Recruiting Software Pricing: Recruitment Software Cost and ATS Pricing Comparison for Staffing Agencies
Nine US recruiting platforms, every price read at the vendor's own pricing page with the date attached. What each one costs per seat, what a five recruiter desk pays in year one, and which plans can actually contact a candidate.
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In one answer Recruiting software pricing for a US staffing or search firm runs from $15 to $494 per user per month at published rates, and the spread is that wide because the vendors are not selling the same thing. Across nine platforms read at their own pricing pages in September 2026, only 15 of 37 plans carry a dollar figure at all. The published entries are Manatal at $15, Crelate Essentials at $85, Recruit CRM Pro at $95, Bullhorn Starter at $99, Recruiterflow Platform at $119 billed annually, Loxo Core from $149, SeekOut Recruit Core at $149, and hireEZ at $494 for a solo recruiter. Gem publishes no plan price. The number that decides most evaluations is not the entry price, though. It is the price of the cheapest plan that can actually send a candidate sequence, and only three of the nine vendors publish one: Recruiterflow at $119, Recruit CRM Business at $135 and Loxo Professional at $199 per user per month on annual billing.
How much does recruiting software cost per user?
Published seat rates for agency recruiting software cluster in three bands. The budget band is Manatal at $15, $35 and $55 per user per month on annual billing, $19, $39 and $59 monthly. The mid band, which is where most US staffing firms actually land, runs $85 to $165: Crelate Essentials $85 and Business $119 annual, Recruit CRM Pro $95 and Business $135, Bullhorn Starter $99 and Core $165, Recruiterflow Platform $119 annual or $149 monthly, Loxo Core from $149 and Professional from $199. Above that sits sourcing software priced as its own category: SeekOut Recruit Core at $149 per month paid annually and up front, and hireEZ at $494 per month for one recruiter.
Every figure on this page was read at the vendor's own pricing page, with the read date next to it in the table below. That matters more than it sounds. The pricing guides that rank for this query are mostly assembling numbers from procurement databases and each other, and several of them are quoting plans the vendors retired.
The meter is not the same everywhere either. Bullhorn, Crelate, Loxo, Manatal, Recruit CRM and Recruiterflow all price per user per month. SeekOut Recruit Core is not per user at all: the feature comparison lists three seats included with no additional seats sold, and the credits are pooled per plan rather than per seat. hireEZ publishes one number for a solo recruiter and then configures enterprise pricing against the stack it replaces. Comparing a per seat rate to a per plan rate without saying so is the single most common error in this category.
Which recruiting software publishes a price for candidate outreach?
Three of nine. Recruiterflow includes multichannel sequences in the Platform plan at $119 per user per month annually, Recruit CRM turns sequencing on from Business at $135, and Loxo puts outreach in Professional from $199. Everything else either gates outreach behind a plan with no number, or does not sell it.
That is the finding that changes a shortlist, so it is worth being precise about each one. Bullhorn publishes a dollar figure on exactly two of thirteen products, and neither Starter nor Core is the product that contacts a candidate. Crelate lists automation and sequences only in Business Plus, which is quote-only, so the cheapest Crelate tier that can run a sequence has no price. Manatal publishes three of four plans and lists no sequencing in any of them, and its trial explicitly excludes mass emailing and email automations. Gem quotes both plans against FTE count.
There is a counter-finding that keeps this honest. Recruiterflow's priced channels are email, calls and text. LinkedIn, the phone and email finder and job change alerts all sit in the AIRA plan, which has no published price. So even the cheapest published ATS, CRM and outreach bundle in the category does not let you price LinkedIn outreach from the vendor's website.
The practical consequence is that most agencies end up buying the ATS on one line and the outreach on another. If that is where you are heading anyway, it is worth pricing the outreach side separately rather than upgrading an entire ATS tier to unlock it. Our own recruitment outreach tool runs alongside whichever ATS you already pay for, and the outreach software for recruiting agencies page walks through how the two fit together on a working desk.
How much does an ATS cost for a staffing agency with five recruiters?
At published annual rates, a five recruiter desk pays $900 a year on Manatal Professional, $5,700 on Recruit CRM Pro, $5,940 on Bullhorn Starter, $7,140 on Crelate Business, $7,140 on Recruiterflow Platform, $8,100 on Recruit CRM Business, $8,940 on Loxo Core, $9,900 on Bullhorn Core, $11,940 on Loxo Professional and $12,900 on Recruit CRM Enterprise. Those are straight seat arithmetic: the published rate times five seats times twelve months.
Three of the nine cannot be priced at five seats at all from their own websites, and that is the more useful observation. Crelate Essentials is capped at two users, so it is not an option for a five person desk no matter what the $85 headline says. SeekOut Recruit Core includes three seats and sells no additional ones, so the fourth recruiter requires the quote-only Sourcing tier. hireEZ publishes one solo number and nothing multi seat.
