Nestor

Nestor is a skills matrix with performance reviews, 360 feedback and an internal jobs board, sold in separate parts. Its AI drafts role descriptions and suggests skills, but each skill level still comes from ratings. The employee rates themselves, the manager confirms it, and colleagues add their own view. If managers stop confirming, the skills picture stops updating. Nestor sells by quote, after a demo.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 16 Sep 2026 Last updated 16 Sep 2026
In one line

Nestor suits companies that want skills and reviews in one product, and whose managers will confirm ratings.

Buy it if

You want skills, performance reviews and 360 feedback all in one place. You have no skills framework yet, and want help building one. Your managers are willing to confirm their teams’ ratings.

Do not buy it if

You want skills worked out automatically from people’s day-to-day work, not from ratings. You need a level proven by a test. Or your company’s buying rules favour a large, well-funded supplier.

Price

Price by quote, after a demo, based on your number of users. It has three plans, usually sized for up to 150 users, 150 to 500 users, and 500 or more.

Nestor’s AI shapes roles, and people rate each person’s level

Nestor sells its product as separate parts. You choose the ones you want, build a plan, and get a quote for it. Orange, for example, bought four parts. They are AI Skills Management, Skills-Driven Performance Management, Talent & Opportunity Marketplace and Talent Development. The marketplace matches people to open roles and projects. Nestor also sells help getting ready for the EU’s pay transparency rules. It starts from the job titles already in your HR system. It turns them into one consistent, skills-based structure of roles.

For the skills themselves, Nestor gives you a ready-made library. It holds more than 20,000 skills, each with its own description. It also holds more than 14,000 job types across more than 15 industries. You can use this library for ideas, or let Nestor’s AI map it onto your own job structure automatically. Each role then lists the skills it needs, with a recommended level for each career stage. The AI suggests which skills each role needs. It also scores every skill against a role, and explains its reasoning. And it writes level descriptions, from beginner to advanced, for any skill in your structure. It also flags skills becoming more common in the market, and helps you keep the library up to date. All of this shapes roles and your skills structure, not individual people.

Nestor builds each person’s level from several sources. In Nestor’s November 2023 description, the employee rates each skill from 1 to 5. That rating appears on their profile only once their direct manager confirms the level. The manager gives a quick yes or no on whether the level has been reached. There is no discussion or development plan attached. Skills from earlier jobs work differently. The employee rates those alone, and they appear on the profile without their manager’s approval.

Each skill level is set against what the role actually requires. The scale runs from 1, “Aware of,” to 5, “Advanced.” You can change this scale if you want a different one. Performance reviews and 360 feedback add further ratings of the same skills. In a skills-based performance review, the employee rates every skill. Their manager rates the same skill, and the two ratings sit side by side. A 360 feedback round can collect views from up to four kinds of people. Those are the employee, their manager, their peers, and their direct reports.

When the AI deals with individual people, all it does is suggest things. It does not decide anything on its own. Managers get suggested skills for their direct reports. Employees get suggestions for related skills they may already hold. Since a redesign in March 2026, the platform itself now handles role matching, career-path suggestions, and learning suggestions. Before, users had to set those up by hand. Nestor’s chief executive wrote in December 2025 that skills mapping should not depend on regular reviews or manual updates. He said it should “evolve as people work, learn, and move,” and that “this is what we’re working toward.” Confirm on the demo which of those parts actually work today.

Nestor connects to HR systems, calendars and everyday work apps. Its HR system connections include Workday, SAP, ADP, UKG, Personio, HiBob, BambooHR, Rippling and Deel. For single sign-on, so staff can use one company login, it connects to Okta, OneLogin and Microsoft Azure. You do not have to connect a system at the start. People, roles, skills and your company structure can all load from spreadsheet files instead.

Nestor redesigned its product in March 2026. The rating steps above come from Nestor’s 2023 description. One step is confirmed as current. You can still change the skill-level scale, since that is on today’s price list. Nestor publishes no product documentation. Confirm the rest on the demo.

Most of Nestor’s figures lack a named customer or a method

Nestor publishes five figures on its website. They cover one customer’s results, set-up speed, adoption, user ratings and admin time saved. Each one needs a named customer and a plain description of what it measures. Get both before you use a number in a business case.

25% of employees made internal career changesOrange

At Orange, 25% of staff moved to a new role inside the company. More than 20% of open roles were filled from inside too. But Orange uses all four of Nestor’s parts, not just skills tracking. It started with performance management and team culture, and added skills tracking later. So this figure measures Orange’s whole programme, not skills tracking alone. The story gives Orange Group’s headcount, 136,000 staff in 26 countries. Get how many of them actually use Nestor.

Skills mapped to roles in under three weeksSet-up time

Nestor says it can map skills to job roles in under three weeks. That claim covers only the technical set-up, not getting people to actually use it. Frigotehnica, part of VINCI Energies Romania, has 200 to 1,000 staff. It describes its own rollout in its own words. “We successfully implemented the platform in two countries within just two years.”

98% adoption rateAdoption

Nestor claims a 98% adoption rate. Get what counts as “adoption,” among which staff, and at which customers, before it goes into a business case.

