Free candidate screening software: what you can actually run at no cost
Candidate screening software is what you use to get from a pile of applicants to a shortlist worth interviewing. It covers three separable jobs: reading resumes, testing skills, and hearing how someone communicates. The tools on this page do the third — one-way video interviews, where candidates record answers on their own time and you review them ranked. Of the seven compared here, VoxScreen is the only one with a permanent free plan. The rest are trials. If what you need is free resume parsing or free skills tests, this list won't cover it, and saying so is more useful than stretching the definition.
Side by side
Facts below come from each vendor's own public pages on the date shown beside their section. A cell reading nothing stated means exactly that: the vendor doesn't publish it.
| Tool | Free plan, not a trial | Free trial, if there is no free plan | Entry price | Team members included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VoxScreen Our product | Yes, 50 candidates a month | Not needed. The free plan has no end date | $39/mo | Unlimited, on every plan |
| Truffle | No | 7 days / 30 credits, no card | $49/mo | Unlimited |
| Hireflix | No | 1 month | $75/mo | Unlimited |
| Willo | No | Not stated on their site | $59 per live role/mo | 5 on Lite |
| Spark Hire | No | Not stated on their site | $249/mo | 5 monthly, unlimited annual |
| OneWayInterview | No | 14 days, no card | $13.99/mo | Unlimited |
| Hirevire | No | 7 days, no card | $49/mo | 1 on Essentials |
The tools in detail
Truffle
Truffle is candidate screening software combining resume screening, one-way video interviews and talent assessments, all drawing on a single monthly credit pool. A resume screen costs 1 credit, an assessment 2, and a one-way interview 5.
Starter is $49/mo billed monthly with 200 credits and a hard cap. Core is $99/mo billed annually with 7,200 credits a year, Team $199/mo, Scale $499/mo, and rollover plus $0.25 overage credits above Starter. The trial is 7 days and 30 credits, no card.
Pick Truffle if
- Resume screening is the bottleneck, not the interview. Truffle prices that as its cheapest action.
- Your volume swings month to month and credit rollover is worth more to you than a fixed allowance.
- You want assessments and interviews measured in one budget not two subscriptions.
· Sources: hiretruffle.com/pricing · VoxScreen vs Truffle
Hireflix
Hireflix is a focused one-way video interview product with unlimited seats, positions and responses on every paid plan, a well-documented GraphQL API and signed webhooks, and integrations into most ATS products.
Hireflix publishes $75/mo for companies under 50 employees and $150/mo for 50 to 250, both billed yearly, with a custom tier above that and a one-month free trial. There is no permanently free plan.
Pick Hireflix if
- You interview at high volume and want one flat price instead of a per-candidate allowance.
- You already run a mature ATS and want the interview tool to plug in and stay out of the way.
- Your team prefers to watch and judge answers itself rather than start from an AI score.
- You want the interview on your own domain. Hireflix sells custom domains. VoxScreen doesn't have them, so the candidate page stays on ours.
· Sources: hireflix.com/pricing , help.hireflix.com · VoxScreen vs Hireflix
Willo
Willo is a British one-way interview platform with 18+ interview languages, an assessment library, custom scorecards, anti-cheat controls, ISO 27001 certification and a long list of enterprise ATS integrations.
Willo Lite is $59 per live role per month, capped at 5 live roles, 5 users and 150 assessed candidates per role. Willo Enterprise is an annual contract from $3,229 to $3,799 a year depending on term. There is no free plan. The split between the two is worth reading carefully: Lite covers the assessment library, email and SMS invites and 18+ languages, but custom branding, custom scorecards, anti-cheat, the open API and downloadable responses are all marked as Enterprise features on their pricing page.
Pick Willo if
- You need ISO 27001, SSO, MFA and a dedicated success manager to clear procurement.
- You need ID, right-to-work or background checks in the same flow. They aren't bundled — Enterprise draws them from a credit balance and Lite sells them as add-ons — but no comparable step exists in VoxScreen at all.
- You interview in languages beyond the five VoxScreen covers. Willo lists 18+.
· Sources: willo.video/pricing · VoxScreen vs Willo
Spark Hire
Spark Hire sells three separate products: an applicant tracking system, video interviewing, and behavioural assessment. Paid plans carry unlimited users, and pricing steps up with company size.
The video interview product is $299/mo month-to-month for up to 5 simultaneous jobs and 5 users, or $249/mo billed annually with unlimited jobs and users. The ATS plans start at $335/mo, annual only. No free plan is offered.
Pick Spark Hire if
- You want an ATS and a video interview tool from one vendor on one contract.
