As of August 2026, Recruiterflow has the lowest published annual platform price of these three, Loxo publishes the clearest annual commitment, and Bullhorn has the lowest headline rate but leaves its contract term and AI tiers to a quote. Compare the first-year cost of the tier you will actually use, not the cheapest card.
Loxo vs Recruiterflow vs Bullhorn pricing: the short answer
This is a comparison for recruitment agencies, staffing firms, and executive-search businesses. These companies sell a system for the relationship between candidates, client companies, jobs, and placements. That is not the same buying problem as an employer selecting an in-house ATS.
The useful comparison is therefore not “Which tool has the longest feature list?” It is “What does one productive recruiter seat cost in year one, on the plan that supports our operating model?” The published entry price can be misleading. Loxo puts its proprietary sourcing graph and agentic AI in Professional, Recruiterflow puts AIRA in a custom-priced plan, and Bullhorn places its recruitment CRM sales pipeline and Amplify AI in quote-based Pro.
| Product | Published price, August 2026 | Binding shown publicly | What the entry price does not settle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loxo Core | From $149/user/month | Annual plan, paid upfront | Loxo Source, the 850M+ talent graph, and the complete agentic workforce require Professional |
| Loxo Professional | From $199/user/month | Annual plan, paid upfront | Extra AI capacity beyond 2,500 included credits per seat is priced with the account team |
| Recruiterflow Platform | $149/user/month monthly; $119/user/month billed annually | Monthly or annual option displayed | AIRA has custom pricing; white-glove migration is paid |
| Bullhorn Starter / Core | $99 / $165 per user/month | Contract term and billing schedule not stated on the public page | Pro, Max, full recruitment CRM sales pipeline, AI, automation, and several additional products need a quote |
| Sprad | Not a like-for-like agency CRM quote | Evaluate as an in-house recruiting workflow | It addresses employer sourcing, screening, and candidate experience rather than client, placement, and agency sales management |
All prices above are vendor list prices checked on 24 August 2026, before tax. “Per month” is a rate unit, not proof of a cancellable monthly contract. Only Loxo explicitly says that its listed plans are annual and paid upfront. Recruiterflow displays separate monthly and annual rates. Bullhorn does not publish the commitment behind its monthly rate, so it belongs in the quote checklist.
The one decision axis: first-year cost per productive recruiter
Agency software earns its keep through placements. That makes a per-employee comparison less useful than two agency metrics:
- First-year cost per productive recruiter: all software and migration costs divided by recruiters who actively run desks.
- Software cost per placement: first-year total cost divided by completed placements.
Use this calculation before a demo:
First-year total = paid seats × seat rate × billed months + implementation + data migration + paid options + overlap with the old system + internal migration time.
Do not put finance, operations, or occasional hiring-manager users into the same seat assumption until the vendor confirms how each role is licensed. Also ask whether a seat can be removed when a recruiter leaves. A five-seat minimum that cannot be reduced during the term behaves very differently from five genuinely flexible subscriptions.
A five-recruiter budget model
| Plan | List-price calculation | Five-seat platform total | Important caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loxo Core | 5 × $149 × 12 | $8,940/year, paid upfront | “Starts at” price; current page also labels it a limited-time new-customer offer |
| Loxo Professional | 5 × $199 × 12 | $11,940/year, paid upfront | Includes 12,500 pooled credits each month across five seats; Boost pricing is not public |
| Recruiterflow Platform, annual | 5 × $119 × 12 | $7,140/year | Does not include a quoted AIRA price or paid white-glove migration |
| Recruiterflow Platform, monthly | 5 × $149 × 12 | $8,940 over 12 months | Verify cancellation notice and whether your order form changes the public terms |
| Bullhorn Starter | 5 × $99 × 12 | $5,940 for 12 rate-months | This is arithmetic, not a vendor annual quote; the public page does not state the term |
| Bullhorn Core | 5 × $165 × 12 | $9,900 for 12 rate-months | Recruitment CRM sales pipeline and Amplify AI are shown under quote-based Pro |
If a five-recruiter firm makes 30 placements a year, every $3,000 of additional first-year cost adds $100 per placement. That may be trivial for retained executive search and material for lower-fee contingency work. The correct conclusion depends on placement economics, not on which monthly number looks smallest.
