When it comes to recruiting top talent, it’s essential to use the right job posting platforms to attract the employees that will help your company grow. ZipRecruiter and Indeed are two of the leading services for businesses looking to connect with potential employees online, but which one is best in 2023?
In this article, we analyze the cost, features, user reviews, and integrations each platform offers to determine the winner between ZipRecruiter and Indeed.
Deciding Factors
| ZipRecruiter | Indeed | |
| Price | ZipRecruiter offers a free trial, then customized pricing for paid plans. | You can post jobs for free on Indeed, or you can choose from its paid plans |
| Ability to Post Multiple Jobs | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Free Job Posting | During free trial | ✔️ |
| Resume Database | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Ease of Use | Easy to post jobs and integrate with applicant tracking software | Easy to find a plan that suits your needs (free plan, daily or monthly posting budget, or pay-per-applicant sponsored posts are available) |
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed: Features
ZipRecruiter and Indeed both provide business owners the ability to post jobs and access their resume databases, but Indeed is a single job board, while ZipRecruiter is software that allows employers to post jobs to multiple (100+) job boards across the web.
ZipRecruiter Features
ZipRecruiter uses AI matching technology to invite candidates matching your qualification requirements to apply to your job openings.
ZipRecruiter’s job posting template includes the following options:
- Remote vs. on-site options
- Full-time, part-time, contractor, temporary, and per diem employment types
- Benefits information
- Salary information
- Sales pitch for why employees should want to work at your company
However, ZipRecruiter does not offer the ability to pay to post a single job, meaning if you only want to post one job you must purchase its least-expensive subscription plan to be cost-effective.
ZipRecruiter’s higher-tier plans enable you to find candidates using its resume database (over 43 million resumes). Its highest-level plan allows you to recruit for multiple companies and send candidates to your applicant tracking system (ATS)
ZipRecruiter offers plans for small to medium-sized businesses (1-5,000 employees) and enterprise businesses (organizations with over 5,000 employees).
Indeed Features
Indeed allows you to:
- Create free or sponsored job posts
- Use screening tools to customize your job posts
- Connect with candidates (message individuals and schedule and conduct interviews)
Indeed’s paid job post feature allows you to choose an advertising budget or pay-per-application plan. Indeed’s budget plan lets you create campaigns and post multiple jobs as needed, while its pay-per-application plan enables you to:
- Reach more people looking for similar jobs to your posting
- Invite people who match your job requirements to apply
- Reject matched candidates you don’t want within 72 hours of receiving them
It also offers integrations with multiple ATS software so that you can view candidates and schedule interviews from your dashboard.
Indeed’s job post template provides tips to reach more applicants, the choice to allow Indeed to generate a data-driven job post for you, and includes the following options:
- Industry
- Job title
- Job type
- Number of people you wish to hire for the position
- Job location requirements
- Required schedule
- Pay (and supplemental pay)
- Benefits
- Job description
- Company description
- Hiring timeline
- Key qualifications that employees need to be considered for the role
- Pre-screening questions (with the option to have them sent by phone)
Although Indeed’s resume database contains over 200 million resumes (compared to ZipRecruiter’s 43 million), as far as features go, ZipRecruiter is the winner. ZipRecruiter wins due to its ability to post jobs on multiple job boards, matching technology, and ability to support enterprise organizations.
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed: Cost
When it comes to cost, Indeed offers free or sponsored job posting options. ZipRecruiter offers a limited free trial, then employers can choose from three different paid plans with customized pricing.
ZipRecruiter Cost
ZipRecruiter offers a free trial, during which you can post unlimited free jobs. Its free trial typically lasts two days, then employers can choose from any of the following paid plans:
Standard: This plan includes a dashboard, distribution to over 100 job boards, and matching technology.
Premium: The Premium plan includes everything in the Standard plan, plus up to six times more candidates and access to its resume database.
Pro: This plan includes everything in the Premium plan and a TrafficBoost feature that helps fill urgent or difficult-to-fill positions and integration with external ATSs
So, how much is ZipRecruiter for employers? Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer as ZipRecruiter pricing is customized and depends on the number of job ads, resume downloads, and user seats you want, as well as your industry and location.
