Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
Talent acquisition teams know that a good recruiting software solution makes their lives way easier while also invigorating their hiring process. From candidate sourcing and job posting to resume parsing and interview scheduling, the right recruiting tools mean more of the best talent in your pipeline and more efficient recruiting cycles.
Those tools can add up in cost over time. If you’re a large business with an extensive HR team, you might want to check out our Best Recruiting Software page for the best of different categories and all-in-one paid options.
However if you’re visiting this page, you are likely a startup or small business who can’t afford to spend money on enterprise-level software. As such, we have curated a list of the best free and inexpensive recruitment software choices, including some of the major players that have options for free trials. That way, it’s easier to find the right solution that fits your recruiting needs as well as your budget.
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 recruiting software solutions that your team should look into.
Why we love it
:
GoHire is an affordable recruiting solution that's also scalable; SMBs can derive value from its introductory plans, and upgrade 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
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 is best for small business that are scaling quickly but need an affordable ATS.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the features you’d expect from a budget-friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations. All of Manatal’s features can be trialed for free for up to 14 days, no credit card required.
Manatal
Review:
Manatal is a budget-friendly recruiting software 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, 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
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
:
Gem gathers data from tools that recruitment teams use on a day-to-day basis, such as LinkedIn InMail, ATS, and email, and combines it into a single talent management hub that automates candidate sourcing and engagement while providing detailed insights to support and optimize your recruiting strategy.
Gem
Review:
Gem has taken many of the best practices your sales team uses to engage leads and applied them to your recruiters’ workflows when engaging candidates. It is primarily a talent engagement platform with features to support talent sourcing, candidate outreach, and recruitment pipeline management. Hiring teams can use Gem to capture information about relevant candidates, engage with them through multistage drip campaigns, and see what's working and what's not through analytics. The best part about Gem is that it integrates with a range of ATS, LinkedIn and email.
While the software is not free, they do offer a free demo and trial so you can evaluate if it is a good fit for your business.
Gem
Customers:
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Gem
Pricing:
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
Best For
Gem is best suited for large enterprises and staffing agencies that need to hire more employees in a short time period.
Why we love it
:
We love Freshteams because it 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:
If your company is around 50 employees in size, Freshteam’s free offering might be ideal. This package helps you stay organized by presenting all recruiting and hiring operations on a single dashboard. It provides basic applicant tracking, interview scheduling, and integration with some Google services. However, the Free plan only allows for 3 active job postings at a time and has no resume parsing feature.
The paid plans all have a 21-day free trial as well, much longer than most competitors.
Freshteam
Customers:
Nissan, University of Pennsylvania, Daimler, SAP
Freshteam is one of the most widely used HR suites out there with over 7,000 customers including Monster, PharmEasy, Ocado, Reaktor, Nissan, SAP, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Freshteam
Pricing:
Freshteam’s free plan lets you add up to 50 employees and is ideal for small companies to handle their basic HR needs. The paid plans start at $1.20 per employee/month, along with a $71 monthly platform fee. These prices are lowered if you choose to pay for a full year.
Freshteam has 4 pricing plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
Best For
Small, growing businesses.
Why we love it
:
We love Zoho Recruit because as with all of Zoho's products, it is quite robust. It is also completely free when hiring for only one active job.
Zoho Recruit
Review:
Zoho Recruit has a free plan that provides services for candidate management, email management, and interview scheduling. Zoho Recruit integrates easily with Google applications and supports 26 languages, allowing you to reach a large applicant pool. It also features simple resume search and 5 customized email templates.
Unfortunately, the free plan allows for only one active job opening. Overall, Zoho Recruit offers much more comprehensive solutions through their paid plans. However, you can start small and upgrade as you go, since they don’t require you to commit for a specific timeframe. Also, they have a 45-day money-back guarantee.
Zoho Recruit
Customers:
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
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
:
On top of being an affordable solution, Recooty has a lengthy 15-day free trial of its paid plans as well as a free forever plan.
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.
Sendlane, Airtable, Uber, Trello, Rack Bank, American Hospital
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.
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
:
We love Indeed because of its massive database of candidates. Companies of any size can post jobs on it and access their talent pool - all for free.
Indeed
Review:
Indeed is perhaps the biggest and most popular job posting platform available today. It allows companies to post jobs and apply skill assessments to those posted jobs to reach one of the largest talent pools on the internet, all for free. Once a candidate passes the assessment(s) and their credentials have been reviewed, companies can use Indeed’s built-in messaging system to reach out to candidates and schedule interviews. Though it is optional, companies can also sponsor job posts on Indeed to reach quality candidates faster.