#1 easiest to use, and a Net Promoter Score of 100G2, a software review site

G2, a software review site, ranked Nestor the easiest to use in its Spring 2025 skills management rankings. That ranking carried a score of 8.8. In autumn 2024, G2 reviewers also gave Nestor a Net Promoter Score of 100. That score shows how likely users are to recommend a product. A rating from a handful of reviewers means far less than one from hundreds. Get how many reviews sit behind each number.

“3x less admin time”Admin time

Nestor promises “3x less admin time.” Its chief executive says automation has saved up to 80% of time on routine tasks. He adds this happens only “in some cases.” Get which customer each figure comes from, and how the saving was worked out.

Nestor fits companies whose managers will keep confirming ratings

You want every skill level traceable to people

Nestor keeps a full history of every rating and confirmation. If an employee questions a level, you have a record showing how it was set. Skills from earlier jobs are the exception. The record behind those is just the employee’s own word.

You have no skills framework yet

Nestor comes with a ready-made library of skills. Its AI suggests which skills each role needs, and writes level descriptions from beginner to advanced. So your HR team starts from a draft, not a blank page.

You want skills, reviews and 360 feedback in one product

Nestor runs skills tracking alongside performance reviews, goals and 360 feedback. In its skills-based reviews, the employee rates each skill. Their manager rates the same skill too, and the two ratings sit side by side. Nestor works for companies from 200 to more than 10,000 people. Four of its six customer stories are at 200 to 1,000 employees.

You are preparing for EU pay transparency

Nestor sells help turning job titles into one consistent, skills-based structure of roles. It calls this “a defensible evidence trail for every pay decision.” This work is about roles, not individual people.

Ratings depend on managers, and some connections are not proven yet

Your purchasing rules favour a large, well-funded supplier

The company behind Nestor is Marionette Studio, Inc. It does business as Nestor. Use its legal name in your supplier checks. It has between 11 and 50 staff. It joined Y Combinator, a start-up programme, in 2018. Its last announced funding was a $2 million early-stage round in December 2022, led by Eleven Ventures. It has announced no further funding, acquisition or layoffs since. Deloitte named it to its EMEA Technology Fast 500 list in 2024. In March 2026 it launched a new logo and a redesigned product. The company is still trading and still building its product.

You want skills read straight out of daily work

Nestor does not scan work tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, GitHub, Confluence or Salesforce to work out skills. It also does not read CVs or LinkedIn profiles for skills. If you choose Nestor, plan on rating rounds, not on profiles that update themselves.

Your managers will not keep confirming ratings

If managers fall behind on confirmations, self-ratings stay off the profiles. So the skills picture is only as complete as your managers keep it.

You need a level proven by a test

Nestor sets levels through ratings, reviews and 360 feedback. Certifications are one of its skills features. Confirm on the demo whether a certification or test result can set a level, and where it shows.

You need a learning or recruitment system connected from day one

Nestor offers ready-made connections to HR, learning, recruitment and single sign-on systems. On its Enterprise plan, it will build you a custom connection too. The one learning system it names is Kallidus.

You want a reference that uses the skills part at scale

Nestor’s customer stories differ in which parts they cover. That matters when you pick a reference. Orange used all four. Arcadia, a private healthcare network in north-east Romania, used the skills and performance parts. Frigotehnica and Extern used the performance and development parts. HB Reavis ran a pilot group. Its first skills assessments were not yet complete. Raiffeisen Bank used the skills part for a 360-degree survey on agile behaviours. It had run a similar survey before, by other means. Its HR specialist now says it runs on “a more modern and user-friendly platform.” Orange is the only story at more than 5,000 employees, and five of the six are in Europe. Only Extern is in the US. Fortune 500 names also sit on Nestor’s client list. Get which of those Fortune 500 names use the skills part, and whether one is near your own region.

Nestor holds SOC 2 Type 2, an outside audit of how it protects data. It follows GDPR and CCPA, the EU and California privacy laws. It says it complies with ISO 27001, a standard for keeping data safe. Nestor hosts its product on Amazon Web Services. It keeps each customer’s data in its own database, and Enterprise customers get servers nobody else shares. It keeps EU data in the EU, and US data in the US. Its privacy policy covers its website, not the employee data in the product. It publishes no data processing agreement, and no list of the companies that process data for it. Get its data processing agreement before you sign. That is the contract that sets out how it handles data. Also get the list of other companies that touch the data.

Three plans, priced by quote, sized to your user count

The price scales with your number of employees and the features you pick. Nestor says it costs less than Gloat, a rival product. You can test that claim yourself once you hold both quotes.

Nestor names its three plans Essentials, Premium and Enterprise. Essentials is usually for up to 150 users. Premium is for 150 to 500 users. Enterprise is for 500 or more. Nestor publishes no minimum number of users, contract value or contract length. Essentials includes the AI features, the skills library, multiple languages and single sign-on. Premium adds what Nestor calls its HR-AI Companion, plus custom branding. It also adds a way to connect Nestor automatically to other software. Enterprise adds a written guarantee on how reliably the service will run. Nestor calls this a service level agreement. It also adds its own dedicated servers and custom connections to your other systems. Every plan comes with an implementation consultant. This person helps you set the product up, connect it to your systems, and launch it. Near 150 or 500 users, confirm which plan a quote assumes. Near 150, that decides whether you can connect Nestor automatically to other software. Near 500, it decides whether you get that reliability guarantee and your own dedicated servers.

