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What's your real cost per hire?

By Dev Rishi Khare, founder of Curriculo (ex-Amazon ML engineer) · Last updated May 2026

Most teams underestimate their cost per hire by 60% because they don't count screening time. Move the sliders to see what hiring actually costs you this year, and what you'd save with an AI ATS.

$4,700
SHRM 2024 benchmark
5 min
Per resume scanned
~80%
Savings with AI screening

What this calculator shows you

  • Your true all-in cost per hire once recruiter screening time is counted, not just tool fees
  • Where the spend actually goes, broken into screening hours, recruiter cost, and ATS fees
  • What an AI ATS would save you per year by cutting screening time and replacing a paid ATS

Your numbers

Live
1100
205,000
130
$25$200
$0$50,000
Screening hours / year (annualized) 200 hrs
Cost of screening time $15,000
ATS subscription cost $8,000
Cost per hire $1,917
You'd save with Curriculo $20,000 / yr
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Assumes 80% reduction in screening time + switch from paid ATS to free Starter plan. Runs in your browser. We never log your inputs.

Methodology

How the math actually works

Three numbers most teams miss. The calculator above runs all three in real time as you move the sliders.

1. Screening hours

The largest hidden cost. A recruiter reading 200 resumes per role at 5 minutes each spends 16 hours screening before the first interview even starts.

resumes × minutes ÷ 60

2. Loaded hourly cost

Recruiter salary × benefits ÷ 2080 working hours. A $120K recruiter costs ~$75/hour fully loaded. That's what every screening minute actually costs.

hours × $75 = total

3. ATS subscription

Greenhouse starts at $15K/year. Lever runs ~$8K. Workable from $1.8K. Curriculo's free Starter plan: $0 forever (5 jobs, top 50 candidates each).

total ÷ hires = CPH
Side by Side

Manual hiring vs Curriculo

That 75% savings number comes from one change: AI surfaces the top 20 candidates first, so you stop reading all 200.

Manual screening

Today
  • Read every resume top-to-bottom, 5 min each
  • Re-read borderline candidates ("did they actually do that?")
  • Build spreadsheets to track who's where in the pipeline
  • Pay $8K-15K/year for an ATS that does keyword filters
  • Lose strong candidates to faster competitors
Realistic cost per hire: $4,700-$8,000 (SHRM avg + tool fees)

With Curriculo

Free Starter
  • AI scores every resume 0-100 in seconds with written reasoning
  • Top 50 ranked candidates per job, so you review the best first
  • Gmail-style inbox auto-sorted by Impact Score
  • $0 ATS cost on the free Starter (5 jobs, lifetime)
  • 15-minute setup with no implementation manager required
Realistic cost per hire: Under $2,000 for most startups
FAQ

Questions founders ask

The 2026 SHRM benchmark for US cost per hire is approximately $4,700 across all industries. Tech and finance run higher ($5,000-$10,000+). The number includes recruiter time, ATS fees, job board spend, background checks, and a share of onboarding. Costs above $8,000 per hire usually signal recruiter-time waste from manual screening. That is the biggest line item most teams underestimate.
Cost per hire = (Internal recruiting costs + External recruiting costs) ÷ Number of hires. Internal includes recruiter salary, screening hours, and tools (ATS, LinkedIn Recruiter). External includes job board postings, background checks, and agency fees. Recruiter time is the largest hidden cost. At $75/hour loaded cost, screening 200 resumes per role for 12 roles per year adds $15,000+ before you count anything else.
Curriculo cuts cost per hire in three ways. First, AI screens resumes in seconds (saving ~80% of the 5-minute manual review per resume). Second, the free Starter plan removes the $0-$15,000 ATS line item. Third, signal-based scoring surfaces strong candidates earlier so time-to-hire drops by 35-50% on average. Combined, most startups see cost per hire drop from $5,000-$8,000 to under $2,000.
Studies put manual screening at 5-7 minutes per resume on average, but realistic numbers are higher because recruiters re-read borderline candidates. At 200 resumes per role and 5 minutes each, that's 16 hours of pure screening per role. With AI screening, the same workload takes 15-20 minutes because the AI surfaces the top 20-50 candidates first.
The calculator includes three main inputs: 1) Recruiter time on screening (calculated from resumes per role × minutes per resume × hourly cost), 2) ATS subscription cost (annual), 3) Implicit overhead from those two. It excludes background checks, signing bonuses, and onboarding costs (those vary heavily by role). The output is your annual external + screening cost, which is the part you can actually control with better tooling.
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