Workable vs Greenhouse vs Breezy HR vs Ashby (ATS)

TL;DR: Which ATS Should You Pick?

If you're comparing Workable vs Greenhouse vs Breezy HR vs Ashby, the short answer is: Greenhouse suits mid-market and enterprise teams that need structured, scorecard-driven hiring; Workable suits small and mid-size teams that want an all-in-one ATS with transparent tiered pricing; Breezy HR suits very small teams or solo recruiters on a tight budget; and Ashby suits fast-scaling startups that want an ATS and recruiting CRM in one system. If your hiring volume is still low and you mainly need help writing job descriptions, screening resumes and doing first-pass interviews before candidates even reach an ATS, Ergora's HR pack covers that earlier part of the funnel at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated platform.

This guide breaks down what each tool actually does well, who it suits, and where a lighter-weight AI layer like Ergora fits alongside (not instead of) one of them.

Workable vs Greenhouse vs Breezy HR vs Ashby: Comparison Table

Workable vs Greenhouse: Two Different Philosophies

This is the comparison most small-business hiring managers actually start with, because both tools are genuinely full applicant tracking systems, just built for different stages of company growth.

Greenhouse is built around structured hiring: standardised scorecards, interview kits tied to each role, and reporting designed to reduce bias and keep hiring consistent across many managers. That rigour is valuable once you have multiple recruiters, several open roles running in parallel, and a need to prove your process to stakeholders or auditors. Greenhouse's pricing is quote-only, which itself signals the market it's aimed at: it's typically sold through a sales conversation rather than a self-serve checkout, and rates are scoped to company size and hiring volume.

Workable covers similar ATS fundamentals (pipelines, job posting distribution, interview scheduling) but is sold on published monthly tiers ($299, $599 and $719 a month), which makes it easier for a small or mid-size team to budget for without a sales call. It also bundles sourcing features aimed at helping smaller teams find candidates without a dedicated recruiter. If you want one platform that does the whole hiring workflow and you can see the price before you sign up, Workable is the more accessible of the two.

Neither is wrong; the decision mostly comes down to whether you need Greenhouse-style structured hiring across a large, multi-manager org, or a self-contained ATS sized for a smaller team. Our deeper look at Ergora vs Workable for small business hiring goes further into that specific pairing.

Breezy HR and Ashby vs Greenhouse: Budget and Scale Trade-offs

Breezy HR and Ashby sit at opposite ends of the spectrum from each other, and both compare differently against Greenhouse.

Breezy HR is the most accessible option here. It offers a free tier alongside affordable paid plans, which makes it a reasonable starting point for a very small team or a solo hiring manager who needs a visual, drag-and-drop pipeline without committing to enterprise-grade spend. It won't carry the same structured-hiring depth as Greenhouse, but for a team hiring a handful of roles a year, that depth often isn't necessary yet.

Ashby vs Greenhouse is a different kind of comparison, because both are aimed at companies that expect to scale hiring quickly rather than companies that are small today and plan to stay that way. Ashby combines ATS functionality with a recruiting CRM, meaning sourcing, pipeline tracking and analytics live in one system, a genuine advantage for a startup whose headcount and hiring volume are both expected to climb fast. Like Greenhouse, Ashby is generally sold on a quote basis rather than published self-serve pricing, so you'll need to talk to their sales team to get an exact number for your team size.

The practical takeaway: if your hiring volume is low and your budget matters more than enterprise features, Breezy HR is the easier entry point. If you're a startup that genuinely expects rapid scaling and wants ATS plus CRM from day one, Ashby's model is built for that trajectory, but it's solving a problem most very small teams don't have yet.

Finding the Right ATS for Small Business Hiring Teams

Picking the right ATS for small business hiring usually comes down to three questions:

1. How many roles are you hiring for right now, and how many hiring managers are involved? One or two open roles with a single decision-maker rarely need Greenhouse-level structure. Several open roles across departments start to justify it.
2. What's your appetite for a sales process versus self-serve signup? Workable and Breezy HR publish pricing or offer transparent tiers; Greenhouse and Ashby typically require a conversation with sales before you see a number.
3. Is your hiring volume stable or about to spike? A startup about to triple headcount has different needs from a small business hiring steadily at a predictable pace. Ashby is built for the former; Breezy HR and Workable suit the latter.

A fourth, often overlooked question: how much of your current hiring effort goes into before a candidate even reaches a formal pipeline: writing the job description, reading through resumes, and doing a first screening conversation? For many small teams, that early-funnel work takes more hours per hire than the ATS itself does.

