Braintrust AIR vs HireVue Pricing and AI Interviews

Short answer: neither Braintrust AIR nor HireVue publishes a price. Braintrust says AIR is priced on the number of interviews conducted, with the rate per interview falling as volume grows, and offers scoped pilots. HireVue quotes every buyer after a demo, and the only figure it ever printed, a $35,000 starting price, was taken down in 2024. AIR is a conversational voice interviewer. HireVue is a broader video interviewing and assessment suite.

Talent teams put these two on the same shortlist because both promise to replace the first-round phone screen with AI. They do it in different ways, they charge in different units, and they leave different gaps. Everything below comes from usebraintrust.com and hirevue.com, and where a figure comes from a third party the text says so.

Braintrust AIR vs HireVue at a glance

Question	Braintrust AIR	HireVue
Price on the vendor's site	None. Volume-based, no public per-interview rate	None. Demo and an ROI calculator
Unit you pay for	Interviews conducted, cheaper per interview at higher volume	Not published. Quoted per contract
Only figure the vendor ever printed	None	"Starts at $35K" a year, removed by August 2024
Trial or pilot	Scoped pilots, live within days for most roles	No trial offered
Interview format	Conversational voice interview with adaptive follow-up questions	Recorded and live video interviews, AI Interviewer, assessments
Languages	Interviews in 16+ languages	Customer support in 20+ languages
Named ATS integrations	Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, iCIMS, SmartRecruiters	"All leading ATS systems", none named on the pricing page
Security claims	SOC 2 Type II	SOC 2 Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR, FedRAMP

How much do Braintrust AIR and HireVue cost?

Braintrust AIR is the more transparent of the two about how it charges, though not about how much. Its pricing page says AIR is priced on interviews conducted, that the rate per interview decreases as volume grows, and that Braintrust does not publish a per-interview sticker price. The same page sells two other products with their own models: a talent marketplace with no platform fee for talent and a Nexus automation service priced at 25 percent of measured savings. Neither of those is AIR, so keep them out of the comparison. One directory listing shows a $10 starting figure with no unit that makes sense for interviews, so ignore it.

HireVue publishes no rate, no tier table and no per-candidate figure. Its pricing page offers a demo, training, ATS integration and an ROI calculator. Archived copies show it printed "Starts at $35K" for companies of 2,500 to 7,500 employees from 2022 to early 2024, and Vendr procurement data puts the average contract near $49,855 a year from a small sample. Our HireVue pricing breakdown traces each figure to its source.

HireVue contract	100 hires a year	250 hires a year	500 hires a year
$35,000 (historical floor)	$350 per hire	$140 per hire	$70 per hire
$49,855 (Vendr average)	$499 per hire	$199 per hire	$100 per hire

There is no matching row for AIR, because the price depends on interview count and Braintrust keeps the rate private. What you can compare is the shape of the bill. HireVue is a platform contract that costs roughly the same whether you interview 2,000 people or 4,000. AIR grows with every interview, so the number of people you invite drives the cost directly.

Is Braintrust AIR cheaper than HireVue?

It depends on volume, and neither vendor gives you the numbers to settle it in advance. At low or seasonal volume, a per-interview model usually costs less than an annual platform contract, because you are not paying for capacity you do not use. At steady high volume, a fixed contract can come out ahead, since its cost per interview keeps falling as you use it more. AIR's volume discount narrows that gap, but Braintrust does not publish where the tiers break.

Make the two quotes comparable before you decide. Ask Braintrust for the per-interview rate at your expected volume and at double it. Ask HireVue for the annual price, what it assumes about interview volume, and the overage rule. Then divide both by hires, not interviews, because that is the figure finance will ask for.

Voice conversation or video interview?

This is the real product difference. AIR runs a conversational voice interview that the candidate completes on their own schedule. Braintrust says the follow-up questions change with each answer rather than following a fixed script, and the result is scored against a rubric built for the role. What reaches the recruiter is a ranked scorecard in the ATS with a composite interview score, a communication signal, language fluency and session-integrity flags for interviews that may not be the real candidate.

HireVue sells a wider set of stages: recorded on-demand video interviews, live video interviewing, its AI Interviewer, assessments and an assessment builder, and scheduling around them. If you need structured video for campus hiring, validated assessments, or a single vendor for several interview formats, HireVue covers more ground. If what you want is a first-round screen that sounds like a recruiter call, AIR is closer to that. For one-way video on a published plan, our Spark Hire vs HireVue comparison covers the cheaper option.

Braintrust is also a talent marketplace for contract tech talent, which is a different purchase from AIR. If the roles you are trying to fill are engineering roles, it can be faster to hire developers by tested skill rather than by resume than to run an interview funnel for each one.

Does either one read resumes?

