Top Recruiting Platforms Employers Should Know in 2025
If you ever need to hire someone online, you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways there are to do that. There are so many different job boards and online recruiting platforms, and they come in all shapes and sizes. How are you supposed to know which ones are the best recruiting platforms?
We were curious, so we did a comparison of popular job-search sites — how they work, what they cost and what audiences they’re aimed at.
What You Need from a Recruiting Platform
Whether you’re a hiring manager for a major corporation or just a mom-and-pop operation looking to hire a freelancer for a temporary gig, you’ll want to use the best recruiting platforms.
Employee referrals can be a nice way to fill your open positions. But these days you need to go beyond that — way beyond. Most businesses will want a recruiting platform that’s easy to use, fits into their budget, and maybe even has some automated or applicant tracking tools. Do you need guidance on how to write a job listing? Some sites have templates you can use. Or, maybe you want a less crowded platform so your opening has a better chance of getting noticed. It all depends on your needs.
How to Choose the Right Platform for Your Business
Hiring managers, you have so many choices. Hopefully this will help narrow it down for you.
The first step is figuring out your budget. Some platforms cost more than others, and while free options do exist, they have so many listings it can be hard for yours to be seen.
Some platforms, like Workable, are job ad syndication sites, or you can post on the sites directly.
One question you might ask yourself is, How easy is it to use?
Ease of use is just as important for job seekers in their job search as it is for employers during recruitment. Job search websites like ZipRecruiter simplify things by allowing employers to post to over 100 boards at once, while it empowers job hunters to search those same boards with its job search engine.
The Best Recruiting Platforms of 2025
We rounded up the recruiting tools of today to make your choice a little bit easier. Here are some of the best recruiting platforms for finding your latest new hire.
1. LinkedIn
Here’s where social recruiting comes in handy. LinkedIn is the biggest professional networking site in the world, with more than 1 billion members in 200 countries.
It can help employers connect with qualified candidates, especially for white-collar positions. Those professionals are the ones who mostly use the networking site.
You only get one job posting at a time for free. You can pay to use LinkedIn Recruiter, which is typically used by larger companies; or LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, which is for smaller companies.
LinkedIn has also introduced LinkedIn Talent Hub, its applicant tracking system. An ATS helps filter out applicants who applied even though they don’t really fit the criteria.
Pricing: On LinkedIn, you can post one job at a time for free, but there are limits. For larger companies, you have to reach out to LinkedIn to get a price quote for LinkedIn Recruiter. There is a slimmed-down version called LinkedIn Recruiter Lite that costs $170 per month, or $140 per month if you sign up for a year.
2. Indeed
Indeed, which has been around since 2004, is a free employment board that also offers paid, premium options to make life easier for job hunters and employers alike.
Because it’s free, many employers can gain access to a diverse candidate pool that’s brimming with talent. And job seekers don’t have to pay to apply for jobs, upload their resume to Indeed’s database or create job alerts for roles they’re interested in.
For employers, the free features of Indeed take the risk out of testing the waters of the talent pool. But its premium features, such as sponsored postings and a subscription to Indeed’s resume database, are what really make Indeed useful for employers in their recruiting process.
But as great as the free option is, that also means the competition is stiff to get your job postings seen. How many other employers are competing for the eyes of qualified candidates? The entire recruitment process depends on your ads getting seen by the right eyes.
Pricing: Indeed starts out free. There’s no charge for posting a help-wanted ad on the site. If you want to post jobs and attract more eyeballs to your job posting, though, it costs. Sponsored job posts will run you a minimum of $5 a day or $150 per month.
3. ZipRecruiter
ZipRecruiter is useful if you need a job opening to be posted widely so you can hire someone quickly. It is both a job board and a marketplace that allows employers to post a job opening to multiple online job listings at the same time. You can post your job listings to over 100 boards at once.
ZipRecruiter uses artificial intelligence to decide where to post your job vacancies, and it uses its matching technology to analyze millions of data points to find the best potential matches for your job.
It’s free for employers to try for two days. After that, there are various packages you can buy, depending on your needs. ZipRecruiter offers three different monthly plans, based on which features you want. You also can pay extra for sponsored posts to give your job postings premium placement on job sites.
Pricing: ZipRecruiter has three monthly plans — Standard, Premium and Pro. It’s not as up front about its pricing, so you will likely need to talk to a sales agent.
4. Workable
This site says it will get your job listing on more than 200 job boards, reaching millions of qualified candidates. Its plans come with an applicant tracking system, candidate sourcing tools and unlimited active jobs.
