Greenhouse vs Workable (September 2026): an independent comparison

Greenhouse or Workable: the verdict

Greenhouse vs Workable: comparison table

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Greenhouse vs Workable: what it costs per year

What Greenhouse and Workable look like

Pricing: Workable lists prices and bills AI per candidate, Greenhouse quotes

Workable's pricing page shows three plans at the smallest company size of 1 to 20 employees. With annual billing, Standard costs $299 a month ($3,588 a year), Premier $599 and Enterprise $719; with monthly billing, Standard costs $360 a month. A selector changes the price by company size, annual billing is advertised with a 20 percent saving, and the 15-day trial covers the full Standard plan without a credit card.

The AI agent is billed on top in credits: 1 credit to evaluate an applicant, 2 to source a profile and 10 for a candidate chat. Every plan includes 3,000 free credits, and extra credits cost $0.12 each in a bundle of 5,000, down to $0.095 in a bundle of 50,000, valid for 1 year.

Greenhouse publishes no prices and advertises no trial. Its pricing page says cost depends on the plan, hiring volume, organizational complexity and the features required. Voice AI is a separate annual subscription that scales with company size, and the help center says Talent Matching needs the Real Talent add-on, although the pricing page lists it on all three tiers, so settle both points in writing.

Quote-only pricing is common in this category: 34 of the 50 applicant tracking tools in our directory do not publish prices, and 19 advertise a free trial.

AI features: Greenhouse keeps a recruiter at every step, Workable's agent acts on its own

Greenhouse's help center lists 17 generally available AI features, updated September 3, 2026, from scorecard summaries to offer forecasts. The central one, Talent Matching, compares resumes with weighted criteria the team sets and sorts applicants into categories such as Strong, Good, Partial and Limited. According to the help center, it never auto-rejects or auto-advances a candidate, even in the lowest category.

Voice AI arrived with Greenhouse's purchase of Ezra AI Labs, completed on May 27, 2026. It runs a structured spoken first interview in 11 languages, scores answers against the team's rubric and, according to Greenhouse, does not score accent, tone, pace or confidence. Real Talent adds fraud and spam detection and identity checks through CLEAR, which the pricing page leaves out of the Core tier.

Workable put four agents into general availability on September 14, 2026: Job Brief, Sourcing, Screening and Engagement. The Screening Agent evaluates applicants against an ideal candidate profile across 14 dimensions, the Sourcing Agent searches a database Workable puts at 400 million profiles, and the Engagement Agent opens conversations and re-scores candidates. Workable's product page says the agent moves strong candidates to a shortlist or invites them to a screening call, with every action logged and reversible.

Oversight: Greenhouse publishes monthly bias audits, Workable publishes none we could find

Warden AI, a third-party auditor, tests Greenhouse's Talent Matching every month and publishes the results. Its public dashboard shows the audit of August 14, 2026, covering 61,740 candidates, with all 110 checks marked clear. Greenhouse says Warden AI audits Voice AI monthly as well, and Pro customers can hide identifying details on resumes.

Workable's announcement says recruiters keep full judgment over final decisions, but neither it nor the security page mentions a bias audit. That gap matters more because the agent can move candidates forward by itself. New York City's Local Law 144 requires employers, not vendors, to have an automated employment decision tool audited for bias within 1 year before use, publish a summary and notify candidates 10 business days ahead.

Ask Workable for audit results before its scores decide who moves on in New York City. With Greenhouse, check that the audited features are in your contract, since Real Talent and Voice AI cost extra.

Country fit: Greenhouse hosts by region, Workable runs from the United States

Our data lists the United States as the strong market for Greenhouse, and the United States and the United Kingdom for Workable. Greenhouse runs AWS silos in Virginia, Frankfurt and Sydney, each backed by a second region for disaster recovery. Workable's privacy policy says its services are hosted and operated in the United States and relies on standard contractual clauses and the Data Privacy Framework for transfers.

In the United Kingdom, section 80 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 replaced the UK GDPR's article on automated decisions with Articles 22A to 22D, fully in force since February 5, 2026. Significant decisions taken solely by automated means now need safeguards, among them information, a way to contest and human intervention. UK teams that let Workable's agent shortlist candidates without review should document those safeguards.

In the EU, the AI Act treats AI tools for employment, such as CV-sorting software for recruitment, as high-risk. After the AI Omnibus amendment entered into force on July 27, 2026, those duties apply from December 2, 2027. Both products' screening features fit that description, so ask each vendor for its compliance plan.

If EU hosting by default matters more to you than public prices, our Greenhouse vs SmartRecruiters comparison covers an applicant tracking system that hosts in Frankfurt unless the contract names another location.

Who should pick Greenhouse and who Workable

The bottom line

Two questions decide it: must you see prices before a sales call, and where must candidate data live? If public prices matter and US hosting is fine, Workable is the quicker start, once you have modeled the credit bill for its agent. If you need EU or Asia Pacific hosting, monthly bias audits and AI that never moves a candidate on its own, Greenhouse fits better, provided the quote for Real Talent and Voice AI fits your budget.