Maki Mochi screens each applicant by phone or web call and scores the answers

Mochi is the AI phone screen from Maki People, a Paris company. It calls each applicant by phone or invites them to a web call. It asks the screening questions and scores the answers. A recruiter reads the result and decides.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 14 Oct 2026 Last updated 14 Oct 2026

Mochi does the first phone screen, and the price comes by quote

In one line

Mochi replaces the first recruiter phone call. It scores every answer against the same marking guide and sends the result to your applicant tracking system.

Buy it if

You want every applicant to get a first screen at any hour. You want each one scored against the same marking guide. You run Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, SmartRecruiters or iCIMS, which Maki connects to directly. Check that Mochi itself runs on yours.

Do not buy it if

You want a fixed fee rather than paying for each candidate interaction. You need a written promise that the service stays up. You want a contract that lets you keep Maki’s content after you leave.

Price

Maki prices by quote. It charges per candidate interaction, in prepaid usage units that it calls “credits”. Ask for a quote or a trial.

What happens from a candidate’s application to a scored result

A candidate applies, and your applicant tracking system passes them to Mochi. Mochi invites them at once. A phone screen invitation arrives by text message. A web screen invitation arrives by email, with reminders sent automatically. If a candidate drops off, Mochi calls back and sends follow-up texts. Nobody on your team chases them.

On the call, Mochi opens the conversation and leads the questions. It follows up on answers. It can answer common questions about the role when a recruiter has approved the information. It covers eligibility, motivation, availability, communication and basic fit for the job. A call usually takes about 10 minutes. Candidates are always told they are speaking with AI, and they must agree first.

You choose phone or web when you design the screening. A candidate cannot switch between the two. Web screening comes only if your contract includes it. Mochi screens in more than 45 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. Switching language during a call needs the talent team to set it up beforehand.

Mochi scores against a fixed marking guide. Maki calls it a behaviourally anchored rating scale. Each part of a skill has its own scoring grid. Recruiters can add evaluation questions to the call and set must-pass rules such as work eligibility, certifications or language level.

Recruiters see scores, the transcript, a summary, key highlights and a recommendation in the recruiter app. Candidates are ranked best to worst by default. A recruiter can mark a candidate go or no-go, or pass them to the hiring manager.

Results reach your applicant tracking system as soon as the call ends. A candidate who clears the pass mark can move to the next stage on their own. Mochi never rejects a candidate on its own judgement, and it has no bulk rejection. It can only screen someone out on a plain, objective rule, such as a missing work permit the role needs. Recruiters decide whether to switch such filters on.

If the next stage is an interview, Maki’s scheduling agent Kumi books it the moment the candidate passes. Kumi works with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. It records the booking, confirmation and any no-show in your applicant tracking system.

Maki connects to more than 30 applicant tracking and HR systems. It has direct links to Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, SmartRecruiters and iCIMS. Workday usually takes 2 to 3 weeks to switch on, and iCIMS under 2 months. A typical rollout is live in under 2 months. Deloitte France uses it with Workday, and ASOS with SmartRecruiters.

Mochi works with other Maki products. Maki also sells Shiro, which gives every candidate a short skills test. It also sells Ken, which runs longer assessments for high-stakes hires. Ken is sold only as an add-on after Shiro has filtered the first pool. Ask Maki which of these your quote includes.

Our review of Maki Mochi in the AI interview agents guide covers the same product as an interviewer.

What Maki gets right for a careful buyer

Every candidate is marked against the same guide

Mochi asks follow-up questions that fit each answer. It marks every answer against one fixed guide for the role. The guide is the same for the first candidate and the millionth. Mochi scores what the candidate says. Delivery, pace and accent do not count. The one exception is a language test, where speaking is the skill being measured.

A person can trace every score

Maki logs every conversation. Each score links back to something the candidate said, with the full transcript and the reason. A recruiter can change a score. The recruiter must write down why.

An outside firm audited the bias results

Holistic AI audited Mochi and Maki’s skills test agent Shiro in March 2026. The audit followed New York City’s Local Law 144. That law treats software that scores candidates as an “automated employment decision tool”. It defines a bias audit as an impartial check by an independent auditor. The audit repeats every year and covers gender and race or ethnicity, alone and combined.

Data held in the EU, with a certified security standard

Maki’s systems run on Google Cloud, with encryption and redundant storage in Belgium, France and Germany. ISO 27001 is a security standard that an outside body certifies. Maki may also use suppliers outside the EU. Mistral 3, a French AI model, writes Mochi’s follow-up questions. Deepgram turns speech into text. ElevenAgents provides the voice. Maki reaches candidates on WhatsApp through Twilio and Meta. Maki also offers a data processing agreement. That is the contract that sets how it handles your candidates’ data.

Who uses Maki and what they got

More than 80 global enterprises use Maki, including Fortune 500 companies. Maki People SAS raised a $28.6m funding round led by Blossom Capital, after earlier rounds worth €11m.

Maki’s customer stories cover its agents, not only Mochi.

TRGC uses AI phone screening across 300+ restaurants

The Restaurant Group Company runs several restaurant brands in airports and transport hubs. It has more than 300 locations and over 15,000 employees. It uses AI phone screening for the early stage of hiring, with the same checks across high volumes.

Capgemini cut time to hire from several weeks to under 10 days

Capgemini makes up to 90,000 hires a year worldwide. In France it gets 8,000 to 10,000 applications a month, and 90% do not qualify. Phase one of its Maki process is a short conversational pre-screen. 95% of candidates were satisfied, and its longer assessments had a 96% completion rate.