What Loxo actually costs
The current Loxo pricing page lists Core from $149 per user per month and Professional from $199, both billed annually and paid upfront. Enterprise uses custom annual agreements. Because the page says “starts at” and identifies the displayed offer as a limited-time new-customer offer, treat the calculation as a floor and preserve the quoted price and renewal basis in the order form.
Core is the system-of-record tier: ATS, recruiting CRM, AI search, unlimited jobs, candidates and companies, pipelines, reporting, email and calendar sync, and a Chrome extension. Professional adds Loxo Source, the proprietary talent graph, contact information when available, the complete agentic workforce, API access, and 2,500 credits per seat per month. Credits pool across the team and refresh each cycle; unused capacity does not become a permanent balance.
Migration is unusually specific on the public page:
- Core teams with three or more seats get free migration.
- Smaller Core teams get guided self-service tooling.
- Complex or custom migrations, including Professional and Enterprise, are scoped as fixed packages before signing.
- The seven-day trial exposes the full Professional platform and does not require a credit card.
Best pricing fit: a search firm that will replace separate ATS, CRM, sourcing, outreach, and data tools, and can measure whether the Professional bundle removes enough other spend. If you only need a database and pipeline, price Core. If the buying reason is Loxo Source or Loxo AI, use $199—not $149—as the starting point.
What Recruiterflow actually costs
The Recruiterflow pricing page shows the Platform plan at $149 per user per month on monthly billing or $119 per user per month on annual billing. Its selector also publishes equivalent nominal EUR prices of €149 and €119. AIRA is custom-priced.
Platform includes ATS and CRM, multichannel sequences, recruitment and sales automation, access controls, Chrome sourcing, reporting, and API access. Recruiterflow says it does not sell add-ons within the selected plan. That statement does not turn AIRA into a Platform feature: the plan comparison reserves AIRA agents, omnichannel communication sync, and custom BI dashboards for the quote-based AIRA tier.
The migration choice has a direct budget effect. CSV/Excel self-service import is free. White-glove migration is paid, depends on data volume, and typically takes six to eight weeks. The vendor says buyers can discuss waiving that fee on multi-year contracts. A waived migration charge is therefore a negotiation point tied to a longer commitment, not a published standard inclusion.
Best pricing fit: an agency that needs ATS, CRM, outreach sequences, automation, and API access in one predictable platform tier. Annual billing saves $30 per seat per month, or $1,800 a year for five seats. Monthly billing may still be worth the premium when team size or process fit is uncertain—provided the actual order form confirms the expected flexibility.
What Bullhorn actually costs
The current Bullhorn pricing page publishes Starter at $99 and Core at $165 per user per month for small agencies. Pro and Max require a quote. Bullhorn labels implementation free on Starter, Core, and Pro, but it does not publish the contract term, payment cadence, seat minimum, migration scope, or renewal rule on that page.
The tier boundary matters more than the $99 headline. Starter includes applicant tracking, resume parsing, client management, job posting with a career portal, and support. Core adds the partner marketplace, custom fields and workflows, LinkedIn integrations, and the Bullhorn email sidebar. The page places the recruitment CRM sales pipeline, AI search and match, Amplify Chat, AI enrichment, process automation, analytics, and a dedicated account manager in Pro.
That means a buyer searching for a Bullhorn CRM price should not automatically model Starter or Core. Ask Bullhorn to map each required workflow to a tier. Larger staffing firms, front-office products, Recruitment Cloud, middle office, onboarding, and further automation are also quote-based.
Best pricing fit: a staffing firm that values configurable workflows and a broad partner ecosystem, especially where ATS/CRM is part of a wider operating stack. The entry cards are useful budget anchors. They are not a complete total-cost quote.
