Dayforce

Dayforce Recruiting carries a candidate into the Dayforce employee record, at a public price per employee. Its grading AI is off until you switch it on, and it can learn from your recruiters’ declines before interview. The terms leave the outcomes of your AI settings, candidate notices and data retention with you. Two Dayforce documents disagree on training AI with your data, and fees are non-cancellable.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 4 Nov 2026 Last updated 4 Nov 2026

Dayforce Recruiting carries the hire into the employee record, at a public price per employee

In one line

Dayforce Recruiting carries a candidate from application to offer, and hands the hire to onboarding in the same system. If someone switches grading on, its AI grades external candidates. Your recruiters still decide.

Buy it if

You keep, or plan to keep, employee records in Dayforce. You hire many people and want one record from applicant to employee. You have 100 employees or more, and you can accept a price set by headcount.

Do not buy it if

You have under 100 employees, which Dayforce does not recommend. You need to set what the grading AI looks at. Under the Recruiting Guide, customers cannot change those factors. A 2025 blog promotes adjustable criteria, so ask first. Your lawyers object to Dayforce’s right to de-identify personal data and use it to train and test AI models.

Price

Recruiting costs $43.44 per employee a year at list price. Recruiting with Onboarding costs $59.88. Every employee counts, not only recruiters. Implementation fees are separate.

The reason to look at Dayforce Recruiting is one record from applicant to employee

The main reason to look at Dayforce Recruiting is what happens when you hire. Dayforce sends the recruiting information to Onboarding automatically. Work assignment, summary and employment history details from the candidate profile then display in the employee profile. So if you keep employee records in Dayforce too, the hiring record and the employee record sit in one system. If you keep them elsewhere, that benefit does not apply to you. The one exception is candidates’ equal opportunity answers, which are not carried over to the employee profile.

If you hire many people at once, Dayforce offers several tools for that. One requisition can hire several candidates at the same time. Mass offer letters and mass hire help customers that hire in high volumes. Evergreen requisitions support continuous hiring. Recruiters can decline active candidates in bulk. Dayforce also detects and declines duplicate applications for the same candidate and job.

If you hire in volume, the effort a candidate must make to apply matters. Dayforce lets candidates apply in several ways, and by default they need no account. Candidates meet Dayforce on your career site, which works on a phone or tablet. Every posting carries a QR code, and candidates scan it to apply. Candidates can also apply with an email address, through Indeed Apply or by chat. They can interview within minutes of applying. Text messages work in the United States and Canada, and only for candidates who consent.

Interviews stay inside the same tool. Recruiters schedule, review and cancel interviews from Recruiting and see free and busy times while they schedule. They can also invite a candidate to pick their own interview slot.

Grading is the AI feature to understand first. It grades external candidates when they apply, if someone has set it up. It is off by default, so someone at your company has to switch it on. Internal candidates are not graded. Candidate names are removed from applications before the grading AI sees them. A keyword match between the application and the job description is one factor in the grade. A recruiter who disagrees with a grade can change it and give a reason. The limits of grading come later on this page.

Recruiting also ranks candidates by a matching score. Matches come from a keyword search of candidate profiles, and the Match column puts the closest matches first. You can give each criterion a weight from 0 to 100 to change the ranking. Dayforce also offers AI sourcing, which surfaces candidates for recruiter review and rediscovers talent in your existing pools. An AI interviewer supports early screening with voice interviews and structured interview steps. Recruiters remain responsible for reviewing the information and making hiring decisions.

Part of what Dayforce promotes is still to come, so ask which AI features you can use today. On 23 October 2026 Dayforce announced that it signed an agreement to acquire Ribbon AI. Ribbon’s voice AI interviewer conducts conversational, two-way interviews around the clock. Dayforce will integrate Ribbon natively into the new Dayforce Agentic Recruiting after the transaction closes. Agentic means AI that carries out tasks itself instead of only suggesting. Dayforce AI Agents are available now, with more capabilities coming through 2026 and 2027. The specific agent experiences are planned to roll out throughout 2027. Our guide to Ribbon covers the interviewer on its own.

