Why this comparison exists
The ATS market has a transparency problem. Most vendors — even those positioned as "modern" and "candidate-first" — do not publish their pricing. The business rationale is straightforward: opacity enables price discrimination, reduces comparison shopping, and shifts negotiating power to the seller.
This article exists because buyers deserve the information vendors choose not to provide. What follows is sourced from public pricing pages (for the vendors that have them), user reports on G2, Capterra, and procurement community forums, analyst research, and direct market intelligence gathered through competitive evaluation processes. The numbers are ranges — specific pricing depends on company size, tier, contract length, and negotiation — but they represent the best available approximation of real-world costs.
One note of transparency: this comparison is written by Treegarden, which competes with several vendors on this list. Our goal is accuracy, not FUD. We have noted Treegarden's own pricing explicitly and applied the same analytical standard to all vendors. If you find a number that seems off, we welcome correction — reach us via the contact page.
The master comparison table
| Vendor | Pricing Model | Starting Price | ~200 Employees/yr | Public Pricing | Free Tier | Renewal Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greenhouse | PEPM / negotiated | ~$6K/yr | $12K–$18K/yr | No | No | 8–15% annual |
| Workable | Headcount tiers | $169/mo | ~$6.6K/yr | Yes | No | Grows with headcount |
| iCIMS | Negotiated enterprise | ~$20K/yr | $20K–$35K/yr | No | No | 30–40% increases reported |
| Ashby | Seat-based / negotiated | ~$400/mo | $8K–$15K/yr | Partial | No | Not widely reported |
| Lever | Negotiated | ~$12K/yr | $12K–$20K/yr | No | No | 8–12% annual |
| JazzHR | Per-seat flat tiers | $49/mo | ~$3K–$5K/yr | Yes | No | Published, stable |
| BreezyHR | Flat tiers | $0 (Bootstrap) | ~$2.4K–$5K/yr | Yes | Yes | Published, stable |
| Teamtailor | Negotiated / flat | ~$250/mo | ~$5K–$8K/yr | Partial | No | Generally stable |
| SmartRecruiters | Negotiated (SAP) | ~$15K/yr | $15K–$30K/yr | No | No | Unclear post-SAP |
| Treegarden | Flat rate | $299/mo | $5,988/yr | Yes | No | Published, no increase |
All figures represent best available market intelligence as of March 2026. Actual pricing varies by tier, headcount, contract terms, and negotiation. Verify current rates with each vendor before making decisions.
Which pricing model is actually better? An honest analysis
The pricing model a vendor uses shapes the cost structure of the relationship as much as the headline rate. Understanding the trade-offs between models helps you evaluate total cost over a multi-year relationship, not just the first-year number.
Flat rate
Examples: Treegarden, JazzHR (approximation), BreezyHR
How it works: Fixed monthly/annual fee regardless of headcount, number of users, or number of active jobs.
Honest pros: Maximum cost predictability. Growing companies aren't penalized for growth. Budget forecasting is straightforward. Easy to compare against alternatives.
Honest cons: A small startup and a large company pay the same price per tier regardless of usage intensity. Vendors may compensate for this with aggressive tier jumping rather than mid-tier increases.
Headcount-based (PEPM)
Examples: Workable, most enterprise vendors in disguise
How it works: Monthly price scales with company headcount, typically in brackets.
Honest pros: Small companies pay small prices; very large companies pay proportionally more. Feels intuitively "fair" at low headcount.
Honest cons: Cost grows with company growth regardless of hiring activity. Companies hiring at the same rate but growing overall pay more year over year. Tier thresholds create billing cliff effects.
Negotiated enterprise
Examples: Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, SmartRecruiters
How it works: No published rates. Every contract is custom, negotiated through enterprise sales, and subject to non-disclosure.
Honest pros: Large buyers can negotiate significant discounts. Very small buyers can sometimes access entry tiers below what vendors would publish.
Honest cons: Buyers have no benchmark to evaluate fairness. Renewal price increases are difficult to challenge without external reference points. The entire model is structurally weighted against the buyer. The 30–40% renewal increases at iCIMS are not a bug in this model — they're a feature.
Per-job pricing
Examples: Some legacy ATS platforms, certain job-board-affiliated systems
How it works: Cost tied to number of active job postings or completed hires.
Honest pros: Very low cost for occasional hiring; you pay when you're active.
Honest cons: Extremely unpredictable during hiring surges. A company going from 3 active jobs to 15 can see costs multiply 5x. This is the pricing model most likely to deliver invoice shock during a growth phase.
Pricing model red flags to watch for
Not all of these apply to every vendor, but each pattern has been observed in ATS sales processes and is worth watching for during evaluations:
- Pricing that requires a "custom demo" before you can get a number. This is a structural choice, not a complexity requirement. Any vendor can publish starting prices and "contact us for enterprise." Requiring a full demo just to get a price is designed to create relationship investment before price discovery.