Nespresso lowered attrition from 24% to 16.2%

Time to hire at Nespresso fell from 27 days to 20. Its evaluations ran mainly on Shiro, Maki’s skills test agent.

MAIF cut the cost of a hire by 20%

MAIF replaced manual CV screening with the Maki assessment. Its teams processed 5,847 more applications in 2025 than in 2024 with the same HR and business time. There was no clear shift in trial-period drop-out at this stage, and no direct link to assessment scores.

Hudson Talent Solutions will bring Maki into its hiring programmes

Maki sells a staffing offer that handles the volume consultants cannot reach. Hudson Talent Solutions will integrate Maki across its hiring programmes. Maki’s partner programme lets a firm run the client experience under its own name.

Where Mochi and its contract stop

Read the terms of sale before you sign.

The price can change during your contract

Maki’s terms let it change parts of the price during the contract, in particular when features change. Changes to the services you bought apply without notice from the day Maki releases or announces them.

Maki does not promise uptime, and its liability is capped

Maki does not guarantee that the service runs without interruption. If Maki is found liable, it pays you no more than you paid in the twelve months before the damage. Any dispute goes to French law and, for a business, the Paris Commercial Court.

Maki keeps the candidate database it builds

Maki’s terms make it the only owner of the database it builds over time. You cannot claim access to that database or to the personal data it holds from other customers. Your licence to use Maki’s content and candidate analyses lasts only as long as the contract. After that, you may not reuse the content for your own purposes.

It is limited in size and scope today

Mochi can run up to 30 interviews at the same time. Mochi may occasionally lose track of a conversation. It never invents false information or gives inappropriate responses. Recruiters choose from a list of validated tasks and question sets. Maki is still exploring AI-written ones. Maki recommends no more than two of them in one screening.

You own the hiring decision and any human screen

You will likely need a human-led screening for any candidate who opts out. Whether a candidate may opt out depends on local law. Maki’s terms leave you responsible for each hiring decision and for human review. Maki is finalising its own EU AI Act conformity assessment with an outside partner. The Act lists AI that filters applications and evaluates candidates as high-risk.

How Maki charges and how you leave

You pay for candidate interactions, not licences. Each Maki agent runs on a credit model. Mochi Web and Phone covers conversational interviews in a browser or by phone. Maki uses one credit for each assessment a candidate starts. A candidate who starts and does not finish still uses a credit. Maki asks you to request a personalised quote.

You choose a contract of one month or one year. Any client can take an Enterprise subscription, with a price and conditions negotiated with Maki. Maki also runs a trial it calls a “proof of value”. You apply, and Maki calls to plan it. Every customer gets guided onboarding and support in several languages.

To leave, give notice 10 days before a monthly term ends. For a yearly term, give notice one month before it ends. Otherwise the contract renews for the same period. Administrators and recruiters on your account can export candidate lists as a spreadsheet file (CSV or Excel). A candidate can ask Maki to delete their screening data. Maki can delete only the data stored in its own system. It cannot delete data your recruiters recorded elsewhere.

Maki’s data processing terms commit it to tell you within 48 hours of learning of a personal data breach. Maki may also use your company name and logo as a reference while the contract runs.

You could also find and screen people with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Eight questions to put to Maki

Which languages can Mochi run in for our roles, and how many calls at once? Good answer: A written list of languages, and a call limit in the order form that covers our busiest day.
Does Mochi itself, not only Shiro, connect to our applicant tracking system today? Good answer: A named system and a live customer using Mochi on it.
What does one credit cost, and how many credits does one Mochi screen use? Good answer: A price per credit and a credits-per-screen figure in the order form, including screens a candidate starts and leaves.
Which price changes can you make during our term? Good answer: A fixed price for the term, with changes only at renewal.
Which identity and cheating checks run during a Mochi call, and what do recruiters see when one flags? Good answer: A named list of checks for calls, not only for the longer assessments.
Will you write into our contract that you will not use our candidates’ data to train any AI model? Good answer: Yes, in writing, covering the AI models and any scoring improvements.
Where do Mistral, Deepgram, ElevenAgents and your phone and messaging providers process our candidates’ data? Good answer: A named country for each supplier.
How do we take our scores, transcripts and recordings with us when the contract ends? Good answer: A file format and a date, written into the contract, covering more than the candidate list.

Alternatives to Maki Mochi

If Maki Mochi comes off your shortlist, look at HeyMilo, Humanly, Apriora, HireVue, Talview and CodeSignal, or buy nothing.

HeyMilo screens and interviews every applicant by voice, video, text message and forms. It works at any hour, in 20+ languages. Its credits pay for interviews, CV screens and text messages. Humanly is built for hourly, frontline and high-volume hiring. It screens every applicant against your criteria and moves qualified people to scheduling. It advances or disqualifies candidates on rules you set. Its fees follow the subscription you buy, not usage, and are not refundable once paid.

Apriora’s Alex handles outreach, screening, interviews, identity checks and scheduling. Apriora’s annual agreements start at $36,000. HireVue launched its AI Interviewer on 18 June 2026. It interviews every applicant by voice at any hour.

Talview’s Ivy runs structured, role-specific interviews. Talview holds a SOC 2 Type II certificate, which is an independent audit of its security controls. It typically asks for a minimum commitment of about 150 to 200 candidates. Each feature is priced by its own unit, and Talview shares prices after you fill out a form. CodeSignal sells skill assessments, AI interviews and live interviews. It spends one credit when a candidate begins. Build costs $99 a month for 5 credits, billed monthly. Grow costs $599 a month for 35, billed monthly. Extra credits cost $20 each.

If your recruiters already phone every applicant in good time, you can buy nothing. Our guide to AI sourcing and screening covers the whole market.

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