Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is designed to improve the recruitment process by making hiring simpler and more efficient. Applicant Tracking Systems allow companies of all sizes to stay organized and productive throughout the hiring process by managing job postings, filtering resumes, organizing applicant information, contacting applicants, and scheduling interviews.
However, many of these systems can be very expensive. So, we wanted to curate a list of the best ATS's that have a free option for companies who are just getting started and need a basic option. We're also crowdsourcing data on ATS pricing through a survey that's anonymous and takes only two minutes. Anyone who helps out the community by filling it out will get access to the entire data set.
For large businesses with extensive HR departments, purchasing a new ATS may be the best option to fit all your HR needs. If you’re considering purchasing a new ATS, check out our complete guide to the Best ATS solutions.
If your business is small or has no budget, purchasing an expensive ATS may not be financially viable. However, there are many products that will offer the services you need for free. These free applicant tracking systems will help make the hiring process faster and simpler for you and your business.
Lastly, you may want to check out this service that will look at your requirements, and recommend an ATS tailored to you. It's free!
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
We surveyed the landscape and came up with these free applicant tracking systems you should look into.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the feature’s you’d expect from a budget friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations.
Manatal
Review:
Manatal is a budget-friendly applicant tracking system that helps HR teams find and hire the right people. Through it, you can create a custom-branded career page, post jobs to multiple job boards, and receive candidate applications. You can also upload candidate profiles and automatically enrich them with data derived from their social media accounts.
We like that Manatal features a customizable recruiting pipeline that’s drag-and-drop enabled. It also has an ai-powered recommendations engine that recommends suitable candidates based on your job descriptions, customizable analytics dashboards, a mobile app for on-the-go access, and a LinkedIn chrome extension, allowing you to quickly connect with and save the candidates who fit your job requirements.
Manatal
Customers:
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal
Stats:
Manatal
Pricing:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
Note:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
Note:
Best For
Manatal is used by organizations of all sizes across different industries, but it’s worth noting that the ball-park of their customers are SMEs.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Teamtailor encompass everything you would expect from an ATS, it also has additional employer branding features that are built-in.
Teamtailor
Review:
Teamtailor is a modern ATS that combines the best practices of employer branding with recruiting software that is great for teams who need a simple but powerful system. You can get setup in a few minutes and get right to recruiting with their 14 day free trial.
This ATS also comes with a full suite of APIs and other powerful features for down the line when your organization's needs grow. This is why over 2,500 companies from the smallest to the largest use Teamtailor to grow their organizations.
Teamtailor
Customers:
Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Veoneer
Teamtailor is used by over 4000 organizations, including Kry, Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Ponsse, and Daniel Wellington.
Teamtailor
Stats:
Teamtailor
Pricing:
Teamtailor offers a 14-day free trial of their ATS. Pricing for their paid plans must be worked out with a sales rep.
Teamtailor’s pricing starts at £2750 for companies with 1-25 employees. This includes unlimited job postings, candidates and user access to the system. You can get in touch with Teamtailor’s sales team to get an estimate according to your business size and needs.
Best For
Companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
For a free product, Zoho Recruit is a decent offer. It’s a basic ATS & CRM, with the free version including free job boards, email management, interview scheduling, and 24/5 support.
Zoho Recruit
Review:
Zoho’s free plan provides services for candidate management, email management, and interview scheduling. It allows for simple resume search and provides 5 email templates. It's important to note that Zoho’s free plan allows for only one active job opening.
Although their free plan is relatively limited in terms of features compared its paid plans, they do offer a 45-day money-back guarantee. Also worth noting is that the paid plans are not that expensive compared to similar products, and some modules are available as separately-priced add-ons.
Zoho Recruit
Customers:
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
Zoho Recruit
Stats:
Zoho Recruit
Pricing:
Zoho Recruit has three paid plans on top of the free plan.
The client portal and video interview modules are what’s available as add-ons. Zoho Recruit also has a 15-day free trial, as well as a free-forever version. The free version has limited features and only 1 active job at a time.
Zoho Recruit has three paid plans on top of the free plan.
The client portal and video interview modules are what’s available as add-ons. Zoho Recruit also has a 15-day free trial, as well as a free-forever version. The free version has limited features and only 1 active job at a time.
