Ashby

What it is

Ashby sells ATS, sourcing, talent CRM, interview scheduling, and analytics as one product on one bill. Its own pricing FAQ is blunt about it: “it’s one price for the entire platform across ATS, Sourcing, CRM, Scheduling, and Analytics.” Built by ex-Quora and ex-Rippling engineers, it is the default pick for venture-backed companies that would otherwise assemble Greenhouse plus a sourcing tool plus a scheduler and pay three bills for it.

Two things moved in 2026. Ashby now publishes a price ladder for companies under 100 employees, so the quote wall is gone below that line. And on 29 June 2026 it shipped a hosted MCP server, which makes it one of the few applicant tracking systems an agent can read and write directly.

Why it shows up in recruiting stacks

• Analytics without a BI layer. Funnel conversion, source ROI, time-in-stage, and interviewer calibration are native. Ashby also sells the analytics module standalone to companies over 100 employees running Greenhouse or Lever — the clearest evidence of where it outruns them.
• Agent access is first-party. The MCP server at https://mcp.ashbyhq.com/mcp/v1 is on every plan, Foundations included. Each user completes their own OAuth flow, so an agent sees exactly what that person sees in Ashby rather than working through a shared service account. It reads candidates, applications, jobs, interviews and offers, and writes four actions: create a candidate, add a note, move an application to the next stage, consider a candidate for an open job.
• AI is metered, not bundled per seat. Application review against job criteria, fraudulent-candidate detection, and talent rediscovery draw on a credit balance — 1,500 credits/month on Foundations, 2,500 per seat per year on Plus, 12,500 per seat per year on Enterprise. Extra credits are purchasable at every tier.

Pricing

Foundations is priced on total company headcount, not recruiter seats. Ashby’s FAQ states pricing is “based on the size of your organization at that point of purchase, not on a seat or talent team basis.” The published monthly ladder, with annual billing at 10% off:

• 1–10 employees — $300/month, $270 on annual
• 11–25 employees — $400/month, $360 on annual
• 26–50 employees — $500/month, $450 on annual
• 51–75 employees — $700/month, $630 on annual
• 76–100 employees — $900/month, $810 on annual

Above 100 employees pricing goes custom: Plus for 101–1,000, Enterprise for 1,000+. Third-party contract aggregators put 100–300-employee deals at roughly $30–70K/year and 300–500-employee deals at $60–120K/year, with SpendHound reporting an average near $64,700 — estimates from resale benchmarks, not vendor figures, so use them to set an expectation and not a target.

What the ladder does not include: SSO is a $100/month add-on on Foundations and included on Plus and Enterprise; the AI Notetaker is a paid add-on at every tier; and the AI Auto-Scheduler and coordinator scheduling queues are absent from Foundations entirely — Plus reaches them through an Advanced Scheduling add-on, Enterprise includes them. Sourcing email lookups are capped at 200/month on Foundations, with more at $90 per 1,000, the same rate as SMS. Implementation carries no separate fee at any tier.

You still take a demo call to buy, but Ashby commits in writing that “the above price will not change during the sales process,” which makes the ladder a real number rather than an anchor.

Best for

TA teams at 10–100-employee venture-backed companies that want ATS, sourcing, CRM, scheduling and analytics on one bill and one data model — and that want an agent to query the pipeline without a middleware layer in between.

Not for

Staffing and agency recruiters: the data model is shaped for in-house TA, and Bullhorn or Loxo fit the placement workflow. High-volume hourly hiring belongs with Paradox or Fountain. And headcount-indexed pricing inverts on companies that are large relative to their hiring volume — a 400-person company making 15 hires a year pays about what a 400-person company making 200 hires pays.

Versus the alternatives

• Greenhouse — also headcount-priced, also quote-only at every tier, with a deeper partner marketplace and more granular approval chains. Pick Greenhouse when structured-hiring governance and third-party integrations decide the evaluation.
• Workday — pick it when recruiting has to sit inside the HCM system of record. Ashby’s Enterprise tier syncs positions and requisitions two-way with Workday, so below 1,000 employees the two more often co-exist than compete.
• Rippling — the newest entrant in this segment, and the one whose ATS arrives attached to the HRIS and payroll you already bought. Pick Rippling when one vendor for people ops is the deciding factor; pick Ashby when recruiting analytics is.

Watch-outs

• The price is indexed to a number you plan to grow. Going from 40 to 80 employees moves you from $500 to $900/month with no change in hiring volume, and Ashby reassesses annually. Guard: model the cost at your headcount plan’s year-two number rather than today’s, and negotiate a multi-year rate at signing.
• Scheduling automation is not in the entry tier. If coordinator load is the reason you are buying, Foundations does not solve it. Guard: price the Plus quote with the Advanced Scheduling add-on before comparing Ashby against GoodTime.
• MCP is in open beta. Ashby’s docs state that tool inputs and outputs may change without notice, and the server rate-limits at 120 requests per minute. Guard: keep an integration test pinned to the tool schemas, and keep the MCP path off hiring-manager-facing surfaces until it reaches GA.
• Credit burn is invisible until month one. Application review against criteria is the credit-heaviest feature, and one high-inbound requisition can eat a large share of the 1,500-credit Foundations monthly allowance. Guard: start on monthly billing, watch the burn for a cycle, then convert to annual for the 10%.
• Foundations has no custom permission roles. Confidential projects and confidential sequences also start at Plus. Guard: if you run exec or confidential searches, scope the quote at Plus — which caps custom roles at three — from the first call.