SeekOut vs hireEZ: Pricing and AI Applicant Screening

Short answer: SeekOut and hireEZ are both AI sourcing platforms built to find people who have not applied, and both now sell AI that reads your inbound applicants too. SeekOut is cheaper to start: Recruit Core costs $149 a month paid annually or $179 monthly, against hireEZ's $494 a month for a solo recruiter. For a team, the order flips. Vendr puts the median SeekOut contract at $20,000 a year and the median hireEZ contract at $13,000. SeekOut sells inbound screening as SeekOut Sam, an add-on below its top tier, while hireEZ sells it as Applicant Review, a module it does not price publicly.

These two end up on the same shortlist because they overlap almost completely at the top of the funnel: a profile index of more than a billion people, AI search, contact finding and multi-step outreach. The differences are in the edges. SeekOut is known for security-cleared and healthcare talent data; hireEZ for aggregating profiles from 45+ platforms and plugging into 40+ applicant tracking systems. We read both vendors' pricing and product pages and their Vendr listings for this comparison.

SeekOut vs hireEZ at a glance

SeekOut vs hireEZ pricing

SeekOut publishes one plan. Recruit Core is $149 a month paid annually and up front, or $179 a month on monthly billing, and includes unlimited AI search, 500 contact credits and 1,000 exports a month, email integration and AI outreach campaigns. The feature table lists 3 seats on Core even though the plan card describes it as a tier for individual recruiters, so confirm the seat count before you prepay a year. Recruit Sourcing, Sourcing + Integration and Full Recruiting Funnel are all custom and billed annually. Our SeekOut pricing page breaks down what each tier adds.

hireEZ also publishes one rate, and it is higher: $494 a month for a solo recruiter, with a 7-day free trial. For teams it says seats remain part of the model but the price is configured to the stack hireEZ replaces, and it runs a four-week verification before you sign. The $169 and $199 per seat figures still found on review sites are self-described estimates from an older model. The hireEZ pricing page grades every figure in circulation.

Read the medians with care. SeekOut's higher median and much wider range reflect how far its custom tiers stretch: ATS rediscovery, market intelligence, AI screening and white-glove implementation all sit in the upper tiers. hireEZ quotes against the tools it replaces, so its median says as much about what buyers already had as about hireEZ itself. For a solo recruiter, though, the answer is simple: SeekOut Core costs less than a third of hireEZ's solo plan over a year.

Which one screens inbound applicants?

Both do, and neither makes it cheap. SeekOut Sam reads each applicant's resume against role-specific criteria and returns a ranked shortlist with plain-language explanations, and it can invite candidates to a structured AI-led screening interview whose transcript and score land with the recruiter. SeekOut says Sam never auto-rejects, avoids protected-class signals and keeps audit trails for EEOC and OFCCP reviews. On the pricing page, AI Inbound Screening is not available on Core, is a paid add-on on Recruit Sourcing and Sourcing + Integration, and is included only on Full Recruiting Funnel. No add-on price is published.

hireEZ Applicant Review builds an Ideal Persona from your job description and labels each applicant Best Match, Good Match, Partial Match or Not a Match; a recruiter then advances or rejects. It reads only what the applicant submitted, the resume and application form, and ResumeSense flags inconsistencies that may point to a fraudulent resume. hireEZ does not itemize its price or say whether the solo plan includes it.

The practical difference is granularity. Four bands are a quick first sort, but when 120 applicants land in Best Match you still need an order inside the band. A ranked list with reasons, which is what Sam promises, is closer to what a recruiter can act on. Either way you are buying a sourcing platform to get it, which is the part to question if your real problem is a full inbox rather than an empty pipeline.

Sourcing data and who each one suits

SeekOut's clearest edge is specialist data. Inferred security clearance and advanced diversity filters start on its Recruit Sourcing tier, and healthcare search is an add-on below the top tier. That matters to defense and government contractors, who often have to staff a cleared role quickly after winning work from federal contract opportunities, and to health systems recruiting nurses and allied staff. SeekOut also publishes an MCP server so its profile search can run inside Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot.

hireEZ's edge is breadth of plumbing. It pulls profiles from 45+ platforms, claims 40+ native ATS integrations (Workday, Greenhouse and Lever are named on the Applicant Review page), and bundles CRM, outreach, scheduling and analytics into one contract priced against the tools it replaces. If you are consolidating four or five recruiting tools, that pricing model can work in your favor. If you have nothing to consolidate, it simply makes the quote harder to compare.

SeekOut vs hireEZ: which to buy, by situation

If the problem is the applicants you already have

Sourcing platforms earn their price when the right people are not applying. Many US hiring teams have the opposite problem: a role draws 250 applications, a recruiter reads the first 30, and qualified people sit unread at the bottom of the ATS. Buying SeekOut's top tier or a hireEZ module to fix that means paying for a billion-profile database you will not use.

Prescreener is built for that job alone. It reads every inbound resume as it arrives, applies your knockout and eligibility rules the same way to everyone, scores role fit with the written evidence behind each score, and ranks the pile, with a recruiter making every decision. It runs alongside Workday, Greenhouse, Lever or any ATS, and plans are $199, $499 or $1,290 a month for the whole account on the Prescreener pricing page, month to month. For a single flooded requisition, see bulk resume screening; for how scoring with evidence works, see candidate scoring software. If Gem is also on your list, our hireEZ vs Gem comparison covers that pairing.

Frequently asked questions

Is SeekOut cheaper than hireEZ? For one recruiter, yes. SeekOut Recruit Core costs $149 a month paid annually or $179 monthly, while hireEZ's solo plan costs $494 a month. For teams, Vendr's buyer data points the other way: a median SeekOut contract of $20,000 a year against $13,000 for hireEZ.

Does SeekOut or hireEZ have a free trial? Both do. SeekOut offers 14 days on Recruit Core with no credit card and no contract. hireEZ offers a 7-day free trial on its $494 solo plan, and a four-week verification with your own workflows before a team signs.

Which is better for AI resume screening, SeekOut or hireEZ? SeekOut Sam returns a ranked shortlist with explanations and can run an AI screening interview, but it is an add-on below SeekOut's top tier. hireEZ Applicant Review sorts applicants into four match bands and is not priced publicly. If screening is the main need, compare both against a dedicated screening tool.

Can SeekOut find security-cleared candidates? Yes. SeekOut lists inferred security clearance filters on its Recruit Sourcing tier and above, and markets a cleared-talent search for defense and government employers. It is not available on the $149 Recruit Core plan.