JobAdder posts a role to more than 200 job boards from one screen and connects to over 100 apps in its marketplace. Kepler does neither. What Kepler does instead is make the eight years of CVs, emails and call transcripts you already own searchable in plain English, and put an assistant on top of them that can act on what it finds.
JobAdder is the better product if your bottleneck is getting a role in front of the market: it posts to more than 200 job boards in one click, carries a marketplace of more than 100 integrations including payroll and billing partners, ships iOS and Android apps, and holds ISO 27001:2022 certification. Kepler is the better product if your bottleneck is the database you already have: it searches CVs, notes, emails and call transcripts in plain English, matches candidates to a job with a readable verdict behind every requirement, and publishes one price with everything switched on. JobAdder does not publish a price.
Last checked 6 Sep 2026 · Written from JobAdder's own public documentation and pricing pages. Tell us if we have something wrong and we will correct it.
JobAdder publishes four named AI features under Adder Intelligence — Smart Summary, Smart Sync, Smart Skills and Smart Job Descriptions — each attached to a particular screen. Kepler has one assistant in a sidebar on every page that reads the whole workspace, returns records rather than text, and writes changes back once you approve them.
JobAdder’s published search is Boolean resume keyword search, predictive search, saved searches and skill tags — which is why it also ships bulk skill coding. Kepler searches semantically and by keyword together, across CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts, without anyone having tagged anything first.
Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually, one edition, every feature included, unlimited records, migration done for you. JobAdder’s pricing page publishes plan names and feature lists but no figure in any currency, and directs you to request a tailored proposal.
Dimensions where Kepler is the stronger product. JobAdder is ahead of us on several others — job board multiposting, the integration marketplace, mobile apps, SMS, client and candidate portals and ISO 27001 certification — and the blog post covers every one of them.
| Kepler | JobAdder | |
|---|---|---|
| Asking your database a question | ||
| A conversational assistantWhether you can type a question and get records back. | App-wide sidebar with roughly fifteen tools; answers span the whole workspace | Four named AI features on specific screens; no chat assistant is published |
| What search readsThe corpus, not the ranking. | CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts, semantic and keyword together | Boolean resume keyword search, predictive search, saved searches and skill tags |
| Setup search needsHow much tagging before it works. | Nothing to tag — plain-English retrieval over the text as written | Skill coding is the search surface; bulk skill coding ships to speed it up |
| Acting on an answerReading is half the job. | Creates records, builds shortlists, saves a result as a list — behind an approval step | AI features generate summaries, skills and job ad copy on the record in view |
| Matching candidates to a job | ||
| Evidence per requirementCan a consultant see the reasoning? | A pass or gap verdict with the supporting text for every criterion, under the row | An instant summary and a relevancy rating drawn from resume, notes and the job description |
| Who sets the criteriaWhether the brief is editable. | Criteria are written per job in plain English and edited on the job | Skill matching against coded skills; the criteria model is not published |
| Measured qualityWhether anyone checks the ranker. | A standing evaluation programme with recall and precision gates and a cost ceiling per job | No published evaluation of matching quality |
| Keeping records true | ||
| Automatic profile updatesBoth do this. The difference is what you get shown. | Emails, calls and messages become proposed field updates and tasks you approve or reject | Smart Sync analyses notes and activities and recommends updates; resumes and transcripts in beta |
| Field-level historyWhat changed, who changed it, and from what. | Per-cell history on every record with the source of each AI suggestion, and undo | Placement Audit Log covers changes to placement records |
| Two people, one recordThe quiet data-loss bug in most CRMs. | Optimistic concurrency across resources, so a stale edit is refused rather than applied | Not described in their public documentation |
| Calls and meetings | ||
