Dover gives you a free hiring system. Read its terms and data rules first.
Dover’s hiring system is free, with no limit on users, jobs or candidates, and Premium costs $199 a month. Dover’s own pages disagree on whether AI scoring is free. Its terms ask customers not to upload personal information, and it stores data in the United States. Export your records before the account ends, because access stops at once and Dover may delete the data.
Dover is a free hiring system, and the cost sits in the contract
Dover is a free hiring system with a paid plan on top. The terms and the data rules need a closer read than the price does.
You want a hiring system this week with no per-seat fee. Your applicants write in English. You can accept storage in the United States and Dover’s terms.
You need to read CVs in other languages. You need candidate data held in the European Union. You need a promise of notice before the service changes.
The free plan has no limit on users, jobs or candidates. Premium costs $199 a month. Paid job board postings and outside recruiters cost extra.
What you get from Dover, and what only Premium gives you
What does the free plan run on its own, and where does Premium take over? The answer decides whether $0 is real for your team. Dover is the trading name of Staya, Inc., a company based in San Francisco. It is a recruiting platform for startups. The hiring system is one part. Beside it sit free sourcing tools, AI features and a marketplace of fractional recruiters. These are outside recruiters who set their own rates.
The core is a board with a column for each stage. Candidates move from application to offer. Each job has its own interview plan, and you can add, edit and reorder its stages. Hiring managers and interviewers leave feedback on each candidate, and others can read it. Jobs go out to at least 50 job boards. One click posts to LinkedIn, Indeed and ZipRecruiter, and applicants arrive in the Applicants tab. Your careers page needs no code. Candidates do not need an account to apply. They upload a CV and the application form fills itself in. A candidate portal lets them follow their status. They can also book their own interview time through a link tied to Google Calendar. Reporting has two tabs. Analytics holds charts, and Reports holds a snapshot of the pipeline and a report on each candidate.
Two jobs stay with your own team. Sourcing in Dover is work you do yourself. The Sourcing tab is where you find candidates and email them, and a Chrome extension sends email campaigns from LinkedIn. In 2023, Dover’s CEO named two services sold beside the hiring system. They are Sourcing Autopilot and Embedded Recruiter. Moving old records in also happens in batches. A CSV upload takes up to 500 candidates at a time. A PDF upload takes up to 100 CVs at a time, each up to 10 MB. A team with a large back file should plan the move or ask about Dover’s managed migration.
The AI is where the two plans start to differ. Applicant scoring reads the CV and the answers to your application questions. It gives each applicant a score from 0 to 100 against criteria you write. Scores from 0 to 59 show in grey as below the minimum. Hover over a score to see why the applicant got it. Scoring runs only when someone scores applicants, or when you turn on automatic scoring of new applicants. Dover also writes job descriptions and interview questions with AI, and formats interview notes.
Premium also adds the AI Notetaker. It joins interviews on Google Meet, records them and writes a transcript. It then fills in the feedback form with notes. Zoom interviews need the Zoom connection, and Microsoft Teams interviews need Microsoft Calendar. Dover tells the interviewer to say the interview is recorded before letting the notetaker in. Recordings, transcripts and notes stay in Dover, and candidates do not get copies. You can switch the notetaker off for one interview. It does not work with rescheduled interviews.
Premium also brings offer management with e-signing, bulk actions and advanced scheduling. Document upload questions, knockout questions and the API are Premium too. Each offer gets a link in the candidate’s portal, the candidate signs electronically, and the signed offer can be downloaded. The API lets your developers add candidates, list recent hires or host a custom careers page. Webhooks are on both plans. They send a message to your own tools when something happens, such as a new application.
Dover also connects AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor to your hiring data, through a standard called MCP. Users sign in when the assistant connects. Any change, such as a note or a stage move, needs write access that you grant. Before the assistant moves, tags or rejects anyone, Dover tells customers to ask it to list who it would change. Then they confirm. Two cautions apply. An email sent from Gmail through the assistant is not logged on the candidate in Dover. Rejecting a candidate this way does not email them. The assistant cannot email or schedule candidates on its own. Gmail and Google Calendar must be connected to the same AI tool.
Where Dover helps a hiring team from day one
A free product has to earn trust on the basics first. These are four places where Dover helps a hiring team from day one. Each one is a reason to take a free plan seriously.
Every colleague can have a login without a seat fee
Neither plan limits users, jobs or candidates. So you can add every hiring manager and interviewer. Nobody has to decide who gets a paid seat. Sign-up needs a company email address and no payment card. The hiring system can be set up in minutes.
