Ashby vs Greenhouse: Hiring Platform Choice 2026

Key Takeaways

• Ashby’s pricing page displayed a Foundations total of $400 per month for companies up to 100 employees, plus a 10% discount for an annual commitment, while Plus and Enterprise stay quote-based.

• Greenhouse sells Core, Plus, and Pro entirely by quote. Texting, sourcing automation, fraud detection, and the business-intelligence connector start on Plus. The audit log and the developer sandbox are on Pro.

• Foundations includes 1,000 outbound candidate texts a month. Plus includes 2,000 per seat per year, which is a lower monthly pace for a single seat once you divide by 12.

• Extra Ashby texts are $90 per 1,000 and are sold in batches. Foundations also prints SSO at $100 per month, one offer template, and one candidate survey.

• Greenhouse’s March 25, 2026 newsroom post says the company helps more than 7,500 companies and that G2 named it number one in 57 Spring 2026 reports. That is a scale claim, not a price.

• The applicant tracking system still ends before finance signs the offer. Requisition approval and the offer handoff need a named reviewer even after you pick a vendor.

Start with the decision, then the two companies

An applicant tracking system is the shared record of open jobs, candidates, interviews, and offers. TL;DR: under 100 employees, Ashby is the vendor that puts a dollar total on the page, and Greenhouse is the vendor that sells structured kits, scorecards, and governance by quote across Core, Plus, and Pro.

Both products are still sold under these names. Nothing we opened describes a merger that retired either brand, or a shutdown. Ashby is the San Francisco recruiting platform whose public pricing page packages an applicant tracking system, sourcing, scheduling, offers, and reporting as All-In-One Foundations, Plus, and Enterprise, and also sells Ashby Analytics on top of an existing system for companies with 100 or more employees. Greenhouse Software is the New York hiring platform whose public pricing page, checked in this research, names three current plans: Core, Plus, and Pro. Older write-ups sometimes use earlier tier labels. The live page we opened uses Core, Plus, and Pro, and every plan card leads to a sales conversation rather than a checkout price.

The category choice for a head of talent at a fast-growing company is narrow. You are close to signing. You need to know whether a dollar figure exists at your headcount, whether every interviewer will use the same kit, whether texting and fraud checks are on the plan you will actually buy, and whether audit history and a test environment show up before you are a large enterprise. You also need to know who owns the product you will renew in two years. Wikipedia records Greenhouse as founded in 2012 by Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, with Daniel Chait as chief executive, and reports that in January 2021 TPG invested $47 million at a valuation of $820 million and spent $450 million buying shares, and the same article says Greenhouse sells annual licenses and in 2025 announced Real Talent to filter fake or AI-generated applications with a CLEAR identity check, TPG valuation reported: $820 million according to Wikipedia (2021).

Ashby’s Y Combinator profile lists a 2018 founding, the Winter 2019 batch, San Francisco, and founders Benjamin Encz and Abhik Pramanik, along with YC profile team size: 110 people according to Y Combinator (2026). A July 22, 2025 item on that same profile points to a funding story. Crunchbase News reported that Ashby told them the customer base had moved from about 1,300 to more than 2,700, that annual recurring revenue rose 135%, and that the company had 220 employees in more than 21 countries, in the same account as Series D reported: $50 million according to Crunchbase News (2025). Those two headcount figures disagree. One is the profile we opened on October 10, 2026. The other is what the company told a reporter in 2025. Treat them as two dated statements, not as one current census.

Who this is for

This comparison is for an in-house head of talent, and the recruiting operations lead beside them, at a company that has outgrown a shared inbox and is choosing the system interviewers, coordinators, and hiring managers will live in. It is also for the finance partner who has to compare a printed monthly total with a quote that will not arrive until after a sales call. You should use it when the shortlist is already these two products and the open questions are price visibility, plan gates, messaging caps, and what happens to the offer after the recruiter is done.

Red flags: you need a dollar figure for a company above 100 employees before any sales conversation, because Ashby’s Plus and Enterprise plans and every Greenhouse plan are quote-based. You need payroll, benefits administration, and the core employee record in this same product, which neither pricing page sells as a full human-resources suite. You need a free self-serve trial that you can start from the pricing page without a sales form, which neither page we opened displayed.