Implementation, migration, and the costs outside the licence
“Free implementation” and “free migration” are not interchangeable. Implementation can mean configuration and enablement. Migration means extracting, cleaning, mapping, importing, validating, and reconciling records and documents. Ask each vendor to define both in writing.
A migration budget should cover:
- candidate, client, contact, job, placement, activity, consent, and attachment history;
- duplicate handling and ownership rules;
- email, calendar, job-board, telephony, reporting, and finance integrations;
- workflow recreation, permissions, templates, and training;
- parallel-run months and read-only access to the old database;
- post-import sampling and a failed-import rollback plan.
The data work is also a risk-control exercise. A useful ATS migration plan separates what must move, what should be archived, and what should be deleted. In the EU, do not move every historic candidate record simply because it exists. Confirm the lawful basis, privacy notices, retention periods, deletion workflows, processor terms, and international transfer setup with counsel.
Agency CRM or in-house recruiting software?
This is the most important filter in the entire comparison. An agency makes placements for clients. It needs business development, client contacts, job orders, submissions, placement tracking, and recruiter productivity. An employer hires into its own organization. It needs requisitions, Hiring Manager collaboration, candidate experience, screening governance, and connections to HR systems.
If you recruit in-house, buying an agency CRM can mean paying for client and placement machinery you do not need. Start with the category distinction in ATS vs CRM vs recruiting software, then compare employer systems in the ATS comparison. Sprad belongs on that in-house path: it supports employer-side sourcing, screening, and candidate experience, but it is not a substitute for an agency sales-and-placement CRM.
A quote checklist that makes the three offers comparable
- Fix the seat definition. List recruiters, sourcers, operations users, managers, and client users separately.
- Price the required tier. Name the exact workflows that force an upgrade: sourcing data, sales pipeline, AI agents, API, automation, analytics, or middle office.
- Request three totals. Year one, renewal year, and exit year. Include tax treatment, services, migration, options, and old-system overlap.
- Write down the term. Initial commitment, invoicing schedule, renewal, notice deadline, and permitted seat reductions.
- Define migration acceptance. Record types, attachments, history depth, deduplication, validation sample, and remedy for failed imports.
- Test with real work. Run one live search, one client workflow, one placement, one report, and one data export.
Also verify whether your “Talent Pool” is merely stored or genuinely reusable. The distinction between Talent Pool, ATS, and CRM helps prevent a database-size claim from standing in for search quality, data freshness, consent, and recruiter adoption.
FAQ
How much does Recruiterflow cost in August 2026?
Recruiterflow publishes Platform at $149 per user per month on monthly billing or $119 per user per month when billed annually. The page also displays €149 and €119. AIRA is custom-priced. Free self-service migration and paid white-glove migration are separate options.
How much does Loxo cost in August 2026?
Loxo lists Core from $149 and Professional from $199 per user per month, both on annual plans paid upfront. Enterprise is custom. Core migration is free for teams with at least three seats; complex, Professional, and Enterprise migrations may be fixed-price packages.
Does Bullhorn publish pricing?
Yes. Bullhorn now publishes Starter at $99 and Core at $165 per user per month on its US page. Pro and Max are quote-based. The public page does not state the contract length, payment schedule, seat minimum, or complete migration scope, so those points require a written quote.
Which is cheapest for a five-recruiter agency?
On public platform rates, Bullhorn Starter has the lowest arithmetic total at $5,940 for 12 rate-months. Recruiterflow Platform billed annually is $7,140, Loxo Core is $8,940, and Bullhorn Core is $9,900. These are not equivalent scopes. The cheapest relevant tier may be different.
What should an in-house recruiting team choose?
Do not start with these three prices. First decide whether you need an employer ATS, sourcing, screening, a candidate portal, or Talent Pool reactivation. An agency CRM is designed around clients and placements. An in-house team can otherwise buy a capable product for the wrong operating model.
Jürgen Ulbrich
Jürgen Ulbrich has more than a decade of experience in developing and leading high-performing teams and companies. As an expert in employee referral programs as well as feedback and performance processes, Jürgen has helped over 100 organizations optimize their talent acquisition and development strategies.
