The best free applicant tracking systems (ATS) simplify job postings, filter incoming resumes and applications, and improve candidate-employer communication. A good ATS can store resumes for future reference, screen applicants, and organize and manage referral programs to boost recruitment efforts.
In this guide, I evaluated eight free applicant tracking software and narrowed them down to my top three recommendations:
- Breezy HR: Best overall free ATS
- Zoho Recruit: Best for startups and staffing agencies
- Indeed: Best for candidate sourcing
The Fit Small Business editorial process follows strict standards to ensure that our best answers are founded on the basis of accuracy, clarity, authority, objectivity, and accessibility.
With over five years of experience evaluating payroll and HR software and 10 years of experience in human resources and handling HR systems, I am deeply familiar with business owners’ recruiting and employee management needs and the HR solutions available on the market.
To evaluate the best free applicant tracking software for small businesses, I compared eight software providers across 36 data points, prioritizing functionality, ease of use, and value for money. See my full methodology below.
Best Applicant Tracking Systems Compared
All the free applicant tracking software on my list offer basic candidate management and job posting tools. These systems also allow you to send candidate resumes to hiring managers for review and even come with online career pages where you can share your open roles and showcase your company culture to attract applicants.
Expert Score (out of 5) | Free Plan Limits | Paid Plans Starter Pricing | Resume Parsing | Careers Page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 3.81 | 1 active job | $189 monthly | ✓ | Branded |
 | 3.80 | 1 active job | $30 per recruiter monthly | Available in paid plans | ✓ |
 | 3.23 | ✕ | ✕ | Branded | |
Do you want to use a spreadsheet to manage applicants while you’re deciding on an ATS? Download our free applicant tracking spreadsheet. If you want to learn more about other recruiting systems, explore our guide on the best recruitment software.
Breezy HR: Best Overall Free Applicant Tracking Software
Pros
- Free plan comes with one active job and resume parsing tools
- Paid plans come with a 14-day free trial
- Easy team and candidate messaging with the mobile app
- Supports over 20 languages
Cons
- Expensive paid plans
- Live support available via chat and email (no phone support)
- Free plan doesn’t include workflows, integrations, and customization options
Overview
Who should use it:
Breezy HR is my top pick for free ATS tools because of its user-friendly, multilingual platform. Its free plan makes it easy for small companies to create an online careers page, post jobs, and parse candidate resumes.
Why I like it:
While its free plan only allows you to post one active job at a time, Breezy HR can distribute it to over 50 job boards, such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Unlike Zoho Recruit, you can use its resume parsing features and create branded career and employee referral sites for free.
It also lets you purchase add-on tools, like candidate match scores and incognito apply, which is great if you use a blind recruiting process to reduce hiring bias. Indeed doesn’t have these features, and Zoho Recruit only offers candidate match tools in its highest tier.
In my evaluation of the best free applicant tracking systems, Breezy HR earned an overall rating of 3.81 out of 5. Its ATS functionalities, easy-to-use platform, and positive user reviews have contributed to its high marks. However, the lack of phone support and the limited reporting and integration options with the free plan pulled its overall score down.
- Free trial: 14 days
- Plans
- Bootstrap: $0; includes one active job
- Startup: $189 monthly; includes unlimited active jobs
- Growth: $329 monthly; includes unlimited active jobs
- Business: $529 monthly; includes unlimited active jobs
- Pro: Call for a quote
- Money-back guarantee: None
- Add ons
- AI-powered candidate match score: Starts at $35 for a single position; Starts at $137 monthly if on a subscription basis (includes unlimited positions)
- Incognito apply: Starts at $137 monthly
- SMS/text messaging: Starts at $41 monthly; this allows you to send text messages to candidates directly from Breezy HR
- Multilingual support: Breezy HR’s multilingual support covers not only its careers pages but also resume parsing functionalities. It can recognize over 20 languages, such as Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
- HR and recruiting templates: Breezy HR is the only free ATS I reviewed that provides access to more than 800 interview questions, job descriptions for your open roles, hiring email templates and letters, onboarding checklists, and more. Best of all, all these templates are free to use.