| Meeting notetakerWhere the transcript comes from in the first place. | A notetaker joins the call and files the summary, next steps and full transcript to the record | Smart Sync reads transcripts in beta; no notetaker of their own is published |
| Calendar and schedulingBooking without the email chain. | Gmail and Outlook two-way sync, calendar and booking links | Calendar sync and event scheduling, with Event Availability for hiring managers |
| Your careers page | ||
| Where the jobs liveWhether the roles rank for your brand. | Your own domain, server-rendered and indexable, with structured data per role | A hosted Careerspage, a JavaScript widget, an XML feed or the API |
| What happens on arrivalThe first twenty minutes after someone applies. | Applicants are parsed into structured profiles and scored against the role on arrival | Applications land in the ATS with source tracking; Smart Summary rates them |
| Buying and getting in | ||
| Published priceWhether you can compare without a call. | USD 119 per user / month billed annually — USD 1,428 per seat per year | No figure in any currency on the pricing page; request a tailored proposal |
| EditionsHow many decisions before you can buy. | One edition. Every feature included, unlimited records and storage | Recruiter Lite, Essential, Pro and Business, banded by user count, plus paid add-ons |
| Cost of migrationWho pays for the unglamorous half. | Free on every plan — extraction, mapping, de-duplication, and fifty of your own records to check first | An implementation consultant and data analyst manage it end to end; the cost is not published |
| What is behind a tierWhether the thing you came for is included. | Nothing. There is no tier above the one price | API and sandbox access, Smart Forms, Broadbean and the Hiring Manager Portal are listed as paid add-ons |
JobAdder publishes four AI features, each bolted to a screen: a summary on an applicant, a relevance rating on a shortlist, suggested skills on a resume, generated copy on a job ad. Kepler has one assistant instead. It sits on every page, searches everything you hold — CVs, notes, email threads, call transcripts — and hands back records you can act on rather than a paragraph you re-type.
Active data engineers in London who have used Kafka in production, available within a month
Found 4 candidates. Three mention Kafka on their CV; one said it on a recorded call last week.
| Candidate | Current employer | Notice | Why it matched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sophia Bennett | Monarch Analytics | 1 month | Kafka streaming for card transactions at Halcyon CV |
| Amir Hassan | Northwind Capital | 2 weeks | Kafka feed for the risk platform CV |
| James Okafor | Juniper Systems | 3 months | Rebuilt the Kafka clickstream pipeline CV |
| Oliver Chen | Northwind Capital | Immediate | Mentioned running Kafka on the 2 Sep call Call note · 2 Sep |
JobAdder’s Smart Summary gives every applicant an instant summary and a relevancy rating drawn from the resume, recruiter notes and the job description. Kepler ranks against criteria you wrote for that job, and opens under each row into the evidence: for every requirement, a pass or a gap and the line from the candidate’s own record that decided it.
| Candidate | Match | Role title | Current employer | Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sophia Bennett | 92Strong | Senior Data Engineer | Monarch Analytics | Python, Spark, AWS, Terraform, dbt | |
| Amir Hassan | 81Good | Data Engineer | Northwind Capital | Python, Spark, EMR, SQL, Airflow | |
| James Okafor | 74Good | Senior Data Engineer | Juniper Systems | Spark, Azure, Databricks, Kafka, Scala | |
| Mei Tan | 68Weak | Engineering Manager, Data | Atlas Cloud | AWS, Leadership, Python, Snowflake | |
| Elena Rossi | 55Weak | Analytics Engineer | Forma | dbt, SQL, Python, Looker | |
| Oliver Chen | 49Off spec | Platform Engineer | Northwind Capital | AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Go |
Assessment
A strong fit for the brief. Sophia has run a production Spark platform on AWS and has managed a team through a migration. Financial services exposure is via a payments client rather than a bank.
Criteria · 3 of 4
Decision
↑ ↓ next candidate · Esc close
Both products keep profiles current from what people write. JobAdder’s Smart Sync analyses notes and activities, spots missing or inconsistent information and recommends updates. Kepler turns emails, calls and messages into proposed field updates and tasks, each carrying the message it came from, each accepted or rejected by a person — and each reversible afterwards from that field’s own history.
