Applicant tracking systems · Europe
Best ATS for European hiring teams
Compare seven ATS options for this hiring brief
| Provider | Choose it for | Important limitation |
|---|---|---|
| 1Teamtailor | Bring hiring managers into candidate reviews and communication without per-user subscription limits. | Local privacy settings require an enabled add-on; a candidate in overlapping locations can receive the shorter deletion period. |
| 2Recruitee Advance | Run multilingual hiring across all 12 vacancies; Advance includes unlimited job posts. | Single sign-on costs extra on Advance. Contracts run for at least one year, even with monthly payments. |
| 3Pinpoint | Apply different candidate-retention rules to jobs in different locations. | Recent profile activity can postpone deletion, so a retention period alone does not fix the removal date. |
| 4Ashby Plus | Build custom recruiting dashboards and calculated fields to investigate where hiring slows down. | Advanced scheduling is an add-on. Privacy rules flag records for someone to remove manually. |
| 5Greenhouse | Give interviewers consistent interview kits and scorecards. | Audit logs require Pro; buying interview structure alone does not include every reporting or audit feature. |
| 6Workable | Manage recruiting with unlimited active jobs, subject to fair use. | The entry price covers a smaller employer than this brief. Snoozed candidates are excluded from automatic deletion. |
| 7softgarden All-in-One | Manage separate client accounts, hiring approvals and permissions in All-in-One. | Separate accounts need their own retention settings. Core’s five advertised positions do not cover this 12-vacancy brief. |
Choose your first two demos · Replacing an ATS? Test the migration
Choose what to fix first
This shortlist assumes four recruiters, 20 hiring managers and 12 live vacancies across three EU countries. The purchase should make candidate communication, manager decisions and local administration easier to run.
Choose the first two demos around the bottleneck. A better careers site matters when candidate attraction is weak; better reporting matters when you cannot explain where hiring stalls.
These are desk-researched fit judgements, not measured hiring results or a legal-compliance rating. Country-specific requirements still need their own assessment.
1. Teamtailor: careers pages and manager reviews
Teamtailor combines career-site tools with hiring-manager review and communication workflows. Its pricing page includes unlimited users and job postings, with a custom quote.
Start with Teamtailor if you need a new careers site and more hiring-manager participation. Its unlimited-user pricing means adding a hiring manager does not require another per-user subscription.
Local privacy settings need an admin-enabled add-on; overlapping locations can apply the shorter deletion period. Include the settings your countries need in the proposed scope.
2. Recruitee: multilingual hiring across 12 vacancies
Recruitee Advance adds unlimited job postings and multilingual career-site capability. For this employer’s 12 vacancies, Start’s five-job limit makes it the wrong comparison.
Compare Advance when recruiters hire across languages and locations. If requisition approvals and SSO are essential, also quote Optimize.
Retention settings remain part of implementation. Recruitee’s help explains how a newer application can affect a merged profile’s retention period. Keep responsibility for those rules with a named owner.
3. Pinpoint: retention rules for different job locations
Pinpoint assigns different retention settings to job locations. That makes it worth considering when recruiters manage several locations through spreadsheets.
Its recent-activity rules can extend how long a record stays. In the demo, show how recent recruiter activity affects the planned deletion date.
Pricing is by quote. Include all 24 recruiting and manager users, migration and support. Third place is a fit judgement, not a claim that Pinpoint costs less.
4. Ashby: buy the reporting, budget the administration
Ashby positions Plus for employers with 101–1,000 employees. It includes advanced reporting capabilities such as calculated fields and custom dashboards; advanced scheduling is a separate addition. This 200-person brief should not be priced from the smaller Foundations offer.
Our verdict: move Plus ahead of the top three when the recruiting leader needs to investigate bottlenecks with reporting, and has someone to own the configuration. Use your own hiring stages in the demonstration report. Check which candidates it includes and how it counts someone who re-enters a stage.
Ashby’s privacy rules flag candidates for manual anonymisation or deletion rather than completing that action automatically. When multiple rules apply, its documentation uses the longest retention period.
That differs from the overlapping-location example in Teamtailor. Neither behaviour is a universal compliance verdict; your approved policy must determine whether it fits. Assign a named person and a review interval to flagged records.
5. Greenhouse: interview kits and scorecards
Greenhouse Core includes interview kits and scorecards; Plus adds a BI connector, while Pro lists audit-log access and a developer sandbox. Include the required reporting and audit features in the quote before the security review.
Our verdict: move Greenhouse up when different interviewers need a consistent evaluation process. Demonstrate the same role with two hiring managers and inspect the completed evidence, not just the empty scorecard template.