Where Ergora Fits: Screening Before You Need a Full ATS

Ergora's HR pack isn't a competitor to Greenhouse, Workable, Breezy HR or Ashby. It's not a full applicant tracking system, and it doesn't try to replace scorecards, multi-stage pipelines or enterprise reporting. What it does is handle the earliest, most time-consuming part of hiring:

• Job Description Writer drafts role descriptions in your brand voice, so you're not starting from a blank page for every opening.
• AI CV Screening reads through applications and surfaces the candidates worth a closer look, instead of a human skimming every resume manually.
• AI Voice Interview runs first-tier screening conversations with candidates before you commit a hiring manager's calendar to them.
• Candidate Kanban and Open Positions give you a simple visual pipeline for tracking where each candidate sits, without the overhead of a full enterprise ATS.

For a very small team that doesn't need Greenhouse's scorecards or Ashby's CRM yet, Ergora's HR pack can genuinely cover the hiring workflow on its own for low-volume hiring. For teams already running Workable or Breezy HR, Ergora works alongside it: the ATS handles the pipeline and compliance paper trail, while Ergora takes the manual work out of writing descriptions, reading resumes and doing first-round screens. It's a seat-based platform starting at $99 a month with the HR pack added from $59 a month on top (never sold as a pack alone), and new accounts get 50% off the first month. If you want to see how AI screening changes the hiring workload in practice, our guides on using AI for smarter candidate screening and how AI is changing recruitment in 2026 go into more depth.

The one-line verdict: for small and mid-size teams that need hiring help without enterprise-scale ATS overhead, pair a lightweight pipeline tool with Ergora's AI screening and voice interviews to cut the early-funnel workload that Workable, Greenhouse, Breezy HR and Ashby were never built to automate.

Frequently asked questions

Is Workable better than Greenhouse for a small business?

For most small businesses, yes, in the sense that Workable publishes clear monthly pricing tiers and is sized for smaller teams, while Greenhouse is quote-only and built around structured hiring workflows that suit mid-market and enterprise companies with multiple hiring managers. If your team is hiring a handful of roles a year without complex approval chains, Workable's self-contained ATS is usually the simpler fit. Greenhouse becomes the better choice once you have several hiring managers and need consistent scorecards across every role.

What is the cheapest ATS for a small business?

Breezy HR is generally the most accessible option here because it offers a free tier alongside affordable paid plans, making it a reasonable starting point for a very small team or solo recruiter. Workable publishes tiered monthly pricing starting at $299 a month, which is still transparent but a step up in cost. Greenhouse and Ashby are typically quote-based, so their cost depends on your specific hiring volume and team size.

Ashby vs Greenhouse: which is better for a startup?

Both are built for companies that expect real scale, but they solve it differently: Ashby combines ATS and recruiting CRM functionality in one system, which suits a startup expecting fast headcount growth and wanting sourcing and pipeline data together. Greenhouse leans more heavily into structured, scorecard-driven hiring, which suits a company that already has multiple hiring managers and wants consistency across them. Both are generally sold through a quote-based sales process rather than published self-serve pricing.

Does Ergora replace an ATS like Greenhouse or Workable?

No. Ergora's HR pack is not a full applicant tracking system. It doesn't offer the deep structured-hiring workflows, enterprise reporting or large-scale pipeline management that Greenhouse, Workable, Breezy HR or Ashby provide. Instead, it covers the earlier screening funnel: writing job descriptions, screening resumes with AI, and running first-tier AI voice interviews, which can either stand alone for low-volume hiring or work alongside a lightweight ATS.

How much does Ergora's HR pack cost compared to a dedicated ATS?

Ergora is seat-based, starting at $99 a month, with the HR pack added from $59 a month on top (it is never sold as a standalone pack), and new accounts get 50% off the first month plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's typically less than a dedicated ATS subscription, though Ergora is solving a narrower problem: early-funnel screening rather than full pipeline and compliance management.

What size team should consider Breezy HR instead of Greenhouse?

Breezy HR suits very small teams or solo recruiters who want a visual pipeline without enterprise pricing or sales conversations, thanks to its free tier and affordable paid plans. Greenhouse is built for the opposite end of the spectrum: mid-market and enterprise organisations with multiple hiring managers who need standardised scorecards and reporting. If you're hiring occasionally with one decision-maker, Breezy HR's lighter footprint is usually the more practical starting point.