A hiring set-up needs more than the recruiting tool, and you buy or contract some of it outside Dayforce. Postings go to Indeed through a feed every four hours, and that link is on by default. Apply with LinkedIn needs a paid LinkedIn Recruiter or Job Slot account. A SEEK link lets candidates apply with a SEEK profile. Background checks use integrations with HireRight and Sterling. Sending assessments depends on a connection to an assessment provider. UK clients must contract with Sterling for UK right to work checks. In Australia, Check Work Rights starts and monitors right to work checks from Recruiting. Offer letters can be e-signed through DocuSign, which depends on you having an E-Signature account. Ask Dayforce which of these you must pay for.

A public price, grading that starts off and equal opportunity records built in

Dayforce Recruiting has five strengths for a Head of HR. They are a public price, grading that starts off and equal opportunity records. They also include phone applying in many languages and an AI governance certificate. Each one affects cost, risk or candidate experience, so weigh them against the limits further down the page.

The price per employee is public

You can budget before you speak to sales. Dayforce publishes a price book. It puts a price per employee per year on Recruiting, Onboarding, the Talent Acquisition package and the Dayforce Platform. That lets you work out a yearly bill from your headcount. The cost section does the sums.

Grading and automatic declines stay off until you switch them on

You decide when the AI starts to affect candidates. Candidate grading is disabled by default. The option that declines candidates automatically after a failed assessment is also disabled by default. Every AI-enhanced feature in Dayforce can be turned on or off. In a blog post, Dayforce runs annual third-party bias and fairness audits for high-risk models, especially those used in hiring. It also requires a human in the loop for them. Third-party audits cover select features, so ask which ones. Its agent terms read differently, which the section on limits explains.

Equal opportunity records come built in

Some employers have to keep equal opportunity records, and Recruiting collects them. It asks candidates about race, ethnicity and gender, in line with OFCCP rules for US federal contractors. The answers are voluntary. Dayforce keeps them for compliance and auditing and does not display them in Dayforce. They are not carried over to the employee profile when a candidate is hired. Some filings sit inside the same system. They cover US federal contractors and California or Illinois pay data. A veteran section helps US federal contractors keep records and collects veteran self-identification. An EEO-1 Filing Report makes a CSV file for filing. California and Illinois pay data are supported too.

Candidates apply from a phone, in many languages

If your candidates apply in different languages, or mostly by phone, this matters. Candidates can search and apply from a phone or tablet. The candidate portal meets WCAG 2.1 Level AA, a standard for accessible websites. Candidates can change the career site language from a list of languages you choose. Dayforce sells Language Packs with translations in 40 or more languages as a separate price line. They cost $7.56 per employee per year.

Dayforce announced AI governance certification

A certification covers how a vendor manages its AI, so it is worth knowing about. On 10 February 2026 Dayforce announced ISO 42001 certification. That is a standard for managing AI. It also announced NIST AI RMF attestation, which relates to a US framework for managing AI risk. Neither answers your own questions about the grading AI, which come later on this page.

Your size and where your employee records live decide whether it fits

Two things decide whether Dayforce Recruiting fits you. They are your headcount and where your employee records live.

Dayforce does not recommend Recruiting for companies under 100 employees. Its best-fit range runs from 100 employees to 4,000 and above. Some restrictions may apply on the job requisition form for customers under 300 employees. If you are under 300, ask which restrictions apply.

Over 7,000 businesses trust the platform. Dayforce features three customers. Hawaii State Federal Credit Union has about 400 employees and added recruiting and onboarding to its Dayforce use. Its managers can see candidates as soon as they apply. Bargain Hunt employs 2,100 people. It uses Dayforce Recruiting and Onboarding. It also uses Payroll, Workforce Management and Benefits. A Bargain Hunt HR director has been quoted as saying that Dayforce streamlined recruiting for many locations. The Nashville Predators have over 1,000 staff. Their HR leader has been quoted as saying that onboarding time fell by about 75%. The quote puts this down to Dayforce, particularly its recruiting and onboarding tools.

Two of these customers run more than recruiting on Dayforce. The 75% result covers Dayforce in general, with a focus on recruiting and onboarding. If you want Recruiting on its own, ask Dayforce for a reference who bought it that way.