Indeed
Customers:
Indeed is used by over 3,000,000 companies, including Nokia, Schwab, McDonald's, and the University of Oxford.
Indeed is used by over 3,000,000 companies, including Nokia, Schwab, McDonald's, and the University of Oxford.
Indeed
Pricing:
It doesn't cost anything to post jobs to appear on Indeed's general search results. To reach more candidates however, you may want to try sponsoring your listing. The price for sponsoring a listing varies depending on the title, location and available job seekers for your posted job. After you define such criteria, Indeed will calculate and show you the price of sponsoring your listing so you’re able to decide if it’s within your budget before paying for it. To ensure you only pay for desired results, Indeed gives you 48 hours to reject unwanted applications before you’re charged.
It doesn't cost anything to post jobs to appear on Indeed's general search results. To reach more candidates however, you may want to try sponsoring your listing. The price for sponsoring a listing varies depending on the title, location and available job seekers for your posted job. After you define such criteria, Indeed will calculate and show you the price of sponsoring your listing so you’re able to decide if it’s within your budget before paying for it. To ensure you only pay for desired results, Indeed gives you 48 hours to reject unwanted applications before you’re charged.
Best For
Businesses of all sizes looking to recruit for any position across hundreds of industries/service types.
Why we love it
:
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
Calendly
Review:
Calendly is an appointment scheduling software that happens to have an indefinite free plan. Although not built for recruiting per se, HR managers can use it at the interviewing stage of recruiting.
It natively integrates with all the popular calendars and video conferencing tools. In the free version, you can create unlimited one-on-one events, send automated event notifications to your candidates, and customize your booking link. If you find the free plan limiting, you can always upgrade to the paid plans, which are still inexpensive compared to other scheduling tools. There’s also a free 14-day trial period for the paid plans.
Calendly
Customers:
Calendly has many big names in their customer base, such as eBay, Compass, Lyft, Dropbox, La-Z-Boy, Twilio, and Stack Overflow.
Calendly has many big names in their customer base, such as eBay, Compass, Lyft, Dropbox, La-Z-Boy, Twilio, and Stack Overflow.
Calendly
Pricing:
Calendly is totally free for a single calendar per user. It costs $8 per user per month for 2 calendars and $12 per user per month for 6 calendars. The premium pricing plans offer more functionality as well.
Calendly has five pricing plans that can be billed either monthly or annually. If you choose the latter, you’ll save 20%. Below are the prices you’ll pay per month per user, if you choose to get billed annually.
All the paid plans come with a 14-day trial, at the end of which, you’ll automatically be downgraded to the free plan. They also offer special pricing for non-profit organizations. You’ll have to reach out to their customer support specialists for details.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking for an affordable and user-friendly scheduling solution. Sole business owners and small businesses might find Calendly particularly helpful since there’s a free plan as well.
As a Recruiter and Business owner, Calendly has been beneficial in my business and profession. I used it for scheduling interviews with job candidates. I used it to book one-on-one meetings with prospects and clients, allowing me to specify the duration and location of each meeting. I also used it to coordinate events such as training, and coaching session with my mentees. That said, these key workflows, allow me to simplify the scheduling process to save time so I can focus on other important tasks.
What I like about Calendly is that it eliminates the need for back-and-forth emails. It makes it a simple and easy way for others to book time with me based on my availability. This process helps to schedule more effectively and efficiently thereby saving time and energy.
I have been using Calendly since 2018 and so far, I haven't come across anything I don't like about Calendly. That said, I am completely satisfied with Calendly and have no negative feedback to provide.
We use Calendly as it eliminates the need for back-and-forth emails. It makes it so easy for our candidates, clients, stakeholders, and others to book time with us based on our availability. This can save us a lot of time and energy and make scheduling a more efficient and effective process.
What I like about Calendly is that it is user-friendly making it so easy to navigate. It has customizable event types as it allows me to create various types of events and I can customize the details for each type. It has real-time availability. I don't need to check timebuddy.com anymore to ensure that the time and date are accurate as Calendly integrates with my calendar.
It has email and calendar integrations such as Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar too, making it easy to manage my appointments and meetings. Finally, it has an automated email reminder. I don't miss a single meeting since Calendly sends automated email reminders to me.
By considering these criteria, you can ensure that you choose a scheduling tool that meets your needs and helps you streamline your processes.
Calendly has evolved through time and has added changes and additions. The goal is to ensure customer satisfaction and streamline the process. It has enhanced customization options. They also improved integration options and added a mobile app.
These are just some of the changes that have evolved and added through time showing their commitment to having a seamless scheduling process.
Calendly is ideal for Freelancers, Small Business Owners, Event Planners, Real Estate Agents, Sales Agents, and the like.
