Pre-Employment Assessment: 9 Tools Compared

I build HR software for small businesses, and whenever I size up a tool, I want two answers first: what it costs, and how much of my time it takes to find out.

This comparison covers nine assessment platforms a US small business is likely to meet: which ones publish a price, what the published ones cost at three real hiring volumes, and the federal rules that switch on once you reach fifteen employees.

Four of the nine will tell you what they cost, and five will not. That split is the single most useful thing to know before you start, because it determines how much of your evaluation is research and how much is sitting on sales calls.

The second useful thing is that price here is almost entirely disconnected from hiring volume. A flat subscription costs the same whether you assess five candidates a year or fifty, so a $2,580-a-year plan works out to $516 per candidate at five and about $52 at fifty. Most comparisons in this category rank features, but features are not what separates these products for a small employer.

What pre-employment assessment actually covers

A pre-employment assessment adds a consistent, comparable measurement to a process otherwise driven by impressions. Every candidate for a role takes the same test under the same conditions, which makes comparing them meaningful in a way that comparing two differently run interviews is not.

For a small employer hiring into a defined role, work samples and skills tests are usually both the most informative and the easiest to defend, because the connection between the test and the job is self-evident. Personality instruments are the most commonly oversold: useful as an input to a conversation, weak as a screening filter on their own.

Federal assessment guidance backs the work-sample point. The Office of Personnel Management credits work samples and simulations with a high degree of content validity, meaning the task mirrors the job. It also notes that cognitive ability tests typically produce larger racial and ethnic differences than other valid predictors, which is the adverse impact risk flagged in the table.

Who publishes a price and who does not

Four of the nine vendors here publish a rate you can act on, and five require a demo or a form before you learn a price. That divide shapes the whole category, and most comparisons skip it. The figures circulating for the quote-only vendors come from procurement databases and aggregators rather than the vendors themselves.

The rules that switch on at fifteen employees

Testing candidates moves you into territory governed by federal employment law, and the threshold is lower than most small employers expect. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures apply to employers with 15 or more employees, which covers most of the businesses reading this page.

A test is not illegal just because some groups pass it at lower rates than others. What matters is adverse impact, meaning a substantially lower selection rate for one race, sex, or ethnic group than for others: a selection procedure producing it is unlawful unless it is job-related for the position and consistent with business necessity.

Adverse impact is assessed with the four-fifths rule, set out in 29 CFR Part 1607: a selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group below 80 percent of the rate for the highest-selecting group is generally treated as evidence of adverse impact.

None of this makes assessment risky in itself. Used properly, it reduces the inconsistency that informal hiring produces. The failure mode is adopting a scored tool, never looking at the resulting selection rates, and having no answer when someone asks why a group passed at half the rate of another.

9 pre-employment assessment tools at a glance

The table below covers each tool's test focus, the lowest tier a small employer can buy, whether a free tier exists, whether it integrates with an applicant tracking system (ATS), whether the price is published, and the commitment term. The commitment column deserves a second look: a burst hirer should rule out annual-only terms before comparing anything else.

How we evaluated these tools

We evaluated for a US small business making somewhere between three and twenty hires a year, where the person running the search is a founder or operations lead rather than a recruiting function. We put the same four questions to all nine tools.

See who is on track and who is stuck

Active Onboardings lists every new hire in progress. Late items are marked, so you see them without messaging anyone.

Start free trialSee how onboarding works

Active OnboardingsTrack and manage employee onboarding progress#EmployeeStageProgressStatus1Angela MartinSenior AccountantStagePre-boardingProgress1/9 tasksStatusOn Track2Darryl PhilbinWarehouse ForemanStageFirst DayProgress4/10 tasksStatusOverdue3Ryan HowardSales AssociateStageFirst WeekProgress7/11 tasksStatusOn Track4Kelly KapoorCustomer Service RepresentativeStageFirst MonthProgress10/12 tasksStatusOn Track

Tools with published pricing

TestGorilla, EmployTest, and HackerRank publish rates you can evaluate without talking to anyone, so start here. Predictive Index also publishes a starting price but quotes the rest by headcount, which is why it sits with the quote-based platforms below.

One tool you may expect to see is missing. Toggl Hire, which paired skills tests with job ad creation and an applicant tracking system, is no longer sold: Toggl closed it to new signups in September 2025 and has since retired it.

