Per-candidate vs per-seat pricing: compare the full cost.
Recruiting products can charge by seat, candidate, role, or usage. Those prices are not interchangeable because each includes a different share of the work. The useful comparison adds the subscription, usage, and the operator time needed to turn access into interviews.
A seat bills for access. A true per-candidate service bills for a defined output. Metix AI is neither: it is a subscription with usage Credits and included AI Agents. Published examples, checked August 2026, include LinkedIn Recruiter Lite at $170 a month, SeekOut Recruit Core at $149 a month on annual billing, a hireEZ solo seat at $494, and Metix AI at $99 to $499. Compare annual cost, usage allowances, and operator labor. There is no honest candidate-volume break-even for Metix because its Credits do not represent candidates. Disclosure: Metix AI publishes this article.
Every figure below is either a vendor's published price or a labeled derivation you can redo by hand.
Three meters, three cost functions
A seat is price × users × time. A per-candidate service is fee × delivered candidates. A usage subscription is base plan plus any usage beyond the included allowance. None of those formulas proves value on its own.
The missing term is labor. A sourcing seat assumes someone runs searches, writes outreach, handles replies, and screens candidates. A per-candidate service includes more of that work. Metix includes AI Agents that carry sourcing through booking, while Credits meter contact unlocks, Deep Search lists, and additional AI Agents. Every third-party price below was read from a vendor-owned page in August 2026; derived annual totals are labeled.
What a seat costs, from published pages
LinkedIn publishes Recruiter Lite pricing on its help center rather than its marketing pages, checked August 2026: $170 a month for a single license, or $1,680 a year billed yearly. Licenses two through five run $270 a month each, or $2,670 a year, and an online subscription caps at five. Each license includes 30 InMail messages a month, with the option to purchase up to 70, and reaches your network to the third degree. Above Lite, the pricing goes dark. Recruiter Corporate and both Professional Services tiers are contact-sales on every LinkedIn page we checked, with no dollar figure anywhere. Buyers do report quotes for Corporate, and our three-way comparison with LinkedIn Recruiter and Juicebox discusses what those reports look like.
The numbers appear on no LinkedIn page, so they do not appear here.
Notice the slope of the seat curve as a team grows. The second Lite license costs more than the first, $270 a month against $170, so three recruiters on Lite run $710 a month, a derivation from the two published rates. On this ladder, seat pricing does not just scale with headcount. It steepens.
hireEZ publishes exactly one number: a solo recruiter seat at $494 a month with a 7-day trial, checked August 2026. Team and enterprise plans are quoted against the stack the platform replaces. A year on the solo seat works out to $5,928 at list price, a derivation from the monthly figure, not a published annual rate. Our head-to-head with hireEZ covers what that seat actually buys.
SeekOut Recruit Core is $149 a month paid annually, which means $1,788 up front, a derivation again, or $179 billed monthly, checked August 2026. Everything above Core is quote-only.
One more pattern deserves a name before the table: seats carry meters of their own. Lite meters InMail at 30 a month, 70 if you buy the top-up, and Core meters contact reveals on top of the license. A seat is rarely just a seat.
| Tool | Published entry price | A year at entry | Quote-only above |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Recruiter Lite | $170/mo, single license | $1,680 billed yearly (published) | Recruiter Corporate, RPS and RPS+ |
| SeekOut Recruit Core | $149/mo paid annually, $179 monthly | $1,788 up front (derived) | Every higher tier, and Spot |
| hireEZ | $494/mo, solo recruiter | $5,928 at list (derived) | Team and enterprise plans |
| Metix AI | $99 to $499/mo, usage subscription | $1,188 at entry billed monthly; $1,068 annual | Volume and specialized hiring |
Prices read from vendor-owned pages in August 2026. Cells marked derived are derivations from list prices, not published annual rates. Metix AI annual billing takes 10 percent off; LinkedIn's yearly figure is a published price.
What the Metix subscription includes
Metix AI publishes four monthly plans. Starter is $99 for 5,000 Credits and 1 AI Agent. Growth is $199 for 10,500 Credits and 2 AI Agents. Professional is $299 for 16,000 Credits and 3 AI Agents. Scale is $499 for 27,000 Credits and 5 AI Agents.
Annual billing uses $89 / $179 / $269 / $449 monthly-equivalent rates across the four plans, billed as $1,068 / $2,148 / $3,228 / $5,388 a year. The free 14-day trial includes one-time access to 1 AI Agent and 500 Credits with no card.
Credits are usage units: 10 unlock contact information, 100 unlock a Deep Search candidate list, and 3,000 add an AI Agent above the plan allowance. Candidate delivery does not consume Credits. The usage-pricing page explains the model step by step.
Above the published ladder, volume hiring and specialized searches go through a quote path. Delivery speed is a separate product claim: 95 percent of roles get a first interview scheduled within 24 hours, company-reported and unaudited. SHRM's 2025 nonexecutive median time-to-fill is 44 days, but it measures requisition open to accepted offer, so the spans are not comparable.
Read them beside each other, not against each other.
Why there is no candidate-volume crossover
A candidate allowance would let you divide one plan by a number of delivered candidates. The current Metix plans publish no such allowance, so that calculation would invent a promise the pricing page does not make.
The valid comparison is annual subscription cost and included usage. Metix costs $1,068 / $2,148 / $3,228 / $5,388 on annual billing. LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is $1,680 a year. SeekOut Core is $1,788 a year paid upfront. A hireEZ solo seat is $5,928 a year at its monthly list price. Those figures still are not equivalent: the seat products assume an operator, while Metix includes AI Agents that carry more of the workflow.