- Contracts with no renewal price cap clause. If a vendor won't agree in writing to limit annual renewal increases, they are reserving the right to increase rates at the level the market — meaning your switching cost — will bear.
- Feature gating on lower tiers. Paying for a lower tier and discovering that the features that actually matter to you are gated behind an upgrade is a common ATS experience. Map your required features explicitly against tier definitions before signing.
- Annual billing with mid-year headcount adjustment clauses. Paying a year upfront and then receiving a mid-year invoice for headcount growth is a billing surprise that user reviews frequently report. Understand the mid-year adjustment policy before committing to annual billing.
- Implementation "included" with limited scope definition. "Implementation included" means different things in different contracts. Get a written scope of work for what the implementation covers before treating it as included.
What should you pay? A calibration by company size
The question "what's a fair price for an ATS?" has a different answer at every company size. Here are reasonable benchmarks by headcount band — the price range you should expect to pay for a full-featured ATS without significant over-payment:
| Company Size | Reasonable ATS Budget | What to look for at this tier |
|---|---|---|
| 1–20 employees | $0–$150/mo | Basic pipeline, job board posting, email integration |
| 21–100 employees | $150–$400/mo | Multi-user collaboration, interview scheduling, integrations |
| 101–300 employees | $300–$700/mo | Analytics, sourcing tools, offer management, HRIS integration |
| 301–1,000 employees | $700–$3,000/mo | Full analytics, compliance tools, dedicated CSM, API access |
| 1,000+ employees | Custom | Enterprise SLAs, multi-brand, OFCCP/EEO, global compliance |
If you are being quoted significantly outside these ranges — particularly on the high side for a company under 300 employees — the appropriate response is a competitive evaluation. You are likely paying for enterprise overhead that doesn't match your actual requirements.
Here's what Treegarden costs — no demo required
Startup: $299/mo · Growth: $499/mo · Scale: $899/mo. All features included. Transparent pricing because we'd want to know the price before booking a demo.
View full pricing →The real question isn't "which is cheapest?"
After reviewing this comparison, the temptation is to optimize for lowest price. That's the wrong optimization. The right question is: which platform delivers the most value for your specific hiring operation at a fair price?
A $15,000/year Greenhouse investment that enables structured hiring that reduces bad hire rates by 20% may pay for itself many times over in a 200-person company. A $299/month flat-rate ATS that saves 8 hours per week of recruiter time at $40/hr returns $16,640/year in productivity on a $3,588 investment.
The pricing comparison matters. But it matters most as an input to a clear-eyed analysis of: what hiring problems do I actually have, what capabilities does each platform provide to address those problems specifically, and what am I genuinely going to use versus paying for aspirationally?
The calibrated question that cuts through vendor sales processes: "What would it mean for my team if we were still doing this the way we do it today in two years?" The answer to that question — not the feature comparison matrix — defines what you actually need.
Frequently asked questions
What's the cheapest ATS?
The cheapest full-featured ATS options start around $49–$75/month. JazzHR's entry tier and BreezyHR's plans are in that range. However, 'cheapest' and 'best value' are different questions. A $49/month ATS that requires significant manual work or lacks key integrations can cost more in recruiter time than a $300/month platform that automates what the cheaper one requires manually. For most companies needing a capable, full-featured ATS, the value-optimized range is roughly $150–$500/month.
Which ATS has the most transparent pricing?
Workable, JazzHR, BreezyHR, Teamtailor, and Treegarden all publish their pricing publicly. Treegarden uses flat-rate pricing with no headcount-based scaling, making the pricing genuinely predictable rather than just technically published. Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, and Ashby all require a sales conversation to get pricing — a structural choice that benefits the vendor, not the buyer.
What's a fair price for an ATS for 100 employees?
For a 100-employee company doing 15–30 hires per year with a lean HR team, a fair price for a full-featured ATS is approximately $200–$500/month ($2,400–$6,000/year). This covers platforms like Workable Standard, Treegarden Growth, Teamtailor, and BreezyHR Pro. If you're being quoted significantly more for a 100-employee company without highly specialized requirements, the premium likely reflects brand positioning and negotiating opacity rather than proportional capability.
Which ATS vendors raise prices at renewal?
The vendors with the most documented renewal increase patterns are iCIMS (30–40% increases reported in 2024–2025), Greenhouse (8–15% annually), and Lever (8–12% annually). Workable's headcount-based model creates effective cost increases with company growth rather than explicit renewal hikes. Vendors with flat-rate published pricing are structurally less prone to opaque renewal increases. The most effective protection is a contractual renewal price cap — negotiating this before signing is more valuable than any upfront discount.