I ran a recruitment agency for four years and used every major ATS. Here is what I actually found - and why I eventually built my own.
I am not a software reviewer. I am a recruiter.
For four years I ran ScalingPPL, a recruitment agency placing people into startups and scale-ups across Europe. During that time I used Bullhorn, Ashby, Recruitee, Manatal, and two others I have genuinely blocked from memory. Every single one of them required me to build workarounds within six months. Not because I was using them wrong — because they were not built for how an agency works.
That is what eventually led me to build Pickr. But before I pitch you on Pickr, here is an honest breakdown of what is actually available.
Every major ATS was built for one company hiring for itself. One employer. One brand. One set of hiring managers. The entire data model is built around that assumption.
Recruitment agencies do not work like that. You manage five clients. A candidate who is wrong for Client A might be perfect for Client B. Client A's hiring manager must never know that the candidate is also in Client B's process. You need to track placement fees, deliver shortlists to clients, and prove what work you actually did to get there.
When you take an in-house ATS and try to run agency operations on it, you are fighting the architecture from day one. The workarounds you build — separate spreadsheets for revenue tracking, PDF exports for client shortlists, manual tags for client separation — are not process problems. They are symptoms of using the wrong tool.
Every review below is filtered through one question: does this tool actually support how a recruitment agency operates?
The honest case: Built specifically for agency workflows, with AI embedded throughout the process — not bolted on.
Pickr is the only ATS I know of that was built by someone who ran a recruitment agency before writing a line of code. The multi-client architecture is native, not a workaround. Candidates live in a properly isolated structure — Client A's hiring manager logs into the portal and sees only their pipeline. Cross-client candidate matching happens at the recruiter level, not the client level, so confidentiality is preserved. Placement tracking, proof-of-delivery reporting, and the client portal are core features, not add-ons.
The AI is not a "ChatGPT button." The AI Process Audit connects to your existing ATS and produces a diagnostic of where your process loses time. The AI Challenge fires when a recruiter moves a candidate without a scorecard, or rejects a strong candidate without a documented rationale. The AI Scorecard Pre-fill drafts your evaluation document from the interview transcript. These are not features you invoke — they run in the background on every candidate, every role.
The honest weakness: Pickr is newer than Bullhorn or Vincere. The integration ecosystem is smaller. The enterprise-level custom reporting that Ashby does exceptionally well is good in Pickr but not yet at the same depth. If you need 50 custom BI dashboards and a Workday two-way sync, Ashby or Vincere are further along.
Pricing: EUR 149/seat/month (Starter), EUR 249/seat/month (Pro). All features included. No add-ons.
Best for: Agencies of 2–30 recruiters who want a modern platform built for how agencies actually work.
The honest case: The industry standard for a reason. Built for agencies. Also built in 2000.
Bullhorn is the most widely used recruitment software in the world for a reason. It was purpose-built for agencies, has real CRM depth, and handles complex staffing operations that other tools do not. If you are running a large staffing firm with dedicated ATS administrators, a compliance team, and a long history of client data, Bullhorn's depth is appropriate.
If you are running a 10-person boutique agency, you are paying for complexity you do not need and navigating an interface that predates the iPhone. Bullhorn's UI is genuinely difficult. New recruiters take weeks to get productive. Every configuration change is a project. Implementation typically takes 2–4 months and costs $10,000–30,000 in professional services before you get to the license fee.
The AI features exist but are acquisitions layered onto an existing product. They are not native.
Pricing: Custom. Typically $75–150+/user/month. Implementation fees on top.
Best for: Large agencies (50+ recruiters) with enterprise requirements and dedicated admin resources.
The honest case: The best in-house ATS on the market. Wrong tool for agencies.
Ashby is used by OpenAI, Shopify, Ramp, and Notion. G2 users describe its reporting as "BI-tool level." Its interview scheduling automation is the best available anywhere. One user reported reducing scheduling time from 15 minutes to 2 minutes per interview, saving 86 hours per month. These claims are real and verified.
Ashby is also structurally incapable of serving a recruitment agency well. There is no native multi-client management. There is no client portal. There is no placement tracking. There is a feature that allows limited external partner access — but every agency that has tried to use Ashby at scale reports hitting the same walls within 6 months.
An independent analysis by Treegarden (March 2026) stated it plainly: "The dominant ATS platforms — Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, Ashby — were designed for in-house talent acquisition teams. They were not designed for an agency."
This is not a criticism of Ashby. It is a fact about what it was built for.
Pricing: Starts at $400/month base. Full analytics requires Plus tier (custom quote). AI Notetaker is a paid add-on.
Best for: In-house talent teams at tech companies. Not for recruitment agencies.
The honest case: Probably the most underrated agency ATS. Solid, clean, no surprises.
Vincere is purpose-built for agencies and has done the hard work of getting the core workflows right: CRM, placement tracking, client management, and decent reporting. The interface is modern compared to Bullhorn. Implementation is faster. The pricing is more transparent.
The AI features are newer and still maturing. Vincere does not have the depth of AI integration that Pickr is building. For agencies that want operational solidity over AI depth, Vincere is a serious choice.
Pricing: Approximately $74/user/month.
Best for: Mid-market agencies (10–50 recruiters) wanting a proven platform with agency-native architecture.
The honest case: The best cheap ATS that actually works. Know its ceiling.
$15/user/month. Real AI features — candidate recommendations, 700M+ profile database, job description optimization. For a solo recruiter or a two-person agency, Manatal delivers genuine value at a price point that is hard to argue with.
The ceiling is real. Boolean search limitations, shallow automation, and limited integration capability mean most growing agencies outgrow Manatal within 18 months. The migration cost when you leave is low because the data export is clean — which is actually a mark in its favour.
Pricing: $15/user/month (Professional), $35/user/month (Enterprise).
Best for: Agencies under 5 recruiters, freelance recruiters, agencies testing the ATS concept before committing to a full platform.
Ask any ATS vendor you are evaluating: "If I give Client A's hiring manager portal access, can they accidentally see any of Client B's candidates?"
If the answer involves the word "workaround" — you are looking at an in-house ATS, not an agency ATS. The right answer is: "No. Client A's portal is a completely isolated data view. Client B's data is invisible to them at the architecture level."
Pickr's answer is the second one. The others are the first.
Pickr for agencies that want AI-native architecture and agency-native features from the start. Manatal if budget is the primary constraint and you have under 5 recruiters. Vincere if you want a proven mid-market option with strong operational foundations.
Ashby is excellent for in-house teams. For recruitment agencies, it lacks native multi-client management, client portals, and placement tracking. Agencies that use Ashby consistently report building manual workarounds for these gaps within 6 months.
An agency ATS has client-level data isolation, cross-client candidate matching with confidentiality rules, a client portal, placement fee tracking, and proof-of-delivery reporting. In-house ATS platforms were built for single-employer use and do not have these features natively.
Manatal starts at $15/user/month. Pickr at EUR 149/seat/month. Vincere at approximately $74/user/month. Bullhorn at $75-150+/user/month with significant implementation costs on top.
Run your free hiring process audit
Connect your ATS in 3 minutes. Get a full breakdown of where your process loses time and candidates — with three prioritised fixes.
Start free audit →Andreas Gruber
Founder of Pickr and ScalingPPL. Former recruiter who placed engineers and operators into European startups and scale-ups for four years before building the tool he wished had existed.