- Branded careers page: With Breezy HR’s free plan, you get a mobile-optimized careers site that you can easily customize—zero coding knowledge required. If you already have a careers site, you can use the Breezy Widget to embed a list of Breezy job postings into your own page. You can even add “perk icons” that signify some of the special benefits that your company offers, such as sports events, gaming rooms, or meal allowances.
With Breezy HR’s careers page, you can highlight perks that your company offers, such as birthday treats and a pet-friendly workplace. (Source: Breezy HR)
Zoho Recruit: Best for Startups and Staffing Agencies
Pros
- Intuitive interface
- Free plan comes with one job posting
- Affordable paid plans with a 45-day money-back guarantee; also comes with a 15-day free trial
- Offers separate packages for corporate HR departments and staffing agencies
Cons
- Resume parsing and advanced candidate management tools only available in paid plans
- Free plan only includes email support; you have to upgrade to a paid plan for live chat support
- Has a bit of a learning curve for new users
Overview
Who should use it:
If you don’t hire often and have simple applicant tracking and recruiting needs, Zoho Recruit’s free plan provides you with the essential tools for managing candidates. What sets it apart from the others on my list is its separate packages for corporate HR teams and staffing agencies, both of which include access to Zapier integrations—allowing you to automate basic hiring tasks with Zapier’s partner apps, such as scheduling interviews via Google Calendar and sending candidate emails via Gmail.
Why I like it:
Zoho Recruit offers a comprehensive applicant tracking system to streamline the hiring process. Its free forever plan comes with one job posting and essential candidate management and interview scheduling tools, but you can easily upgrade to its paid plans if you want advanced functionalities, such as an AI candidate matching tool. I was impressed that its free plan includes Zapier integrations—a feature that Breezy HR offers in its paid plans, while Indeed doesn’t connect with Zapier as of this writing.
I also appreciate that it has separate packages for corporate HR teams and recruitment agencies. Both have similar features, although the paid plans for recruiting agencies come with a higher allocation of active job postings and online portals where your clients can view, approve, and reject candidate profiles.
In my evaluation, Zoho Recruit earned an overall rating of 3.80 out of 5. While it offers affordable paid tiers and has received many positive user reviews on review sites like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius, its free plan only has basic candidate management features. This is unlike Breezy HR, whose free tier includes resume parsing, which extracts relevant information from online resumes to create candidate profiles automatically.
Further, Zoho Recruit isn’t as user-friendly as Breezy HR—at least not for new users. When I first logged into the system to test it out, I had a difficult time figuring out what to set up first and where to go. While it has an in-app help section with video tutorials, it doesn’t include step-by-step instructions or an online wizard that guides you through the setup process.
If you decide to get this software, I recommend opening its online knowledge center in a separate tab or window. It contains a “Getting Started” section with various articles to help with the system setup.
- Free trial: 15 days
- Plans for corporate HR departments
- Free: $0; includes one active job
- Standard: $30 per recruiter monthly; includes 10 active jobs per recruiter license
- Enterprise: $60 per recruiter monthly; includes 20 active jobs per recruiter license
- Plans for staffing agencies
- Free: $0; includes one active job
- Standard: $30 per user monthly; includes 100 active jobs
- Professional: $60 per user monthly; includes 250 active jobs
- Enterprise: $90 per user monthly; includes 750 active jobs
- Money-back guarantee: 45 days
- Add ons*
- Video interviews: $12 per license monthly for staffing agency plans; $12 per job opening for corporate HR plans
- Client portal: $6 per license monthly for staffing agency plans
- Vendor portal: $6 per month for corporate HR plans; for external recruiters to submit and track candidate profiles
- Employee license: $10 per month for corporate HR plans; can be purchased as packs of 10 only; this allows employees to refer candidates and track application status
*Note that the add-ons are not available for purchase if you sign up for the free plan.
- Job posting: Zoho Recruit excels in job recruitment by posting listings on over 75 job boards. You can also customize recruiting campaigns, such as reaching out to previous applicants for new job opportunities they may be qualified for. This unique functionality is matched only by Indeed.