The pricier plans include hiring plans, text features and video interviews. For an additional fee, you can add on HR tools like employee onboarding and time tracking. If these are all things you need and you have the means to pay for it, there’s definitely a convenience factor there.
Its website says more than 30,000 companies have used Workable for not just finding new hires, but supporting them in the hiring process and managing their employees.
Pricing: There is a 15-day free trial with no credit card required. After that you have a choice between the standard plan at $299 a month or a premier plan at $599 a month, if you have fewer than 20 employees. The price goes up the more employees you have. For something in between, you can add extra à la carte features to the standard plan.
5. Greenhouse
Greenhouse aims to be a one-stop shop for hiring needs. It’s an ATS that offers, “AI-powered, end-to-end hiring.” So you can post to job boards, build interview kits to help hirers look for the right qualities and create an onboarding process. It even has a redacted feature where you can keep certain aspects of resumes hidden to reduce bias.
All of its plans get you basic talent sourcing, as well as support with workflows, interviewing and decision making, plus reporting and insights. The more features you want within each category, the more it will cost.
It doesn’t have as many job board partnerships as other platforms on the list, but it hits the big ones like LinkedIn and Indeed.
Pricing: Greenhouse has three plans — essential, advanced and expert. You will have to reach out about cost, because they don’t make that information available on their website.
6. Zoho Recruit
Zoho says it can help you find, evaluate and communicate with candidates in a more streamlined way. It can get your job on more than 75 jobs boards and find quality candidates based on your needs through its AI assistant.
Its free plan gets you one active job at a time along with candidate management, email management and interview scheduling. The more active jobs you want out there, the pricier it will get. The more expensive plans can also get you social recruiting, resume management, advanced analytics and much more.
This is definitely an affordable option if you need a few extra tools under your belt.
Pricing: There are four plan options: free, standard ($25 per user per month), professional ($50 per user per month) and enterprise ($75 per user per month).
ATS vs. Job Boards vs. All-in-One Suites
All of these can have a hand in helping you hire. Whether or not you just need one or a combination of them depends on your needs. Job boards are things like LinkedIn, where you post your job and that’s the only place it lives. All-in-one suites like Workable post to hundreds of job boards at once. An applicant tracking system like Zoho will screen applicants for you. It can search for keywords in resumes so hiring managers don’t have to sift through applications from candidates who aren’t a good fit.
So, who needs what? Large companies who might see hundreds of applicants in one posting would benefit from job boards and an ATS. If they have no trouble getting people to apply, then they don’t need as much help expanding their reach. And screening hundreds of candidates just for one job is draining. But smaller companies who need to get their job in front of a lot of eyes and need support in the screening process would benefit from all-in-one suites like workable.
How AI Is Shaping Recruiting Tools
Recruiting is just one of many things businesses are turning to AI for. It’s not a perfect science yet, but it can help streamline the process for businesses who need the extra support. A company may simply use AI to write the job description, it could use an ATS to filter out resumes of undesirable candidates or it could use it for interview scheduling. All of that can save business owners and recruiters a lot of time.
Some places are going as far as having AI chatbots screen candidates. You know, the part of the hiring process where you’ve chosen a candidate based on their resume, and you have the initial phone call so you can get a better feel of them? AI tools can take care of that for you.
That won’t necessarily be the right thing for everyone. Especially in jobs where the candidate’s personality is especially important, like customer service or sales. But there are many options out there for making the process less of a time suck.
Small Business-Friendly vs Enterprise Platforms
Whenever you see a platform refer to itself or one of its plans at “enterprise” that simply means it caters to larger businesses. The needs of bigger corporations and small businesses are often similar, but are needed on a much different scale. That’s why the enterprise options typically are more expensive. It doesn’t mean the platform is necessarily better. It just has the hiring tools needed for a company with way more employees.
Final Take: Best Recruiting Platforms for Your Business
If you’re still having trouble deciding on the best platform for you, think of what you need out of it. A few of these platforms come with a lot of extras that can be helpful on your journey. But if you just need to keep it simple and get your job out there, stick with jobs boards like LinkedIn and Indeed. If you need support with everything from the job descriptions to how to interview and onboard candidates, all-in-one platforms like Workable and Greenhouse are solid options. And don’t let the term AI scare you or overly excite you. It’s great to have when you need it, but if you’re more comfortable sorting through resumes yourself, then do it.