Run the same arithmetic against the outreach question and the honest comparison narrows to two numbers. The only two published ways to buy an ATS, a recruiting CRM and candidate sequences from one vendor at five seats are Recruiterflow Platform at $7,140 a year and Loxo Professional at $11,940. Recruiterflow is $4,800 a year cheaper at that headcount, with the LinkedIn caveat above attached.
One coincidence is worth keeping in mind when a rep quotes you a monthly rate. Recruiterflow billed monthly and Loxo Core cost exactly the same, $1,788 per user per year, for materially different deals. Recruiterflow includes sequences and you can cancel month to month. Loxo Core excludes outreach and is paid twelve months up front.
Why recruiting software pricing comparisons keep printing the wrong numbers
Because most of them are not reading the vendors. They are reading procurement databases, and then presenting the median of signed enterprise contracts as if it were a starting price. Both numbers can be true at once. A large multi seat agreement across several modules can land in five figures a year, and the same vendor can publish a self serve seat for a fraction of that. Sourcing from the contract side and then writing that nobody publishes anything is a category error, not a typo.
It shows up in checkable ways. A page one summary for this category currently lists Crelate as Pro at $95 per user per month and Business at $115, with annual rates of $69 and $89. Crelate's own page lists Essentials at $85 and Business at $119 annual or $149 monthly, and there is no plan called Pro. A widely repeated comparison of the two big sourcing tools had the cheaper vendor exactly backwards: it put hireEZ below SeekOut when hireEZ's published entry is more than three times SeekOut's annual seat rate, a gap of over $4,000 a year for one recruiter.
The defensive habit that fixes this costs about ninety seconds. Open the vendor's own pricing page, note the date, and write down which plans have a number and which do not. The ratio of priced to total plans tells you more about how a vendor sells than the entry price does. Bullhorn prices two of thirteen. SeekOut prices one of four. Recruit CRM prices three of three.
Recruit CRM charges a US buyer close to twice what it charges a European one
This one is easy to reproduce and almost nobody mentions it. Opening recruitcrm.io/pricing from a European connection on September 21, 2026 returns Pro at 49 euro, Business at 69 euro and Enterprise at 109 euro per user per month. Opening the same page from a US connection on September 17, 2026 returned Pro at $95, Business at $135 and Enterprise at $215 on annual billing, with monthly rates of $109, $159 and $259.
At the exchange rates of that week the European Pro seat is roughly $53 against $95 for the identical plan in the United States. There is no visible currency switch on the page: we tried the raw HTML, a headless render, and explicit currency and country parameters, and the page resolves the price from the visitor's location every time.
The practical takeaway for a US buyer is narrow but real. If a comparison article quotes Recruit CRM in euro, it was not written for you, and the dollar figure you will actually be charged is materially higher. The full plan by plan breakdown with the add-on prices is on our Recruit CRM pricing page.
Is recruiting software priced per user or per job?
Per user, almost universally, in the agency segment. Of the nine vendors here, six meter per user per month, SeekOut Recruit Core meters per plan with three seats included, hireEZ publishes a single solo rate, and Gem quotes against FTE count. Per job and per hire metering shows up in corporate hiring tools rather than in agency systems.
The per seat meter has a consequence worth planning for. Cost scales with headcount rather than with activity, so a recruiter who bills two placements a year costs the same as one who bills twelve. On a desk that grows from three to ten people, Recruiterflow goes from $4,284 to $14,280 a year and Loxo Professional from $7,164 to $23,880, without a single extra email being sent.
Capacity tools behave differently. Outreach volume, enrichment credits and sending capacity are priced against what you do, not who is logged in, which is why they usually sit on a separate line and scale far more slowly than the ATS does. That gap is the whole argument for keeping the two purchases apart.
Per user per month: Bullhorn, Crelate, Loxo, Manatal, Recruit CRM, Recruiterflow
Per plan with seats included: SeekOut Recruit Core, three seats, no additional seats sold
Single published solo rate: hireEZ at $494 per month, enterprise configured against your stack
Quoted against FTE count: Gem, with a startup program at $130 per month paid yearly for 1 to 10 FTE
What should a staffing agency actually budget?
Split the budget in two and price each half against what it does. The system of record is a per seat cost you can read off a page: at five recruiters that is $5,700 to $9,900 a year for most of the mid band, more if you need the tier that unlocks outreach. The outreach half is a capacity cost, and it scales with how many people you contact rather than with how many recruiters you employ.
For context on the second half, the infrastructure underneath outbound is cheap and well understood: mailbox resellers charge $2 to $4 a month per inbox, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 run $7 to $8.40 per seat, domains are $10 to $15 a year, and a warmed mailbox safely sends 30 to 50 messages a day. A desk contacting 500 prospects a week sits in the $7 to $13 a month range on infrastructure, and 2,500 a week lands around $29 to $55. Those are real numbers and they are nowhere near the size of the seat bill.
Which is the argument for not buying the outreach through the ATS upgrade. Going from Loxo Core to Loxo Professional at five seats costs $3,000 a year for the right to send sequences. Coldoutreach starts at $39 a month on annual billing for the whole workspace, researches each prospect before it writes, and runs beside the ATS you already have. You can see what it writes on a real prospect in the composer at the top of this page before you pay anything.
