By Ryan Bradshaw · Live tracker, counts refresh from the Work Insiders directory · Last count November 5, 2026
Every number on this page is read from the Work Insiders directory and updates itself when a listing or its price changes. Starting prices come from each vendor’s own pricing page. Work Insiders’ own Grok bot templates are left out because they have no vendor price.
Live from the Work Insiders directory · updated November 5, 2026
Recruiting software pricing tracker
$49/mo
median starting price across 660 tools with a US dollar monthly price
32%
hide the price behind a demo (415 of 1,288)
21%
have a permanent free tier (265 tools)
Permanent free tier 265 Free trial only 225 Paid, no free option 366 Quote only, no public price 415 Not yet tagged 17
Where starting prices fall
US dollar starting prices a month, yearly prices divided by twelve. Per user and per employee plans count at their one seat price. Euro and pound prices, per check, per posting, per credit and per hire prices stay out.
Pricing by category
| Category | Tools | Free tier | Hide price | Median start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead generation | 257 | 29% | 11% | $49/mo |
| ATS | 204 | 13% | 42% | $79/mo |
| Sourcing | 177 | 23% | 24% | $99/mo |
| Outreach | 144 | 21% | 8% | $50/mo |
| Email finders | 142 | 39% | 9% | $49/mo |
| Interviewing | 116 | 19% | 41% | $79/mo |
| Recruiting CRM | 106 | 11% | 38% | $85/mo |
| AI screening | 105 | 13% | 34% | $99/mo |
| LinkedIn outreach | 98 | 12% | 4% | $59/mo |
| Job boards | 93 | 24% | 22% | $150/mo |
| AI interviewing | 87 | 15% | 36% | $99/mo |
| Assessments | 69 | 19% | 39% | $80/mo |
| HRIS | 54 | 6% | 56% | $8/mo |
| Time and attendance | 54 | 20% | 35% | $7.34/mo |
| Deliverability | 53 | 19% | 2% | $30/mo |
| Payroll | 50 | 6% | 48% | $29/mo |
| AI sourcing | 49 | 18% | 31% | $109.48/mo |
| Recruitment marketing | 48 | 4% | 56% | $69/mo |
| HR compliance | 44 | 5% | 57% | $49/mo |
| Email verification | 40 | 38% | 0% | $39/mo |
| Onboarding | 39 | 5% | 59% | $9/mo |
| Texting | 33 | 3% | 58% | $54.50/mo |
| AI note takers | 33 | 42% | 24% | $18.50/mo |
| Candidate fraud and AI detection | 33 | 21% | 27% | $124.50/mo |
| Workforce management | 32 | 22% | 56% | $6/mo |
| Background checks | 31 | 3% | 58% | – |
| Scheduling | 30 | 13% | 37% | $13.50/mo |
| People analytics | 28 | 11% | 61% | $14/mo |
| AI assistants | 28 | 82% | 4% | $20/mo |
| Performance | 28 | 11% | 54% | $5.50/mo |
| Workflow automation | 27 | 52% | 11% | $29/mo |
| Engagement | 27 | 15% | 48% | $5/mo |
| Learning | 27 | 0% | 74% | $14/mo |
| Dialers | 25 | 8% | 20% | $30/mo |
| Benefits administration | 25 | 0% | 68% | $10.50/mo |
| Healthcare recruiting | 24 | 4% | 54% | $249/mo |
| Visitor ID | 23 | 17% | 13% | $99/mo |
| Personal brand | 23 | 26% | 0% | $29/mo |
| Succession and internal mobility | 21 | 0% | 86% | – |
| AI outreach | 20 | 20% | 25% | $112/mo |
| Internal communications | 19 | 11% | 79% | $29/mo |
| Employee referrals | 18 | 6% | 83% | – |
| Recognition and rewards | 17 | 12% | 65% | $3/mo |
| EOR | 15 | 0% | 20% | $139.50/mo |
| Leave management | 15 | 13% | 47% | $5/mo |
| Employee advocacy | 15 | 0% | 87% | – |
| Reference checks | 14 | 0% | 43% | – |
| Job descriptions | 14 | 21% | 50% | $207.50/mo |
| Wellbeing | 14 | 14% | 71% | – |
| HR help desk | 12 | 0% | 75% | – |
| Compensation | 11 | 9% | 64% | – |
| Org charts and planning | 11 | 0% | 73% | – |
How the numbers have moved
| Count | Tools | Free tier | Hide price | Median start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 5, 2026 | 1,288 | 21% | 32% | $49/mo |
| November 4, 2026 | 1,277 | 21% | 32% | $49/mo |
| November 3, 2026 | 1,256 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
| November 2, 2026 | 1,249 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
| November 1, 2026 | 1,246 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
| October 31, 2026 | 1,245 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
| October 30, 2026 | 1,244 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
| October 29, 2026 | 1,232 | 20% | 36% | $49/mo |
Counts come straight from the directory and refresh when a listing changes. Starting prices come from each vendor's own pricing page. Work Insiders' own Grok bot templates are left out.
