Explainable resume screening for teams that hire without an ATS
Primary sources checkedSiftFirst✓ Claimed by vendor
SiftFirst ranks applications against criteria the employer writes, and puts a quoted line from the resume under every score. It is billed per candidate screened rather than per seat, and it is built for a small team doing its own hiring, not for a recruiter working inside an ATS.
The short answer
- Best for
- A small team that gets two hundred applications for a role, reads them itself, and wants a defensible first pass rather than a black-box reject
- Not ideal for
- Recruiters who want screening to happen inside their ATS pipeline, and anyone who needs sourcing, candidate communication or offer management in the same product
- Price
- Free for 50 candidates a month; paid from $31/month billed yearly for 500
- Closest alternative
- CurriculoThe better answer when the screening is only the first half of the problem and you actually need a pipeline, because it is a flat-rate ATS with scoring rather than a screening layer beside one.
At a glance
- Recruitment fitStrong
- Ease of useUnknown
- ImplementationStrong
- Price transparencyFair
- Value for moneyUnknown
- ScalabilityFair
Why these assessments
- Recruitment fitStrong
- Everything in it is hiring-shaped: a job description in, criteria and weights, ranked candidates, interview questions and scorecards out. It is narrow rather than general, and the narrowness is deliberate.
- Ease of useUnknown
- SourcrLab has not run applications through it. The shape is low-friction on paper — paste a job description, edit the suggested criteria, upload — but in a screening tool ease shows up in whether the ranking matches your own judgement on your own roles.
- ImplementationStrong
- There is no migration and no integration project: it runs in the browser, takes uploaded or pasted applications, and a demo runs for up to fifteen candidates without an account at all. The free plan needs no card.
- Price transparencyFair
- The meter is unusually clear — candidates screened, with a published overage rate of $8 per additional 100. What is not clean is the page itself: a monthly/yearly toggle and interface labels showing higher figures mean the monthly list price could not be read with confidence.
- Value for moneyUnknown
- Not assessed. The prices are published and the meter is legible, but whether the ranking is worth paying for depends on screening quality that no public evidence establishes and that SourcrLab has not tested.
- ScalabilityFair
- Volume scales cleanly because the meter is volume, and collaborative review is not punished by a seat count. It scales as a screening tool, not into the rest of a hiring process — that ceiling is a scope limit rather than a capacity one.
Our reading of the evidence on this page. No score, no formula.
Where it sits
- Apply
- Screen
- Interview
- Decision
The SourcrLab bottom line
The differentiator is not the ranking, it is the quoted line of evidence underneath it. Most screening tools produce a number and ask you to trust it; this one produces a number and shows you the sentence in the resume it came from, against criteria you wrote rather than a model's idea of a good candidate. Sold per candidate screened rather than per seat, with a free tier at 50 a month and no card, so the cost of finding out is close to zero. It is one layer, not a hiring system, and it does not pretend otherwise.
Best fit
A business that advertises a role, gets more applications than anyone has time to read, and has nobody whose job is reading them. The evidence quote under each score is what makes the output usable by a non-recruiter: it can be checked against the resume in seconds, which is exactly what an owner needs before rejecting somebody.
Think twice if
If your screening problem lives inside an ATS, this is the wrong shape. The vendor says so itself, which is unusual and worth taking at face value: SiftFirst was not designed around a recruiter with a pipeline, and bolting it onto one means candidates exist in two places with no sync between them.
SourcrLab assessment
Everything on this page comes from the vendor's own pages, checked on the dates below. SourcrLab has not used this product in real recruitment work, so you will not find a first-hand opinion here.
Why choose SiftFirst?
Every score carries the sentence it came from
The vendor's core promise is that each criterion score is accompanied by a direct quote from the resume. That turns a ranking from something you either trust or ignore into something you can check, which is the difference between a tool a non-recruiter can defend and one they cannot.
You write the criteria, not the model
The founder was explicit with SourcrLab that the employer defines what matters and the product does not carry an independent notion of a good hire. SiftFirst suggests criteria from the job description, and you edit them and their weights before anything is scored.
The meter is candidates, not seats
Billing is per candidate screened, not per user and not per screening project. For a small team that means a second and third pair of eyes on a shortlist costs nothing extra, which is the opposite of how most screening software prices collaboration.
Nothing has to change to try it
A demo runs for up to fifteen candidates with no signup, the free plan needs no card, and there is no ATS to migrate from or into. For a buyer whose current process is a folder of PDFs, the evaluation cost is an afternoon rather than a project.
