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Greenhouse vs SmartRecruiters comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Greenhouse
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of Greenhouse is 2.7%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 3.3%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SmartRecruiters3.3%
Greenhouse2.7%
Other94.0%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

CD
Recruiter at Emerge
An affordable and easy-to-use product that is really intuitive and is one of the most stable applicant tracking systems
The product is easy to use. It's really intuitive. The things are laid out well. The search function seems to be better than other products. When I search for a name, some of the applicant tracking systems struggle to find the name, and I have to keep spelling out the entire name. Greenhouse has a better search function than other products and finds candidates quicker. I haven’t had issues with bugs. I have noticed other products freezing up or acting weird for some reason. However, Greenhouse is a solid solution. It has a really nice layout that tells us about upcoming events.
Anudeep Kamuni - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Lead - TA ops & Analytics | Strategy Growth & Leadership at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees
Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability
There are a couple of areas of improvement. SmartRecruiter lacks certain features in terms of usability. For instance, we cannot move candidate profiles, interview feedback, notes, and activities related to one candidate when transitioning from one job to another. We have to manually copy and paste everything for that specific candidate. This is a significant drawback. Additionally, the filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager. This level of inaccuracy is unexpected for an application, especially for smaller organizations. It should have been corrected easily. Moreover, the CRM module lacks video reporting capabilities. These are some the biggest improvement I would like to see.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Greenhouse has a better search function than other products and finds candidates quicker."
"I think the ease of use is one of the most valuable features."
"It provides very good flexibility to create filters. Therefore, I can look at candidates' progress across different stages. I can also follow candidates to get updates about where they are in the cycle."
"It provides very good flexibility to create filters, so I can look at candidates' progress across different stages and follow candidates to get updates about where they are in the cycle."
"The solution is pretty solid and stable, and I have had more issues with other ATSs than I ever did with Greenhouse."
"SmartRecruiters is much more user-friendly; it's much easier for both candidates and recruiters."
"What I really like about it is that it feels minimal, but is also dynamic. There aren't a lot of ways to get lost, which is good."
"It was very good to see how the platform works and how easy it became for us to see our data and to analyze the information received."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."
"If you're a pretty massive company, this is the one that you would want to look into because it has so much functionality built in."
"Job publishing and application tracking are the most valuable features. You can keep the flow of a candidate's application into one system. The whole collaboration can also be done within the system, which means that you can schedule interviews and add your feedback and ratings there. You can also communicate with the candidates. The analytics part of it is also very valuable. It is a useful feature that we use quite a lot. We don't really use other features such as recruitment marketing or CRM candidate relationship management in SmartRecruiters."
"It is a reliable system, and you can use it for the full cycle of recruitment, easily configuring and adapting it to your processes while everything is tracked in one place."
"Once we implemented SmartRecruiters, it meant that we were able to have a consolidated global overview of all the recruitment activities."
 

Cons

"There are dashboards that I can see, but for pending things that I have to look at, it should provide alerts."
"Probably the biggest issue with Greenhouse is that the scheduling portion isn't very strong or smart."
"There are dashboards that I can see, but for pending things that I have to look at, it should provide alerts. For example, if there are 10 new people who are added to the job that I'm involved with, it should provide me with a chart or notification so that I am prompted to look at it. Currently, I have to go and look at the dashboard. There should be a little bit of intelligence to prompt action."
"The biggest thing for me was that Greenhouse sucked a lot of time when we were trying to schedule, whereas Lever made it very fast and easy."
"If we have to schedule multiple interviews in Greenhouse, we will have to schedule them individually."
"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."
"One thing that has been a bit of a struggle is getting tech support. It is a little more difficult to get support from SmartRecruiters. They want you to have your own in-house person to help you with any issues, whereas with both Lever and Greenhouse, you can just click a button at the bottom of the screen and chat with someone almost instantly."
"There were problems with integrations around other systems and each one had to be custom-built, which took a little while to get set up and running."
"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems; that's where we've had some sort of pain points."
"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems. That's where we've had some sort of pain points. They've done a lot of work with their development team in setting up integrations with other types of software like SuccessFactors, which we use, but we have found some glitches there. This is probably where they need to do some work. Sometimes, when it refreshes or there is any sort of update in SmartRecruiters, it has a direct impact on the integrations that we have with other tools. We are not always notified when that takes place. We have had HR say to us, "We've just hired this guy. He is not there in our end board at all. What's going on?" That's when we realized that the integration is actually broken. When we have other solutions like SuccessFactors, it would be very helpful to have knowledge articles for such integrations. We have found some of the templates that we want to use and some of the customizations that we do around the offer letters and the contract letters to be a little bit more difficult, which hasn't made this process any more efficient than it was. We still have to do a bit of manual intervention there. I don't know if it is just our company, but we need to have different clauses and things in place. We have stopped using DocuSign as well, and we are trying to look at other ways of doing that. They are aware of this."
"We ran into some serious issues related to language barriers."
"The filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager."
"Around 2015 and into '17, I worked at a federal contractor. I had to switch to a different applicant system as I didn't know if SmartRecruiters was OFCCP compliant, which is something that, as a US-based federal contractor, you have to ensure. They should work to appeal to the contractor industry and get the product OFCCP compliant."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is pretty affordable for startups and medium-level companies."
"The one thing I didn't like, and what caused me to move from Greenhouse, was that they wanted to bump us up almost 20% over what the previous cost was."
"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."
"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."
"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."
"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."
"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."
"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."
"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
20%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Non Profit
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zenefits, Pinerest, Airbnb Inc., BrightRoll, Vimeo LLC, Evernote
Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Find out what your peers are saying about Greenhouse vs. SmartRecruiters and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.