Dayforce also has a new owner, so ask whether that changes your contract. Thoma Bravo announced on 4 February 2026 that it had completed its purchase of Dayforce, Inc. Dayforce’s common stock has ceased trading. It will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. The brand was formerly Ceridian.

The grading AI, the data terms and the contract leave much of the risk with you

These are the places where Dayforce’s own documents leave work or risk with you. Several of them put responsibility for AI decisions on your company, so read them with your lawyer before you sign.

Dayforce’s documents differ on whether you can change what the grading AI looks at

You need to know what drives a grade before you rely on it. Under the Recruiting Guide, customers cannot change the factors the grading AI uses. In a May 2025 blog, Dayforce promotes a scoring engine that makes it easy to adjust criteria for a role. Ask which applies to grading today. A keyword match between the application and the job description is one factor in the grade. How much each factor counts depends on the recruiting data at the time. It also depends on how likely the factor is to lead to an interview. Accuracy varies by role and by the quality of the job description. Grading can fail when no resume or profile information is available, or when no job description is available.

Once grading learns, candidates you decline before interview teach the AI

Grades can reflect your recruiters’ habits, so those habits matter. This applies only if someone has switched grading on. The grading model keeps learning from your hiring behaviour. Learning starts when a requisition has enough data, typically 20 positive and 20 negative training events. The AI counts candidates declined without moving into the interview process as negative training events. So your recruiters’ past choices can shape later grades. The learning process can only be started once.

Recruiters see no grade for candidates in New York City

If you hire in New York City, grading works differently there. For candidates the system determines live in New York City, recruiters see a Restricted icon instead of a grade. Dayforce tells customers to add an AI disclosure to job descriptions where their jurisdiction requires it. Depending on legislation, a job description may need a disclaimer. It would tell readers that AI generated the description and that candidate grading is in use. Under Dayforce’s guide, it is strictly the customer’s responsibility to understand what to set up and communicate for regulations.

Dayforce asks for a person in the loop, and its agent terms allow actions without one

These two positions meet in your settings, so know which one applies to you. In a blog post, Dayforce requires a human in the loop for high-risk models, especially those used in hiring. Under Dayforce’s terms for its AI agents, you may enable actions with no person approving them at the time. If you do, you set the permissions and approval limits. You also set the monitoring, escalation and shutdown controls. Dayforce is not responsible or liable for any action, decision or outcome from your setup of the AI. That includes your choice to allow actions without human intervention. Dayforce’s software guide adds that AI features give recommendations and are not meant to replace your employees’ professional judgement. Under that guide, your sole remedy is to disable the feature. Ask which features can act without a person approving them.

You may owe candidates notices about automated decisions

Some AI settings may bring a legal duty to tell candidates. Automated Decision-Making Technology is a legal term for software that makes or helps make decisions about people. Under Dayforce’s terms for its AI agents, certain features may constitute or enable it. That depends on how you set them up. You are responsible for the required notices to the people affected. Under Dayforce’s acceptable use policy, the AI features are not intended to be the only basis for hiring decisions. The same goes for other decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on a person. The features are designed for use when a qualified human decision-maker reviews the output. That person makes the final decision with independent judgement.

Two Dayforce documents differ on training AI with your data

Your candidates’ data is personal data, so it matters whether it can train AI models. Dayforce’s AI compliance page puts it one way. Dayforce does not train the underlying large language model and does not use customer data to train models. Its Data Processing Addendum reads differently. Dayforce may de-identify personal data. It may use that data, combined with others’ data, to create or improve its services. That includes training and testing of machine learning and AI models. The addendum also lets Dayforce process personal data in any country where it and its authorised sub-processors operate. Sub-processors are other companies that handle the data. Separately, Dayforce runs Meta Llama 3 in its private cloud only. It does not share client or employee data with Meta.

Dayforce is not responsible for meeting your data retention rules

Keeping candidate data only as long as you should is a job you run inside Dayforce. Under the Data Processing Addendum, Dayforce is not responsible for compliance with the client’s data retention requirements. In the Data Management Center, administrators set how long data is kept in each country. The Data Management Center can flag inactive candidates for complete removal, and removal is processed once a week. A setting lets candidates delete data they added to your career sites. Recruiters cannot see that data, and it is removed under your retention policies. If a candidate deletes their Dayforce ID without first deleting their personal data, the data stays on your servers.

