How is this recruitment & ats ranking decided?

Mechanically. The 17 approved recruitment & ats listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.

Is this list re-ordered for startups?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the startups framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.

How much does recruitment & ats software cost?

Across the 17 recruitment & ats tools listed here, paid plans start between $5 and $14,500 a month, with a median entry price of $99. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $14,500 a month (iCIMS). 5 of 17 also publish a $0 plan.

What is the cheapest recruitment & ats software?

1 of the 17 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 & ats software?

Yes, 5 of 17 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 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 & ats software have?

Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are analytics (7 of 15 tools that publish plan detail), ats (4) and onboarding (4). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as accrual basis or applicant tracking, 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 & ats software usually billed?

subscription (7), quote (5), usage-based (1), counted across the 17 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. 7 of 17 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.

What does recruitment & ats software actually cover?

The 17 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ats (10), recruiting (9), enterprise (4), talent-management (3), ai (2). 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 & ats may overlap on very little.

How many pricing tiers do recruitment & ats tools offer?

15 of 17 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 3 of 17 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 & ats tools are listed on Softwr?

17 approved recruitment & ats listings appear on this page, including Ashby, Breezy HR, ClearCompany, Deel. 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-ats, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Recruitment & ATS · ranked shortlist

Best Recruitment & ATS software for Startups in 2026

17 approved recruitment & ats listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.

Tools ranked: 17
Entry price range: $5-$14,500
Publish a $0 plan: 5 of 17

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.

Where the ratings come from

No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.

What the pool is

Approved recruitment & ats listings, capped at 20 per page; 17 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the recruitment & ats category page.

The ranking

Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.

#1
Ashby
Highest rated here
All-in-one recruiting software
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $400 a month, with no free plan.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
ats, recruiting, analytics, scheduling
Ashby breakdown Compare with Breezy HR
#2
Breezy HR
End-to-end recruiting software
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $189 a month.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
ats, recruiting, visual-pipeline, free-tier
Breezy HR breakdown Compare with ClearCompany
#3
ClearCompany
Talent management platform unifying hiring, onboarding, performance, and learning
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
5 tiers
Tags
talent-management, ats, Hr Software, Performance Management
ClearCompany breakdown Compare with Deel
#4
Deel
Global payroll and compliance made easy
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $49 a month.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $599.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
global-payroll, eor, contractors, Remote Work
Deel breakdown Compare with Factorial
#5
Factorial
HR software that employees love
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $5 a month.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
hr, time-tracking, free-tier, smb
Factorial breakdown Compare with iCIMS
#6
iCIMS
Talent cloud for transformative hiring
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $14,500 a month, with no free plan.
Billing
Model not published
Tags
ats, recruiting, Enterprise, talent-cloud
iCIMS breakdown Compare with JazzHR
#7
JazzHR
Powerful, affordable recruiting software
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $1,000 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $5,508.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
ats, recruiting, smb, affordable
JazzHR breakdown Compare with JobScore
#8
JobScore
Applicant tracking system for finding, scoring, and hiring candidates
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Publishes a $0 plan, with paid tiers from $69 a month.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
4 tiers
Tags
ats, recruiting, hiring, Hr Software
JobScore breakdown Compare with Jobvite
#9
Jobvite
Evolve your talent acquisition
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
ats, recruiting, social-recruiting, referrals
Jobvite breakdown Compare with Lever
#10
Lever
Talent acquisition suite built for collaboration
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
ats, recruiting, crm, talent-acquisition
Lever breakdown Compare with Oracle HCM Cloud
#11
Oracle HCM Cloud
Complete cloud HCM solution
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $13 a month, with no free plan.
Billing
Model not published
Tags
hcm, Enterprise, talent-management, ai
Oracle HCM Cloud breakdown Compare with Pilot
#12
Pilot
Bookkeeping, CFO, and tax for startups
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $599 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $849.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
bookkeeping, startups, cfo, tax
Pilot breakdown Compare with Rippling
#13
Rippling
Manage HR, IT, and Finance in one place
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $8 a month, with no free plan.
- 2 published tiers, topping out at $12.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
hr, payroll, it-management, unified-platform
Rippling breakdown Compare with SAP SuccessFactors
#14
SAP SuccessFactors
Human experience management
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
hcm, Enterprise, talent-management, learning
SAP SuccessFactors breakdown Compare with SmartRecruiters
#15
SmartRecruiters
Talent acquisition suite for hiring success
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
ats, recruiting, Enterprise, ai
SmartRecruiters breakdown Compare with Teamtailor
#16
Teamtailor
Employer branding and ATS combined
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $99 a month, with no free plan.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
ats, recruiting, employer-branding, career-site
Teamtailor breakdown Compare with Workable
#17
Workable
Recruitment and employee engagement platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
usage-based
Published tiers
2 tiers
Workable breakdown