Greenhouse’s retention workflow can notify an owner that a record is ready for manual deletion. Its period begins after all of the candidate’s applications are hired or rejected.
Selecting the name field alone does not remove names from Activity Notes; those notes must be selected separately. Put a fictional marker in both places and make the demonstration account for both.
6. Workable: unlimited active jobs, with retention exceptions
Workable publishes headcount-based pricing, unlimited active jobs subject to fair use, and additional recruiting options. The opening rate is for 1–20 employees. It is not the price for this 200-person employer. Request the correct band with the assessment, messaging and other additions you will actually use.
Its privacy automation excludes snoozed candidates from automatic deletion. Unsnoozing counts as activity. Its documentation also says hired candidates’ names remain in Time to Hire and Hiring Plan reports after GDPR deletion, while other report treatment differs.
Our verdict: consider Workable if you need unlimited active jobs, subject to its fair-use policy. Give the privacy owner the reporting exception before choosing.
Test an ordinary inactive record, a snoozed record and a hired record separately. Ask the supplier to distinguish operational deletion, reporting retention and the response to a specific erasure request.
7. softgarden: inspect every client account
softgarden Core starts at EUR 199 monthly before VAT for five active positions; All-in-One lists 20 positions, multi-client administration and expanded permissions. Quote All-in-One if you need separate client accounts.
SSO and HRIS integrations cost extra. Core’s five-position starting plan does not cover twelve vacancies.
Our verdict: move softgarden up for a buyer who needs those distinct recruiting structures. Its retention documentation says subtenant settings do not inherit the parent configuration. Automatic deadlines apply to hired or rejected candidates; someone still needs to deal with profiles left in other stages.
An applicant deleting their own account does not delete their applications. The employer must handle application deletion separately. Demonstrate both, then document who receives and completes the employer-side request.
Compare quotes for the same hiring workload
Give every supplier the same requirements:
- Hiring workload: 200 employees, 12 simultaneous vacancies, four recruiters, 20 hiring managers, three countries and the required career-site languages.
- Services and features: first-year and renewal totals, with migration, SSO, API access, calendar connections, reporting, support and required privacy settings priced separately.
- Contract: length, price-change terms and the cost of leaving.
Compare the total for the same requirements.
For the manual work, use a measured task count. This deliberately fictional illustration is a planning method, not a provider saving:
| Assumption | Calculation | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| 120 expired records monthly; two minutes to review and action each | 120 × 2 ÷ 60 = 4 hours monthly | Time requirement to investigate, not a measured industry benchmark. |
| Internal planning rate: EUR 50 per hour | 4 × EUR 50 = EUR 200 monthly; EUR 2,400 yearly | Potential capacity value, not cash saved or a software budget. |
| Some cases still need judgment | Retain their measured time in the comparison | Automation does not eliminate exceptions, verification or ownership. |
A supplier that flags records can still be the right purchase. The mistake is putting zero administration beside it in the business case. Conversely, automatic deletion is not a benefit if its rule removes material your approved process needed to retain.
Keep the privacy work proportionate to the purchase
For a multi-country employer, retention settings and manager access can change the shortlist. Agree those requirements with the people responsible for privacy, then use the supporting cases below for the finalist. They should not turn every first demo into an audit.
Optional: four fictional records for the finalist’s configuration review
Use a supplier-approved non-production environment and synthetic data only. Your privacy owner must define the permitted retention and deletion outcomes before the demonstration.
The six- and twelve-month periods below are deliberately invented test settings, not recommended legal periods. The supplier must show whether each case is supported, configurable, manual or unavailable.
These are proposed tests; we have not executed them in the products.
| Case | Demo setup and steps | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| ATS1 — two applications | Candidate TEST-101 has expired rejected application A and active application B. Run the approved clean-up for A. | Show the remaining profile and both application histories. B must survive if that is the approved policy; document any manual workaround. |
| ATS2 — conflicting locations | TEST-102 applies to one job with two test locations: six-month and twelve-month rules, same starting date. Display the selected rule and exact due date. | The result must match the privacy owner’s written decision. A vendor explaining its default is not proof that the default fits. |
| ATS3 — information in several places | Put TEST-ERASE-103 in a name, attached CV and recruiter note. Complete the approved erasure scope, then inspect search, record views and named reports. | Account for every copy, any justified retention, backup treatment and connected-system owner. A flag or missing search result alone does not demonstrate completion. |
| ATS4 — manager changes jobs | Manager M leaves the team for job A but still manages job B. Remove the A permission; try the old candidate link and document access. | A must be inaccessible under the agreed policy while B remains usable. Capture role changes and confirm the edition needed to retrieve that evidence. |
Record configuration, edition, operator, expected result, observed result and unresolved dependency for every case. Download a synthetic export before ATS3 and track it separately: deleting a record in the ATS does not itself prove that an earlier exported file or a downstream integration has been cleaned up. Assign those actions to named owners.
