8 applicant tracking systems for startups, with October 2026 prices and what 778 companies hiring on Clera actually use. Free plans included.
The best applicant tracking system for most venture-backed startups in October 2026 is Ashby. Pick Greenhouse if you already run structured interviews with several people per hire. Pick Breezy HR if money is tight: its free plan covers one open role. Pick Gem if you have under 30 people and source most candidates yourself, since the first six months are free. Pick Needle if you want hiring to run from Slack with an agent doing the sourcing and scheduling.
We also checked the application links on every open role on Clera today. Of 778 hiring companies whose links show their system, 544 (70%) use Greenhouse, Ashby or Lever.
Summary table
| Tool | Best for | Key stat | One limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashby | Best overall, seed to Series B | $400/month listed for up to 100 employees | Foundations plan allows 1 offer template |
| Greenhouse | Structured hiring with many interviewers | Used by 207 companies hiring on Clera, the most of any system | No published prices |
| Lever | Tracking and nurturing candidates in one place | 142 companies hiring on Clera use it | Quote only, several paid add-ons |
| Gem | Founder-led sourcing, under 30 people | First six months free | Startup page does not list the price after month six |
| Needle | Hiring run from Slack by an agent | Starter $150/month with unlimited seats | SOC 2 Type II audit still in progress |
| Workable | Getting a role posted fast | Standard plan $299/month for 1 to 20 employees | Premier and Enterprise are annual only |
| Breezy HR | Tightest budget | Free plan, then $157/month billed annually | Free plan holds 1 open position at a time |
| JazzHR | A few roles a year | Hero plan $1,000/year | Hero starts at 3 job postings a month |
How we picked
We started with every system we could detect on open roles in Clera's jobs data on 24 October 2026, then added the tools that keep showing up in the top-ranking guides for this search. That gave us 15 candidates.
Each one had to clear two bars: real use by startups (in Clera's data or in the vendor's own customer claims) and pricing a founder can check or get quoted without a procurement team. We dropped Workday (built for large companies: 8 companies on Clera post 1,572 open roles through it) and HR suites where recruiting is only sold as part of a wider bundle quote. Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked the same day.
Clera is a hiring platform, not an applicant tracking system, so it is the data source here, not an item.
1. Ashby
Best for: seed to Series B startups that want one tool for sourcing, interviews, offers and reporting.
- Ashby lists its Foundations plan at $400/month for companies up to 100 employees, with 10% off for an annual commitment, on its pricing page as of October 2026.
- Foundations includes 200 sourcing email lookups and 1,500 AI credits a month.
- Ashby raised a $50 million Series D in July 2025, and Crunchbase News reported its customer count grew from about 1,300 to more than 2,700 in the year before.
- 195 companies hiring on Clera run their roles through Ashby, second only to Greenhouse.
Why it made the list: it covers sourcing to offer without a second tool bolted on, and analytics is good enough that Ashby also sells it on its own to teams running other systems.
Downside: Foundations caps you at 1 offer template and 3 custom permission roles, and the AI Notetaker and Advanced Scheduling cost extra.
2. Greenhouse
Best for: teams with several interviewers per hire who want scorecards and a repeatable process.
- Greenhouse sells three plans, Core, Plus and Pro, and its pricing page says pricing is customized to your hiring needs.
- Core already includes interview kits, scorecards, an AI notetaker, scheduling, reporting and SSO. Plus adds texting and fraud and spam detection.
- 207 companies hiring on Clera use Greenhouse, with 2,104 open roles between them. No system appears more often.
Why it made the list: it is the most common system among companies hiring on Clera, so the recruiter you hire next has a good chance of already knowing it.
Downside: you need a demo call to get a number, and a 5-person team will not use half of it yet.
3. Lever
Best for: teams that keep in touch with candidates for months before a role opens.
- Lever sells one core platform that puts candidate tracking and relationship management in one system, plus unlimited AI interview transcription, per its pricing page.
- Employ Inc. acquired Lever on 5 August 2022, putting it in the same family as JazzHR and Jobvite.
- 142 companies hiring on Clera use Lever, with 1,527 open roles.
Why it made the list: if you hire the same profile again and again, keeping past candidates warm is built in, not a separate tool.
Downside: pricing is quote only, and Candidate Insights, AI screening and onboarding are paid add-ons.
4. Gem
Best for: founders and first recruiters who source most candidates themselves.
- Gem started as a sourcing and outreach tool and launched its own tracking system on 20 September 2023.
- Its startup program gives companies under 30 employees the first six months free.
- One record per candidate holds outreach history, notes and stage, so sourcing and tracking live together.
Why it made the list: six free months is the longest no-cost runway on this list for a full-featured tool.
Downside: the startup page does not say what you pay after month six. Ask before you move your pipeline in.
5. Needle
Best for: founder-led teams that want an agent to do the busywork and live in Slack instead of another tab.
- Needle calls itself the applicant tracking system that runs itself: it sources candidates from a pool it puts at 800M profiles, drafts outreach, checks calendars and books interviews.
- Its pricing page lists Starter at $150/month with unlimited seats and 5,000 credits, and Pro at $300/month with 20,000 credits, as of October 2026. One credit is roughly one sourced, enriched candidate.
- Every plan includes a Slack agent, an AI notetaker and candidate enrichment, and the agent also works over MCP from a chat app.
- There is a free 7-day trial.
