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 spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. Most of the vendors featured on our site have no commercial relationship with us, we want to feature the best software for our readers regardless. Learn more
We surveyed the landscape and came up with these free recruiting software solutions that your team should look into.
Why we love it
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We love GoHire because it is affordable and scalable; companies of different sizes can make use of their offerings. They can also upgrade their plan as their operation grows.
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
Sweetberry, VoucherCart, Swapcard
GoHire
Stats
GoHire
Pricing
GoHire offers a two week free trial. After that, they offer these plans:
Best For
GoHire is best for small business that are scaling quickly but need an affordable ATS.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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We love MightyRecruiter because it is a completely free end-to-end ATS that allows for unlimited job postings.
MightyRecruiter is a completely free end-to-end ATS. It allows for unlimited job postings on a variety of job boards and social networks. No need to fuss with free trials or low-tier plans with other providers. MightyRecruiter features candidate rankings, screening questions and a vast searchable database of over 21 million resumes.
MightyRecruiter
Customers
DocuSign, OpExpert
MightyRecruiter
Stats
Best For
Mighty Recruiter is great for any business wanting a free solution.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Vultus is an affordable recruiting and workforce management solution that allows you to trial its offerings for free.
Vultus is a recruiting and workforce management SaaS company with free trials for both solutions. Their ATS option, called Vultus Recruit, can publish to job boards, schedule interviews, manage recruiting pipelines and even has Candidate Relationship Management capabilities. On top of their free trial, their subscription plans are extremely affordable, making it an ideal choice for a startup or small business looking for their first ATS.
Vultus
Customers
Vultus
Stats
Vultus
Pricing
Vultus offers a free trial. Their affordable plans are as follows:
Best For
Small companies looking for an affordable recruiting solution.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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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.
If your company is around 50 employees in size, Freshteam’s free offering might be ideal. This package, called Sprout, 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 Sprout 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
Stats
Freshteam
Pricing
Freshteam is free for up to 50 employees. Then it starts at $50 per month per 50 users, billed annually. All paid plans come with a 21-day free trial.
Best For
Small, growing businesses.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Not only does iKrut pack a decent amount of features in its free plan, it also allows for an unlimited number of users, which is a rare offering for a free software.
iKrut’s free version offers an unlimited number of users and applications, whereas other ATS providers limit this in their free versions. iKrut features mobile compatibility, online interview scheduling, an iKrut-powered career site and mass emailing capability. However, just because it has unlimited users and applications doesn’t mean it is without flaws. The paid iKrut solutions have much more functionality to offer.
iKrut
Customers
iKrut
Stats
iKrut
Pricing
iKrut is available for free. It also has two paid versions:
Best For
Companies who aren't hiring for more than one position at a time.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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We love SmartRecruiters because their 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.
SmartStart is the free version of SmartRecruiters talent acquisition service, specifically made for smaller businesses. You’ll have access to an unlimited number of users as well as a variety of services including multi-board job posting, scheduling management tools, candidate database management and one-click apply.
SmartStart’s unlimited user accessibility enables many hands to be a part of the hiring process, unlike many other free options. The service also offers one-click job postings on any of over 200 available job boards. Unfortunately SmartStart is limited to 10 active job postings at one time. If your team finds this is holding you back, there are different plans you can upgrade to.
SmartRecruiters
Customers
Ikea, Visa, LinkedIn
SmartRecruiters
Stats
Best For
Growing small businesses and startups.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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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.
Yes, the job board giant Indeed is a great free recruiting tool. Why? It allows companies to post jobs and apply skill assessments to those open positions to reach one of the largest talent pools on the internet completely for free. It also has a built-in messaging system for direct contact with candidates.
While using Indeed will likely prove to be limited in the long run, it's an easy-to-use tool when in a pinch or in transition between recruiting software providers.
Indeed
Customers
Nokia, Schwab, Pier 1 Imports, Smokey Bones.
