Access Vincere Evo sells a recruitment operating system: a per-user CRM and ATS licence, four per-agency AI Smart Packs on top, and separate Access products for screening, onboarding, payroll and billing. Kepler sells one edition at one price, with the assistant, matching, the notetaker and the migration already in it.
Vincere is the wider product and Kepler is the more modern one. Vincere covers ground Kepler does not go near — timesheets, pay and bill, invoicing, job multiposting, SMS and native mobile apps — and after the acquisition it sits inside The Access Group, with Access payroll and onboarding products alongside it. Kepler covers less ground and does more with the database underneath: one assistant across everything you own, matching that shows the evidence behind every requirement, a notetaker that files the transcript, and a single price with no packs to assemble.
Last checked 6 Sep 2026 · Written from Vincere's own public documentation and pricing pages. Tell us if we have something wrong and we will correct it.
Vincere’s AI arrives as named features — candidate scoring, an ad generator, the OptimAIser email rewriter, a support chatbot — bundled into Smart Packs. Kepler has one assistant in a sidebar on every page that reads the whole workspace and can act on it once you approve.
Vincere’s AI candidate scoring is documented as running on up to 25 candidates at a time, on a 1–5 star scale, and their help centre states a scored candidate cannot be rescored for the same job. Kepler ranks the database against the brief and shows a verdict and a source for every requirement.
Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually, one edition, every feature included, unlimited records, and migration done for you. There is no pack above it and no module beside it.
Dimensions where Kepler is the stronger product, written from Vincere’s own help centre and The Access Group’s Vincere pages. Vincere is ahead of us on several others — pay and bill, multiposting, SMS, mobile and video interviewing among them — and the blog post covers those in full rather than hiding them here.
| Kepler | Vincere | |
|---|---|---|
| The assistant and search | ||
| Scope of the AI assistantOne thing that reads everything, or many things that each read one. | App-wide sidebar that reads the whole workspace and acts across records | Named AI features — scoring, ad generator, OptimAIser email rewriting, support chatbot |
| Acting on an answerReading is half the job. | Creates and updates records, builds shortlists, saves a result as a list — behind an approval step | Copilot answers questions and drafts copy; writing back is CRM automation, a separate pack feature |
| How search finds peopleThe retrieval model, not the filter count. | Plain English, semantic and keyword together, across candidates, CVs, notes and conversations | Boolean advanced search with a Search Resume option, wildcards and fuzzy matching |
| What AI costsWhether the AI is the product or an upsell. | Included in the seat price; an additional AI capacity available on request removes every limit | Smart Packs priced per agency per month — Base £25, Present £139, Automate £235, Elite £349 |
| Matching candidates to a job | ||
| How many candidates get scoredThe pool, not the ranking. | Every candidate in the database is ranked against the job brief | AI candidate scoring runs on up to 25 candidates at once, per their help centre |
| What sits behind the rankCan a consultant see the reasoning? | A verdict on every requirement with the line from the profile it rests on | A 1–5 star rating with highlights, noted gaps and suggested interview questions |
| Changing your mindBriefs move; the shortlist has to move with them. | Criteria are per-job and editable, and matching re-runs against the new brief | Their help centre states a scored candidate cannot be rescored for the same job |
| Trusting what is in the record | ||
| Meeting and call notesWho writes them. | A notetaker joins the call and files the summary, the next steps and the full transcript against the record | Meetings and calls logged by hand — activity type, participants and a description field |
| Keeping profiles currentApplied, or proposed for review? | Emails, calls and messages become proposed field updates and tasks you approve or reject | An enrichment agent, listed in the Automate and Elite Smart Packs |
| Undoing a changeWhat changed, who changed it, and from what. | Per-field history with the source of every AI-suggested change, and undo | An audit trail of edits and deletions with user and timestamp; no undo is documented |
| 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 |
| What one seat buys | ||
| Published priceWhether you can work out the bill before the call. | USD 119 per user / month billed annually — USD 1,428 per seat per year, on the pricing page | From £69 per user / month for CRM and ATS in the UK; the Australian pricing page publishes no figures |
| Editions and modulesHow many decisions before you can buy. | One edition. Every feature included, nothing above it and nothing beside it | A per-user licence, four per-agency Smart Packs, and further modules for screening, onboarding, payroll and billing |
| Records and storageWhat growth costs. | Unlimited records and storage on every plan, with no per-record charge | Expanded storage is listed as one of the additions in the Elite Smart Pack |
| Getting your data inWho does the unglamorous half, and who pays for it. | Done for you on every plan, free — extraction, mapping, de-duplication, and fifty of your own records to check first | A dedicated implementation team; the implementation fee is a separate line from the licence fee |
| Running the desk | ||
| ReportingWhether the good version costs extra. | Billings, delivery and consultant splits read from real placements, included | Base analytics in the packs; advanced and custom analytics is an add-on across all packages |
| What automations you can seeA rule you cannot find is a rule you cannot turn off. | A register of everything that runs by itself — what it reads, what it writes, when it last ran, and a switch | CRM automation, listed as a feature of the Automate and Elite Smart Packs |
| Your careers siteWhat happens to an applicant on arrival. | Your own domain, SEO-indexed, with applicants parsed and scored as they land | Job Portal publishes to companyname.vincere-digital.io/jobs, with an option to switch to your own website domain |
| Email and calendarThe plumbing everything else sits on. | Gmail and Outlook two-way sync, threads linked to the right record, included | Email and calendar sync, listed on their Australian pricing page as included and marked beta |
Vincere’s AI is a set of named features you buy in a pack: candidate scoring, a job ad generator, the OptimAIser that rewrites an email or polishes a candidate brief, a support chatbot. Each is useful and each does one thing. Kepler has one assistant instead, in a sidebar on every page, that searches everything you own — candidates, CVs, notes and conversations — hands back the records it used, and can create and update 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 |
Vincere’s help centre describes AI candidate scoring as a 1–5 star rating over up to 25 candidates at a time, returning highlights, noted gaps and suggested interview questions, and states that a scored candidate cannot be rescored for the same job. Kepler ranks every candidate in the database against the brief, and opening a row gives you a verdict on each requirement and the line from the profile behind it — so a consultant who disagrees can see exactly what to disagree with.