Large companies
Why we love it
:
We love SeekOut because it packs a Sourcing Assistant that is incredibly powerful for a free tool. They put many variants of artificial intelligence within the context of a search engine for talent.
Seekout
Review:
SeekOut is an AI-powered talent search engine designed to help your hiring team source and recruit candidates from social media sites. While most of their solutions cost money, they do offer a free Chrome extension. Called SeekOut Sourcing Assistant, the tool will extract rich information directly from LinkedIn, GitHub, and other sources, thus allowing you to organize, enrich and export candidate profiles.
Seekout
Customers:
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
Seekout
Pricing:
Seekout has a few different plans:
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Seekout has a few different plans:
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Best For
Seekout has segmented pricing plans for different industries. While there is a general plan for most businesses, Tech, Engineering, and Life Sciences hiring managers get the most functionality from Seekout. The tool can be used by companies with large in-house recruiting teams as well as small agencies looking for a user-friendly tool to reach a diverse pool of talent.
Why we love it
:
You can use myInterview's free-forever plan to send interview links for one open position. You can start the hiring process without worrying about an expiration date.
MyInterview
Review:
myInterview is a free video interviewing platform to help you shortlist and hire the most suitable candidates for your job. With no trial period or expiration date, you can start using MyInterview for free when you're hiring for only one job. If you hire for more than one job, you'll have to upgrade to a paid plan – and you can always downgrade to the free offering whenever you like.
MyInterview
Customers:
myInterview customer list include prominent names like Ocado, Facebook, Six Flags, Chick-fil-A, and more.
myInterview customer list include prominent names like Ocado, Facebook, Six Flags, Chick-fil-A, and more.
MyInterview
Pricing:
myInterview has with five pricing plans:
myInterview has with five pricing plans:
Best For
Companies of all sizes can use myInterview and derive value while staying within their budgets.
As you've probably noticed, recruiting software isn't limited to a single category.
Therefore, the key features to look out for in any recruitment tool will vary widely from one landscape to another. Let’s take a quick dive into the different types of solutions on this page:
Key Features from Applicant Tracking Systems
The ATS is a core piece of talent acquisition software, acting mainly as a candidate database. Therefore people think applicant tracking software is synonymous with recruiting software since they can handle the entire recruiting pipeline from applying to hiring.
Today’s ATS should have robust analytics, open APIs, candidate profiles, employee referrals, and capabilities that help source/engage talent. There are tons of options out there to track applicants, so check out our top free ATS page for more information.
Key Features for AI Recruiting Tools
AI recruiting tools allow HR and talent acquisition teams to supercharge their efforts through smart and automated workflows that eliminate tedious tasks, and let recruiting teams focus on the most strategic parts of their recruitment process.
Key Features for Video Interview Platforms
The right video interview software can save recruiting teams a lot of time and effort in producing new hires. The main differences between video interview software and regular video conferencing include automated scheduling, pre-recorded interviews, interview templates, and ATS integration.
Key Features for Candidate Sourcing Tools
These solutions handle sourcing top talent for teams in a time-saving manner. Many times, the right candidate isn't actively looking for a new job, so work-focused social media sites like LinkedIn or Glassdoor have allowed for the rise of candidate sourcing tools that leverage these and other databases. Key features include are smart filtering capabilities, AI-based recommendations, automated email outreach, and integrations with your ATS or other recruitment solution.
More often than not, free recruiting solutions are temporary. On one side they are temporary because they offer limited functionality that your company will eventually outgrow. On the other side, many are quite literally temporary free plans to give you the chance to try before you buy.
Regardless, these free recruiting software options are meant to give your organization a taste of what’s to come so you can make the right paid plan decision. Just be sure to cancel any trials before you're ready to buy to avoid the charge!
Free recruiting software is any software tool that recruiters, hiring managers, and HR/TA teams use to streamline their recruiting workflow.
The following are different types of free recruiting software: video interviewing, sourcing tools, AI chatbots, virtual career fairs, recruiting CRMs, candidate assessment tools, and recruiting ATS’s.
Some benefits your company will see from using free recruiting software include faster time-to-fill, high quality candidates, diversity hiring, and saved money.
There are some pitfalls to avoid when choosing free recruiting software. First, instead of looking for a short-term fix, look for a long-term need. Next, think about what you really need before choosing a category. Don’t get shiny object syndrome. Finally, make sure every key employee is on board with the software you choose.
We hope this listing of free recruiting software was useful for your recruiting team. We also have a specific list of free Applicant Tracking Systems that could enhance your recruiting process too. 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 buy, we recommend checking out our page on the best recruiting software out there, complete with questions to ask on demos, ROI calculations, etc. Enjoy!
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