Best For
Zoho Recruit is perfect for large and small companies of various industries that use premium and niche job boards to give them an edge over competitors. It is also worth considering for smaller recruiting firms, but also has tons of functionality that enterprise companies would value. Of course, any company wanting a free ATS that can integrate with the rest of their tech stack would be wise to consider them.
Why we love it
:
GoHire is an affordable recruiting solution that's also scalable; SMBs can derive value from its introductory plans, and upgrade to more features as their operation grows.
There are both pros and cons to using GoHire.io. Let's take a look at some of the most important ones:
GoHire
Review:
GoHire is a simple to use ATS that is perfect for smaller companies focused on growing their teams. Their software will distribute your roles to job boards, schedule interviews, record candidate feedback, and communicate with candidates. This is a great offering for budget conscious companies and they offer a two week free trial.
GoHire
Customers:
Snagajob, Promoter, Sweetberry, Swapcard, Voucher Cart
Snagajob, Promoter, Sweetberry, Swapcard, Voucher Cart.
GoHire
Stats:
GoHire
Pricing:
GoHire.io offers three pricing plans to meet the needs of businesses. The plans provide flexible schedules for both monthly and annual payments. The company also offers a cancel anytime policy that is helpful when a business is not hiring. For new users, the company offers a free 14-day trial. The plans are:
GoHire.io offers three pricing plans to meet the needs of businesses. The plans provide flexible schedules for both monthly and annual payments. The company also offers a cancel anytime policy that is helpful when a business is not hiring. For new users, the company offers a free 14-day trial. The plans are:
Best For
GoHire.io targets startups and small businesses looking for an affordable, efficient and effective way to manage their hiring process. The cost starts from £58 per month on the lowest plan and this can be scaled to fit the company needs and budget.
Why we love it
:
Jobsoid is a great choice for early stage startups. These companies can make use of Jobsoid's Beginner plan, which is free forever, then upgrade to Jobsoid's paid offerings as they grow.
Jobsoid
Review:
Designed for startups in their early stages, Jobsoid’s free Beginner package offers helpful services for organizing the recruitment and hiring process. For businesses interested in reaching potential applicants through social media, the free plan allows for integration with Facebook.
This ATS includes custom email templates and simple one-click posting to job boards. It also supports website career page integration and offers a branded careers portal. Jobsoid’s free Beginner package allows for one user and one job posting which may pose an issue for businesses looking to fill many positions. While the free version does offer online help, it’s overall support is limited and does not include phone, email, or setup support. To access more features, Jobsoid does offer paid plans.
Jobsoid
Customers:
Jobsoid
Stats:
Jobsoid
Pricing:
Jobsoid's Beginner plan is free forever. They offer a few paid plans:
Best For:
Best for startups looking an ATS at their early stages. The Lite paid plan is affordable as a good next step at only $49 per month.
Why we love it
:
As a self-serve recruitment intelligence platform, TurboHire can discover talent, conduct effective interviews, and run a data-driven, collaborative, and engaging recruitment process via Augmented Intelligence.
Turbohire
Review:
TurboHire is an AI-powered talent acquisition platform. The solution is packed with intelligent recruitment automation features like a LinkedIn chrome extension for smart sourcing, AI-based career pages for capturing relevant candidates, automatic interview scheduling, and much more.
The idea behind the tool is to help recruiters streamline each stage of the recruitment process. This is an excellent option for budget-conscious companies, as they have a free version and 14-day free trial for their paid Pro plan.
Turbohire
Customers:
Turbohire
Stats:
Turbohire
Pricing:
TurboHire offers 4 plans:
Best For:
TurboHire is a good bet for companies and recruitment agencies on a tight budget looking to automate their workflows.
Why we love it
:
Trusted by 181,000 users, Recruitee ATS is not only robust, but also affordable and scalable. Companies like M&S saw a 50% decrease in time-to-hire since implementing Recruitee. You can try the software for free for 18 days.
Recruitee
Review:
Recruitee offers a robust ATS specifically designed for companies with <1,000 employees who want to build their employer brands, monitor the health of their recruiting function through data, and of course hire through the feature set you'd expect from a best in class applicant tracking system. Their product has an 18 day free trial so it's very easy to get started with their offering.