Indeed Cost
Indeed offers free job posting or sponsored job posts. Its sponsored job post options include:
- An advertising budget plan (suggested budget is $56/day, but can range from $5-$499/day)
- A pay-per-application plan ($14/application)
- The ability to create campaigns in which you can post multiple jobs with a pay-to-post budget
Sponsored job posts unlock Indeed’s Instant Match feature, which provides you with a list of candidates that match your job requirements. You can then invite matching candidates to apply for your listing.
When you make sponsored job posts, you can set deal breakers, which are the minimum requirements that job seekers must meet to apply for your job. If a candidate doesn’t meet your deal breakers, you don’t pay for that application.
If Indeed doesn’t have enough data to offer pay-per-applicant pricing, it will give employers the opportunity to pay-per-click instead.
You don’t have to pay for any candidates whom you reject within 72 hours, and you can cancel either plan at any time.
If you want to search resumes, you can choose one of Indeed’s unlimited resume search subscription plans:
Standard: This plan supports 1-11 hires per year and starts at $95.83/month when billed annually. It sends automatic email reminders to unresponsive candidates and enables you to create contact templates (contacts rollover for six months).
Professional: The Professional plan includes everything in the Standard plan and is $240/month when billed annually. It allows you to send messages to up to 50 people at one time, use advanced search features, or text or call (through Indeed) candidates.
As far as Indeed vs. ZipRecruiter cost goes, Indeed is the clear winner as it provides the ability to post free job postings and offers transparent pricing for its job posting and resume search plans.
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed: User Reviews
Job seekers posting about ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed on the social content site Reddit chose Indeed over ZipRecruiter, citing spam emails and the presence of multi-level marketing (MLM) and unskilled hourly labor positions on ZipRecruiter.
However, ZipRecruiter has excellent reviews (4.5 out of 5 stars) on the customer review site TrustPilot, due in large part to its customer service for employers. Indeed’s TrustPilot rating is only 2.7 out of 5 stars thanks to reports of issues with customer service, lack of quality candidates, and unapproved charges.
We looked to ConsumerAffairs’ customer reviews to break the tie. Indeed wins with a ConsumerAffairs rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, thanks to employers’ ability to post free jobs and the site’s ease of use. ZipRecruiter’s rating is 2.4 out of 5 stars due to its pricing and short free trial.
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed: Integration With Other Software
As far as integration with other software, ZipRecruiter and Indeed are evenly tied. Both platforms can integrate with dozens of external ATSs. If you don’t see your preferred ATS on their lists of integrations, you can request it from either company.
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed: Which Is Best For My Business Needs
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed
- Best for mid- to enterprise-sized organizations
- Highest-tier plan allows you to recruit for multiple companies
- AI matching technology allows you to invite qualified candidates to apply for matching roles
- Free job posting makes Indeed a solid choice for businesses on a budget or companies that only need to fill a few positions
- Resume database of over 200 million resumes for companies looking for a large hiring pool
- Can reject candidates within 72 hours if they don’t match your criteria, saving you money
ZipRecruiter vs. Indeed Comparison: The Final Verdict
ZipRecruiter and Indeed have many similarities: they both offer the ability to post multiple jobs, a mobile app for job seekers, the ability to integrate with ATS software, and the ability to preview resumes (but you must pay to access candidates’ contact information).
So, which is better, ZipRecruiter or Indeed? It depends on your business’s unique needs. If you have a mid- to enterprise-sized business, ZipRecruiter is probably your best bet, as it:
- Enables you to post on multiple job boards
- Integrates with third-party ATSs
- Is designed to support organizations with thousands of employees
On the other hand, if you have a startup or smaller business with a limited budget, Indeed’s unlimited free job postings might be best.
FAQs
Is Indeed or ZipRecruiter bigger?
Indeed is bigger than ZipRecruiter as far as revenue is concerned, although its revenue is not reported separately from other companies under its parent organization. According to Indeed’s parent company, Recruit Holdings Co.’s, 2023 financial report, the organization brought in 3,429,519 million yen (over 23 billion in US dollars) for the 2022 fiscal year.
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system (EDGAR), ZipRecruiter is a smaller company as far as revenue goes. ZipRecruiter reported earnings of $904.6 million in total revenue for 2022.
