Recruitee

Recruitee’s AI counts criteria and your team decides, except where a knockout rule rejects

You can switch the AI off, and the vendor warns against using it as a filter

An AI that touches hiring needs controls you can explain to a works council or a candidate. Recruitee gives you six, and each one comes with a condition you should know before you rely on it.

Customers range from firms that started at 25 staff to more than 7,000

Your own company is the best test of fit, so these examples cover different situations. Recruitee reports each result on its own website. Ask for a reference close to your size before you rely on any of them.

Screening reaches only some applicants, and one rule type rejects with no person

Six limits matter most if you must explain the system’s decisions to a candidate, a works council or a regulator. The law then adds its own duties below them.

The law adds duties of its own, and the EU is the first place to look. The EU AI Act puts AI that analyses and filters applications and evaluates candidates among its high-risk uses. An exemption under Article 6(3) can apply. It covers a system that poses no significant risk of harm to fundamental rights. That includes a system that does not materially influence the outcome of decisions. The exemption does not apply when the system profiles people. The EU Digital Omnibus sets 2 December 2027 as the date the high-risk rules apply to this kind of system. Ask your lawyer whether a criteria count falls inside or outside the exemption.

Colorado’s SB26-189 may also apply if you hire people who live in Colorado. It starts on 1 January 2027 and covers decisions made on or after that date. It defines a consumer to include a job applicant who lives in Colorado. It covers technology that produces scores or other output used to make, guide or assist a decision. A company using such a tool must give notice at the point of interaction. After an adverse outcome it must describe the tool’s role within 30 days. The applicant can also ask for meaningful human review after an adverse consequential decision, which includes decisions about employment.

The price depends on headcount, and you may have only 30 days to take your data out

Recruitee’s price depends on your plan, your headcount and how you pay. The plans are Start, Advance and Optimize. Start allows up to five jobs. It includes posting to several job boards, a mobile app and standard reporting. Advance includes unlimited job posts, candidate self-scheduling, custom reports and the AI Screening Assistant. Optimize adds company login and expert setup assistance. It also adds a dedicated customer success manager, requisition approvals and 65 matching searches a month. It also adds connections to business reporting tools.

Because users are unlimited, your number of employees sets the price. The vendor checks it before each contract year. A subscriber over its Maximum Number of Employees moves to the lowest-priced listed subscription that fits its employee count. So a growing company should ask what happens when it passes a band. Paying yearly gives a 20% discount, and contracts have a one-year minimum. Recruitee still offers monthly billing under the yearly contract. Fees are in euro, US dollars or pound sterling. A recruitment agency gets a custom quote. Ask for a quote for your headcount before anything else.

One public contract gives a sense of scale. A Dutch regional authority awarded Recruitee B.V. an applicant tracking contract. The authority estimated its value at 400,000 euros excluding VAT over 24 months. That is the size of one deal and tells you nothing about your own price.

Some costs sit outside the plan, so the first quote may not include them. The add-ons include company login, Texting and Journeys. They also include AgencyHub and WhatsApp Hiring. Company login also appears on the Optimize card, so ask which applies to you. Messages carry their own costs. You get 50 free texts when you first activate Texting. A separate texting subscription can then be bought, for example $75 in the US or €75 in Europe. If you use WhatsApp Hiring, Meta charges when your company starts a WhatsApp conversation. From 1 October 2026 Meta also charges for outbound WhatsApp service messages, with the first 1,000 a month free. Marketplace products have their own fees. VONQ CPA+ costs a flat €460 per campaign, which includes 20 completed applicants. Ask what counts as completed.

The contract decides what you can change later, so read these terms before you sign. Subscriptions renew automatically unless a party gives 90 days’ notice. At renewal Tellent may raise fees by up to 5% for each year since the term began. If the consumer price index change is higher, that figure applies instead. You can terminate at any time, but fees for committed terms are due. So your real exit date is the end of the term. If you miss the 90 days’ notice, the subscription renews automatically. Tellent warrants 99.5% availability per quarter for most functions. If it misses that, it reduces the quarter’s fee by 10% on request. Its total liability is capped at the fees for six months of the service.

Your contracting party depends on where you are, and it decides the law and courts that apply. For the US and Canada it is Recruitee Inc., under New York law and courts. For Germany, Austria and Switzerland it is Recruitee GmbH, under German law and the court of Düsseldorf. In the Netherlands it is Recruitee B.V.

Plan your exit before you sign, because the time to take your data out may be short. After termination you may download your content or request it through the API within 30 days. An API is the link other software uses to read your data. The vendor may then delete your content. It cannot guarantee to store data more than 30 days after the last billing period. So do three things before those 30 days end.