The last thing that really caught our eye is that a disproportionate amount of their engineering team is strictly focused on design which results in an intuitive and powerful product built to enable collaboration across recruiters and hiring managers alike. Some of their marquee customers include Vice, Breitling, and Hotjar.
They offer an 18 day free trial so that you can get a feel for the system and get started recruiting today. This trial comes with all of the features in their Scale plan.
Recruitee
Customers:
Recruitee
Stats:
Recruitee
Pricing:
Recruitee has three pricing tiers, all of which start with an 18-day free trial.
Best For:
Companies with under 1,000 employees.
Why we love it
:
SmartRecruiters' SmartStart plan is designed with small businesses in mind. Besides it being free of charge, SmartStart allows for an unlimited number of users, a perk Free ATSs rarely provide.
SmartRecruiters
Review:
Designed specifically for smaller businesses, SmartStart is the free version of SmartRecruiters talent acquisition service. It allows for an unlimited number of users as well as a variety of services including multi-board job posting, one-click apply, scheduling management tools, and candidate database management.
While the number of users is often restricted for free ATS, SmartStart’s unlimited user accessibility enables many people throughout a company to take part in the hiring process. SmartStart also has a high focus on collaboration and offers one-click job postings on any of over 200 available job boards. Cons: SmartStart is limited to 10 active job postings at one time, but SmartRecruiters also offers paid upgrades for higher functionality.
SmartRecruiters
Customers:
SmartRecruiters
Stats:
SmartRecruiters
Pricing:
SmartStart is completely free for up to 10 active jobs at a time.
Best For:
Small businesses will get the most benefit out of SmartStart.
Why we love it
:
Recruiteze offers a free 15-day trial of their applicant tracking system software that helps with applicant sourcing, interviewing, streamlining the recruitment process, and reducing recruitment costs. The free trial version also includes ATS software that provides unlimited access to job boards and job postings.
RecruitEze
Review:
One of the main benefits of RecruitEze is that there is no contract and so you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. There is also no fee for setup. Recruiteze’s ATS is specifically targeted toward small businesses. Even its most elaborate package is limited in terms of the number of users who can access it and the free version only permits one user. The free version also does not include a custom careers page, candidate workflow, or bulk resume upload features. It also is limited to 500 total applications.
RecruitEze
Customers:
Recruiteze is used around the world. Their customer list includes ClientMind Recruiting, the Augustine Institute, the Viking International School, and Integrity Talent Source.
RecruitEze
Stats:
RecruitEze
Pricing:
Recruiteze offers a 15-day free trial of their software, and has 3 different paid plan options.
Best For:
While companies of all sizes can benefit from using Recruiteze, the software is best suited for small to medium-sized businesses and startups.
Why we love it
:
If you are a small business that only requires one ATS user seat, Recooty is worth checking out. It is completely free for a single user and provides several features for a recruiter to keep track of applicants.
Recooty
Review:
Recooty's free applicant tracking system (ATS) enough functionality for small businesses to attract and hire the right people. Their free plan allows for one active job post at a time, job widget integration, the creation of branded careers page and social network sharing. They also offer a 15 day trial of their paid plans so you can test out some of their more advanced features before committing.
Recooty
Customers:
Recooty serves over 5000 companies, including Sendlane, Airtable, Uber, Rack Bank, American Hospital, and Trello.
Recooty
Stats:
Over 15000 jobs have been posted and over 500,000 applications received through Recooty.
Recooty
Pricing:
The company offers four pricing plans:
All the plans come with a 14-day trial period in which you can test the service without providing your credit card details. After the trial period ends, you will need to update your card to continue using the services.
You'll appreciate Recooty's flexible and affordable pricing options if you're a small business. If you're starting, the free tier gives you access to one job posting, which is more than adequate for most small firms that only require one or two people at any given time.
Best For:
Recruitee's free solution is perfect for a small company with only one person doing the recruiting.
Why we love it
:
Freshteams is a robust and user-friendly ATS. Their free plan serves companies with up to 50 users quite well, eliminating the need to supplement their offering with additional tools.