Model your expected contact unlocks, Deep Search lists, and concurrent AI Agent needs, then add the loaded cost of the people who operate each option. That is the break-even calculation the published units support.
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly Credits | Included AI Agents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $1,068 | 5,000 | 1 |
| Growth | $2,148 | 10,500 | 2 |
| Professional | $3,228 | 16,000 | 3 |
| Scale | $5,388 | 27,000 | 5 |
Annual totals are the published annual rates multiplied by twelve. Credits meter product usage, not candidates. Candidate delivery has no per-candidate fee.
The zero-hire month still costs money
Every subscription here bills for its selected term, whether or not a hire happens. A seat buys access. Metix buys included AI Agents and a Credits allowance. Neither is a contingency fee.
Lumpy hiring makes that asymmetry expensive. Most small teams hire three roles one quarter and none the next. Metix AI plans are monthly, sized to the month, and cancel anytime. The seat rates we quoted lean the other way, though on one of them the commitment is a choice. SeekOut Core's $149 is an annual rate paid up front. Lite is sold monthly at $170 or yearly at $1,680, and LinkedIn's own help page says you may cancel your subscription at any time; the yearly rate is the cheaper of the two, and it is money already spent.
Ride a quiet quarter on a prepaid year and you have paid for three months of access nobody used.
Utilization is the quiet variable in every subscription comparison, and it cuts both ways. An oversized Credit or AI Agent allowance can go unused; a seat rented for a sourcing sprint that ended in February keeps billing until the contract does.
No model forgives bad forecasting. Choose a plan based on realistic usage and downgrade or cancel when your hiring cadence changes. Our essay on buying outcomes covers the separate question of accountability for delivery.
When paying per seat honestly wins
The seat model is not a mistake. Put a SeekOut Core seat, $1,788 a year derived, in the hands of a full-time sourcer who helps fill 40 roles that year, and the software line is about $45 per hire. That does not include the sourcer. SHRM's cost-per-hire definition counts recruiter pay and benefits alongside agency fees, job boards, relocation, travel, and tooling. Its 2022 benchmarking report put average cost per hire at $4,683 with a median of $1,244; the 2025 brief puts the nonexecutive median at $1,200.
Per-seat pricing wins exactly when that person already exists, stays busy all year, and would be on payroll either way.
Steady volume is the second condition. On a busy seat, one more search costs no extra base software money, caps aside. Metix instead bundles increasing Credit allowances and AI Agent capacity; above 27,000 Credits, volume hiring is quoted.
That is the country of staffed teams, and seats serve it well.
Agencies frame the far end of the same spectrum. They include labor, then price it as a share of salary: the commonly quoted range is 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary, and SHRM's 2016 figure for contingency firms is 20 to 25 percent of first-year cash compensation. Agency fee vs software cost runs that fork on its own.
Across all three models, ask one question: who or what performs the operating work?
Match the model to your volume in three steps
Three numbers settle it. First, estimate the roles and outreach volume you expect over the next twelve months. Second, price the seat path honestly: license plus the loaded hours of whoever operates it. Third, price the Metix subscription tier whose included Credits and AI Agents cover that usage. There is no candidate-volume crossover because Metix Credits do not meter candidate delivery.
Above that, the real question is whether the operator exists.
When you employ the operator: a staffed recruiter or sourcing team, steady volume every month, and a seat that rarely idles. The salary behind it is already on your payroll, and that is the real reason the seat can win.
When nobody owns the seat work: choose a plan whose included Credits and AI Agents cover the product actions and concurrent workflow capacity you need.
The cluster around this article prices the parts. Our LinkedIn Recruiter cost breakdown runs the full Lite ladder to the five-license cap, and explains why Corporate publishes no price at all. AI recruiting tools pricing in 2026 covers the whole shelf, seat models and meters alike. And the cost-per-hire breakdown itemizes what sits underneath the software line in a full cost per hire. What vendors mean when they say they charge per candidate, four different output meters rather than a seat, is on pay-per-candidate recruiting.
Test the workflow on a live role
Bring a role you need to fill right now. Metix AI runs it as a free 14-day trial: 1 AI Agent and 500 Credits, no card. You write the brief, approve the outreach, and watch what lands on the calendar.
Candidate delivery does not consume Credits; contact unlocks, Deep Search lists, and additional AI Agents do.
Frequently asked questions
What is the break-even between per-seat and per-candidate pricing?
There is no fixed candidate-volume crossover now that Metix AI is a subscription with usage Credits. Compare LinkedIn Recruiter Lite at $1,680 a year with Metix annual plans at $1,068, $2,148, $3,228, and $5,388, then model the operator time and usage you need. Metix Credits meter contact unlocks, Deep Search lists, and extra AI Agents, not candidate delivery.
How much does per-seat recruiting software cost?
Published rates, checked August 2026: LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is $170 a month for a single license or $1,680 a year, with licenses two through five at $270 a month each; SeekOut Recruit Core is $149 a month paid annually or $179 billed monthly; a hireEZ solo seat is $494 a month. LinkedIn's full Recruiter tiers, hireEZ team and enterprise plans, and everything above SeekOut Core publish no price and are quote-only.
What does a Metix AI credit include?
Metix AI Credits are usage units: 10 unlock one candidate's contact information, 100 unlock a Deep Search list, and 3,000 add an AI Agent after the included quota is used. Plans run $99 to $499 monthly and include 5,000 to 27,000 Credits plus 1 to 5 AI Agents each month.
When is paying per seat cheaper?
A seat can be cheaper when the operator already exists and keeps it busy. Metix AI is also subscription software now, but includes AI Agents that perform more of the workflow. Compare annual subscription cost, included usage, and operator salary rather than dividing either plan by a promised number of candidates.