A recruiting agency running many clients inside one login should read the agency row on Ashby with care and should ask Greenhouse how multi-brand boards and permissions are quoted. A single-desk founder hiring one role a year will feel the weight of either implementation. The pages we opened are built for companies that hire often enough to care about kits, approvals, and reporting.

How we evaluated these platforms

We scored the decision a head of talent actually makes, using only items we could point at on a page opened for this article. Price visibility carries 20% because this reader is close to a signature and one vendor prints a total while the other does not. Structured interviews carry 20% because hiring managers, not the recruiter, decide quality, and a kit with a scorecard is how you keep those managers on the same rubric. Scheduling without a required add-on carries 15% because coordinators lose days to calendar chase. Sourcing and messaging limits carry 15% because the overage, not the logo, moves the bill. Governance carries 15% because an audit log, a sandbox, and sign-on control matter as soon as more than one team hires. Reporting and the offer handoff carry 15% because the funnel still has to reach finance. The weights add to 100%. They are our judgment of what this buyer feels. They are not a vendor ranking and they are not a satisfaction score.

A pass on price visibility means we could read one public dollar figure for the entry plan. A pass on structured hiring means the entry plan lists kits or interview plans, scorecards or feedback, and approvals. A pass on scheduling means self-scheduling and scheduling links are on the entry plan, or the vendor clearly marks the advanced behaviors as a paid add-on so you can budget them. A pass on sourcing means we could see whether texting and outreach automation sit on the entry plan and what the cap is. A pass on governance means we could see SSO, an audit trail, and a non-production environment, including when they are held to a higher plan. A pass on the handoff means offer templates or e-signature are described and job or offer approval is listed. Meeting the minimum checks means the fact is public. It does not mean the product will fit your process.

Published prices and the quote wall

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. On the Ashby page we opened, the Foundations plan is described for companies up to 100 employees, the company-size selector lists bands from 1–10 through 76–100, and the total on the page was Foundations price shown: $400 per month according to Ashby (2026), with a 10% discount for annual commitments and a note that emerging-market pricing is available. The same page says Plus is for 101 to 1,000 employees and that Plus pricing is based on company size, usage, and commitment. Enterprise is for 1,000 or more employees and is described as a predictable pricing model. Neither Plus nor Enterprise printed a dollar total. Ashby Analytics, for an existing applicant tracking system at 100 or more employees, says pricing is based on usage. We are not filling in band-by-band dollar amounts. The view we received showed one Foundations total, not a separate price under each headcount band. Quote-based is the right label wherever a dollar was absent.

Greenhouse’s pricing page lists Core, Plus, and Pro and states that the cost depends on the plan, hiring volume, organizational complexity, and the features required. The comparison grid on that page shows Core CRM allowance: 1 event according to Greenhouse (2026). No Core, Plus, or Pro card printed a dollar price. Quote-based is the only honest label for all three. Greenhouse’s March 25, 2026 newsroom post says the company helps more than 7,500 companies and that it placed in the top three of 91 Spring 2026 reports, including Number-one Spring reports: 57 according to Greenhouse (2026). Read that as the vendor’s account of review-site awards. It does not tell you what your order form will say.

Our reading of that table is commercial, not technical. If your company is still under 100 employees and the board wants a number before anyone books a sales conversation, Ashby is the only one of the two that put a total on the page we opened. If you are past that headcount, both vendors move you to a quote, and you should compare the quotes on the same headcount, the same messaging volume, and the same list of add-ons. Do not subtract a third-party “typical contract” from the $400 figure. Those outside medians are not on either vendor’s pricing page, so they are not in this guide. Wikipedia’s note that Greenhouse sells annual licenses also means you should ask whether a Greenhouse quote is a yearly amount while the Ashby total we saw is monthly. Put both in the same unit before you tell finance which one is smaller.

