Recruit CRM publishes three plans — USD 49, USD 79 and USD 129 per user per month billed annually — and bills Advanced Analytics, Workflow Automation, LinkedIn messaging and the careers-site builder on top of the first two. Kepler is USD 119 with one edition, every feature included, unlimited records and the migration done for you.
Recruit CRM is the cheaper way in and the broader back office: its Pro plan starts at USD 49 per user per month billed annually, and it ships timesheets, invoicing, bulk SMS, job multiposting and native mobile apps that Kepler does not have at all. Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually with one edition, so the things Recruit CRM meters or moves up a tier — AI candidate matching, open API access, the careers site, advanced analytics, workflow automation — are simply on. The real question is whether you are buying a cheap seat or an assistant and a search that read everything your desk has ever written down.
Last checked 6 Sep 2026 · Written from Recruit CRM's own public documentation and pricing pages. Tell us if we have something wrong and we will correct it.
Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually with every feature included, unlimited records and free migration. Recruit CRM’s Pro plan caps AI candidate matching at two matches, withholds open API access and keeps Recruit CRM branding on your careers pages; Advanced Analytics, Workflow Automation, LinkedIn messaging and Recruit Craft are priced separately below Enterprise.
Recruit CRM’s help centre is precise about what its Boolean search covers: the record’s profile fields and the CV uploaded to the default Resume field. Kepler searches candidates, CVs, notes, emails and call transcripts together, semantic and keyword, so a thing someone said on a call two years ago is findable.
Recruit CRM ranks candidates 0–100 with what it calls bimetric scoring. Kepler returns a shortlist with a verdict and the supporting line from the record for every single requirement on the brief, and the criteria are per-job and editable, so a consultant can argue with the ranking instead of trusting it.
Dimensions where Kepler is the stronger product. Recruit CRM is ahead of us on several others — timesheets and invoicing, bulk SMS, job multiposting, data enrichment, sourcing across the open internet, mobile apps and security certification — and the blog post covers those in full.
| Kepler | Recruit CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| What one price includes | ||
| EditionsHow many decisions before you can buy. | One edition. Every feature included, no tier above it | Pro USD 49, Business USD 79, Enterprise USD 129 per user, billed annually |
| What the cheapest seat cannot doWhere the gating actually bites. | Nothing is gated — the price is the whole product | Open API access and removing Recruit CRM branding start on Business |
| Paid extrasWhat turns up on the invoice later. | No feature add-ons; additional AI capacity is available on request | Advanced Analytics USD 25 and LinkedIn messaging USD 12 per user; free on Enterprise |
| Records and storageThe bill when the database grows. | Unlimited records and storage on every plan | Unlimited open jobs on every plan; record and storage limits are not published |
| Finding people in your own database | ||
| What search readsThe corpus, not the ranking. | Candidates, CVs, notes, emails and call transcripts, semantic and keyword together | Boolean over profile fields and the CV in the default Resume field |
| Asking in plain EnglishWhether one question can span records. | App-wide assistant sidebar that reads the whole workspace and acts across records | AI Assist writes and summarises inside a note, an email or a transcript |
| Acting on the answerReading is half the job. | Creates and updates records, builds shortlists, saves a result as a list — after approval | AI agents draft candidate submissions, pitch emails and formatted CVs |
| Matching | ||
| Evidence per requirementCan a consultant see the reasoning? | A verdict and the supporting line for every criterion, expandable under the row | A 0–100 bimetric score; per-criterion evidence is not documented |
| How much matching you getWhether the ranker is metered. | Included in the seat price and monthly AI allowance | Up to 2 candidate matches on Pro, up to 50 on Business and Enterprise |
| Who decides what countsThe brief, or the algorithm’s idea of it. | Per-job criteria you edit, scored pass or gap one requirement at a time | Matches from a job description or from an ideal candidate’s profile |
| Trusting the record | ||
| Field-level historyWhat changed, who changed it, and from what. | Per-cell history with the source of every AI-suggested change, and undo | Admin audit log of team actions over the last 30 days, on Business and Enterprise |
| What the log missesThe gap that shows up in an audit. | The history is on the field, whoever or whatever made the change | Their documentation notes actions performed via the API are not recorded |
| Keeping profiles currentWho does the updating. | Emails, calls and messages become proposed field updates you approve or reject | You email candidates a form to fill in, plus alerts when someone changes job |
| Two people, one recordThe quiet data-loss bug in most CRMs. | Optimistic concurrency, so a stale edit is refused rather than silently applied | Not described in their documentation |
| Calls, careers pages and moving in | ||
| Meeting notesWhere the transcript comes from. | A notetaker joins the call and files the summary, next steps and full transcript | Transcripts for calls recorded in Recruit CRM; 25 MB a file, 3,000 minutes a month |
| Careers siteWhether the jobs rank for your brand. | Your own domain, included, applicants parsed and scored on arrival | Recruit Craft on your own domain — native on Enterprise, an add-on below it |
| MigrationWho does the unglamorous half. | Done for you on every plan, free, however large or messy the export | Free CSV and Excel import tool, or paid migration engineers priced by data volume |
Recruit CRM’s AI sits where you are already typing: AI Assist summarises a note, generates a job description, tidies a call transcript, drafts an email. Kepler’s assistant is a sidebar on every page that reads the whole workspace — CVs, notes, email threads and call transcripts — shows the records it used, and creates or updates them once you approve.