What recruitment & ats software costs

Counted from the published pricing of the 17 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: $99across 11 priced
Dearest entry price: $14,500iCIMS
Publish a $0 plan: 5of 17

Paid recruitment & ats plans in this set start anywhere from $5 a month for Factorial to $14,500 for iCIMS. The median entry price across the 11 tools that publish one is $99, half of them start below that figure and half above it.

5 of 17 publish a $0 plan, and 1 of those charge nothing at all. 7 tools have no free tier of any kind.

7 of 17 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 pricing iCIMS pricing iCIMS plans

How these vendors bill

The billing model each of the 17 recruitment & ats listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.

subscription: 7
quote: 5
usage-based: 1

Separately, 7 of 17 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 15 recruitment & ats 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 , 7 of 15
ATS , 4 of 15
Onboarding , 4 of 15
CRM , 3 of 15
Integrations , 3 of 15

Named by fewer

Payroll , 2 of 15

Named by exactly one vendor: Accrual basis, Applicant tracking, Candidate Management, Documents, Limited hires, Shifts. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.

What “Recruitment & ATS” covers in practice

The subject tags that recur across these 17 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.

ats10
recruiting9
Enterprise4
talent-management3
ai2
free-tier2
hcm2
hr2
Hr Software2
smb2

Carried by a single tool: affordable, career-site, employer-branding, hiring, payroll, Remote Work, startups, tax. 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

5 of 17 recruitment & ats 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 $14,500 is a $14,495 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 $14,500 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

3 of 17 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, ats, onboarding, 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 3 billing models: subscription on 7 listings, quote on 5, and 1 other arrangement 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 & ats 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.

Go straight to the numbers

Build your own comparison See the shortlist instead

Questions people ask about recruitment & ats software

Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.

How is this recruitment & ats ranking decided?: Mechanically. The 17 approved recruitment & ats listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
Is this list re-ordered for startups?: No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the startups framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Startups are buying for a headcount they do not have yet, which makes the second and third tier of each ladder more important than the first. Check what the price becomes at ten people.
How much does recruitment & ats software cost?: Across the 17 recruitment & ats tools listed here, paid plans start between $5 and $14,500 a month, with a median entry price of $99. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $14,500 a month (iCIMS). 5 of 17 also publish a $0 plan.
What is the cheapest recruitment & ats software?: 1 of the 17 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 & ats software?: Yes, 5 of 17 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 1 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 & ats software have?: Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are analytics (7 of 15 tools that publish plan detail), ats (4) and onboarding (4). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as accrual basis or applicant tracking, 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 & ats software usually billed?: subscription (7), quote (5), usage-based (1), counted across the 17 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. 7 of 17 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
What does recruitment & ats software actually cover?: The 17 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are ats (10), recruiting (9), enterprise (4), talent-management (3), ai (2). 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 & ats may overlap on very little.
How many pricing tiers do recruitment & ats tools offer?: 15 of 17 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 3 of 17 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 & ats tools are listed on Softwr?: 17 approved recruitment & ats listings appear on this page, including Ashby, Breezy HR, ClearCompany, Deel. 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-ats, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Keep reading

Neighbouring categories

Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Where the ratings come from

What the pool is

The ranking

Ashby

Breezy HR

ClearCompany

Deel

Factorial

iCIMS

JazzHR

JobScore

Jobvite

Lever

Oracle HCM Cloud

Pilot

Rippling

SAP SuccessFactors

SmartRecruiters

Teamtailor

Workable