Top 7 Recommended ATS For Candidate Sourcing In 2025

Ask any recruiter and they’ll tell you the same: sourcing talent is more difficult than you might think.

You find someone on LinkedIn, message them, log them somewhere else, and by the time you follow up, the thread is already lost. That fragmentation is what slows teams down. And that’s the gap we have researched, where sourcing breaks down, and which tools genuinely fix it?

So, we reviewed the top 7 recommended ATS for candidate sourcing to see which ones actually solve this problem. Our analysis includes user reviews, product testing, and recruiter interviews to show you which tools deliver real results: better organization, faster follow-ups, and stronger candidate pipelines. Here's what we found:

We’ve highlighted Greenhouse software first because it stands out as one of the most structured and scalable hiring platforms available today— a reputation it continues to earn through its focus on organized, fair, and data-driven recruiting.

In fact, Greenhouse was named one of Canada’s 5-Star Recruitment Software Solutions for 2024 by Canadian HR Reporter (CHRR). This recognition reflects how consistently it delivers measurable hiring results.

What stands out about Greenhouse is that it doesn’t treat sourcing as an add-on, it integrates candidate relationship management (CRM) and outreach tools directly into its ATS. That makes it more than a pipeline tool: it behaves somewhat like a sourcing engine + ATS combo. Its user satisfaction rate is reported at ~98%, and many users say they'd recommend it. To us, this rating reflects its strong usability and overall user trust, which, in fact, matters a lot.

Another most important thing we have found about Greenhouse is that it supports ‘sourcing automation’ (campaigns, email sequences) as an add-on. Its candidate relationship management (CRM) tools let you nurture passive talent pools. The ‘Events’ app is another interesting sourcing extension: for example, the website claims that Five9 uses to quickly import resumes captured at career fairs and feed them into the ATS (streamlining what used to be a time-consuming manual task).

Best For: We recommend this software to mid-to-large companies (50+ employees) that need built-in sourcing and CRM capabilities.

Pros And Cons Of Greenhouse

Pricing

Greenhouse offers a tiered pricing model with three main plans:

• Essential
• Advanced
• Expert

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Second, we’ve highlighted Lever ATS (often referred to as LeverTRM) because it consistently positions itself as more than a standard ATS. It’s built to function as a unified recruiting system that merges sourcing, CRM, automation, and even analytics.

The company reports serving over 22,000 customers and supporting 600 million active jobs worldwide. Another recognition we would like to highlight here is that big names such as Talend, Spotify, KPMG, Career Karma, and Coupa trust Lever to manage their recruiting processes. That shows its credibility in the market.

What we’ve observed is that many users like Lever’s user interface, cleanliness, and relatively low friction in adoption. We also noticed that Lever's nurturing and outreach features are more robust than what you'd typically find in an ATS. Their Maxwell case study showed how personalized outreach sequences improved candidate response rates. This is important because most ATS platforms use external tools for nurture campaigns, whereas Lever offers it built in.

Best For: If you're a small team doing occasional hiring, this might not be a good fit, because it will work better for recruiters managing multiple roles and nurturing large pipelines.

Pros And Cons Of Lever

Pricing

Lever offers custom and scalable pricing plans tailored to team size and hiring needs:

• Core Product: ATS Platform

Add-ons:

• Advanced Employee Referrals
• AI Interview Companion
• Advanced Automation

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Workable ATS is an AI-driven recruiting suite popular among small and mid-sized businesses. It covers everything from posting jobs to onboarding new hires. What sets it apart is its AI-powered sourcing: the ‘AI Recruiter’ automatically searches public data to identify candidates for your open jobs, ranking them so you focus on the best fits first.

On the downside, some reviewers call out that reporting customization is limited. However, what stood out to us is its ‘People Search’ feature that scours public profiles, portfolios, resumes, and social sites, consolidating data into detailed candidate profiles. Another important thing we have observed is that its ‘AI Recruiter’ module analyzes open roles and suggests up to 50 matching candidate profiles, which you can review and import into pipelines. This helps reduce dependency on manual Boolean sourcing. 

Workable supports posting to 200+ job boards, and according to Forbes , it provides access to over 400 million candidate profiles through these integrations. We found it useful that all plans include unlimited active jobs, which isn’t common among competitors. Priority support, however, is only offered in the Premier plan.

The vendor website lists well-known clients such as Ogilvy, Huawei, PwC, Reebok, Eurobank, and Ryanair among 30,000+ companies using Workable, reflecting strong adoption among global brands.

Best For: We recommend this software to companies that frequently hire and may need automation for that. But if you rely on customized reporting, it's best to go for Workable alternatives.

Pros And Cons Of Workable

Pricing

Workable offers two main pricing tiers designed for businesses of different sizes. The plans can be purchased for Recruiting only or bundled with HR features, which changes the overall cost. The prices listed above are for the Recruiting plan only:

• Standard: $360/month
• Premier: $599/month

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Breezy HR is a user-friendly ATS built around a visual, drag-and-drop pipeline, making it easy for small teams to adopt. One thing that stands out to us is its free plan, which includes built-in candidate sourcing via LinkedIn and over 50 other job boards, making it more competitive than many in its category.

We also noticed it has video interviewing and automated interview scheduling baked in. Their ‘Incognito Apply’ add-on, which strips demographic info from resumes to help with early screening. It does offer a mobile app, though user feedback indicates, it lacks some features compared to the desktop version.

Breezy does not include built-in onboarding modules. Users generally rely on integrations for managing document uploads, e-signatures, and task automation. HeroHunt.ai can plug into Breezy to enable passive candidate discovery and outreach. Also, third-party tools like Runbear allow you to push Breezy pipeline summaries or feedback collection into chat platforms like Slack or Teams for better collaboration.