Equal opportunity questions are built in
Each job can collect a voluntary equal employment opportunity survey. That is the set of US questions about applicants’ background. Your team sees only the combined results. Dover hides the counts when only a few people answered a question. Some places require pay on a job posting. Dover tells customers to check local laws. Turning on Show on job posting displays the pay.
It is clear who controls candidate data
You are the controller of candidate data and Dover is the processor. That puts candidate notices and requests on your team, not on Dover. You give candidates their notice. You also handle their requests to see, correct, delete, restrict or export their data. Dover provides a data processing agreement on request. It gives you notice before it adds or replaces an outside company that handles your data. After a reportable breach, Dover notifies the relevant parties where feasible. That is no later than 72 hours after it becomes aware. Those two points are what you can hold Dover to.
People make the hiring decisions
Dover’s AI does not replace recruiters or hiring managers. It assists with ranking and summaries, and final hiring decisions stay with the team. Dover tells customers to review applicants personally before they decide. On the Applicants page your team rejects, advances or bookmarks each applicant. Dover then asks whether to send a rejection email.
Which hiring teams Dover is built for
A free system with no seat fee suits some teams more than others. The cards below describe the teams whose daily work matches how Dover is built.
A founding team that has no hiring system yet
Dover labels its free plan “Best for Founding Teams”. A team with nothing in place gets job posts, a candidate board and reports at no cost. Sign-up needs no card, and the hiring system can be set up in minutes. That lets the team learn what it needs before it pays for anything. Dover is a recruiting platform for startups, and more than 600 companies trust it.
A team that already lives in Gmail, Google Calendar and Slack
Dover connects to Gmail and Outlook for email and to Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar for scheduling. Candidate email is sent and received from the user’s own inbox. Slack tells your team when a candidate enters an interview stage, and you set that per job. Zoom and Calendly links also work inside Dover.
A team that wants an AI assistant to work on its hiring data
Dover connects AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor to your jobs, candidates and applications. The connection is included on every plan. A team that already asks an assistant for answers can ask it about the pipeline too. The cautions and limits are in the section on what Dover does.
A team that may want outside recruiters later
Dover runs a marketplace of fractional recruiters beside the hiring system. These are outside recruiters who set their own rates. In 2023, Dover’s CEO wrote that two services start with one click from the free hiring system. They are Sourcing Autopilot and Embedded Recruiter. In 2023, Dover sold both beside the hiring system. A team that expects to want help with outreach can start free and add that help from the same place.
Read these terms and limits before candidate records go in
A hiring system holds personal data about every applicant, and Dover’s free plan comes with terms that touch that data. These are the limits and contract points to read before candidate records go in. They matter more than the feature list.
Dover reads CVs in English only
Dover parses only CVs written in English. Dover itself gives non-English applications as a reason it may not fit. If an applicant uploads a CV in another language, plan for your team to read it and enter the details. If you hire in more than one language, test this on real CVs before you move your hiring in.
Its terms ask customers not to upload personal information
Under Dover’s terms, customers are asked not to upload or provide personal information to the software. The reason given is that other users will be able to see and use it. Communications through the software are not confidential under the terms. Dover does not guarantee the security of data sent over the internet. A hiring system exists to hold personal information. Ask Dover how those lines apply to candidate records.
Candidate data is stored in the United States, not the EU
Dover stores application data in the United States and does not store it in the European Union. It is not certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The safeguard for moving your data to Dover is set out in the data processing agreement. You have to ask for that agreement. Dover provides it on request. Candidate data also reaches several outside companies. Tigris stores files such as CVs. OpenAI supports AI features such as applicant scoring and email writing. Anthropic supports CV reading and applicant scoring. DeepInfra handles the AI when a customer selects its model. Recall.ai records and transcribes interviews.
Automatic rejections and hidden scores need a policy check
Knockout questions are multiple-choice questions that reject an applicant automatically when they pick a disqualifying answer. They are part of Premium. Dover rejects the applicant as soon as they apply. The rejection email goes out after a delay you set. The default is 2 days, and you can set 1 to 30. Applicants are also not told that the AI scores them. Only your hiring team sees the score. Check what your local law and your own hiring policy say about both.
Check the date of Dover’s bias audit before you hire in New York City
In New York City, a tool like this needs a bias audit within one year before use. New York City’s regulator says the vendor that made the tool is not responsible for its bias audit. So the employer must check that the audit is current. Under Local Law 144, Dover is considered an automated employment decision tool that supports hiring. Dover says it enlisted an independent auditor to perform the required audit for all current and future customers. Each customer has an Equal Employment Opportunity page, reached from the careers page, that publishes a bias audit. Open that page and read the date on the audit itself. The 17 January 2024 date belongs to Dover’s help article, not to the audit. Candidates can ask for an alternative selection process by email. Dover’s guide adds that the employer and the tool are not required to respond to those requests. Dover adds that its information is not legal advice.