TestGorilla

Best for test library breadth and a genuinely usable free plan

Pricing

Free plan with 10 credits a month; Core from $215 a month and Plus from $520 a month per account, billed annually, tiered by credit volume; monthly billing also offered

Tests

350-plus in the library on Core, spanning skills, cognitive, personality, situational judgment, and coding

Best for

Teams hiring steadily across several role types

TestGorilla is the most complete option here for a general small business, and its free plan is unusually serious: 10 credits a month, AI resume scoring on every applicant, five essential skills tests that use no credits, qualifying questions, five preset custom questions, and limited video questions and AI interviews. For a company making a handful of hires a year, that free tier alone can be the whole answer.

On the paid side, Core opens the full 350-plus test library from $215 a month billed annually. It is priced in credit tiers, so the entry figure rises with candidate volume rather than staying flat. Each skills test in an assessment uses one credit per candidate, an AI interview uses two, and identity verification, available on Plus, uses one more.

TestGorilla's billing terms have two details worth knowing. Annual plans pool credits for the year while monthly plans reset each month, and a credit is charged when a candidate starts an assessment, not when they finish. Monthly billing suits a seasonal hirer, though it costs more: the annual plan saves 25 percent.

EmployTest solves the problem the subscription model creates. Credits are bought in packs, one completed test uses one credit, and there is no subscription. The company reports serving more than 13,000 organizations since 2006.

With packs, a company hiring four people in March and nobody until October pays for what it used, as long as it uses the credits within their one-year life. At five candidates a year, $199 against a $2,580 annual subscription is not a close comparison.

The trade-off is scope. This is a testing service rather than a hiring platform: no ATS integrations listed, no free plan beyond sample tests, and no pipeline features.

Costs also scale with the number of tests. EmployTest says employers give an average of two per applicant, which doubles the cost per candidate, and at higher volume it offers an annual company-wide license priced on request. It is a precise fit for one situation and an awkward one outside it.

HackerRank

Best for technical and engineering hiring

Pricing

Starter at $99 a month, or $79 a month billed annually ($948 a year), with 60 attempts a year; Pro at $529 a month, or $419 billed annually, with 360 attempts a year; unlimited users on both; Enterprise by quote

Tests

Coding assessments and live pair-programming interviews across 55-plus programming languages

Best for

Companies hiring developers, data, or engineering roles

For technical hiring this is a category of one among the tools here. HackerRank supports 55-plus programming languages, runs asynchronous take-home tests and live collaborative interviews from the same platform, and includes plagiarism detection with AI-assistance flagging, which now matters more than any other single feature in coding assessment.

The constraint for a small team is the Starter allowance: 60 attempts a year on the annual plan, or five a month on the monthly one, and a question library of 2,000-plus against 4,000-plus on Pro. Users are unlimited on both plans, so the hiring manager and the founder can both work in it.

Attempt volume is what pushes a team to Pro, at $529 a month or $419 billed annually. That pricing shape reflects a product built for engineering organizations rather than for a company making two developer hires a year. If you hire non-technical roles too, you will need a second tool.

What a technical hiring platform covers beyond the coding test

A technical hiring platform is software built specifically for filling engineering roles, and assessment is only one layer of it. The other layers are developer sourcing, applicant tracking tuned to engineering pipelines, and live interviewing in a shared code editor. Vendors label the bundle a tech hiring platform or a developer screening stack, but the layers are the same.

For a small employer, the practical question is whether a general test library goes deep enough. TestGorilla includes coding tests in its general library, and Canditech runs technical tasks inside its simulations, so either can screen a junior developer. HackerRank earns its price when you need broad language coverage, a real editor, live pair programming, and plagiarism detection that flags AI assistance.

Quote-based and enterprise platforms

These six price through a sales conversation: Vervoe, Canditech, Criteria, Wonderlic, and HireVue publish no price, and Predictive Index publishes only a starting figure before quoting by headcount. They are included so you can recognize them, understand what is known about their cost, and decide whether to spend the calls.

Vervoe

Best for AI-graded job simulations

Pricing

No published plans; pricing on request, with the product positioned for enterprise-scale hiring

Tests

Job simulations and work samples with AI grading of the actual output

Best for

Larger teams screening at volume with job simulations

Vervoe takes a different approach from question-bank testing: candidates complete realistic job tasks, such as drafting a customer reply or working through a spreadsheet exercise, and AI grades the actual work rather than a multiple-choice proxy for it. For roles where output is the point, that produces a more informative signal than a knowledge quiz, and it is easier to explain to a candidate who asks why they are being tested.

Vervoe has moved upmarket. Its pricing page no longer lists plans: it asks visitors to request pricing and describes the product as built for skills-first hiring at enterprise scale, with single sign-on, regional data storage, and uptime and support guarantees.