Three candidates · this week
Re: Senior Data Engineer at Northwind
Thanks for sending the details over. The role sounds great, and I can start on 3 October if the timing works for them.
Are you still keeping half an eye out?
I handed my notice in this morning, so I am actively looking now.
James · 11:26For my next move I am looking for £105,000. I would want a step up for a move.
| Candidate | Available from | Status | Expected salary | Notice period | Company | Owner | Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sophia Bennett | Not set | Passive | £90,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Amir Hassan | 14 Oct 2026 | Passive | £85,000 | 2 weeks | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| James Okafor | Immediate | New | £100,000 | 3 months | Juniper Systems | Tom Reilly | ||
| Mei Tan | Not set | Passive | S$160,000 | 2 months | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Elena Rossi | Not set | Active | €78,000 | 1 month | Forma | Tom Reilly | ||
| Oliver Chen | Immediate | New | £88,000 | None | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| Rahul Menon | 2 Nov 2026 | Active | £92,000 | 1 month | Juniper Systems | Priya Nair | ||
| Yuki Tanaka | Not set | Passive | ¥14,000,000 | 3 months | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Hafiz Rahman | 20 Oct 2026 | Active | S$145,000 | 2 weeks | Meridian Partners | Priya Nair | ||
| Clara Nowak | Not set | New | €84,000 | 1 month | Forma | Tom Reilly | ||
| Daniel Okonkwo | Immediate | Active | £78,000 | None | Northwind Capital | Priya Nair | ||
| Ana Ferreira | 8 Dec 2026 | Passive | €96,000 | 3 months | Juniper Systems | Tom Reilly | ||
| Tomas Novak | Not set | Active | €71,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Grace Adeyemi | 27 Oct 2026 | Active | £105,000 | 2 weeks | Atlas Cloud | Tom Reilly | ||
| Ivan Petrov | Not set | Passive | €88,000 | 2 months | Forma | Priya Nair | ||
| Leila Haddad | Immediate | New | £82,000 | None | Meridian Partners | Tom Reilly | ||
| Marcus Reid | 16 Nov 2026 | Active | £98,000 | 1 month | Monarch Analytics | Priya Nair | ||
| Nadia Kaur | Not set | Passive | S$172,000 | 3 months | Northwind Capital | Tom Reilly |
Kepler's CV parsing and formatting are ported from RemakeCV, our own product, which 300+ recruitment agencies use. The migration that fills your database on day one runs on an engine that has been reading real agency CVs for years, not on something written for this launch.
RemakeCV is a Kepler product. It is the same team and the same code, which is why we are willing to point at it — and it is the only outside evidence on this page, because Kepler itself is new and has no customer stories yet.
Whatever your current system gives you, plus any loose CVs and spreadsheets sitting in folders. If you are not sure how to get the export out, we will walk you through it.
Extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation — the unglamorous half most vendors leave on your desk. Your custom fields are recreated rather than flattened into notes.
Fifty of your own records, fully parsed — your people, not a demo set. Tell us what we got wrong and we fix it and re-run, as many times as it takes.
The full database goes in, mailboxes and calendars connect, and history backfills onto the right records. We stay on it until your team is working in Kepler.
£89 per user / month, billed annually
Does not publish pricing
JobAdder’s pricing page, read 6 Sep 2026, carries no figure in any currency. It publishes four agency plans banded by user count — Recruiter Lite for 1–5 users, Essential for 6–20, Pro for 21+ and a bespoke Business plan — with a feature list under each, plus a separate in-house plan. Alongside them sits a list of paid add-ons: a dedicated IP address, API and sandbox access, single sign-on, the Broadbean integration, Smart Forms and the Hiring Manager Portal. The page states that rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, JobAdder builds a tailored proposal for each business.