What are the key recruiting software pricing numbers in 2026?
The Work Insiders directory tracks the pricing of 1,288 recruiting, lead generation and HR tools. 265 (21%) have a permanent free tier. 225 (18%) offer a free trial only. 366 (28%) publish a paid price with no free option. 415 (32%) hide their price behind a demo form, and 17 new listings are still waiting for a pricing tag.
823 tools (64%) print a starting price on their website. Among the 660 that price in US dollars by the month or year, the median starting price is $49 a month. 53% start under $50 a month and 75% start under $100.
The split by category is the real story. Tools recruiters buy for themselves (email finders, outreach, LinkedIn tools, deliverability) almost always publish a price. Tools HR buys for the whole company (payroll, benefits, help desks, succession) mostly do not.
What changed since the September count?
On September 21, 2026 the directory held 778 priced tools: 14 percent with a free tier, 43 percent quote only, and a $49 median across 368 dollar prices. By October 8 it held 1,026. The share hiding a price fell to 40 percent and the free tier share rose to 17 percent, while the median stayed at $49.
Most of that movement came from what was added rather than vendors changing their pages. New categories such as AI note takers and workflow automation are heavy on free plans, which lifted the free tier share. This page now runs live, so the next shift will show up here the day the listings change.
How much does recruiting software cost per month?
The median published starting price across the directory is $49 a month. The average is $135, pulled up by a small group of enterprise tools that print four figure monthly prices or large annual contracts.
Starting price means the cheapest paid plan on the vendor’s own pricing page, converted to a monthly figure where the vendor quotes annually. A per user or per employee plan counts at its one seat price. It does not include the free tier, and it does not tell you what a five person team will pay once seats and credits are added. Per job pricing works differently again, which our JOIN review walks through.
Only 32 tools in the whole directory print a starting price of $500 a month or more, and most of those are annual contracts written as a monthly figure. The band chart in the tracker shows the full spread.
What does recruiting software cost by category?
The median moves a lot depending on what the tool does. Deliverability infrastructure is priced per mailbox and starts at a median of $30 a month. Email finders start at $49, outreach tools at $50 and LinkedIn tools at $59.
An ATS starts at a median of $79, a recruiting CRM at $85 and a sourcing tool at $99. Job board packages start around $150 because they are priced per posting bundle, not per seat.
HR tools are harder to compare on this measure because many price per employee. Payroll starts at a median of $29 and time and attendance at $7.34, but a per employee plan multiplies by headcount, and many add a base platform fee on top.
Lead generation and email finders overlap heavily, which is why their numbers sit close together. Most email finders are tagged into both categories because staffing firms use the same tools to find hiring managers and candidates.
How many recruiting tools have a free tier?
265 of 1,288 tools (21%) have a permanent free plan. Another 225 (18%) offer a free trial, which we count separately because a trial is not a free plan. The most common trial length in SaaS is 14 days, used by about half of companies that offer one, according to AcademyOcean’s pricing study.
Free tiers are concentrated in the tools individual recruiters buy. Email verification is at 38% free tier, AI note takers at 42%, email finders at 39% and lead generation at 29%. You can browse every free plan on the free tools page, which regenerates from the same data.
At the other end, benefits administration is at 0% free tier, payroll at 6% and HRIS at 6%. If a vendor in one of those categories says free, read the fine print. It is usually a free trial, or a free tier for the first few employees that converts to a per employee fee.
Which categories have the most free recruiting tools?
Email finders, by count. 55 of the 142 tools in the email finders category have a free plan, usually 10 to 50 credits a month. That is a recruiter’s best entry point into a paid stack, because you can test lookup accuracy on your own candidate list before spending anything.
Outreach is close behind. 30 of 144 outreach tools have a free tier, and another 50 have a trial. Most outreach vendors let you send a small volume before paying, because a free user costs them almost nothing until a second mailbox is connected.
Why do so many HR software vendors hide their pricing?
415 tools (32%) show no price anywhere on their site. That is lower than the wider B2B software market, because the directory includes so many self serve recruiter tools that publish prices. Wynter’s April 2026 survey of 50 SaaS leaders found 62% gate pricing behind contact sales and only 10% are fully transparent.
Recruiting tools are more transparent than HR tools because recruiters are self serve buyers who compare tools for a living. HR tools are less transparent because the buyer is a generalist signing a company wide contract, and the vendor wants a sales conversation before quoting.