- Zapier integration: Even with Zoho Recruit’s free plan, you can use Zapier integrations to connect its platform with popular apps to streamline hiring tasks. For example, you can use Zapier to pair Zoho Recruit with Google Calendar to track candidate interview schedules.
The Zoho Recruit and Zapier integration allows you to access templates that trigger specific actions with partner systems to help automate hiring tasks. (Source: Zapier)
Indeed: Best for Candidate Sourcing
Pros
- Post unlimited jobs for free
- Free plan includes basic candidate management tools and a branded career site
- Integrates with over 300 ATS platforms
- Resume bank has over 240 million resumes
Cons
- Free job posts quickly fall out of search results
- Indeed Smart Sourcing, which includes candidate matching, team collaboration, and resume search features, is a paid add-on
- Lacks resume parsing tools
Overview
Who should use it:
Indeed offers free job postings that can be seen by 580 million people, which is the number of job seeker accounts with verified email addresses on Indeed’s platform. This makes it a good option for businesses with high turnover numbers that want to reach a large number of applicants.
Why I like it:
Indeed is one of the largest job posting sites on the market. You can post jobs for free or boost your open positions for a fee to make them appear more often in search results. It also has an extensive resume bank, over 240 million, which makes it highly likely for you to find employees who best fit your requirements.
Its candidate management tools allow you to message applicants throughout each stage of the hiring process, schedule interviews, and send assessments—and it automatically updates the candidate’s status on Indeed’s employer dashboard for easy tracking.
It also lets you check the competitiveness of your compensation package. Its salary tools, which is one of my top recommended salary comparison tools for small businesses, provide information about employer and employee-reported pay rates based on job titles.
Indeed earned an overall rating of 3.23 out of 5 in my evaluation because it is easy to use and navigate, offers live phone support, and received a lot of positive reviews from G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius. It scored the lowest in applicant tracking features because many of its tools are paid add-ons and it lacks resume parsing functionalities. If you don’t want to scan online resumes to find qualified candidates manually, I recommend Breezy HR. Its free ATS can parse resumes for you.
- Free trial: None
- Free plan: $0; includes unlimited job postings
- Money-back guarantee: None
- Add ons
- Sponsored jobs: Starts at $5 daily or $150 monthly for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising fee to boost job postings
- Indeed Smart Sourcing module: $120 or $400 monthly to instantly match and connect with 30 or 100 candidates, respectively
- Careers page and employer branding: Your free Indeed careers page informs job seekers what it’s like to work for your company. You can add photos, and employees can leave reviews about your company. While Breezy HR offers a branded careers page with its free plan, Indeed has a broader reach and is a more popular job posting site—perfect for promoting your employer brand.
- ATS integrations: Only Indeed works with over 300 third-party platforms such as Applicant Pro, Greenhouse, Hirebridge, JazzHR, TalentReef, and Workable. It even connects with Zoho Recruit and Breezy HR. If you use any of these platforms, you can sync relevant job posting data and candidate information from Indeed into your ATS. This saves you time from going back and forth between two systems, making it easy for you to manage applicants.
- Candidate messaging: Unlike Breezy HR and Zoho Recruit, you get free candidate messaging tools with Indeed. You can do this through the Messages tab on Indeed’s employer dashboard or by clicking the candidate’s name and opening the Candidate Detail Page. You can even create message templates or use its AI tool to generate or edit messages based on the candidate’s resume and your open position’s job description.
With Indeed, you can create message templates with data fields that automatically update depending on the candidate’s name and your job posting details. (Source: Indeed)
Want to learn more about Indeed’s features? Check out our guide on how to post a job on Indeed.
Limitations of Free Applicant Tracking Systems
While some software providers offer free access to their ATS tools, you only get basic features like applicant profiles, web forms, search and filter tools, and the capability to submit profiles or resumes to hiring managers. It typically has limitations on the number of job listings, users, and the amount of data storage.
However, if your hiring process is simple, a free ATS software may be right for you. It’s also an ideal option for those who only recruit a few candidates in a year.