Indeed
Stats
Indeed
Pricing
It doesn’t cost anything to post jobs to appear on Indeed’s general search results. To reach more candidates, companies can sponsor job posts starting from $5/day. Payment is only made when sponsored job posts are clicked.
Best For
Businesses of all sizes looking to recruit for any position across hundreds of industries/service types.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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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.
ATS provider 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.
Zoho Recruit
Customers
Yokohama, spiceJet, OnePlus, airtel
Zoho Recruit
Stats
Zoho Recruit
Pricing
Zoho Recruit has two paid plans on top of the free plan.
Best For
Zoho Recruit will be best for any company wanting a free ATS that can integrate with the rest of their tech stack.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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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.
Applicant tracking system Recooty features a completely free basic program for a single user. The basic plan features 3 active job posts, a branded careers page, applicant tracking and social network sharing capabilities. They also offer customizable plans alongside their two main paid plans, which are all available for a 15 day free trial.
Recooty
Customers
Airtable, Uber, Trello
Recooty
Stats
Recooty
Pricing
Recooty has three pricing plans.
The paid plans start with a 15-day free trial as well.
Best For
Recruitee's free solution is perfect for a small company with only one person doing the recruiting.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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We love Calendly because it is the simplest online scheduler out there, and it's totally free for one calendar / user.
Scheduling software is useful to any recruiting team. Calendly is one of the best out there and happens to be free. The basic plan allows a single user to connect their Calendly schedule to any of the big name calendars, while providing automated notifications, website integration, video chat integration and a personalized link.
If the basic plan is limiting to you, the Premium and Pro plans are still inexpensive. It’s probable that your hiring team will eventually want an ATS or other service to have automated scheduling, but Calendly remains an effective free solution in the meantime.
Calendly
Customers
LinkedIn, Trustpilot, Zendesk
Calendly
Stats
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.
Best For
Anyone needing a free scheduling tool.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Gem's free Chrome sourcing tool is a great choice for companies getting started with AI sourcing.
Gem offers a free trial of their Chrome extension for prospective buyers to take advantage of their candidate sourcing tool. It’s a far cry away from the candidate touchpoint tracking abilities and follow up automation of their paid version, but the free trial is a stepping stone to automating your candidate sourcing process.
Gem
Customers
Lyft, Zapier, Robinhood, Dropbox
Gem
Stats
Gem
Pricing
The Chrome extension comes with Gem's free trial. The trial length is not specified online.
Best For
Companies looking to test out an AI sourcing tool.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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We love SeekOut because it packs a Sourcing Assistant that is incredibly powerful for a free tool.
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, including their blind hiring module and advanced filtering capabilities, they do offer a free Chrome extension. Called SeekOut Sourcing Assistant, the tool will extract rich information directly from LinkedIn and GitHub and allow you to organize, enrich and export candidate profiles.
Seekout
Customers
23andMe, Activision, Twitter
Seekout
Stats
Seekout
Pricing
SeekOut Sourcing Assistant is free to use, with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Best For
Anyone wanting to boost their sourcing with a simple tool.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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myInterview has a free forever plan with plenty of functionality.
myInterview is an easy-to-use and quick-to-implement video interviewing tool that offers a free forever solution. It helps candidates record and send their own interviews via any device, no app necessary, in order to speed up the hiring process. The free Starter plan includes one active job interview, two user seats, and up to 30 candidates a year. It’s not an ideal solution for large companies that are constantly hiring, but for the small business or startup looking for the best costless solution, myInterview is the right choice.
MyInterview
Customers
McDonald's, Facebook, Six Flags
MyInterview
Stats
MyInterview
Pricing
The Starter plan is free forever for 1 active job, 2 user seats, 10 interview questions, and 30 candidates per year.
Best For
Startups or small businesses looking for a robust free solution to get started with video interviewing.
Worth Checking Out:
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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