First, export your candidates as a CSV list of essential data. Export through the open API may need advanced technical knowledge or a developer, so CSV is the simpler route. Second, save your jobs. Recruitee cannot currently export jobs automatically, though it generates an XML feed with all published jobs. That feed is a file of your live jobs that other software can read. Third, print or save the key candidate profiles as PDF. Users with the Export data permission can do this for a single profile.

Cancelling ends access to your account, careers site and candidate database at the end of the billing period. So do not cancel until your export works. Under the data processing terms, you can choose return or deletion of personal data on termination. If you delete the company account, it is locked for all users for 14 days. All account data is then permanently deleted.

Coming in is simpler. Recruitee asks you to have your previous system export candidate data into a CSV file. It tells you to contact sales if that does not cover your migration needs.

Eight questions for the sales call

These eight questions cover the AI, the plans and the exit. Each has a good answer to look for.

1. What does each plan cost for our headcount, and what is the price at renewal? Good answer: A written price per plan, and the exact cap on the renewal rise.
2. Which offer letter signing do we get, and is it included in our plan? Good answer: The name of the signing tool and a line on whether it is included.
3. Which of our applicants does the Screening Assistant read? Good answer: A written list of the entry routes it covers, including job boards.
4. Which rules on our account reject a candidate with no person involved? Good answer: A full list of those rules, and who on our side can change them.
5. Where does candidate data go for each AI feature we switch on? Good answer: A named company and region for every AI service.
6. Which of the plan features we need are in the plan we are quoted? Good answer: A feature list in the order form, covering approvals and anonymous screening.
7. How many job boards in our country will a posting reach? Good answer: A list of named boards for our country, and which ones cost extra.
8. Can we take jobs as well as candidates out when we leave, and for how long? Good answer: A full export of both, with a window longer than 30 days.

Alternatives to Recruitee

Workable, Breezy HR, Teamtailor and Pinpoint are the four alternatives to Recruitee that this guide covers. The right one depends on which worry on this page weighed most with you. You could also buy nothing yet.

If your worry was a rule or AI that acts without a person, compare the products. Look at how each starts out and how you stop it. Every Pinpoint AI feature is opt-in and never on by default. Pinpoint works as a full applicant tracking system with every AI feature switched off. Its Hiring Copilot needs your explicit confirmation before each action. A recruiter’s own action on a candidate stops Workable’s Agent. Workable has one combined switch for all its AI. It also has separate switches for sourcing, screening, auto-advance and auto-disqualify. Recruitee lets you switch the Screening Assistant off for the account or for one job. Workable lets you switch off one step at a time. Teamtailor’s Co-pilot features are opt-in, and you choose which ones to enable. Its Smart move can then move candidates automatically from the screening evaluation, and candidates cannot opt out of that evaluation.

If your worry was that screening reaches only careers-site applicants, ask each vendor which entry routes its AI reads. Each product has its own rule on which candidates its AI reads. So the same question applies to all three. Breezy HR scores every applicant from 0 to 10 against criteria you control. It does not review candidates who were in the pipeline before you switched it on. It also skips resumes it cannot read, such as a scanned resume. Workable scores every candidate out of 100 against an ideal candidate profile. It reads the CV, application answers and custom fields. Pinpoint grades each applicant against criteria you approve. Switched on, it scores every candidate already in the pipeline with a CV, except those rejected or hired. Ask all three whether job-board and agency applicants are included.

If your worry was the cost of giving every hiring manager access, Recruitee already prices on unlimited users. Breezy HR also includes unlimited users on every plan. It has a free plan with one active job at a time. Pinpoint prices by organisation size and capabilities, not per recruiter seat or open role. Teamtailor gives a price after you tell it about your company. Compare what drives each price, and not only the headline figure.

If the 90 days’ notice and the 30-day data window worried you, compare the exits. Teamtailor needs one month’s written notice to stop a renewal. Workable needs 45 days’ notice, and Pinpoint needs 30 days. Workable’s full export is a zip file with a CSV for each data area, and signed offers can be included. Breezy HR exports position data to CSV, while Recruitee cannot currently export jobs automatically. Pinpoint makes your data available to download on request for 30 days after the contract ends, which matches Recruitee’s window.

Buying nothing yet makes sense if you cannot say which applicants need screening or who would own a knockout rule. A tool will not settle that for you. Count how many applicants arrive through your careers-site form, because that is the only route Recruitee’s screening reads. Then run one real hire through a trial. Recruitee’s trial lasts 18 days on the Advance plan. It allows no more than five published jobs and 50 emails. Ask whether the trial includes the Screening Assistant, because the Advance plan does. The WhatsApp Hiring trial lasts 14 days and is free. A trial costs less than a signed year, because the minimum contract is one year.