For a small employer, Vervoe's enterprise focus means a sales conversation before any number, which puts it with the quote-based platforms in this section rather than the self-serve tools above.

Canditech sits between the question-bank platforms and the simulation specialists, running technical tasks, video responses, and soft-skill exercises inside a single assessment so one sitting produces several signals. Its cheating controls include monitoring for ChatGPT and Google searches, webcam snapshots, and copy-paste detection.

Canditech publishes plan limits but not prices. The Individual plan covers one assessment and three users, Team covers two assessments and eight users, and Pro and Enterprise are unlimited. The rate comes after a demo or the free trial.

As a way into simulation testing, Canditech is a credible option, but get the price for the tier you need in writing before comparing it with anything else on this page.

Criteria is the option on this page most clearly built around industrial and organizational psychology, the field that studies people at work, rather than software convenience. Its Assess package bundles the full portfolio of cognitive, personality, emotional intelligence, risk, and skills tests. Its integrations page lists more than 50 applicant tracking and human capital management (HCM) systems, and a free trial runs before any sales call.

The catch is that you cannot price any of it in advance. All three packages carry a request-pricing button, AI proctoring (automated monitoring of candidates while they take a test) and AI scoring are sold as upgrades, and the quote is built from your goals and headcount.

If validity documentation is genuinely important to you, perhaps because you hire at volume into roles where adverse impact is a live concern, the calls are worth making. Otherwise it is a lot of process before you see a number.

Predictive Index

Best when you want consulting alongside the assessments

Pricing

Plans start at $10,000 a year, priced by headcount, with unlimited users and assessments

Tests

Behavioral assessment plus a 12-minute, 50-question cognitive assessment, with team and management analytics on top

Best for

Growing companies using assessment for team design as well as hiring

Predictive Index (PI) is less a testing tool than a talent framework with tests inside it. The behavioral assessment feeds team composition analysis, management guidance, and manager coaching, so the same instrument used to evaluate a candidate keeps producing value after they join.

Companies that adopt it tend to treat it as a shared internal language rather than as a screening step. PI says more than 10,000 companies use it, and its plans include onboarding and rollout support.

For a small business, the barrier is total cost rather than the software. PI publishes a floor: plans start at $10,000 a year and rise with headcount, and it sells only annual subscriptions rather than individual assessments. That is a substantial line item for a company making four hires a year, and the value depends on actually using the framework internally rather than only at the hiring stage.

Active Onboardings

Ryan HowardFirst WeekOn Track

Darryl PhilbinFirst DayOverdue

Kelly KapoorFirst MonthOn Track

Onboarding Wizard

1 · EmployeeRyan Howard

2 · TemplateSales Associate

3 · Review & Launch11 items

Onboarding Templates

Sales Associate11 steps

Warehouse Foreman10 steps

Customer Service12 steps

Onboarding

Each new hire, set up in one go

Put tasks, documents to sign and courses into one plan, then send all of it with one launch.

Start free trial

Wonderlic

Best established cognitive assessment for frontline hiring

Pricing

Quote only, priced by package and employee count

Tests

Cognitive ability, personality, and motivation, combined into a single composite score

Best for

High-volume hourly and frontline hiring where speed of screening matters

Wonderlic has been in employment testing since 1937, and its composite approach, scoring cognitive ability alongside personality and motivation rather than treating them separately, is genuinely distinctive. For high-volume frontline hiring where the practical need is a fast, consistent filter across many applicants, it does what it was designed to do and has decades of use behind it.

There are two reasons to be careful at small scale. Wonderlic publishes no prices, so there is no way to judge fit before a sales process.

The second reason is the test type itself. Cognitive testing carries the highest adverse impact risk of the common test types, which means the record-keeping and validation questions in the legal section apply here with more force than they do to a work-sample test. That is manageable with the right documentation and a real problem without it.

HireVue

Best enterprise assessment and video interviewing at large scale

Pricing

Quote only; positioned for mid-market and enterprise buyers

Tests

Video interviewing plus game-based, coding, language, and job-simulation assessments

Best for

Large organizations hiring at a scale where automation pays for itself

HireVue combines structured video interviewing with game-based, coding, and job-simulation assessments and integrates with the enterprise recruiting stack, including Workday, iCIMS, and Greenhouse. For an organization screening thousands of applicants, the automation is the product and the arithmetic works.

It is on this page so you can stop evaluating it. HireVue publishes no prices and describes its platform as built for mid-market and enterprise hiring, with training and change management handled by its professional services team. A small business would be quoted on a model designed for a different kind of buyer. That says nothing against the product, and no amount of negotiation changes it.