Main trade-offs
It is a layer, not a hiring system
Sourcing, candidate communication, offer management, requisition control and HRIS workflows are all outside it. A buyer who needs those is buying SiftFirst plus something else, and the something else is usually the larger purchase.
The pricing page does not read cleanly
A monthly/yearly toggle sits next to interface labels showing $39, $99 and $299 where the yearly-billed rates are $31, $79 and $239. The yearly figures were readable and are what this page publishes; the monthly list price was not established, so budget on the annual commitment or ask before assuming the difference is the monthly rate.
Compliance positioning is not a certification
The vendor references NYC Local Law 144 and similar automated-employment-decision rules, describes a tamper-evident audit trail, and states that application data is not used to train models. All of that is the vendor's own account of its product. None of it was independently audited here, and an audit-tool reference is not a bias audit of your use of it.
Procurement facts are missing
Enterprise SSO, formal certifications, data residency and DPA terms were not established. For a small business that may not matter; for anyone whose legal team reviews suppliers processing candidate data, these are the first four questions and none of them has a published answer.
Pricing and buying reality
Free for 50 candidates a month; from $31/month billed yearly
- The meter is candidates screened — not seats, not the number of screening projects
- Free: $0, 50 candidates a month, no card required
- Starter: $31/month billed yearly ($372/year), 500 candidates a month
- Professional: $79/month billed yearly ($948/year), 1,500 candidates a month
- Business: $239/month billed yearly ($2,868/year), 5,000 candidates a month
- Overage on paid plans: $8 per additional 100 candidates
- A no-signup demo runs for up to 15 candidates
What we do not know
- The monthly-billed list price. The page's yearly state was readable; interface labels showing $39/$99/$299 were not consistent enough to publish
- Whether unused monthly candidate allowance carries over
- Enterprise terms, SSO and any data-residency options
Checked on the vendor's pricing page, August 2026. SiftFirst pricing page (per-candidate meter, free tier, yearly-billed rates and overage)
How it fits your stack
Works with
- A job board or careers page that produces PDF, DOCX or ZIP applications
- A browser workflow, with an optional Chrome extension
Likely replaces
- Reading a folder of resumes by hand and scoring them in a spreadsheet
May overlap with
- The screening and scoring layer of a lightweight ATS
Check before buying
- Whether your applications actually arrive in a format you can upload, rather than sitting inside a job board's inbox
- How candidates and rankings get from here into whatever you use to schedule and reply
- Whether your legal position needs SSO, a DPA or a stated data-residency, none of which is published
SiftFirst vs alternatives
Products a buyer would genuinely put next to this one, with the reason you would pick each instead.
Choose Curriculo when the screening is only half the problem and you need an actual pipeline: it is a flat-rate ATS with AI scoring rather than a screening layer that sits beside one.
Choose Goodfit when you want to test candidates rather than only read them — voice interviews, coding tests and psychometrics on a pay-per-completed-assessment meter.
Choose 100Hires if what you are missing is a place to keep candidates, communicate and move them through stages, and screening is the smaller part of the gap.
Used SiftFirst?
Tell other recruiters what worked, what did not, and who it suits. Positive, mixed or critical — all useful.
Evidence
- Explainable candidate screening, with a quoted resume line as evidence under each criterion score — checked against a primary source: SiftFirst product site (criteria-based ranking, evidence quotes, workflow, data-handling and compliance positioning)
- The intended buyer is an owner or small team hiring without a dedicated HR stack, not a recruiter working in an ATS — vendor claim, not independently verified: Founder correction supplied to SourcrLab by email: the buyer is a small team without an ATS, and the employer sets the criteria
- The employer defines the criteria; the product carries no independent definition of a good hire — vendor claim, not independently verified: Founder correction supplied to SourcrLab by email: the buyer is a small team without an ATS, and the employer sets the criteria
- Billing meter is candidates screened; free tier of 50 a month with no card; overage $8 per 100 — checked against a primary source: SiftFirst pricing page (per-candidate meter, free tier, yearly-billed rates and overage)
- Application data is stated not to be used for AI model training, and screenings and account data can be deleted — vendor claim, not independently verified: SiftFirst product site (criteria-based ranking, evidence quotes, workflow, data-handling and compliance positioning)
- Compliance tooling references NYC Local Law 144 and comparable rules — vendor positioning, not a legal certification — vendor claim, not independently verified: SiftFirst product site (criteria-based ranking, evidence quotes, workflow, data-handling and compliance positioning)
- The monthly-billed list price — not enough evidence
- Enterprise SSO, formal certifications, data residency and DPA terms — not enough evidence
- SourcrLab has not used this product in real recruitment work. — not enough evidence
Last reviewed: August 2026. How SourcrLab verifies information
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