SeekOut pricing 2026: plans, add-ons and real cost per recruiter

SeekOut is one of the few mid-market sourcing tools with a real self-serve price: Recruit Core costs $149 a month billed annually (or $179 a month billed monthly), covers 3 seats, 500 contact credits and 1,000 exports, and comes with a 14-day free trial. Everything past that entry tier still runs through a sales conversation, and Vendr's 2026 marketplace data (65 purchases analyzed) puts the median paid deal at $20,000 a year, as of October 2026.

seekout.com

SeekOut: homepage, October 2026.

If you are weighing these list prices against a lighter start: the active sourcing tool from Sprad starts free with 100 credits a month, and Recruiter Lite costs 79 € per seat and month (as of October 2026). Sprad is itself a vendor in this market, so test it against your own vacancy rather than taking our word for it.

SeekOut's plans, now that one of them is public

SeekOut sells four tiers. Only the entry tier has a list price; the other three are quote-based.

The $149/month figure comes straight off SeekOut's own pricing page (fetched October 2026) — the first time in this series a mid-market sourcing tool this specialized has published a self-serve number at all. The three higher tiers stay unpriced: Vendr's live marketplace data puts Professional-tier list pricing at roughly $5,000-9,000 per seat annually, with negotiated deals reported as low as $4,500-7,000, and a median total deal of $20,000 a year. For context, LinkedIn's own Recruiter Professional Services tier runs roughly $10,800 per seat per year according to Vendr — below SeekOut's negotiated per-seat range at the high end, though SeekOut's total bill still grows fastest once ATS sync or CRM features are added.

What the published price doesn't cover

• Contact credits and exports beyond the allowance. Core includes 500 contact credits and 1,000 exports a month — a team running searches daily can reach that ceiling before the month ends, and the higher allowance on the custom Sourcing tier (750 contacts and 5,000 exports per seat) isn't priced publicly either.
• The 3-seat cap on the only published tier. A fourth recruiter doesn't fit inside Recruit Core — the moment a team grows past three, it's negotiating a custom Sourcing contract with no visible list price.
• CRM features locked to the top tier. Anything resembling pipeline management or client-facing CRM only appears on Full Recruiting Funnel, the most expensive and least-specified of the four tiers.
• ATS integration as a paid step-up. Real-time sync with an existing ATS isn't included in Core or the base Sourcing tier — it only appears once a team moves to Sourcing + Integration, which itself has no published price.

What 5 and 15 recruiters really pay

A team of 5

SeekOut's only published price stops at 3 seats, so a 5-recruiter team already needs the custom-quoted Sourcing tier. Vendr's 2026 data (65 purchases analyzed, current as of October 2026) puts small teams of 1-5 seats at $15,000-35,000 a year in total — a third-party estimate, not an official number, since SeekOut doesn't publish per-seat pricing above Core. At the low end that's about €13,800/year; at the high end, about €32,200/year. If a team can get by with exactly 3 seats, staying on Recruit Core instead costs just $149 × 12 = $1,788/year (about €1,645) — a dramatically smaller bill than moving to the custom tier for two extra seats.

A team of 15

At 15 seats, a team sits in Vendr's mid-sized band (6-15 seats): $40,000-90,000 a year. That's close to what the earlier per-seat estimate of $4,500-7,000 times 15 would suggest ($67,500-$105,000) — Vendr's directly reported band is the more current number. At the low end that's about €36,800/year, at the high end about €82,800/year. Either way, only a real sales conversation confirms where a specific 15-seat deal lands.

Is SeekOut worth it?

SeekOut holds 4.7/5 on Capterra from 189 reviews, with 96% positive sentiment — reviewers specifically praise the sourcing filters, AI matching for diversity recruiting, and team collaboration on shared searches. For a mid-market or enterprise team that needs patent, clearance or academic data alongside standard sourcing, that's a real, differentiated capability nothing else on this list matches. For a small agency, the same Capterra reviewers say the cost was "prohibitive for a smaller company" — a direct, first-party signal that even with a published entry price, the tier structure above 3 seats still isn't built with a growing 5+ person team in mind.

Cheaper ways to the same job

Sprad: pay per seat, then only for what happens

sprad.io

Sprad for recruitment agencies, October 2026.