The website highlights that companies like Unito and Dollar Flight Club use Breezy HR and how it helps them save time and eventually simplify hiring. It also claims that Breezy HR is trusted by over 17,400 companies across 83 countries.

Best For: The vendor suggests that it will be perfect for fast-growing companies from 10 to 10,000. We find it equally useful for small teams too since they can post jobs on multiple job boards for free.

Pros And Cons Of Breezy HR

Pricing

Breezy HR offers four pricing plans with 14-day free trial. The prices below reflect the monthly billing option.

• Bootstrap: $0
• Startup: $189/month
• Growth: $329/month
• Business: $529/month

The vendor also provides several add-on options, including:

• SMS/Text Messaging: $41/month
• Breezy Intelligence: $30/100,000 credits
• Onboard: $49/month
• Expert Training: Custom pricing

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

SmartRecruiters position itself as a full Talent Acquisition Suite rather than just a basic ATS. It emphasizes sourcing, recruiting marketing, candidate engagement, and analytics layered on top of traditional applicant tracking.

The platform is built to recruit globally: it supports localization in 37 candidate-facing languages and 31 languages for hiring teams. Notably, it also offers a free plan, which is called ‘SmartStart’. If your company is hiring for less than 10 roles, then this software is more compatible with your needs.

Another important factor we noted is that it offers full functionality for recruitment marketing and collaborative hiring, with an open marketplace of 600+ connected solutions. Its AI module, called 'Winston', is designed to help process large volumes of applicants through ranking and filtering, which, in fact, according to the company's case study with Frasers Group, reduced time-to-hire from 23 days to 9 days.

SmartRecruiters reports serving more than 4,000 customers globally, including recognizable names like Visa, LinkedIn, Amazon, and McDonald's.

Best For: This product is ideal for corporate organizations that need to manage high-volume, global, or complex hiring. We do not recommend it for staffing agencies.

Pros And Cons Of SmartRecruiters

Pricing

SmartRecruiters offers four subscription plans:

• Essential: $14,995
• Professional: Custom pricing
• High Volume: Custom pricing
• Complete: Custom pricing

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Manatal is an AI-powered recruiting platform that’s surprisingly affordable. Under the hood, it’s a full ATS + CRM, but what stands out is its AI features for sourcing. The systems suggest the best candidates for each role and even enrich profiles with public data (social media, job history) to give recruiters more context.

One of the more striking claims we found is that it supports posting or distributing jobs across 2,500+ channels (free, premium, local, global). It also offers a Chrome extension (‘People-Match AI’) that lets you source from LinkedIn, GitHub, Xing, etc., and pull candidate public profiles details directly into the ATS to keep candidate information accurate and up to date.

There is another thing that we would like to highlight here is that the platform claims access to a talent pool / database of 600+ million profiles for matching, which could enhance sourcing reach. And to attract a global workforce, the platform can display your career page in numerous languages, including English, Spanish, French, and German, on all plans.

Manatal reports being trusted by over 10,000 recruitment teams in 135+ countries, including major global brands such as Toyota, Heineken, KPMG, Cognizant, Tencent, Fujitsu, and Bosch.

Best For: We recommend Manatal for small-to mid-sized recruitment agencies with global hiring needs, but not for large enterprises.

Pros And Cons Of Manatal

Pricing

Manatal offers four monthly pricing plans along with a 14-day free trial for new users.

• Professional Plan: $19/user/month
• Enterprise Plan: $39/user/month
• Enterprise Plus Plan: $59/user/month
• Custom Plan: Custom pricing

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Loxo brands itself as a ‘Talent Intelligence Platform’, essentially an ATS/CRM combined with robust sourcing. It includes an AI sourcing engine and a proprietary database of over 1.2 billion profiles. Recruiters can search and filter across LinkedIn and many open web sources, then reach out through Loxo's email or phone dialer, helping them source beyond LinkedIn's limits.

The Chrome extension to capture LinkedIn profiles and import them into Loxo is rated as one of the most refined option in third-party reviews. What we would like to point out here is that, just like Breezy HR and SmartRecruiters, it has a free plan from which you can access multiple functions, including this Chrome extension.

Loxo's interface comes across as polished and straightforward, which many users have praised. It has a drag-and-drop pipeline and resume parsing to keep candidate data organized.

Based on what we've heard from users, Loxo seems to focus heavily on feature expansion, but several users mention that some of these tools lack the polish or depth needed to be genuinely useful in daily recruiting work. Which is why we've positioned this software in the 7th spot, as it balances both its generosity with its free plan while still leaving some room for improvement in a few features.

According to the website, Loxo is used by more than 125,000 recruiters globally, with trusted partners including Executives in Sport Group, FoundHuman, Garman Partners, and Gecko Hospitality.

Best For: We recommend Loxo for in-house corporate recruiters and staffing agencies, but not for large-scale corporate talent acquisition teams who may find it too limited.

Pros And Cons Of Loxo

Pricing

Loxo offers four pricing plans with a 7-day free trial:

• Free Plan: $0 (forever)
• Basic Plan: $209/user/month
• Professional Plan: Custom pricing
• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Well, at the end, what we would like to conclude is that Greenhouse is the best fit if structured, data-backed, and scalable hiring is your top priority. And if you’re focused on building long-term candidate relationships, Lever works better.

For teams that want automation and AI to do most of the sourcing work, Workable is the most practical pick, based on our observation. But if you’re a small team looking for something simple and free, Breezy HR gives plenty of value without adding cost. While SmartRecruiters is ideal for global and enterprise-scale hiring, Manatal suits growing businesses that want AI sourcing on a budget. And finally, we suggest Loxo if you want an AI-driven sourcing tool with a free plan and easy setup.