Dover may change the service at any time without notice
A service that may change at any time is hard to plan a hiring year around. Ask for a written notice period. Under Dover’s terms, Dover may change the services at any time without notice. Its liability is capped at the fees you paid in the 12 months before the event. If you pay nothing, that cap is $0. If a dispute arises, the terms send it to a private arbitrator under California law, not to court. Payment disputes are the exception. The arbitration runs through the American Arbitration Association. Class actions against Dover are barred. You must defend and indemnify Dover against claims from your use of the software. All fees are non-refundable, except where the terms provide otherwise.
Job boards can add fees and renew every 30 days
Some job boards charge for a posting, and the cost appears before checkout. Dover charges you for a paid posting and again every 30 days until you deactivate it. Deactivating stops the renewal at the end of the billing period, with no refund for the rest of it. LinkedIn decides whether a job goes live, and Dover cannot guarantee that a posted job appears. LinkedIn Basic Jobs are not available on the free plan.
Free is $0 and Premium is $199 a month, but extras apply
Free does not mean the whole bill is zero. Add up the plan, the extras and the work of leaving before you start.
The free plan costs nothing, and sign-up needs no payment card. Premium costs $199 a month. It carries no contract and is priced monthly. A cancelled plan stays active until the end of the billing period. So the only commitment is one month at a time. You pay by card or from a US bank account. The features of each plan are in the section on what Dover does. Whether AI scoring costs extra is the open question in the box there. Knockout questions, document upload questions, the API, the Wellfound job board connection and Export History are Premium too. The free plan includes 50 MCP tool calls a month, and Premium has no limit.
Three kinds of cost sit outside the plan. The first is job board postings, which Dover charges to you and records under Subscriptions and Billing. The second is Dover’s outside recruiters. They set their own rates by the hour, as a retainer or per hire. Dover puts the average cost per hire at $4.8k. Under Dover’s terms, Dover may require a deposit to use the marketplace. It holds the deposit and applies it against future fees. Dover’s FAQ makes the deposit 100% refundable if you do not work with an expert. Under the terms, Dover may treat a deposit as forfeited after twelve straight months with no marketplace activity or fees. A Hire Fee applies in the case the terms cover. It is 30% of a marketplace service provider’s annualised compensation. Ask which case that is. The third cost is a finance charge on late or unpaid amounts. It is 1.5% per month, or the legal maximum if that is lower.
Leaving takes two steps, and the order matters. Go to Settings and then Data Export. It writes candidate data to a CSV by job and date range and emails you a download link. The file has one row per candidate and a column with a link to the CV. You can add interview feedback for up to 25,000 candidates. You cannot add it when you choose all jobs and all time together. Export History is part of Premium. Under Dover’s terms, you can end your account on 30 days’ written notice. Ending it removes your access at once, and Dover may delete your account information. No purpose in Dover’s privacy policy requires keeping personal information longer than 90 days after the account ends. So export before the account ends.
Deleting cannot be undone. Deleting a candidate permanently deletes the candidate and all associated data. Deleting a job permanently deletes the job and all its candidates, applicants, feedback forms and settings.
You could also run hiring steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map
Eight questions to put to Dover before you sign up
Dover’s own pages leave several points open. These include the scoring plan, the personal-information clause and the move of data to the United States. The rest cover the bias audit, automatic rejections and what happens to recordings when you leave. Get each answer in writing. Dover may change the service without notice, so a spoken reply is easy to lose. Each question comes with a good answer to listen for.
- Is applicant scoring in the free plan or in Premium? Good answer: One written answer that matches what you will pay for.
- Your terms ask customers not to upload personal information. How does that apply to candidate records? Good answer: A line in our order form that allows candidate data.
- Which safeguard covers the move of our candidates’ data to the United States? Good answer: A signed data processing agreement with the safeguard spelled out.
- Can I see the latest bias audit, with its date, for the tool as it runs today? Good answer: The full report, dated, with the results for each group.
- Can a recruiter review each automatic rejection before the email goes out? Good answer: Yes, within the delay we set, and we can turn the rule off per job.
- What happens to recordings, transcripts and AI notes when our account ends? Good answer: Deleted or exported within a stated time, in writing.
- What changes to the service will you tell us about first? Good answer: A notice period written into our order form.
- Which job boards will charge us, and how do we stop a renewal? Good answer: A fee for each board before we post, and a stop that works before day 30.