Why it made the list: sourcing, outreach and scheduling come in the base price, so a team without a recruiter can fill a pipeline from day one for $150 a month.
Downside: its SOC 2 Type II audit is still in progress, which matters if your own customers ask about vendors in security reviews. The 7-day trial is also the shortest on this list.
6. Workable
Best for: getting a role in front of a lot of job boards on day one.
- Workable's Standard plan is $299/month for companies with 1 to 20 employees, per its pricing page as of October 2026.
- Premier ($599/month) and Enterprise ($719/month) are billed annually only, and every plan includes 3,000 AI credits.
- There is a 15-day free trial with no credit card.
- 46 companies hiring on Clera use Workable.
Why it made the list: a published price, a free trial without a card, and month-to-month billing on Standard.
Downside: prices step up with your headcount band, so the $299 figure only holds while you are 20 people or fewer.
7. Breezy HR
Best for: pre-seed teams with one or two roles and no budget.
- Breezy HR's Bootstrap plan is free forever for 1 active position with unlimited users, per its pricing page.
- The Startup plan is $157/month billed annually or $189 monthly, with unlimited positions.
- 31 companies hiring on Clera use Breezy.
Why it made the list: it is the only free-forever plan here, and the paid tiers are flat fees, not per seat.
Downside: the free plan holds one open position at a time, so a second role means paying.
8. JazzHR
Best for: small teams hiring a handful of people a year.
- JazzHR's Hero plan is $1,000/year, starting at 3 job postings a month, per its pricing page.
- Plus is $3,480/year for up to 200 active jobs, and Pro is $5,508/year.
- Standard pricing does not apply to companies over 250 employees.
- 17 companies hiring on Clera use JazzHR.
Why it made the list: lowest paid entry price with published numbers, and Lever sits in the same company family if you outgrow it.
Downside: the Hero plan's posting limit bites fast once you hire for two teams at once.
What 778 companies hiring on Clera actually use
On 24 October 2026, 3,898 companies had open roles on Clera. For 778 of them, the application link shows which system they use. The rest come from job feeds that do not include the application link. We counted each company once, under the system most of its open roles link to.
| System | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Greenhouse | 207 | 26.6% |
| Ashby | 195 | 25.1% |
| Lever | 142 | 18.3% |
| Workable | 46 | 5.9% |
| BambooHR | 35 | 4.5% |
| Breezy HR | 31 | 4.0% |
| Rippling | 30 | 3.9% |
| Personio | 24 | 3.1% |
| Teamtailor | 19 | 2.4% |
| JazzHR | 17 | 2.2% |
Two things stand out. Ashby is 12 companies behind Greenhouse, close enough that either is a safe default. And the long tail is real: 234 companies, about 30%, use something other than the big three, and 89 of those run recruiting inside an HR suite they already pay for (BambooHR, Rippling or Personio).
How to choose
- If you have one open role and no budget, start on Breezy HR's free plan and move up when role two opens.
- If you are under 30 people and doing your own sourcing, take Gem's six free months or start on Ashby Foundations.
- If you will hire 20 or more people in the next year with panels of interviewers, pick Ashby or Greenhouse now. Moving systems mid-growth means migrating every candidate record and retraining every interviewer.
- If nobody on the team has time to source and your company already lives in Slack, try Needle for a week.
- If you keep warm candidates for repeat roles, Lever keeps that history in the same place as your pipeline.
Before you sign anything, check three things in the trial: that it builds a careers page on your domain without an engineer, that candidates can book their own interview slots from your calendar, and that it connects to the HR or payroll system you already pay for.
The tracking system holds your pipeline. It does not fill it. For that side, see our lists of the best sourcing tools for recruiters and the best recruiting CRMs for startups. If you are not sure you need both, our guide to recruitment CRM vs applicant tracking covers the split. And since fake applicants now show up in every pipeline, it is worth reading our roundup of candidate fraud detection tools before you go live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Once you have two open roles or more than one interviewer, yes. A spreadsheet works for the first hire. After that, candidates get lost between inboxes and interview feedback lives in five places. A free plan like Breezy HR's or Gem's six free months costs nothing to try at that stage.
Published prices in October 2026 run from free (Breezy HR Bootstrap, one role) to $1,000/year (JazzHR Hero), $150/month (Needle Starter), $299/month (Workable Standard) and $400/month (Ashby Foundations). Greenhouse and Lever only quote, so budget a sales call and ask about implementation fees and renewal increases.
Both are used by about a quarter of the companies hiring on Clera that we could check. Ashby publishes its startup price ($400/month) and bundles sourcing and analytics. Greenhouse only quotes but is the single most common system in our data. If you have no recruiter yet, Ashby. If your first recruiter already knows Greenhouse, that is a fair tiebreaker.
Sources
- Ashby pricing and Ashby Series D announcement
- Crunchbase News on Ashby's Series D
- Greenhouse pricing
- Lever pricing and Lever joins Employ, Business Wire
- Gem startup program and Gem launch post
- Needle and Needle pricing
- Workable pricing
- Breezy HR pricing
- JazzHR pricing
- Clera jobs data: open roles and application links on 24 October 2026, aggregated by company
Hiring at a startup?
A tracking system keeps your pipeline tidy. It does not put great people in it. On Clera, job seekers join once and VC-backed startups bid on the ones they want to meet. We make the warm intro, and you move them into whichever of these eight tools you run. If your pipeline is empty, start there.