Freshteam
Review:
Freshteam is user-friendly HR suite with features for applicant tracking, candidate screening, hiring, onboarding, time-off management, employee information management, and more on a single platform.
With a customizable career site, integration with multiple job boards, and social media channels, Freshteam enables you to attract top talent for your open positions. Once candidate applications are received, your recruiting team can proceed with screening their resumes, scheduling interviews, and sharing feedback with all relevant parties. All of this activity can easily be tracked through Freshteam’s recruiting funnel that you can customize to reflect all the stages in your hiring process.
Freshteam
Customers:
University of Pennsylvania, Daimler, SAP, Nissan, JCDecaux
Freshteam
Stats:
Freshteam
Pricing:
Freshteam is free for up to 50 employees, it then starts at $1.20 per employee plus a $71 platform fee, billed monthly. All paid plans come with a 21-day free trial and you get two months for free if you go with the annual plan.
Best For:
Any company searching for a free ATS.
Why we love it
:
Best suited for SMBs, iKrut brings almost everything you need to attract, source, and manage candidates the way you want it with minimal training.
iKrut
Review:
iKrut
Customers:
Over 55 companies use iKrut as their applicant tracking tool. Most of them have under 50 employees and are located in English-speaking countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
iKrut
Stats:
iKrut
Pricing:
iKrut offers a free plan that allows you to post unlimited jobs, create unlimited users, and access an editable iKrut-powered career site and all applications. The software also has two paid options: Premium and Premium+.
On top of that, you will get up to a 20% reduction off iKrut’s standard pricing for a multi-year deal. There is also a reduction for paying monthly upfront, yet you need to contact their team to get the details.
Best For:
iKrut budget-friendly offering is best suited for SMEs hiring fewer than 50 candidates a year.
Why we love it
:
Unlike other free products that are often limited in functionality, MightyRecruiter is a robust ATS that allows for unlimited job posting across various job boards. It also comes with a comprehensive resume database, employee referral features, a reporting dashboard and a branded career website at no additional cost.
MightyRecruiter
Review:
Ideal for small and medium-sized businesses, MightyRecruiter is a free recruitment software that helps companies streamline their talent-sourcing process. The tool allows you to attract candidates through a custom-branded career page, post unlimited job openings across 29+ job boards, access a resume database of over 21 million candidates, rank and filter candidates. To speed up your sourcing efforts further, the platform packs over 200 ready-to-use job description templates and suggests suitable candidates for your job posts based on defined criteria.
MightyRecruiter
Customers:
ThinkGlink Media, DocuSign, OpExpert, GTM Pros, Small World Recruiting
MightyRecruiter
Stats:
MightyRecruiter
Pricing:
MightyRecruiter is free to use. However, viewing the full resumes of candidates on their resume database costs extra.
Best For:
MightyRecruiter is best suited for SMBs. It is a free ATS that packs a decent range of features to streamline recruitment for companies hiring under 50 candidates a year.
Why we love it
:
For small businesses looking for an affordable ATS with basic features, JobScore’s free version is great option. It offers Job SEO Optimization and analytics reports that can be easily exported to Excel.
JobScore
Review:
Featuring interview scheduling with calendar integration, JobScore helps businesses stay organized through the recruiting process. The free version also allows employers to design unique job application forms where candidates can create profiles and submit a resume. If your business is on the medium side or is growing rapidly, the free version may not provide the services you need. Designed for small businesses hiring less than 5 people at a time, JobScore’s free system only allows for one active job posting.
JobScore
Customers:
JobScore
Stats:
JobScore
Pricing:
JobScore offers a free plan with one active job. They also have three other pricing plans for those looking to upgrade:
Each paid plan also has a 30-day free trial available.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes can make use of JobScore's offerings.
Why we love it
:
CandidATS is a free, open-source ATS. It has so far been used by thousands of businesses in over 130 countries to track and manage applicants.
CandidATS
Review:
Created by Aueio, CandidATS is a free open source ATS. Its features include a centralized candidate management tool, an easy to search database for resumes, email templates, and interview scheduling capabilities.
CandidATS
Customers:
CandidATS
Stats:
CandidATS
Pricing:
CandidATS is completely free to download. However, customization services cost $25/hour.
