Most articles about assessment-tool pricing are a table of vendor names and starting prices that were out of date the week they were published. This one is different on purpose. Vendor prices change, most are quote-based, and a starting price tells you almost nothing about what you will pay. What does not change is the structure: there are three pricing models, each has a volume at which it becomes expensive, and every quote leaves things out. Understand those and you can evaluate any vendor's number, including ours.
One disclosure up front: Cohesyve, the company publishing this, sells a skills assessment tool. Its price is stated below because we control it. Other vendors' prices are described by model, not by number, because we do not.
The three pricing models
Per candidate
You pay for each person who takes an assessment, sometimes with a monthly minimum. This is common among fixed-library platforms and some technical assessment tools.
Where it works: occasional hiring. If you assess forty people a year, paying for forty is hard to beat.
Where it breaks: volume. At two thousand assessments a year the same per-candidate rate becomes the most expensive option on the market. It also has a quieter problem. When every assessment costs money, teams start assessing fewer people, which means screening later in the funnel, which means the tool is no longer doing the job it was bought for.
Questions to ask: What counts as a candidate — an invitation, a start, or a completion? Is there a minimum monthly commitment? Does unused volume roll over?
Per seat
You pay for each recruiter or hiring manager with a login, usually with an unlimited or generous candidate allowance. This is common among tools that started as interview or sourcing platforms and added assessment.
Where it works: a small recruiting team assessing a lot of people.
Where it breaks: when you want hiring managers in the tool. Per-seat pricing discourages giving access to the people who should be reviewing results, so the recruiter becomes a bottleneck and the hiring manager gets a PDF. It also scales badly as the talent team grows.
Questions to ask: Does a hiring manager who only views results need a paid seat? What happens to a seat when someone leaves? Are there view-only seats?
Volume subscription
You pay a flat monthly or annual fee tied to an expected band of hiring volume, with no seat limits. This is the model most newer assessment and scheduling tools use, and it is Cohesyve's model.
Where it works: steady hiring where you can estimate annual volume within a reasonable range. It is predictable, it lets everyone who should be in the tool be in the tool, and it does not punish you for screening more people.
Where it breaks: very lumpy hiring. A team that assesses nothing for eight months and two thousand people in one quarter pays for capacity it does not use most of the year. Check what happens when you exceed the band and whether you can move between bands mid-term.
Questions to ask: What is the volume band and how is it measured? What happens when we go over? Can we change plans mid-year? Is there a monthly option?
What the quote leaves out
Every model has a headline number and a real number. The gap is made of these.
Implementation and onboarding. Enterprise tools often charge a one-time setup fee, and the larger psychometric vendors bill consulting time to configure the assessment. Self-serve tools usually do not. Ask.
Integrations. Connecting to your applicant tracking system is sometimes included, sometimes a tier, sometimes a fee. If the integration is the reason you are buying, get its cost in writing.
Proctoring and identity verification. Frequently priced separately, and often per session. If you need it, it can double the per-candidate cost.
Custom or additional content. Library platforms may charge for building a custom test. Generated-assessment tools should not, since customisation is the product.
Tier overages. The subscription looks fine until you exceed the band. Ask for the overage rate, or whether you are simply moved to the next tier and back-billed.
Annual commitment. Many quotes assume an annual contract. Ask for the monthly price. The difference tells you how confident the vendor is that you will stay.
Data export on exit. Not a fee, usually, but a cost. Confirm you can get candidate results and audit records out in a usable format when you leave, because one day you will.
Cohesyve
See what candidates can do before you interview them
Cohesyve turns a job description into a role-specific assessment with a scoring rubric. Each candidate gets a different version, so questions cannot be shared. Ten candidates free, no card.
A worked comparison
The only fair comparison is total cost for a year at your volume. Here is the arithmetic, with the numbers left for you to fill in, because yours are the ones that matter.
- Estimate annual assessments. Take the roles you expect to hire for, multiply by the number of candidates you would assess per role. Be honest about the second number; the point of a screening tool is to assess more people earlier, so use the number you would want, not the number you assess today.
- Count the people who need access. Recruiters, coordinators, and the hiring managers who should be reviewing results. That last group is usually larger than the first two combined.
- For each vendor, calculate: the base price at that volume and that seat count, plus implementation, plus integrations, plus proctoring if you need it, plus the overage you would pay if volume came in 30% high.
- Note the exit terms: minimum term, notice period, what you can take with you.
- Compare the totals, not the headline prices.
When teams do this, two things usually happen. Per-candidate quotes that looked cheapest come out most expensive once volume is honest. And per-seat quotes that looked reasonable turn out to have excluded the hiring managers.
What Cohesyve costs
Since it is our product, here is the number. Cohesyve is a volume-based subscription starting at $199 a month billed annually, with monthly billing available at a higher rate. There are no seat fees, so recruiters and hiring managers can all be in the tool. There is no per-candidate charge within your plan's band, no setup fee, and the assessment is generated from your job description, so there is nothing to pay for custom content. Ten candidates are free on signup, without a card, so the pilot costs nothing.
If your hiring is very occasional, a per-candidate tool may genuinely be cheaper. If your team is two recruiters assessing thousands of people, a per-seat tool may be. For most teams hiring steadily across several roles, a volume subscription is the model that behaves best, and we built ours that way for that reason. The worksheet above will tell you which case you are in.
Common questions
What is a reasonable price per assessment? It depends entirely on the model and your volume. Under a volume subscription, the effective cost per assessment falls as you use more of the band. The more useful question is what your total spend per hire looks like, and whether the tool reduced the number of interviews that produced that hire.
Are free assessment tools worth using? For a very small team, a free tier can be enough to start. The limits arrive quickly: candidate caps, shared question banks, no integrations, no support. Treat free tiers as pilots, not plans.
Should we negotiate? Enterprise and quote-based vendors expect it. Ask for the monthly price, the overage rate and implementation waived, in that order. Self-serve subscription tools usually publish prices and negotiate less, which is a feature if you value predictability.
Is more expensive better? No correlation we have seen. The most expensive tools are the ones with the largest sales organisations. Judge on whether the assessment shows you who can do the job and whether the pricing model suits your volume.
How do we justify the spend internally? Count interviews. A screening tool that removes even two interviews per hire pays for itself in interviewer time at almost any salary level. Measure interviews per hire before and after a pilot and put that number in front of finance.