Partly, in AIR's case, and not in HireVue's. AIR's scorecard includes a resume match signal that shows how closely the resume maps to the role, so a reviewer can see it next to the interview score. It is a signal on the people who were interviewed, not a sort of the whole applicant pile before anyone is invited. Braintrust says candidates are invited straight from the ATS.

HireVue's AI acts on what a candidate completes: an interview, an assessment, a chat. It does not read the resume pile that arrives when you post a job. We covered this in detail in whether HireVue uses AI to screen resumes.

That gap matters more for AIR's bill than for HireVue's. If every applicant gets an AI interview and you pay per interview, a job with 600 applicants means 600 interviews, including the people a recruiter would have ruled out in ten seconds. Reading the resumes first and inviting the top 100 cuts the interview line by about five sixths.

Bias audits and compliance

Both vendors keep a human in the decision. Braintrust says AIR does not auto-reject candidates, recruiters review scorecards and evidence, and humans decide who advances. It also says a published third-party bias audit reported no adverse findings across the groups tested, and that it is SOC 2 Type II certified. HireVue claims SOC 2 Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001 and GDPR compliance, and says it is the only virtual interviewing and assessment provider with FedRAMP certification, which matters mostly to public sector buyers.

Neither claim moves the duty off the employer. If you hire in New York City, the employer must have a bias audit of the tool it uses and give candidates notice, and if you use recorded video in Illinois, the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act requires consent and an explanation of how the AI works. Our guide to the NYC Local Law 144 bias audit lists what to ask each vendor for.

Which should you pick?

If your team	Lean toward	Why
Wants a first-round screen that sounds like a recruiter call	Braintrust AIR	Adaptive voice interview, scored on a role rubric
Hires seasonally or in bursts	Braintrust AIR	Paid per interview, so quiet months cost less
Interviews in many languages	Braintrust AIR	Interviews run in 16+ languages
Runs campus programs or needs validated assessments	HireVue	Video, assessments and AI Interviewer under one contract
Is a public sector employer	HireVue	Claims FedRAMP certification
Hires at high, steady volume all year	Get both quotes	A fixed contract can beat a per-interview meter at scale
Has hundreds of unread applicants per job	Either, with a screening layer first	Neither ranks the full applicant pile before the interview

If neither fits, our list of HireVue competitors sorts the rest by whether they read inbound resumes, and the roundup of the best video interviewing software covers the one-way video tools with published prices. For hourly hiring by text and voice, see what Humanly pricing looks like next to Paradox and Workstream.

Spend less on interviews by reading resumes first

Most teams comparing these two are trying to solve one problem: too many applicants and not enough recruiter hours to talk to them. An AI interviewer fixes the talking. It does not decide who deserves the interview, and on a per-interview bill that decision is where the money goes.

Prescreener does that reading step and runs beside AIR, HireVue or any ATS. It reads every inbound resume, applies your knockout rules the same way to every applicant, scores role-fit with the written evidence behind each score and ranks the pile, so you invite the strongest applicants into the interview instead of everyone. A recruiter makes every decision, and nobody is rejected automatically. Plans are published at $199, $499 and $1,290 a month, or half that billed yearly, on the Prescreener pricing page.

Braintrust AIR vs HireVue frequently asked questions

Is Braintrust AIR cheaper than HireVue?

Nobody can say from published prices, because neither vendor prints one. AIR is billed per interview conducted, with lower rates at higher volume, while HireVue sells an annual contract whose last published floor was $35,000. Per-interview pricing usually wins at low or seasonal volume. Get both quotes at your real interview count and compare cost per hire.

How much does Braintrust AIR cost?

Braintrust does not publish an AIR price. Its pricing page says AIR is priced on the number of interviews conducted, that the per-interview rate falls as volume grows, and that there is no public sticker price. You get a number by scoping a volume plan or a pilot with the Braintrust team.

Does Braintrust AIR have a free trial?

Braintrust offers scoped pilots rather than a self-serve free trial. Its pricing page says AIR can typically be live within days, and its FAQ says most roles can be configured within a week. Agree the pilot's length, interview volume and price in writing before it starts, so the results can be compared with a HireVue proposal.

Is HireVue a one-way video interview?

Partly. HireVue sells recorded on-demand video interviews, which candidates answer alone on their own schedule, alongside live video interviewing, an AI Interviewer and assessments. Braintrust AIR is a two-way voice conversation with follow-up questions that change with each answer. Which suits you depends on the role and on how candidates in your market respond.

Can I use Prescreener with Braintrust AIR or HireVue?

Yes. Prescreener reads and ranks the resumes on a job as they arrive, so you invite only the strongest applicants into AIR or HireVue and pay for fewer interviews. It runs beside your ATS, and a recruiter makes every decision. Plans start at $199 a month, or $99 a month billed yearly.