Capterra, a software review site, shows a wrong Nestor price. Its “NESTOR” listing, in capitals, is priced from €799 a month per user. That listing is for SVITEX’s cash-register software for catering businesses, a different product entirely. Capterra lists the HR platform separately, under the name “Nestor.”

Leaving has a cost too, and it is worth working out before you sign. You can load skills, job roles, users and your company structure in from spreadsheet files. You can download reports the same way. Nestor publishes no customer terms. Get what a full export actually contains, and what happens to data once the contract ends. A product like this builds its value slowly, from years of ratings, confirmations and reviews. That history is what gets lost in a bad exit. A complete export, in a clear, documented format, belongs in the contract before you sign.

You could also build this on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. See it as an agent

What should you ask Nestor before you sign?

  1. Show us, on a live demo, how one skill and its level land on an employee’s profile. Who enters it, and who confirms it? Your November 2023 article says a self-rating appears only after a manager confirms it. Is that still how it works? Good answer: A live answer for each role that matches the 2023 description, or says what has changed.
  2. Your chief executive wrote in December 2025 that a self-updating skills picture is still something you are working toward. Right now, apart from ratings, confirmations, endorsements and reviews, what else can change a level on someone’s profile? What is planned, and by when? Good answer: A named feature and a date, not a repeat of the December letter.
  3. Which learning and recruitment systems do you connect to today? Does learning data actually come in from Kallidus, and can we speak to a customer using that connection? Good answer: A working connection we can see live, and a customer we can call.
  4. Send us your SOC 2 report, your data processing agreement and your customer contract terms. Are you certified to ISO 27001, or do you follow it without certification? Where is our data stored, and which other companies process it? Good answer: All three documents in writing, and a certificate number if one exists.
  5. Which Orange country business actually uses Nestor, and how many employees are on it? Can we talk to a customer using the skills part across more than 1,000 people? Good answer: A named business unit and headcount, and one customer call at our size.
  6. A year after launch, how many employees at one customer have a skills profile their manager actually confirmed? How many of those were updated in the last six months? Good answer: Real numbers from one named customer, not an average.
  7. For our headcount and the parts we need, what is the price per employee per year? What is the minimum contract term? And do we need the Premium plan just to connect our systems and pull out our own data? Good answer: A price per employee in writing, and a straight yes or no on Premium.
  8. When we leave, can we export every employee’s skills, levels, confirmations, endorsements and review history in a clear, written file? Will that be written into the contract? Good answer: Yes, with the file format and the contract clause both named.

Run one rating round first, or compare TechWolf and Microsoft

Microsoft People Skills and TechWolf both read skills straight from people’s own work, not from ratings. If you run Workday or SAP, look at their own skills tools first. Workday Skills Cloud and SAP Talent Intelligence Hub are worth a look.

The cheapest route is to try a rating round before you buy anything. Run one round, with one team, in a spreadsheet. See whether the managers actually take part. If they don’t, that is what you need to fix before you buy any software.

A role structure for the EU’s pay transparency rules starts with roles, not with each person’s skills. Nestor sells its product as separate parts, and it has its own pay transparency offering. Get what that offering costs on its own before adding a full skills inventory on top.

In this guide, two products read skills straight from daily work, not from ratings. Microsoft People Skills builds its skill picture from Microsoft 365 only. It costs $0 extra, so far, on top of a Copilot or Viva licence. Microsoft says the tool is not designed for promotion or pay decisions. Its skill levels are not described in Microsoft’s People Skills documentation. TechWolf is the other option. Its price is not published. Its smallest named case study is a company of about 5,000 people. If your company sits under that, confirm TechWolf works with companies that size before it goes on a shortlist.

Workday and SAP are both systems Nestor connects to. If you run either one, its existing contract may already cover some skills work. That avoids buying a second system to hold the same thing. In SAP SuccessFactors, letting the software work out skills automatically needs a separately purchased AI units licence.

For the rest of the market, see our skills intelligence buyer’s guide. It splits the field into products built on self-ratings and products that learn from the work itself. It says which kind fits your situation.

Sources and method

Unless another source is named below, every statement about Nestor comes from Nestor’s own website, articles, customer stories and LinkedIn posts, or from its Y Combinator listing, all read on 14 September 2026. What Nestor publishes about its own product is taken as its description of that product. Where we say something is not published, we checked Nestor’s site for it on the same day. The finding that Nestor has announced no funding, acquisition or layoffs since December 2022 covers Nestor’s own site and Google News. The Capterra name clash and the description of Kallidus come from those two sites, read the same day. Facts about Microsoft People Skills, TechWolf and SAP come from each company’s own documentation, and the list below gives the date each was checked.

Nestor website
Nestor articles and announcements
Nestor customer stories
Other sources
Microsoft People Skills, TechWolf and SAP