Alternatives to Dover
Start with Breezy HR, Zoho Recruit, Ashby and Gem if Dover comes off your shortlist. Buying nothing is a fifth route.
Breezy HR and Zoho Recruit also have a free plan, so compare what each one holds back. Breezy HR calls its free plan Bootstrap. It keeps one active job opening or candidate pool at a time. Breezy deletes Bootstrap data after one year of inactivity. Zoho Recruit’s Free edition allows 1 active job and supports no add-ons. A Zoho Recruit trial lasts 15 days and ends on that Free plan, with data kept. Dover’s free plan has no limit on jobs. What it holds back is knockout questions, the API and e-signed offers, which sit behind $199 a month.
Ashby and Gem price differently. Ashby prices startups by the size of the organisation at purchase, not by seats. Gem’s pricing is custom and based on your full-time employee count, with startup pricing available. Dover charges a flat $199 a month for Premium, with no seat count. If your team will grow, ask each vendor what the bill looks like at your size in two years.
Buying nothing is the last route. For Dover the deciding question is not price, because the plan is free. It is whether you accept Dover’s terms and US storage for candidate data. If you do not, buying nothing keeps candidate records out of those terms. Our market guide covers the full range of products and how they differ.
https://www.dover.com/llms.txt · Dover, description of the company and its products · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/ats · Dover ATS page · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/ai · Dover on its AI features · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/mcp · Dover MCP page · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/pricing · Dover pricing · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/integrations · Dover integrations directory · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/gdpr · Dover GDPR page · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/subprocessors · Dover subprocessors · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/terms · Dover terms · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/privacy-policy · Dover privacy policy · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/data-breach-policy · Dover data breach policy · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/compare/dover-vs-ashby · Dover comparison with Ashby · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/blog/how-is-dover-ats-free · Dover CEO post, 28 September 2023, on the free ATS · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.dover.com/blog/ai-powered-applicant-tracking-systems · Dover blog post on AI-powered applicant tracking · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-started/frequently-asked-questions/ · Dover help centre, frequently asked questions · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-started/getting-started-with-ats-features/ · Dover help centre, getting started with ATS features · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-started/how-to-add-a-job/ · Dover help centre, adding a job · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-started/reporting-analytics/ · Dover help centre, reporting and analytics · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-applicants/applicants/ · Dover help centre, applicants · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-applicants/job-postings/ · Dover help centre, job postings · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-applicants/ai-powered-applicant-scoring/ · Dover help centre, AI applicant scoring · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/getting-applicants/job-board-integrations/ · Dover help centre, job board integrations · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/hiring-guides/employers-guide-to-complying-with-nyc-144/ · Dover help centre, employer’s guide to NYC Local Law 144 · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/hiring-guides/compensation-requirements-for-job-postings/ · Dover help centre, pay rules for job postings · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/scheduling-interviewing/dover-ai-notetaker/ · Dover help centre, AI Notetaker · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/sourcing-and-outreach/sourcing-candidates/ · Dover help centre, sourcing candidates · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/integrations/mcp-server/ · Dover help centre, MCP server · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/settings/slack-integration/ · Dover help centre, Slack integration · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/settings/subscriptions-and-billing/ · Dover help centre, subscriptions and billing · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/settings/data-export/ · Dover help centre, data export · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/settings/migrating-data-to-dover/ · Dover help centre, migrating data to Dover · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/managing-candidates/candidate-actions/ · Dover help centre, candidate actions · read 2 Nov 2026
https://docs.dover.com/api/ · Dover API overview · read 2 Nov 2026
https://help.breezy.hr/en/articles/9065454-what-is-breezy-s-bootstrap-plan · Breezy HR help centre, the Bootstrap plan · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.zoho.com/recruit/pricing.html · Zoho Recruit pricing · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.zoho.com/recruit/corporate-plan-comparison.html · Zoho Recruit corporate plan comparison · read 2 Nov 2026
https://breezy.hr/pricing · Breezy HR pricing · read 2 Nov 2026
https://help.breezy.hr/en/articles/6428145-what-is-breezy-s-data-retention-policy · Breezy HR help centre, data retention policy · read 2 Nov 2026
https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4344524&GUID=B051915D-A9AC-451E-81F8-6596032FA3F9&Options=ID%7CText%7C&Search= · New York City Council, Local Law 144 text · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/about/DCWP-AEDT-FAQ.pdf · New York City DCWP, automated employment decision tool FAQ · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.ashbyhq.com/pricing · Ashby pricing · read 2 Nov 2026
https://www.gem.com/pricing · Gem pricing · read 2 Nov 2026