That is a legitimate way to sell software to a 200-seat staffing group, and we are not going to guess at a number for it. What it means for a smaller agency is that comparing the two requires a sales call on one side and a web page on the other. Kepler publishes one price, one edition and no gating, so the thing you came for is never behind the tier above.
It depends on where the work actually goes. JobAdder is the better product for an agency that advertises: one-click posting to more than 200 job boards, a marketplace of more than 100 integrations, iOS and Android apps, SMS, client and candidate portals, and ISO 27001:2022 certification. Kepler is the better product for an agency whose value is a database it cannot search — Kepler reads CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts in plain English, ranks candidates with a readable verdict behind every requirement, records a notetaker’s summary and transcript against the right record, and keeps per-field history with undo. An agency that lives on paid job boards should buy JobAdder. An agency sitting on eight years of unsearchable history should look hard at Kepler.
No, and this is the clearest gap on the page. JobAdder connects to more than 200 job boards globally — SEEK, Indeed, Reed.co.uk, CV-Library, Totaljobs, CareerBuilder and the rest — and posts a written ad to your selection of them in one click. Kepler has no multiposting of any kind: no Broadbean, no idibu, no LinkedIn Recruiter posting. What Kepler publishes is a branded job board on your own domain, server-rendered and indexable with structured data per role, where applicants are parsed and scored on arrival. That is a different product doing a different job, and if paid board advertising is how you fill roles, JobAdder wins this outright.
JobAdder does not publish pricing. Its pricing page, read 6 Sep 2026, lists four agency plans banded by user count — Recruiter Lite for 1–5 users, Essential for 6–20, Pro for 21+, and a bespoke Business plan — with feature lists but no figure in any currency, and asks you to request a tailored proposal. Several capabilities are listed as paid add-ons, including API and sandbox access, single sign-on, Broadbean, Smart Forms and the Hiring Manager Portal. Kepler publishes USD 119 per user per month billed annually, which is USD 1,428 per seat per year, in one edition with every feature included, unlimited records and storage, and free migration. Additional AI capacity is available on request.
JobAdder publishes AI under the name Adder Intelligence, and it is a set of named features rather than an assistant: Smart Summary generates candidate overviews and relevance ratings, Smart Sync analyses notes and activities and recommends record updates, Smart Skills reads a resume and suggests skills to tag, and Smart Job Descriptions generates ad copy from a few points. Their platform updates page shows Smart Sync extended to resumes and transcripts in beta. There is no conversational assistant on JobAdder’s published feature list. Kepler’s assistant is a sidebar on every page with roughly fifteen tools: it searches the whole workspace, builds and saves shortlists, answers questions about your desk, and creates or updates records after you approve the change.
JobAdder publishes predictive search, Boolean resume keyword search, saved searches and skill tags, which is why it also ships bulk skill coding through talent pools — the quality of the search depends on how well the database has been tagged. Kepler searches in plain English using semantic and keyword retrieval together, over candidates, CVs, notes and conversations rather than structured fields alone, so a phrase somebody said on a recorded call is as findable as a job title on a CV. Neither approach is strictly better: Boolean gives a specialist exact control, and Kepler’s gives everyone else a result without tagging first.
Kepler runs the migration for you and it is free on every plan, however large or messy the export. You send an export from JobAdder plus any loose CVs, spreadsheets and shared-inbox archives that never made it in; Kepler handles extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation, and rebuilds your custom fields as real fields rather than flattening them into notes. Before the full load you review fifty of your own records fully parsed, and anything wrong is corrected and re-run. Activity, stages and history come across, not just names and email addresses. Kepler also exports your entire workspace on request at any time, with no exit fee. In the other direction, JobAdder assigns an implementation consultant and a data analyst and publishes an onboarding window of two to four weeks, or up to ten weeks where the data migration is complex.
Bring your hardest search to a 15-minute call. We will run it live, on real records, and talk through what a migration would look like.