If candidate scoring or interview AI is part of the proposal, give it a separate evaluation. Require visible inputs, a correction path and a human owner for decisions. None of the ranking above depends on a claim that automated screening improves hiring.
Start with two demos and a clear reason for each
Our starting pair is Teamtailor and Recruitee Advance. Choose Teamtailor for careers pages and hiring-manager reviews; compare Recruitee for multilingual hiring. Add Pinpoint if jobs in different locations need different retention settings.
Move Ashby up for reporting or Greenhouse for structured interviews. Compare Workable for unlimited active jobs under its fair-use policy, or softgarden for separate client accounts.
Take the same live vacancy brief into the first two conversations: who needs to hire, who needs to decide and where the process stalls. Then compare the required edition, the work left for recruiters and the total cost of moving. If your incumbent can solve the problem with a practical change, keeping it is a valid buying decision.
Request a Teamtailor demo or request a Recruitee demo. For the location-administration brief, request Pinpoint. Select your software-use country in the form. People Ops Buyer handles the request and follows up; a meeting is not booked until confirmed.
Questions buyers ask
Which ATS should a 200-person European employer shortlist?
For three-country hiring with 12 simultaneous vacancies, our first invitations are Teamtailor, Recruitee Advance and Pinpoint. Move Ashby Plus up for advanced reporting or Greenhouse for structured evaluation. These are conditional editorial choices from published documentation, not tested performance scores.
Does a GDPR feature mean an ATS deletes expired records automatically?
No. The documented workflows differ: some complete configured removal, while others flag or notify an owner for manual action. Even automatic workflows have exclusions, timing rules and limits on the information removed. Test your approved policy and name the person responsible for exceptions.
When should I shortlist Pinpoint?
Shortlist Pinpoint when jobs in different locations need different candidate-retention settings. In the demo, show how recruiter activity affects the planned deletion date. Compare the quoted price for your users, migration and support.
Can we use the advertised starting price in an ATS budget?
Only if its headcount, active-job capacity, edition and required additions match the purchase. This guide’s brief exceeds several opening scopes. Obtain a written first-year and renewal schedule before comparing totals.
Sources and research scope
Primary product, pricing and help documentation reviewed on 2 October 2026. Rankings are our buyer-fit judgments; product behaviour is attributed to supplier documentation. No hands-on product testing, measured savings, legal certification or hiring-outcome rating is claimed. Local privacy and employment requirements must be assessed for the buyer’s actual workflow. Fictional cases and cost assumptions are labelled. Teamtailor, Recruitee, Ashby and Greenhouse pricing/plan scope rechecked 6 October 2026; other sources retain their original research dates.
- Teamtailor pricingCustom quote; unlimited users and job posts.
- Teamtailor ATSCareer-site and hiring-manager workflow scope; vendor descriptions, not measured adoption.
- Teamtailor automatic removalOne-week flagged grace period; rejected application and candidate-profile distinction.
- Teamtailor local privacy settingsAdmin-enabled add-on; most restrictive overlapping location settings; latest application precedence.
- Recruitee pricingStart five jobs; Advance unlimited, multilingual and SSO add-on; Optimize scope; minimum one-year commitment.
- Recruitee privacy featuresRetention from application; merge behaviour; deletion automation available on Advance/Optimize.
- Pinpoint quote requestCustom commercial scope rather than a published rate for this buyer.
- Pinpoint automatic removalPII removal, recent-activity extension and anonymised reporting record.
- Pinpoint location policiesMultiple retention settings explicitly assigned to job locations.
- Ashby pricingPlus 101–1,000 employees; reporting scope and separately priced advanced scheduling.
- Ashby data privacy documentationFlagging followed by manual action; longest matching rule; hired-profile exception.
- Greenhouse pricingCore interview kits/scorecards; Plus BI connector; Pro audit log and developer sandbox.
- Greenhouse retention rulesManual deletion notification, all-applications condition and separate Activity Notes selection.
- Workable pricingCompany-size bands; opening price for 1–20 employees; unlimited jobs with fair-use policy.
- Workable privacy automationSnoozed candidates excluded; activity and report-retention boundaries.
- softgarden pricingCore five-job starting scope, All-in-One 20 positions, optional SSO/HRIS integrations.
- softgarden deletion deadlinesHired/rejected stages; subtenant settings do not inherit parent settings.
- softgarden applicant account deletionDeleting the login account does not remove applications.