI features and what documentation it provides.

AI features need a closer look

Most products here now sell AI sourcing, screening or chat features, and several price them separately. Workable's screening and sourcing agents run on credits, with Evaluate costing one credit per screen and Source costing two credits per passive candidate. Its free trial does not include them. Recruiterflow's AIRA plan, Breezy HR's Breezy Intelligence credits and Ashby's AI Notetaker are also paid.

Before turning any of these on, ask what the tool scores, whether a person reviews every rejection, and whether the vendor can supply bias audit data for New York City. A feature that only summarizes a call carries less legal risk than one that ranks or rejects applicants.

Contracts and leaving

Renewal terms are public for only some vendors. Workable's terms renew subscriptions for successive one-year terms, allow fee increases of up to 5% with at least 45 days' notice, and say prepaid fees are generally not refundable. Those terms also require Workable to provide tools to export or retrieve the customer's data. Breezy HR's terms renew plans automatically for another monthly or annual term, say nothing about refunds, and do not address data export. Recruitee requires a one-year minimum commitment.

For the products without published terms, request the order form before the trial ends. Candidate data includes resumes, notes and scorecards, and moving them to another system matters as much as moving contacts from a CRM.

What to test during a trial

• Post one test job to two boards and note how long each listing takes to appear.
• Move a test candidate through every stage and check which automatic emails go out.
• Schedule an interview with two interviewers and confirm the candidate sees the right time zone.
• Have two colleagues submit scorecards and check who can see them.
• Export all candidates, notes and scorecards, then count what is missing from the file.