If you are still choosing the system of record, the per vendor breakdowns are worth twenty minutes each: Bullhorn pricing, Recruiterflow pricing, Loxo pricing, SeekOut pricing, hireEZ pricing, Crelate pricing and the head to head comparisons of Loxo against Recruiterflow and Manatal against Loxo.
| Vendor | Published entry | Plans priced | Cheapest priced plan with sequences | Read at source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manatal | $15 / user / mo annual, $19 monthly | 3 of 4 | None published in any plan | Sep 21, 2026 |
| Crelate | $85 / user / mo annual, capped at 2 users | 2 of 4 | Business Plus, no published price | Sep 16, 2026 |
| Recruit CRM | $95 / user / mo annual (US), 49 euro in the EU | 3 of 3 | Business, $135 / user / mo annual | Sep 17 and Sep 21, 2026 |
| Bullhorn | $99 / user / mo Starter, $165 Core | 2 of 13 | No priced product contacts a candidate | Sep 6, 2026 |
| Recruiterflow | $119 / user / mo annual, $149 monthly | 1 of 2 | Platform, $119 / user / mo annual, email, calls and text only | Sep 9, 2026 |
| Loxo | $149 / user / mo Core, annual paid up front | 2 of 3 | Professional, $199 / user / mo annual | Sep 9, 2026 |
| SeekOut | $149 / mo annual up front, 3 seats included | 1 of 4 | Not published for a multi seat desk | Sep 16, 2026 |
| hireEZ | $494 / mo for one recruiter | 1 of 2 | Not published above the solo rate | Sep 17, 2026 |
| Gem | No plan price, quoted on FTE count | 0 of 2 | Not published | Sep 17, 2026 |
| Coldoutreach | $39 / mo annual, $49 monthly, per workspace | All published | Included at every tier, runs beside any ATS | Sep 21, 2026 |
Common questions
The questions buyers actually ask before they switch.
How much does recruiting software cost?
Published rates for agency recruiting software run from $15 to $494 per user per month. The mid band where most US staffing firms land is $85 to $165 per seat: Crelate Essentials $85, Recruit CRM Pro $95, Bullhorn Starter $99, Recruiterflow Platform $119 annual, Loxo Core from $149, Bullhorn Core $165. Manatal sits below that band at $15 to $55 and sourcing tools sit above it. All figures read at the vendors' own pricing pages in September 2026.
How much does recruitment software cost for a small agency?
For a five recruiter desk on annual billing, the published year one cost is $900 on Manatal Professional, $5,700 on Recruit CRM Pro, $5,940 on Bullhorn Starter, $7,140 on Crelate Business or Recruiterflow Platform, $8,940 on Loxo Core and $11,940 on Loxo Professional. Crelate Essentials caps at two users and SeekOut Recruit Core sells no seats beyond the three it includes, so neither can serve five recruiters at its published price.
Which recruiting software includes candidate outreach in the published price?
Three of the nine vendors here. Recruiterflow includes email, call and text sequences in Platform at $119 per user per month annually, Recruit CRM enables sequencing from Business at $135, and Loxo includes outreach in Professional from $199. Bullhorn, Crelate, Gem, hireEZ, Manatal and SeekOut either gate outreach behind a quote-only plan or do not sell it at all.
Why do recruiting software vendors hide their pricing?
Because the plan most agencies need is the one they want a sales conversation about. Across nine vendors only 15 of 37 plans carry a dollar figure, and the unpriced ones are consistently the tiers that add automation, outreach, integrations or SSO. Bullhorn publishes a price on two of thirteen products, SeekOut on one of four. The entry price is a qualifying tool, not the offer.
Is recruiting software priced per user or per job?
Per user, in the agency segment. Six of the nine vendors here meter per user per month, so the bill scales with headcount rather than with hiring activity. SeekOut Recruit Core is the exception, metered per plan with three seats included and pooled credits. Per job and per hire pricing is more common in corporate hiring tools than in agency systems.
What is the cheapest recruiting software that can send candidate sequences?
Recruiterflow Platform at $119 per user per month billed annually is the lowest published price at which a US agency can buy an ATS, a recruiting CRM and multichannel candidate sequences from one vendor. The caveat is that those channels are email, calls and text. LinkedIn outreach sits in the AIRA plan, which carries no published price.
Do I need to buy outreach from my ATS?
No, and it is usually the expensive way to get it. Upgrading five seats from Loxo Core to Loxo Professional costs $3,000 a year purely to unlock sequences. A dedicated outreach tool is metered on contact volume rather than headcount, runs beside the ATS you already pay for, and keeps your system of record decision separate from your sending decision.
How often do these recruiting software prices change?
Often enough that a guide written six months ago is unreliable. Loxo retired its $169 Basic plan, its $119 Starter plan and its free tier, and pages still quote all three. Recruiterflow retired a three tier structure that comparison articles continue to list. Every figure on this page carries the date it was read, and we re-read the vendors rather than each other.
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