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 |
Recruit CRM ranks candidates 0–100 and lets Pro see two of them. Kepler scores against the criteria on the brief and opens under any row into the assessment: every requirement met, partial, missing or not stated, with the line from the candidate’s own record that each verdict rests on.
| 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
Recruit CRM transcribes calls you place through its own dialler, up to a 25 MB recording and 3,000 minutes a month. Kepler sends a notetaker into the meeting itself and files the summary, the next steps and the full transcript against the right record — and that transcript is then part of what search reads.
Screening call for the Senior Data Engineer role at Northwind Capital. James is interested and available.
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
From USD 49 per user / month, billed annually
Recruit CRM publishes its prices, which is more than most of this set do. As of 6 Sep 2026 the plans are Pro at USD 49, Business at USD 79 and Enterprise at USD 129 per user per month billed annually, or USD 59, USD 89 and USD 159 billed monthly. Pro and Business carry the footnote “Enterprise features are billed separately”: Advanced Analytics is USD 25 per user per month, LinkedIn messaging USD 12 per user per month, Workflow Automation USD 41 a month for 1,000 tasks, Job Multiposting USD 20 a month for seven jobs, Recruit Craft USD 41 a month for up to five jobs, and Data Enrichment USD 250 a year for 3,000 credits. All of those are bundled or free on Enterprise.
Which plan you would actually buy is the whole comparison. Recruit CRM’s Pro seat is USD 70 a month cheaper than Kepler, and it caps AI candidate matching at two matches, holds back open API access, allows fifteen custom fields and one hiring pipeline, and keeps Recruit CRM’s branding on your careers pages. Their Enterprise seat — the one with nothing metered — is USD 129. Kepler is USD 119, there is no tier above it, and migration is free.
Recruit CRM publishes three per-seat plans: Pro at USD 49, Business at USD 79 and Enterprise at USD 129 per user per month billed annually, or USD 59, USD 89 and USD 159 billed monthly, checked on 6 Sep 2026. Advanced Analytics, Workflow Automation, LinkedIn messaging, Job Multiposting, Data Enrichment and the Recruit Craft website builder are billed on top of Pro and Business and included on Enterprise. Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually — USD 1,428 per seat per year — with one edition, every feature included, unlimited records and free migration, plus additional AI capacity available on request. Recruit CRM is cheaper than Kepler at the entry tier and more expensive at the tier where nothing is metered.
It depends on which half of the job you need solved. Recruit CRM is broader across the agency’s operations — timesheets, invoicing and contractor pay, bulk SMS, job multiposting to thousands of boards, data enrichment, sourcing across the open internet and native iOS and Android apps are all live there and none of them exist in Kepler. Kepler is deeper on the database you already own: one assistant that works across the whole workspace, search that reads emails and call transcripts as well as CVs, matching with readable evidence per requirement, and per-field history with undo. An agency running contract desks should look hard at Recruit CRM. An agency sitting on years of CVs and conversations it cannot search should look hard at Kepler.
Yes. Recruit CRM matches candidates to a job description and can also find candidates similar to an ideal profile, ranking results 0 to 100 with what its help centre calls bimetric scoring, a two-way matching algorithm based on holistic profiles rather than keywords. Two limits are published: candidates need a CV in the default Resume field to be considered, and the number of matches you can open is capped by plan — two on Pro, fifty on Business and Enterprise. Kepler’s matching is included in the seat price, scores against per-job criteria you can edit, and shows a verdict plus the supporting line from the record for every requirement rather than a single number.
Reporting and analytics, workflow automations, a careers site on your own domain, and the data migration itself. Recruit CRM prices Advanced Analytics at USD 25 per user per month, Workflow Automation at USD 41 a month for 1,000 tasks and Recruit Craft at USD 41 a month for up to five jobs on the Pro and Business plans, and charges for done-for-you migration based on the volume of data. Kepler has one edition at USD 119 per user per month billed annually: reporting, automations, the job board on your own domain, the assistant, matching, campaigns and the API are all in it, and the migration is free on every plan.
Yes. Kepler’s search is hybrid semantic and keyword retrieval across candidates, CVs, notes and conversations, so an email thread or a recorded call is searchable text rather than an attachment nobody opens. Recruit CRM’s help centre describes its Boolean search as covering the record’s profile fields and the CV uploaded to the default Resume field, with filter search across default and custom fields you have made visible. Both products can transcribe calls; the difference is whether that transcript is then part of what you can search.
Kepler runs the migration for you on every plan, free, and Recruit CRM makes leaving easy at their end — their FAQ says you can cancel at any time and export your data. You send the export plus any loose CVs, spreadsheets and shared-inbox archives that never made it into the CRM. Kepler handles extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation, rebuilds your custom fields as real fields rather than flattening them into notes, and shows you fifty of your own records fully parsed before the full load. Activity, stages and history come across, not just names and email addresses.
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.