Recruiting costs $43.44 per employee a year at list price, and fees run for the full term

Your bill depends on your total headcount, not on how many recruiters you have. The contract also holds you to the full term. So work out the sums before you sign. Dayforce publishes a price book. Recruiting costs $43.44 per employee per year in it. Onboarding costs $25.20. The Talent Acquisition package holds both for $59.88. The Dayforce Platform, the core package for HR data and employee self-service, costs $171.96.

Here is what that means at list price. A company with 500 employees pays $21,720 a year for Recruiting and $29,940 for the Talent Acquisition package. At 2,000 employees the same two cost $86,880 and $119,760. Dayforce also sells additional environments. The price book puts them at $7,560 a year for 100 to 700 employees. It puts them at $18,900 for 701 to 3,500 employees and $69,300 for 3,500 to 10,000. Ask what an additional environment is for and whether you need one. The price book on Dayforce’s site is dated 31 August 2026. Check the date on the price book behind your quote.

Two Dayforce sources give the price unit differently. A file Dayforce publishes for AI tools puts pricing per employee per month and calls it not publicly available. The price book is public and puts it per employee per year. Ask Dayforce to write the unit on your quote. On Microsoft’s marketplace you choose a $0 plan, then Dayforce contacts you and provides a private offer.

AI adds charges, so ask for them in writing. Dayforce announced simple and predictable pricing for AI and gave no figures in the release. Its rate sheet charges US$85.00 per hire for the AI Interviewer once a customer exceeds its contracted annual hires. Work Units are an allowance that Dayforce’s AI agent features use up. Use of the Dayforce Agentic HCM Platform or its agentic products uses Work Units. If you have used all your Work Units, Dayforce may pause or limit your AI agent features. That lasts until capacity is replenished. The job description writer is English only. It needs an upgrade to activate AI Assistant and AI Agents, and the upgrade may carry a cost.

Implementation fees are separate. The AI-tools file puts typical implementation at 3 to 6 months for mid-sized companies and data migration support as included. Dayforce’s implementation Statement of Work reads differently. Importing requisition data into Recruiting is not available there, and importing candidate data is available for a fee. Ask which applies to you.

Plan to pay for the whole term. Fees are non-cancellable and non-refundable. Termination for most reasons does not relieve you of paying all amounts for the contract term. That makes the renewal terms matter before you sign. The parties may renew for 36 months or longer, which Dayforce’s contract calls an Extended Term. An Extended Term is subject to an eight percent annual increase each year of the subscription. The contract has you tell Dayforce at least 90 days before the final year ends that you intend to renew.

Size changes can cost you too. Your subscription depends on the number of employees in your order form. Dayforce may audit your employee populations before each anniversary of the start date. Dayforce may suspend your services if you do not sign an order in time. That applies to an order for a usage-limit increase or a Growth Event. Ask what counts as a Growth Event.

If something goes wrong, the contract limits what you can claim. The Service Level Agreement sets a minimum acceptable level of 99.75% availability, excluding maintenance minutes. Its target is 100%. Dayforce caps its liability at the amount paid or payable for the services involved. The amount is counted over the twelve months before the first incident. The cap rises to 24 months of fees for some claims. Those are claims from a breach of its confidentiality and data security and processing obligations.

Plan your exit before the term ends. You can export the list of candidates as a CSV file. The export holds only the candidates displayed in the tab. A candidate’s CV downloads from the Resume tab. Your right to access the services ends when the service term ends. Help with moving your content needs a written request at least 90 days before the term ends. Dayforce may then agree to give reasonable assistance, at its then applicable rates. Dayforce returns personal data on request in a form it decides, at costs the parties agree. So decide what you need back well before the term ends.

You could also run hiring steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Eleven questions to put to Dayforce before you sign

Put these questions to Dayforce in writing before you sign. Each one comes from a gap, a disagreement or a duty that falls on you. Each also comes with the answer you want to hear.