When to Consider Paid ATS
A paid ATS is a better option if you need to find candidates for several open roles, have complex hiring stages, or your business belongs in an industry with strict hiring requirements, such as the healthcare and technology industries. Unlike free ATS, paid applicant tracking systems offer workflow automation, advanced resume management and candidate sourcing features, customization options, in-depth reporting, and integrations with third-party systems.
Methodology: How I Evaluated the Best Applicant Tracking Systems
Evaluation Criteria
To evaluate the best applicant tracking system for small businesses, a collaborative assessment was made using a new rubric containing several criteria that looked at the software’s features, pricing, ease of use, customer support options, and user reviews. Irene Casucian, one of Fit Small Business’s expert research analysts, objectively scored the rubric. From there, I added my expert rating to each criterion, where I considered the effectiveness of that area or feature.
Together with Irene Casucian, we evaluated seven solutions. These are:
- Zoho Recruit
- Loxo
- Indeed
- Jobsoid
- Breezy HR
- TalentHR
- monday.com Work Management
Then, I compared each software, and while I wasn’t able to test all of these, I looked for key ATS features to help streamline applicant tracking and basic hiring processes. I also checked video tutorials if available and user reviews for feedback about the system’s overall ease of use and functionality. Of the seven solutions on our list, I narrowed it down to the three best free ATS.
To view the full evaluation criteria, click through the tabs in the box below.
10% of Overall Score
Because users have real-world experience with each platform, they played a significant role in narrowing down my list of solutions to compare. For this criterion, we checked the user reviews from third-party software review sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius.
25% of Overall Score
15% of Overall Score
We looked at the support options available, such as the support hours and if customer representatives can be reached via phone, email, or chat. We also checked the types of help resources offered, such as how-to guides and a community forum.
20% of Overall Score
In this criterion, we considered the platform’s data security features, permission controls, mobile app functionality, software integrations, and general ease of use.
30% of Overall Score
We looked for key features, such as resume parsing, search and filter tools, candidate profiles, hiring notes, recruiting guides, and basic reports. We also checked whether or not these features are available across all plans or only in paid tiers.
Meet the Experts
The following HR and research experts contributed to this article:
 | Robie Ann Ferrer is an HR expert writer at Fit Small Business, focusing on small business HR and payroll software content. Her 10 years of experience handling different facets of HR and five years of experience reviewing HR systems allow her to provide insights and ATS software recommendations to help small businesses find their next great hire. |
 | Irene Casucian is a research analyst for Fit Small Business. With sufficient experience as an HR writer, she has developed a profound understanding of various business needs that inform her research and analysis of HR platforms. Irene specializes in HR software evaluation and draws on her experience as a research assistant to provide in-depth assessments. Irene conducts objective research by gathering data to evaluate HR software performance across various HR functions, such as payroll, ATS, and onboarding, using carefully defined criteria to assess each platform’s effectiveness. |
 | Jessica Dennis is the HR lead writer at TechnologyAdvice and also lends her expertise reviewing content for Fit Small Business. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Michigan and over six years of experience in onboarding, payroll, benefits, compliance, and workforce management as an HR generalist. Since joining TA, she’s covered additional topics like DEI, engagement, training, communication, hiring, and performance management best practices. Her expertise, in-depth research, and hands-on experience with HR software ensure she provides the best people operations and technology insights to readers. When she’s not writing, you can find her obsessing over her labrador retriever, crocheting, or jumping into the nearest body of water. |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Free ATS Tools
If you have a limited recruiting budget, a simple hiring process, and only hire occasionally, then using a free ATS is recommended. However, it isn’t suitable for everyone because free applicant tracking systems have feature limitations.
ATSes come with varying features—so the best one for your business depends on your needs. If you’re looking for a free ATS, I found that Breezy HR has the basic tools you need to manage resumes, store candidate profiles, streamline job posting, and create a branded careers page.
While you can’t expect to get the same features of paid software, the best free ATS should at least let you:
- Sort applications
- Parse resumes
- Collaborate with other hiring members
- Communicate with candidates
- Import or export resumes
- Create basic hiring reports