Limits that change the bill

The same Ashby pricing grid sets Foundations candidate texting at 1,000 outbound messages a month, Plus at 2,000 messages per seat per year, and Enterprise at 3,000 messages per seat per year. Additional messages are purchased in batches at Extra text batch: $90 per 1,000 according to Ashby (2026). That grid also lists included AI credits of 1,500 a month on Foundations, 2,500 per seat per year on Plus, and 12,500 per seat per year on Enterprise, prints SSO at $100 per month in the Foundations column, limits Foundations to 1 offer template and 1 candidate-experience survey, prints up to 5 brands and custom permission roles limited to 3 on Plus, and prints those brand and role rows as unlimited on Enterprise. The Plus and Enterprise cells on the SSO row did not print a dollar amount, so we do not describe SSO as free there. The AI-credit line says the credits power AI-assisted application review, candidate fraud detection, and AI talent rediscovery. AI Notetaker is listed as its own add-on, separate from that credit line.

Dividing the Plus text allowance by 12 is our arithmetic on the published cap, not a second price. Two thousand messages per seat per year is about 167 messages a month if you spread them evenly. A single Plus seat therefore has a lower monthly text pace than Foundations, which includes 1,000 in the month. The unit also changes on AI credits, from a monthly pool on Foundations to a per-seat yearly pool above it. A team that texts candidates every week, or that runs AI review on every application, should model the cap before it celebrates a higher plan name. Greenhouse does not print a text-message price. Its grid shows texting absent on Core and present on Plus and Pro, so the cost of texting is inside the quote rather than a batch fee you can multiply.

Greenhouse plan gates are easier to see as included or absent. In the table below, 1 means the pricing grid showed the control on that plan, and 0 means the grid showed it absent. The Pro card also says CRM events are unlimited, which is why that one cell is a word rather than a count.

Where the products split

Read the matrix as published packaging. Where a cell gives a number, that number is from the pricing page cited above. Where a cell says a feature is listed, we could see the row and could not see a plan-by-plan cap in the cells the page returned.

Our analysis of that split is about operating shape. Greenhouse puts the structured-hiring kit, scorecards, scheduling links, candidate self-scheduling, job and offer approvals, SSO, and AI Notetaker on Core, then holds the automation that changes daily recruiter work for a higher plan. Texting, email automation, contact lookups, talent discovery, auto-reject, auto-advance, AI report filters, the business-intelligence connector, fraud detection, and CLEAR identity checks wait until Plus. Resume anonymization, application limits, the audit log, and the developer sandbox wait until Pro. A team that wants “Greenhouse” in the abstract and then discovers that texting and fraud checks are a plan above the entry quote will feel that in the first month of sourcing.

Ashby’s shape is a wide product on Foundations with hard caps and paid add-ons. Offers and e-signature are listed as unlimited even on Foundations, while templates stop at one. Several scheduling behaviors that matter once you have a trained interviewer pool, including the auto-scheduler, calendar holds, and automatic replacement of a declined interviewer, are marked as the Advanced Scheduling add-on on the Plus column. The add-on block on the page also lists Advanced Scheduling and AI Notetaker as optional. A coordinator team that assumes auto-scheduling is inside the $400 total should confirm the add-on quote before the business case is locked. The marketplace row says 250 or more integrations. We did not treat that as a quality score. A larger catalog helps only if the two or three tools you already pay for are in it.

Sourcing is the other split. Ashby’s grid includes multi-touch sequences, a hosted job board, referrals, and texting with a counted cap. Greenhouse includes prospect pools, a prospecting browser plugin, and one CRM event from Core, then moves email automation and texting to Plus. If your sourcers live in LinkedIn and you need that activity written back to the system of record, read the separate note on connecting Greenhouse to LinkedIn recruiting steps and then ask each vendor which events your plan will actually emit. A CRM event cap of one on the Greenhouse grid is a sourcing design choice. Confirm what “one event” allows you to run before you assume a full nurture program is inside Core.

One month of texts on the published Ashby rate

Take a company that stays inside the Foundations band and, in one heavy month, sends 2,500 candidate texts. Twelve times the $400 monthly total on the pricing page is $4,800 for the year. The published 10% annual-commitment discount removes $480 and leaves $4,320. Foundations includes 1,000 outbound messages in that heavy month, so 1,500 of the 2,500 are extra. The pricing row says additional messages are purchased in batches, so those 1,500 extra messages take two batches at $90 per 1,000, which is $180 on top of that month. If a sourcer also opens those people on a job through application.create, Ashby’s API reference says that call considers a candidate for a job and requires the candidatesWrite permission, and a coordinator still reviews the new application before anyone advances it. This paragraph is illustrative arithmetic on published rates and on a documented endpoint. It is not a customer we observed and it is not a savings claim.