Can we buy Recruiting without the Dayforce Platform, and what is our price per employee? Good answer: A written answer and a yearly price per employee that matches the price book.
Which AI features can we use today, and which are planned for 2027? Good answer: A dated list, with the Ribbon features marked live or waiting for the deal to close.
Under your Recruiting Guide, customers cannot change the grading factors. A 2025 blog promotes adjustable criteria. Which applies today, and can we read the Explainability Statement for Candidate Grading? Good answer: A written list of what we can change, and the statement itself.
Your AI compliance page and your Data Processing Addendum differ on training AI with customer data. Which one governs our candidates’ data, including de-identified data? Good answer: The answer is written into our order form and covers de-identified data.
Which AI features can act without a person approving them, and how do we keep each one off? Good answer: A list of those features and the setting that keeps each one off.
In places with AI hiring rules, such as New York City, which features do we switch off? Good answer: A list for each place we hire in, and wording for our job posts.
What do we get when the contract ends, and at what price? Good answer: A full export of candidates, resumes and history in an agreed format, priced in the contract.
Is the implementation fee fixed, and does importing our old candidates and requisitions cost extra? Good answer: A fixed fee in writing, with both imports priced.
What happens to our price when we renew or add employees? Good answer: A cap on yearly increases and a written price for each added employee.
How many AI Interviewer hires does our contract cover, and what happens when we pass that number? Good answer: A number that fits our hiring plan, with the US$85.00 extra charge per hire in writing.
What counts as a Growth Event, and do we need an additional environment? Good answer: Both defined in writing, with prices.

Alternatives to Dayforce

Four things on this page might send you to another product. They are the grading factors, the data-training clash, the headcount price and the full-term fees. Here is how other products handle each one, and what to check before you switch.

If you want to set what the AI scores, look at Ashby and Greenhouse. Ashby’s AI checks CVs against criteria the user defines, and users review the result criterion by criterion. Greenhouse’s Talent Matching compares CVs against criteria the customer defines and weights. It does not auto-reject or auto-advance any candidate. Switching vendors does not remove the duty, though. Under ADP’s marketplace terms, the client is exclusively responsible for its hiring practices. That includes monitoring, analysing and reporting adverse impact that may result from the client’s ranking criteria. Adverse impact means a hiring rule that falls harder on one group of people than on others. So ask every vendor how its terms share that duty.

Vendors answer the training question in different ways. Under Ashby’s AI terms, neither Ashby nor the third-party AI services train on customer data. Greenhouse trains its own models on customer data only in anonymised and de-identified form. At Oracle, predictive AI models are trained on the customer’s data. Ask each vendor the Dayforce question, which is whether de-identified data trains its models.

Dayforce counts every employee, so your bill moves with your headcount. Workday’s price list on the UK government’s G-Cloud 15 framework also prices per employee per year. It does so for a bundle that holds Recruiting. Recruiting alone has no price line there. Lever asks for a custom quote tailored to organisation size and hiring needs. So neither one takes your headcount out of the price. Ask each vendor for a yearly quote at your headcount and compare the totals.

The full-term fees are the other worry, and changing vendor does not remove it. Lever’s fees are also non-cancellable and non-refundable, except as its terms expressly state. At Dayforce, the length of term you sign is the choice that matters. Termination for most reasons does not end your duty to pay for the term. A renewal of 36 months or longer is an Extended Term at Dayforce. It is subject to an 8 percent increase each year. So ask how long a term the order form asks for, and what it costs to leave.

Dayforce’s hiring tools also depend on parts you buy elsewhere. Examples are a LinkedIn Recruiter account, an assessment provider, Sterling for UK right to work checks and an E-Signature account. With iCIMS, activating its supported assessment, background screening and I-9 and E-Verify partners needs no professional services engagement. It also needs no additional iCIMS integration subscription fee. Ask Dayforce for the same answer on each of its connections.

Not buying yet is a real choice. Dayforce does not recommend Recruiting for companies under 100 employees. Fees are non-cancellable, and termination for most reasons does not end your duty to pay for the term. So a purchase made too early can cost you the full term. Our applicant tracking system guide covers the whole market, and our comparison of 47 products puts them side by side.