- You buy on an annual contract through procurement. The ATS plans are annual only and priced for that.
- You want behavioural assessment and automated reference checks in the same purchase.
· Sources: sparkhire.com/pricing · VoxScreen vs Spark Hire
OneWayInterview
OneWayInterview is a one-way video interview tool aimed at small businesses, with AI candidate scoring, over 100 pre-built screening tests, ATS integrations, anti-cheat controls and metered interview volume.
Annual plans run $13.99/mo for 30 interviews, $34.99 for 60, $62.99 for 150 and $209.99 for unlimited, with monthly billing about 30% higher and extra interviews at $0.57 each. The trial is 14 days with no card. There is no free plan.
Pick OneWayInterview if
- Your volume is genuinely small and predictable, and a 30-interview allowance covers a whole quarter.
- You want a large library of ready-made screening tests instead of questions generated for your role.
- Unlimited interviews at $209.99/mo is the shape you need, and metering per interview beats metering per candidate. That tier is also the only one with their Corporate Domain option, which VoxScreen has no equivalent of.
· Sources: onewayinterview.com/pricing · VoxScreen vs OneWayInterview
Hirevire
Hirevire is an asynchronous screening tool that collects video, audio and file responses, transcribes them in 90+ languages and produces AI scorecards, with plans metered by active jobs, users and interviews per year.
Hirevire publishes $49/mo for Essentials (1 active job, 1 user, 300 interviews a year), $149/mo for Professional and $249/mo for Agency, each about 20-35% cheaper billed yearly. There is a 7-day free trial with no card, but no permanently free plan.
Pick Hirevire if
- You need candidates to attach files or portfolios alongside their recorded answers.
- You screen in languages well outside the five VoxScreen supports: Hirevire advertises transcription in 90+.
- You hire one role at a time and one person does all the reviewing, which is exactly what the Essentials plan is priced for.
- You need interviews on your own domain, or emails sent from your own server. Hirevire sells both from Professional up; VoxScreen has neither.
· Sources: hirevire.com/pricing · VoxScreen vs Hirevire
The honest version
If the requirement is screening at zero cost: VoxScreen, and it isn't close, because it is the only permanent free plan in the field. 50 candidates a month, unlimited team members, no card.
If you want screening breadth not depth on one signal: Truffle bundles resume screening, one-way interviews and assessments against one credit pool from $49/mo. That's genuinely more of the screening job than we do, and if you want all three in one place it is the better fit.
If you want screening plus an applicant tracking system: Spark Hire, from $249/mo for interviews and $335/mo for the ATS. Every other tool here is a screening layer that hands off to whatever you already run.
The narrow read on this whole page: a one-way interview is the cheapest way to learn the thing a resume can't tell you, which is how someone actually communicates. It isn't a replacement for reading resumes, and no free plan changes that.
Common questions
Is there free candidate screening software with no time limit?
VoxScreen's free plan has no end date: 50 candidates a month, 2 active interviews, unlimited team members, no credit card. It covers one-way video interviews with AI scoring against a rubric you write. The other six tools compared here have no free tier. They offer trials, from 7 days at Truffle and Hirevire up to about a month at Hireflix.
What does candidate screening software actually do?
It reduces a pile of applicants to a shortlist and gives you a reason for the order. Different tools attack different parts: resume screeners read documents, assessment tools test a skill, and one-way interview tools capture how someone thinks and speaks. The tools on this page are the third kind. Truffle is the one here that also does the first two.
Can free screening software rank candidates for me?
On VoxScreen's free plan, yes — every answer is transcribed and scored against the rubric, and the list comes back ranked with the reasoning per criterion. That's unusual for a free tier; AI scoring is normally the first thing held back. Elsewhere on this page, ranking exists but only behind a paid plan or inside a trial window.
Does screening software reject candidates automatically?
It shouldn't, and VoxScreen doesn't. A ranking is a sort order, not a filter: every applicant stays on the list, and no score removes anyone. If you're evaluating tools in this category, this is worth asking each vendor directly. Auto-rejection is both a legal exposure and the fastest way to lose a good hire to a formatting quirk.
Do I need an ATS to use these?
No. Every tool on this page works standalone: you share one link, candidates apply and record, and results land in one list. If you already run an ATS, most of them connect through an API, webhooks or Zapier. Spark Hire is the only one here that sells an ATS of its own.
VoxScreen makes one of the tools on this page, so read the ranking with that in mind. Every competitor figure comes from that vendor's own public pages, read on the date shown in their section, and every section says when they're the better buy. Products and prices change. Check their site before you decide.
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