The same month on Greenhouse cannot be priced from public pages. You can still count the work. Two thousand five hundred texts are a Plus or Pro conversation, because Core’s grid leaves texting off. The $180 batch fee has no Greenhouse twin to subtract. Ask the Greenhouse quote to state whether texting is inside the annual license Wikipedia describes, or a measured add-on, and put that answer next to $4,320 plus the months when you will exceed 1,000 texts. If you expect three heavy months, three times $180 is $540 of batch fees on top of the discounted Foundations year, before any SSO line. Foundations SSO at $100 per month is $1,200 over twelve months if you keep it all year. Adding that published SSO line to the discounted platform total is $4,320 plus $1,200, or $5,520, before text batches. That stack is still only the figures the Ashby page printed. It is not a prediction of your Greenhouse quote.

What each vendor is built to carry

Ashby fits a talent team that wants the applicant tracking system, the sourcing workspace, scheduling, offers, and reporting discussed as one product, and that can live inside the Foundations caps or is ready to request a Plus quote the day headcount crosses 100. The best-fit signals on the page are the printed entry total, unlimited e-signature even on Foundations, approval workflows, referrals, and a reporting section with job dashboards and core dashboards. The limits that bite first are the single offer template, the single candidate survey, the 1,000-text month, the $100 SSO line, AI credits that are a monthly pool of 1,500, and advanced scheduling marked as an add-on. Implementation cost is not a printed dollar on the plan cards. The page has a frequently asked question about implementation charges and another about importing from a current system or a spreadsheet. Ask both, in writing, and ask how long historical candidates and scorecards take to move. The primary evidence is the pricing grid and the public API reference for application.create, which is the call that considers an existing candidate for a job and is separate from the job-board submit endpoint.

Choose Ashby when interviewers will tolerate a newer system in exchange for one login, when you want the price conversation to start from a page rather than a form, and when your headcount will remain under 100 for the contract you are signing now. Ask for the Plus quote early if hiring plans will carry you past that line inside the year. The Y Combinator team-size figure and the later report of 220 employees describe Ashby the company, not the number of seats you must buy. Foundations is packaged by company size, not by a recruiter-seat count printed on the entry card.

Greenhouse fits a talent team that wants every interviewer on a kit and a scorecard from the first plan, wants SSO on that first plan, and is willing to wait for a quote. Core is the structured-hiring plan: sourcing and CRM with the one-event allowance, kits, scorecards, AI Notetaker, scheduling, reporting, SSO, and Real Talent matching. Plus is the operating plan for a company adding teams or brands: texting, sourcing automation, fraud and spam detection, CLEAR identity checks, AI report filters, and the business-intelligence connector. Pro is the governance plan: unlimited CRM events, enterprise data controls, the audit log, and a developer sandbox. The pricing page also describes the product path as running through onboarding, which is the handoff Ashby’s pricing grid does not list. Limitations are the missing public price, the features held above Core, and a sales cycle before you can compare a number with the $400 total. Implementation length is not printed. Ask who configures kits, how scorecard history migrates, and whether onboarding is in the same order form as Core. Primary evidence is the pricing grid we opened and the March 25, 2026 newsroom post for the company’s own scale claims.

Choose Greenhouse when the hiring-manager experience is the thing you are standardizing, when you already know you need audit history and a sandbox and you are prepared to buy Pro, or when onboarding has to sit next to the applicant tracking system in the vendor’s own description. If you are shopping because a current Greenhouse renewal feels heavy, read Greenhouse alternatives for recruiting firms and the separate Greenhouse compared with Lever before you treat Ashby as the only other door. Those pieces cover neighboring choices. They do not change the prices in the table above.