The pattern is clean. Deliverability hides prices 2% of the time, email verification 0% and LinkedIn tools 4%. HR help desks hide them 75% of the time, employee referral tools 83% and succession tools 86%. The further a tool sits from a single recruiter’s desk, the more likely it is to hide its price.
Does hiding the price actually work for vendors?
On the form fill, yes. On the pipeline, it is less clear. HockeyStack’s pricing page study across 80 B2B SaaS sites found pricing pages without a visible price convert at 4.6% versus 2.8% for transparent ones, but visitors to hidden pricing pages view fewer pages and leave faster.
The Reddit version of this question shows up in r/humanresources and r/recruiting every few weeks: someone asks what a payroll or HRIS platform actually costs and gets a dozen replies of “it depends, they will not tell you until the demo.” That is the gap the pricing data on this directory is meant to close, one verified vendor page at a time.
How do recruiting tools charge: per seat, per credit or flat?
Three models cover almost the whole market. Per seat pricing charges by recruiter login and dominates ATS, CRM and outreach. Credit pricing charges by lookup or export and dominates email finders and sourcing databases. Flat or per company pricing charges one fee regardless of users and is common in small business ATS and job board bundles.
203 vendors write the unit into the headline price (per user, per seat, per employee, per worker or per contractor). Most of the rest print a monthly number and bury the seat or credit limit in the plan comparison, which is why the published figure and the invoice so often disagree. Another 62 price only in euros or pounds and are kept out of the dollar medians.
| Pricing model | Typical unit | Where it dominates | What to check before buying |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per seat | Per recruiter per month | ATS, recruiting CRM, outreach, LinkedIn tools | Minimum seat count, annual commitment, admin seats |
| Per credit | Per email or phone found | Email finders, sourcing databases, verification | Rollover rules, what counts as a credit, bulk export caps |
| Flat per company | Per month, all users | Small business ATS, job board packages, texting | Active job limits, user caps, board syndication |
| Per employee | Per employee per month | Payroll, HRIS, benefits, time tracking | Base platform fee on top, implementation fee, minimums |
| Per mailbox | Per inbox or domain per month | Deliverability infrastructure | Warmup included or extra, domain setup fees |
Per seat remains the most common published model in software generally. OpenView’s pricing study found 55% of companies that publish prices charge by user count, with 36% using some form of usage based metric. Recruiting follows that split closely once you treat credits as usage.
How much does a full recruiting stack cost?
A one recruiter desk built from median priced tools runs about $267 a month: an ATS seat at $79, an email finder at $49, an outreach tool at $50, a LinkedIn tool at $59 and deliverability infrastructure at $30.
A five recruiter desk is not five times that, because credit based tools scale by usage and some flat plans cover the whole team. You can price your own combination with the stack cost estimator, which reads the same published prices this page is built from, or see a worked example in our agency tech stack guide.
How was this pricing data collected?
Every tool in the directory carries one or more pricing tags: free tier, free trial, paid or quote. For this page each tool gets one bucket, in that order, so a tool with a free tier and a paid plan counts as free tier. A tool only gets the quote tag when we find positive evidence that it sells through demos.
Starting prices come from each vendor’s own pricing page and are recorded with a verification date. Yearly prices are divided by twelve. Prices in euros or pounds are counted but kept out of the dollar medians. Per check, per course, per hire, per posting and per credit prices, and prices published with no billing period, are left out of the monthly figures.
The tracker refreshes whenever a listing, its price or its pricing tag changes, and at least every six hours. The same approach runs our live MCP tracker. Corrections go to support@workinsiders.com.
Quick answers
How much does recruiting software cost?
The median published starting price across 660 recruiting and HR tools is $49 a month. 53% start under $50 and 75% start under $100. Enterprise HR platforms usually do not publish a price at all.
What percentage of recruiting tools are free?
21% (265 of 1,288) have a permanent free tier. Another 18% offer a free trial only.
What percentage of HR software vendors hide their pricing?
32% of all tools in the directory are quote only. In HR categories it is far higher: HRIS at 56%, payroll at 48% and benefits administration at 68%.
How much does an ATS cost per month?
The median published ATS starting price is $79 a month, across 83 ATS platforms with a US dollar monthly price. 42% of the 204 ATS platforms are quote only. See the full ATS market breakdown.
How much does an email finder cost?
The median published starting price is $49 a month, usually for a fixed monthly credit bundle. 55 of 142 email finders have a free tier with a small credit allowance.
Is per seat or per credit pricing cheaper for a small agency?
Per credit is cheaper when usage is uneven or low. Per seat is cheaper when every recruiter searches daily. Most small agencies end up with per seat for the ATS and outreach layer and per credit for contact data.
How often is this updated?
Continuously. The numbers are read from the directory and refresh whenever a listing or its price changes, and at least every six hours.
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