Best AI recruiting software for teams under 200 people

We're a 55-person startup and just went through a pretty thorough evaluation of AI recruiting tools. Figured I'd share what we found since most "best of" lists are written by people who've never actually used the products.

Our requirements were simple: help our one HR person screen candidates faster, include AI analysis without enterprise pricing, and be something we could set up without an implementation team.

Here's what we tested, in order of how long the evaluation took.

HireVue: Couldn't get past the sales process. They wanted to understand our "organization's hiring maturity" before showing pricing. After two calls we still didn't have a demo or a number. Moved on. Built for companies much larger than us.

Spark Hire: Got a demo quickly. $299/month starting. Clean interface for video collection. But the AI features were limited. It's a solid tool for recording and organizing one-way interviews, but the analysis piece is mostly manual. You're still watching every video yourself.

Willo: $279-409/month depending on the plan. Similar to Spark Hire in that it's focused on video collection. Interface is friendly. But again, no AI-assisted screening in the way we needed. You collect videos and review them yourself.

VidCruiter: Contact sales pricing. Comprehensive feature set. But the sales process was geared toward larger companies. They quoted us a price that assumed higher volume and longer contracts than we needed. Feature-rich but more than a 55-person startup requires.

Truffle: $149/month. One plan. Everything included. Set up our first position in about 20 minutes. Candidates record responses through a Position Link. Truffle's AI transcribes, scores against our criteria, and generates ranked shortlists with AI Summaries and Candidate Shorts. The match scores are transparent. You can see exactly what criteria drove each ranking.

We went with Truffle. Four months later, it's still the tool we use daily.

What made the difference for a team our size:

• Price: $149/month (or $99/month annual). No negotiation needed.
• Speed: Live in 20 minutes. No implementation timeline.
• AI included: Match scores, summaries, and Candidate Shorts aren't add-ons.
• Simplicity: Our HR person runs it solo. No training needed.

Screening time per position went from about 20 hours to around 5. Our HR person handles 3-4 open positions at once now instead of struggling with 2.

For other small teams evaluating AI recruiting software, what did you end up choosing and why?