A useful disqualifier sits between them. If you want Ashby’s printed price and Greenhouse’s Pro audit log and sandbox on one entry contract, neither vendor offers that bundle on the pages we opened. If you want Greenhouse’s included Core SSO and Ashby’s 1,000 included texts on the cheapest public card, you are describing a mix, not a plan. Pick the constraint you will not bend. For many fast-growing companies the constraint is either “finance must see a number this week” or “every hiring manager must submit the same scorecard, and security wants a sandbox.” The first points at Foundations while you are under 100 employees. The second points at a Greenhouse quote, often Plus or Pro once texting, fraud checks, or the audit log enter the requirements list.

The approval gap after the ATS says yes

Neither pricing page completes the path from a hired candidate to a clean requisition and a signed offer that finance can audit. Greenhouse lists job and offer approvals on every plan. Ashby lists approval workflows, Slack and mobile approvals, and, on the enterprise side of the grid, an offer-approval API. Those features matter. They still assume the right people are users inside the product, and they still leave a gap when the approver lives in finance, when the requisition started in a planning sheet, or when a sourced person must be attached to a job only after a coordinator checks the match. The practical write-up of that Greenhouse gap is in why recruiting teams add a requisition approval path around Greenhouse, and a channel-specific version is in a Greenhouse and Slack approval recipe.

A proposed US Tech Automations workflow for the Ashby side starts when a recruiter marks a sourced person as ready for one job. The action calls application.create with the candidate id and the job id only after a coordinator has confirmed both. The prerequisite is an API credential with candidatesWrite. The output is an application the API can read back, and the docs’ example success payload shows an active application with a current interview stage. A person reviews that stage before any advance, any email, or any interview invite. This is a configurable design with a human review point. It is not a live deployment and it has no measured outcome.

On the Greenhouse side, a proposed workflow starts when an offer reaches the job and offer approval step that Core, Plus, and Pro all list. US Tech Automations can be configured to post the offer summary to the approver’s channel and wait. The output is an approve or send-back note stored with the approver’s name. The offer is not treated as accepted until that person acts. Prerequisites are a Greenhouse user who is allowed to see offers, a test in a non-production place, and, if the requisition id must travel on the job, the API-only job custom fields that the grid places on Plus and Pro. Pro is the plan that lists the developer sandbox. Finance or the hiring manager reviews compensation before approval. Again, this is a proposed configuration, not a customer story.

Zapier, Make, and n8n can carry the same shape. Configured with care, they can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence of each run. The buyer still owns observability, idempotency so a retried create does not open a second application for the same person and job, escalation when an approver goes silent, access control on the API key, and maintenance when a field changes. A proposed US Tech Automations design can place the Ashby create call and the Greenhouse approval wait on one reviewed path, with a hold state when the API returns an error and a named person who clears that hold. The prerequisites are the same credentials, a written duplicate rule, and a reviewer with authority to stop the offer. That is a different division of ownership. It is not a promise that the path already runs in your account.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: stay inside Greenhouse when job and offer approvals already match how the company hires and every approver already works in that product. Stay inside Ashby when the Foundations caps cover your volume and the native approval chain, the single offer template, and the built-in sequences are enough. Keep the steps inside the vendor when security will not allow a write-capable API key to leave that vendor. In those three cases an outside workflow adds a second log and another renewal, and the simpler tool is the one you already pay for.

Common mistakes before you sign

• Comparing a monthly Foundations total with an annual Greenhouse quote without converting both to the same twelve-month view. Twelve times $400 is $4,800 before the 10% discount, and the discount math has to be written down or the comparison is noise.

• Assuming a higher Ashby plan means more texts every month. Plus is 2,000 per seat per year. Divided by 12, that is about 167 messages a month for one seat, against 1,000 in a Foundations month.

• Assuming Greenhouse Core includes texting, fraud detection, auto-reject, and the business-intelligence connector. The grid places those on Plus. The audit log and the sandbox sit on Pro.

• Treating the Foundations SSO cell as included at no charge. The cell we read says $100 per month. Over a year that is $1,200 if you keep it.

• Importing a median contract from a review blog and calling it the Greenhouse price. If it is not on Greenhouse’s pricing page, it is not the price.

• Buying Ashby Analytics beside a full Greenhouse subscription without asking whether you now pay for two reporting layers and two admin models.

• Letting a sourcer’s personal sequence tool remain the system of record. If the hire has to be explained later, the event has to land on the application, with a person still accountable for the stage move.