| 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
Vincere logs a meeting the way most CRMs do: you pick the activity type, add the participants, and type what happened into a description field. Kepler sends a notetaker to the call, and what comes back is filed against the right record — a summary, the next steps, and the full transcript, which then becomes searchable alongside the CVs and the email threads.
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 £69 per user / month, plus Smart Packs from £25 per agency
The Access Group's UK Vincere pricing page publishes the CRM and ATS "starting from £69 per user per month", then four AI Smart Packs charged per agency per month — Base from £25, Present from £139, Automate from £235, Elite from £349 — and says you "extend with additional modules for screening, onboarding, payroll and billing as needed". Advanced and custom analytics and a third-party data connector are add-ons across all packages. Checked 6 Sep 2026.
Their Australian pricing page publishes no figures at all. It describes bespoke plans built from a monthly licence fee covering Vincere Core and any additional modules, a separate one-off implementation fee, and tiered Customer Success Plans, and asks you to request a quote. Both statements are Vincere's own; we have not estimated anything they do not publish.
Modular pricing is a real argument, not a caricature: an agency that wants the CRM and none of the AI pays less under Vincere's model than under ours. What it costs you is a bill with several moving parts, and a set of features that are switched off until someone approves an upgrade. Kepler's answer is one line on an invoice.
It depends on whether your problem is coverage or depth. Vincere is the wider product: pay and bill, timesheets, shift scheduling and invoicing through Vincere TimeTemp, job multiposting via Broadbean and idibu, SMS, video interviewing and native iOS and Android apps are all live in Vincere, and Kepler has none of them. Kepler is the deeper product on the AI and the data underneath it: one assistant across the whole workspace, matching with a readable verdict and source for every requirement, a notetaker that files call transcripts, per-field history with undo, and one price with everything included. An agency running a large temp desk should look hard at Vincere. An agency sitting on years of CVs, notes and email it cannot search should look hard at Kepler.
Kepler is USD 119 per user per month billed annually, which is USD 1,428 per seat per year, with every feature included, unlimited records and storage, and free migration; additional AI capacity is available on request. The Access Group publishes Vincere's UK pricing as the CRM and ATS from £69 per user per month, plus AI Smart Packs charged per agency per month at £25, £139, £235 and £349, with further modules for screening, onboarding, payroll and billing quoted separately and a one-off implementation fee. Their Australian pricing page publishes no figures and asks you to request a quote. Both sets of numbers were checked on 6 Sep 2026.
The product is sold today as Access Vincere Evo. The Access Group describes it as an AI-powered recruitment CRM "built by recruiters, for recruiters" and lists neighbouring Access products alongside it — Access Automate for intelligent automation, Access Attract Evo for recruitment intelligence, Access FastTrack360 Evo for payroll and billing, and Access Onboarded for automated screening and onboarding. The help centre is still at help.vincere.io and the module names an existing customer knows — Vincere Core, TimeTemp, Engage, Portals, Intelligence — are still in use.
Vincere ships AI as a set of named features rather than one assistant. Their help centre documents AI candidate scoring, an AI generator for job descriptions and adverts, the Access Evo OptimAIser — powered by Access Copilot — which rewrites emails and polishes candidate briefs from the email tab and from candidate and contact profiles, an AI support chatbot, and an AI Coach performance dashboard. Which of those you get depends on the Smart Pack you buy. Kepler takes the other approach: one assistant in a sidebar on every page that reads the whole database, returns the records it used, and writes changes back only after you approve them.
No, and this is the clearest reason to choose Vincere. Vincere TimeTemp covers timesheet submission and approval, leave requests, shift scheduling, pay rules and overtime, and sales, purchase and self-bill invoicing, and The Access Group sells Access FastTrack360 Evo alongside it for payroll and billing. Kepler has no timesheets, no invoicing and no payroll, and no plan to build them. What Kepler offers instead is a public REST API with scoped keys and outbound webhooks with delivery logs, so a back-office system can be integrated rather than replaced.
Kepler runs the migration for you, free, on every plan. You send an export from Vincere plus any loose CVs, spreadsheets and shared-inbox archives that never made it into the CRM, and Kepler handles extraction, mapping, de-duplication and validation, rebuilding 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. Activity, stages and history come across, not just names and email addresses. Kepler also exports the whole workspace on request at any time with no exit fee, which is the same courtesy in the other direction.
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.