Best For:
CandidATS is best for companies needing a free solution in a pinch.
Why we love it
:
OpenCats because is a completely free open-source ATS that packs all the basic features a small business would need to keep track of applicants.
OpenCATS
Review:
OpenCATS is a completely free open source ATS. Designed for recruiters, OpenCATS provides basic ATS services such as candidate tracking, resume parsing, and job requisition and posting.
OpenCATS
Customers:
OpenCATS
Stats:
Best For:
OpenCATS is best for companies needing a free ATS in a pinch.
Why we love it
:
Apart from their basic job posting services, VanHack offers a free, full-scale applicant tracking system (ATS) that supports unlimited jobs and users. Their platform lets you schedule interviews in as little as three clicks, post jobs, and track candidate progress.
VanHack
Review:
VanHack offers a free ATS platform for all employers. Their platform supports unlimited users and jobs, and it doesn’t even require a credit card to get started. This makes it a great option for small businesses, startup entrepreneurs, and those who just want to test the waters and see what they have to offer.
Their ATS includes a Kanban pipeline for all jobs, making it a breeze to manage potential candidates, and you can schedule an interview in as little as three clicks. Users can also post jobs directly from their ATS platform.
VanHack
Customers:
Some of VanHack’s customers include Deloitte, Brex, Booking.com, Zalando, Rogers, and SkipTheDishes.
VanHack
Stats:
VanHack
Pricing:
VanHack is completely free for job seekers. For employers, VanHack charges a fee per hire that amounts to 20% of the candidate’s annual salary. Job posts, interviews, and candidate searching are all free.
Best For:
VanHack is best for organizations that are looking for potential candidates within the IT industry, especially in on-demand roles. It’s also useful when trying to hire one-off tech roles for your company – regardless of your industry.
ATS's are great for recruiting teams that are looking to grow their organization's headcount, and want to stay organized. Even with a free option, companies can expect to gain benefits including:
One of the key benefits of buying a free ATS is that you get to try out a system before you have to pay for it. While some of these systems do have forever free tiers, the main pitfall to remember here is that you will most likely eventually pay for the system you are using (businesses have to make money after all!).
This means it's really important for your team to choose the right solution, and then make sure you are vetting it as a long term play. Don't let a paid tier sneak up on your unprepared!
Even for free (and cheap) versions of software, you can still expect to get many of the basics that you'd find in any ATS:
An applicant tracking system is a software application designed to help HR teams organize recruitment and hiring data.
You need an applicant tracking system to easily manage large volumes of applicants and candidates, streamlining the recruitment process.
When looking into a free applicant tracking system, you might come across a few different options:
Small businesses and startups in particular who aren’t looking to do a ton of hiring at once should look into a free applicant tracking system. An ATS will streamline their hiring process while saving them the cost of buying enterprise software.
However, larger companies may find value in free trials, as it allows them to vet different vendors to find the right solution before buying.
An ATS is used in recruitment to make the end-to-end process of hiring easier. Applicant tracking systems were originally made for large corporations that deal with thousands of job applications every week. Therefore having a software system automatically sort applicant information into a database and analyze the best candidates saves HR teams hours of work.
However, an ATS will still provide value to a small business looking to automate their hiring process.
Applicant tracking systems work by acting as a liaison between an employer and an applicant. Once an application is submitted, the ATS stores the candidate’s work experience, education, contact information and other details into a database. HR teams use the database to review applications, communicate with applicants, schedule interviews and sometimes administer skills tests.
A free applicant tracking system won’t have all the features of a paid software, but they can offer a selection of the following:
We hope this listing of free applicant tracking systems was useful for your recruiting team as they look to bring on a new ATS. If you have any additions, please send us a note, or leave a comment, and we’ll be happy to update the list!
Lastly, if you have the budget to use a paid ATS, we recommend checking out our page on the best applicant tracking systems, complete with questions to ask on demos, ROI calculations, etc. Enjoy!
Guides and Blogs on ATS:
What is an ATS? / Benefits of an ATS / How to Calculate ATS ROI / Guide on ATS Pricing / ATS Buyer Guide / Questions to Ask ATS Vendors on Demos
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