Bullhorn is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system designed specifically for the staffing industry.

For years Bullhorn published no pricing whatsoever, and this page used to say exactly that. That is no longer true. Bullhorn now publishes a list price for its two entry tiers. Everything above them is still quote-only.

So this guide covers three things: what Bullhorn actually publishes, what agencies report paying once they get past the published tiers, and when that price is worth it.

We'll answer these questions for you:

• Which Bullhorn plans are there?
• What does Bullhorn cost?
• When should I pay for Bullhorn?
• What are alternatives to Bullhorn?

Prices below were verified against Bullhorn's own pricing pages in July 2026. Bullhorn negotiates per company, so your quote will vary by geography, headcount and industry.

Which Bullhorn plans are there?

Bullhorn sells two different product families, and this is what makes most Bullhorn price comparisons useless.

The Bullhorn Platform is the proprietary ATS and CRM that most agencies mean when they say "Bullhorn". The Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud is the Salesforce-based line, and not one of its tiers carries a published price.

You will also still see Team, Corporate and Enterprise quoted as Bullhorn's plan names all over the web (this page did the same until we rechecked it). Those are legacy labels. The current small-agency lineup is Starter, Core and Pro.

Bullhorn Starter: $99 per user, per month

• Applicant tracking
• Resume parsing
• Client management
• Job posting with career portal
• Live expert support

Bullhorn Core: $165 per user, per month

Everything in Starter, plus:

• App marketplace (300+ partners)
• Custom fields and workflows
• LinkedIn integration
• Bullhorn email sidebar

Bullhorn Pro: custom pricing

Everything in Core, plus:

• Recruitment CRM (sales pipeline)
• AI Assistant
• Automation (tasks, outreach, data quality)
• Real-time analytics
• Dedicated account manager

Notice what sits behind the quote-only wall: the CRM. The sales pipeline half of "ATS and CRM" is not included in either of the two priced tiers.

Add-ons: priced separately

These are each a separate "get a quote" line on Bullhorn's pricing page, not part of a seat:

• Search and Match
• Onboarding
• Back office (pay and bill)
• Middle office, Analytics, Messaging
• Amplify Digital Workers, Recruitment Automation, VMS Automation

What does Bullhorn cost?

The two figures Bullhorn publishes, as of July 2026:

• Bullhorn Starter: $99 per user, per month
• Bullhorn Core: $165 per user, per month
• Bullhorn Pro, Bullhorn One, the Recruitment Cloud and every add-on: custom quote

Read "per user" carefully, because this is the single most common mistake made about Bullhorn's price (including by the earlier version of this page, which said "$99 per month"). A six-person desk on Core is roughly $11,880 a year, not $165 a month.

Bullhorn's small-agency page states "No setup fees. No hidden costs". That claim is attached to Starter and Core. It does not describe the negotiated tiers, which is where most agencies of any size actually land.

What agencies report paying above the published tiers. These come from review aggregators and agency-published quotes rather than from Bullhorn, so treat them as directional rather than as list prices:

• Mid-tier and enterprise seats: roughly $150 to $315 per user per month once automation, analytics and VMS modules are attached
• Implementation and data migration: roughly $1,000 to $5,000 for a small agency, rising to $15,000 to $50,000+ at 100+ users
• Renewal: multiple Capterra reviewers report Bullhorn seeking increases of around 20% at renewal, so price the second year, not just the first

There is also no free trial. Past Starter and Core, evaluating Bullhorn means booking a sales call.

When should I pay for Bullhorn?

Bullhorn is a system of record for candidate and client data, with a distinct focus on staffing agencies. It is mainly used in the US but is globally available.

The useful question is not "is Bullhorn good", it is "am I buying the part of Bullhorn that costs this much".

Bullhorn is worth its price if:

• You run a temp or contract desk and need timesheets, pay and bill, and middle or back office in the same system as the ATS. This is the real moat, and it is why generic ATSs are not substitutes.
• You work through VMS portals and want that req intake automated rather than rekeyed.
• You are big enough that the 300+ partner marketplace and the API matter, because your stack is already built around them.
• You have the volume to absorb implementation and an annual increase without it changing your economics.

You are probably overpaying if:

• You are a perm-only desk. You would be paying staffing-grade prices for an ATS and never touching the modules that justify them.
• You are one to three recruiters. At that size the implementation fee and the annual commitment dominate the seat price.
• What you actually need is a pipeline and a client list, not a system of record.

Either way, consider your alternatives before you sign. There are other solutions in this market, and several publish their prices.

What alternatives do I have?

If you're not sure Bullhorn is worth the price, you have two realistic directions.

1. General-purpose tools

Plenty of small desks run on a spreadsheet plus a CRM before they buy staffing software. It works up to a point. You get no resume parsing, no career portal and no candidate deduplication, and the manual work scales with your placement volume rather than staying flat.

Here are the tools staffing agencies most often use this way:

• Google Sheets (genuinely free)
• HubSpot (free CRM tier, but no ATS)
• Smartsheet
• monday.com

Be careful with the word "free" here. monday.com's free plan caps at 2 seats and 3 boards, and its paid Work Management plans carry a 10-seat minimum, so a five-person agency cannot buy five seats. Its CRM product has a 3-seat minimum. It is cheaper than Bullhorn, but it is a work OS that you would be configuring into an ATS yourself, on your own time.

2. A cheaper recruitment ATS

The more direct comparison is a purpose-built recruitment ATS. Unlike Bullhorn, several of these publish a list price you can check without a sales call:

• Manatal: $15 per user per month annually (Professional, capped at 15 jobs and 10,000 candidates), $35 for Enterprise with no caps. Includes an agency CRM and client portal. No back office.
• Workable: $299 per month on Standard and $599 on Premier for 1 to 20 employees, priced per company rather than per seat.
• Recruitee: no longer publishes figures. Tiered by plan, company headcount and billing period, with a minimum one-year commitment and a 20% discount for paying annually.
• Teamtailor: quote only.
• Greenhouse: quote only, and built for in-house talent teams rather than agencies.

One caveat that applies to this whole list: Workable, Recruitee, Teamtailor and Greenhouse are built for in-house hiring. They track candidates against your own reqs, not clients, placements and margin. For an agency, that is a real functional gap, and it is why Manatal is the closest like-for-like swap for a perm desk leaving Bullhorn.