Sprad charges no negotiated annual contract. Sprad publishes its prices: you can start free with 100 credits a month (200 in the first month), Recruiter Lite costs 79 € per seat and month on annual billing, and Atlas Recruiter 299 € per seat. Extra usage runs on credits, for example 2 credits per profile shown in a web search and 30 for a 5-minute voice interview. A 5-seat Recruiter Lite team pays 395 € a month (4,740 € a year) — well under even the low end of SeekOut's estimated 5-seat range — and a 15-seat team pays 1,185 € a month (14,220 € a year). Full numbers: sprad.io/industry/recruitment-agencies.

Sprad's search isn't specialized toward diversity or clearance data. One search runs across LinkedIn, XING, GitHub and the agency's own talent pool, with more than a billion profiles worldwide, and its AI checks every profile individually against your requirements instead of matching keywords, which also surfaces people with a thinly kept profile. Outreach runs on LinkedIn (including InMail) and email with AI templates and follow-ups, in one inbox with one history per candidate. The data stays with the agency, with a full raw-data export, and hosting is in the EU.

In the public PeopleSearchBench (119 real search tasks), Atlas, Sprad's sourcing tool, comes to 73.5 out of 100 in the Recruiting area in our own re-measurement, converted to the published scale (Juicebox 65.7 as published). PeopleSearchBench (Recruiting), published by Lessie, October 2026. Other systems' scores as published in the benchmark; Atlas is our own re-measurement with the benchmark's open test procedure, converted to the published scale; not an official entry (method).

How to tell real AI search from keyword search: if results appear instantly, it is almost always a (semantic) keyword search. A real AI check reads and assesses each profile against your requirements, which takes a few minutes for a deep search. Ask every vendor whether each profile is actually assessed individually, and test it with a role that is worded unusually.

Two more options worth a look

If the priority is technical, GitHub-style sourcing rather than diversity or clearance data, hireEZ at least publishes one fixed number — $494/month for a single solo seat — making it easier to budget for a small team (full breakdown in our hireEZ pricing guide). For a team that mainly needs LinkedIn reach without SeekOut's enterprise-scale pricing, LinkedIn Recruiter Lite starts at $140/seat/month on an annual commitment — far cheaper per seat, but limited to LinkedIn's own network with none of SeekOut's specialist data sources.

FAQ

How much does SeekOut cost?

SeekOut now publishes one price: Recruit Core costs $149/month billed annually (or $179/month billed monthly), for 3 seats, 500 contact credits and a 14-day free trial. Past 3 seats, Vendr's 2026 transaction data shows small teams (1-5 seats) paying $15,000-35,000 a year and mid-sized teams (6-15 seats) paying $40,000-90,000 a year, with a median total deal around $20,000 a year, as of October 2026.

Does SeekOut offer a free trial?

Yes, as of October 2026 — Recruit Core, the entry self-serve tier, comes with a 14-day free trial. The three higher, custom-quoted tiers still start with a demo call.

What's included in SeekOut's contact credits?

Recruit Core includes 500 contact credits and 1,000 exports a month for email verification; the custom Sourcing tier raises that to 750 contacts and 5,000 exports per seat, but neither the Sourcing tier's price nor any credits beyond these allowances are priced publicly.

Is SeekOut good value for a small agency?

For a team of 3 or fewer, the published $149/month Recruit Core plan is a genuinely fair entry price. Past that, Capterra reviewers themselves flag cost as "prohibitive for a smaller company," since a 4th seat already means a custom-quoted contract.

What's a cheaper alternative to SeekOut?

Sprad's Recruiter Lite at 79 € per seat and month plus pay-per-use credits (2 credits per profile shown in a web search) typically costs well under even SeekOut's lowest estimated 5-seat range, since there's no contract to negotiate and no seat cap to run into.

Does SeekOut have DACH or German pricing?

No. SeekOut's pricing and support concentrate on the US, UK, EU and APAC markets generally, without DACH-specific rates or a German interface.

The bigger question behind the price tag

A published entry price only tells part of the story if the resulting candidate data doesn't fully travel once a team outgrows it — and at SeekOut, that happens at exactly 3 seats. Sprad's pricing is built the other way: an ATS and talent pool the agency actually keeps at any team size (Recruiter Lite from 79 € per seat and month), an AI requirement search across more than a billion profiles in the same workspace, and extra usage billed by credit — starting free with 100 credits a month. See what that looks like for your team at sprad.io/industry/recruitment-agencies.