What it costs at 5, 20, and 50 candidates a year

Assessing five candidates and assessing fifty costs the same on every subscription option here. This is the table the category avoids, because it shows how little the price moves with usage.

On current list prices, credit packs stay cheaper across a wider range of volumes than you might expect. EmployTest at $199 for five candidates against $2,580 for a TestGorilla Core subscription is a difference of more than ten times for the same job. Even 100 EmployTest credits, at $1,999, cost less than that Core subscription.

A subscription pulls ahead only at high, steady volume, where its price holds still while spending on credit packs keeps climbing. If your hiring is lumpy rather than steady, annual commitments are a worse fit than their headline rates suggest.

Before you choose

FirstHR picks up where pre-employment assessments end. It is an HR platform for US small businesses covering what happens once someone accepts: onboarding, employee records, e-signature, and document management, at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50. The tests and the candidate scoring come from one of the platforms above.

That distinction matters for one reader in particular. If you are hiring three or four people a year, the numbers above suggest an annual assessment subscription is a hard purchase to justify, and the larger loss in a small company is usually not choosing the wrong candidate but losing the right one in the first ninety days. Assessment sharpens the decision; nothing in it touches what happens once someone accepts.

How to choose a pre-employment assessment tool

Five questions settle this, and the first two remove most of the list before you open a trial.

A closing note on sequencing: before you buy anything, run one open role with a structured interview where every candidate is asked the same questions in the same order, and a short work sample you write yourself. That costs nothing, captures a large share of the benefit assessment software provides, and tells you concretely what the software would need to add.

Set up your next new hire in FirstHR

4.7 on G2

Start free trial

Offer LetterSigned

Welcome courseCompleted

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a pre-employment assessment?

It is a structured test given to candidates before hiring, measuring cognitive ability, job-specific skills, personality, situational judgment, or work-sample performance. The purpose is a consistent, comparable data point in a process otherwise driven by impressions. It differs from background and reference checks, which verify history rather than measure ability, and from post-offer medical examinations, which are governed separately.

How much does pre-employment assessment software cost?

Among vendors that publish, EmployTest sells credit packs from $199 with no subscription, HackerRank Starter runs $99 a month or $948 a year, TestGorilla Core starts at $215 a month billed annually alongside a free plan, and Predictive Index starts at $10,000 a year. Vervoe, Canditech, Criteria, Wonderlic, and HireVue quote on request.

Do pre-employment tests have to be validated?

Under the Uniform Guidelines, only if they produce adverse impact. The Guidelines say plainly that they do not require a validity study for a selection procedure that causes no adverse impact. Adverse impact is assessed with the four-fifths rule: a selection rate below 80 percent of the highest-selecting group is treated as evidence of it. Tracking your own selection rates is what tells you which case applies.

Are pre-employment assessments legal?

Yes, within limits. Title VII and the Uniform Guidelines apply at 15 or more employees, and a test is lawful even where it screens out more of one group provided it is job-related and consistent with business necessity. The ADA separately restricts medical examinations to after a conditional offer. A growing number of states and cities regulate automated employment decision tools, so check local rules where scoring is automated.

What is the difference between a skills test and a cognitive test?

A skills test measures what a candidate can already do and is easy to defend as job-related because the connection is obvious. A cognitive test measures general reasoning and learning speed, predicts across a wider range of roles, and carries the highest adverse impact risk of the common types. For a defined role, a skills-based or work-sample approach is usually both safer and more informative.

Should a small business use assessments?

It depends on hiring volume rather than headcount. At two or three hires a year, a structured interview plus a short work sample you write yourself captures most of the benefit at no cost. Software starts paying off when applicant volume makes consistent screening a real time saving, or when hires are frequent enough that cost per candidate becomes reasonable.

Can candidates cheat on online assessments?

Yes, and most vendors now sell countermeasures: webcam snapshots, full-screen enforcement, question randomization, tight time limits, plagiarism and AI-assistance detection, and identity verification. None is perfect. The practical mitigation for a small employer is structural: treat the test as a screening filter rather than a final decision, and verify the result in a live conversation where the candidate explains their own work.

What is the difference between assessment software and an ATS?

An applicant tracking system manages the pipeline; assessment software measures candidates. They are different products most teams eventually connect, which is why ATS integration appears on nearly every assessment vendor's feature list and is often gated to a higher tier. For small employers the pipeline problem usually arrives first, and assessment gets added once applicant volume makes manual screening impractical.