Glossary

• Applicant tracking system: the record of jobs, candidates, interviews, feedback, and offers that recruiters and hiring managers share.

• Foundations: Ashby’s entry All-In-One plan, described for companies up to 100 employees, with the $400 monthly total we saw on the pricing page.

• Quote-based: the vendor will not show a dollar price on the public plan card. Greenhouse Core, Plus, and Pro, and Ashby Plus, Enterprise, and Analytics, are in this group.

• CRM event: a Greenhouse sourcing allowance. The grid checks a one-event row on all three plans, and the Pro card says events are unlimited.

• Scorecard: the structured feedback form tied to an interview kit so hiring managers rate the same attributes.

• AI credit: Ashby’s metered unit for AI-assisted review, fraud detection, and talent rediscovery. The pool is 1,500 a month on Foundations and a per-seat yearly amount above that.

• Sandbox: a non-production place to test changes. Greenhouse prints the developer sandbox on Pro. Ashby lists a sandbox row.

• Requisition: the approved opening that finance and the hiring manager agreed to fill. The applicant tracking system stores it only if your approval path actually writes it there.

Questions heads of talent still ask

Does Greenhouse publish a dollar price?

No. Greenhouse says the price is customized from the plan you choose, your hiring volume, your organizational complexity, and the features you need, and the Core, Plus, and Pro cards we opened did not show a dollar amount. Budget a sales cycle, and ask the quote to separate the annual license, texting, onboarding, premium support, and any implementation help. Until that page arrives, the honest label is quote-based.

What monthly figure does Ashby display for Foundations?

The pricing page displayed $400 per month for the Foundations plan, which is described for companies up to 100 employees, and it also printed a 10% discount for an annual commitment. The page includes a company-size selector. This guide uses the one total that view showed and does not invent a different dollar amount for each band. Plus, for 101 to 1,000 employees, and Enterprise, for 1,000 or more, did not show a price.

Which Greenhouse plan includes candidate texting?

Plus and Pro include texting. Core does not. Email automation, contact lookups, talent discovery, auto-reject, auto-advance, fraud detection, and the business-intelligence connector follow that same step up from Core to Plus. If texting is how your coordinators reach candidates, price Plus, not Core, or you will compare the wrong quote with Ashby’s batch fee of $90 per 1,000 messages.

Can we buy Ashby reporting and keep our current system?

Yes. Ashby Analytics is listed as a separate offer for companies with 100 or more employees that want advanced reporting on an existing applicant tracking system, and the page says that price is based on usage. That can matter if you are staying on Greenhouse for kits and scorecards and you still want another reporting layer. Get the usage quote in writing, and decide who administers two products before you add a second login for every hiring manager.

Did either product get renamed, acquired into oblivion, or shut down?

No. Both still sell under the names on this page. Greenhouse’s live pricing page names Core, Plus, and Pro. Ashby’s live pricing page names Foundations, Plus, Enterprise, and Analytics. Wikipedia’s account of the January 2021 TPG transaction is a change of majority ownership at Greenhouse, reported at an $820 million valuation, not a product shutdown. Ashby’s 2025 funding story is a Series D of $50 million, not a sale of the product to someone else.

What should we ask in the first security review?

Ask where SSO sits and what it costs, where the audit log sits, and where a sandbox sits. On the pages we opened, Greenhouse includes SSO from Core and holds the audit log and the developer sandbox for Pro. Ashby prints SSO at $100 per month on Foundations and lists a user audit log and a sandbox row without a dollar amount in the cells we could read. Ask which API permission a write call such as application.create requires, and who can create that key. A badge image on a footer is not a control you can hand to an auditor by itself.

After the signature

The vendor choice answers where candidates and scorecards live. It does not, by itself, answer how a requisition becomes an offer that finance will recognize. Foundations at the $400 monthly total, or a Greenhouse quote on Core, Plus, or Pro, still needs a named person to confirm the candidate-to-job match and a named person to approve compensation. see how US Tech Automations configures this after the API credential, the duplicate rule, and the reviewer are written down. Until those three exist, keep the approval inside the product you already trust, and do not add another system to watch.