Turn Employees Into Your Best Recruiters: Referral Software Compared

Among the dedicated employee referral platforms covered here, only ERIN publishes a price. As of 15 October 2026, ERIN lists a free plan until your first referral hire, then a Refer plan at $799 a month billed annually for 100 hires a year and up to 2,500 employees. Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby also let employees submit referrals inside the ATS, so the real question is whether you need a separate tool for bonuses and engagement.

What does employee referral software actually do?

It gives employees one place to see open roles, submit a contact and track what happened to that person. The better platforms also handle eligibility rules and bonus payouts. Greenhouse's documentation for its Boon integration describes the standard loop: employees see open roles, refer people they know, track the status of each referral and earn rewards when a referral is hired.

Two things matter most in practice. First, the referral has to land in your ATS as a candidate with the referrer attached, so credit is never in dispute. Second, the referrer needs status updates, or they stop referring.

What referral tools are already inside Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby?

All three have a native way to take a referral, so you may already own the basics. They differ in setup and in what the vendor documents.

Greenhouse. In Greenhouse Recruiting, a Site Admin controls whether employees can submit referrals and use referral-sharing links, under Configure, then Organization, then Referral Program. Greenhouse says the page applies to its new subscription tiers (Core, Plus and Pro).

Lever. Any member of your organization can submit a referral: select the Referrals tab and click Refer Candidate. With single sign-on enabled, people on your email domain can log in with Interviewer-level access.

Ashby. Users without a paid seat can add referrals and create referral links, though they need an Ashby account. A direct referral adds one candidate for review. A referral link credits anyone who applies through a job link you share. Custom referral filters are available on the Legacy Plus, Plus and Enterprise plans but not on Foundations. Ashby also documents that only one referral form can exist, and that referrals cannot be submitted through its Slack integration.

If you are still choosing an ATS, our Greenhouse vs Lever vs Ashby comparison covers the wider feature set. For smaller teams, see the best free ATS for your first 10 hires.

What do dedicated platforms like ERIN and Boon add, and what do they cost?

They add the program layer: bonus rules, payouts, campaigns and reporting. Prices are mostly hidden, so ask for a written quote.

ERIN. The company says its Refer plan includes ATS and HRIS integrations, eligibility automation, and bonus reporting and analytics. Per the ERIN pricing page as of 15 October 2026, the slider shows $107 per hire at 50 hires a year, $95 at 100 and $89 at 200. Enterprise pricing is custom. ERIN also says its Studio AI assistant is included at no extra cost.

Boon. Per Greenhouse's documentation, referrals made in Boon are created as candidates in Greenhouse, open jobs are pulled into Boon, and referral status flows back so rewards can be paid out automatically. Setup runs through a Boon customer success contact, and a Greenhouse Admin account does the authorization. Ask Boon for a written quote.

EmployeeReferrals.com and Trusty. These are add-ons for specific ATS products. Lever's help center says the EmployeeReferrals.com integration syncs jobs to an employee portal and syncs referred candidates back, and that you need an EmployeeReferrals.com contract plus a Lever account. Ashby's documentation says its Trusty integration uploads referrals into Ashby automatically and notifies recruiters and referrers in Slack.

How do the options compare side by side?

The table covers the same attributes for every option. Prices are as of 15 October 2026. "Not described" means the vendor's referral help page does not cover it, not that the feature is absent.

Any contract for these tools deserves a read for renewal terms and add-on fees. Our guide to hidden fees in HR software contracts lists what to ask.

How well do referrals actually perform?

Vendor data says referral programs convert well, but the share of total hires varies widely by source. Treat the numbers below as context, not a forecast for your company.

ERIN analyzed its 2024 user data, covering over 1.1 million referrals from 744,580 unique users, according to SHRM. The ERIN study concluded that among enterprise-level organizations 1 in 10 referrals results in a hire. ERIN's CEO said that of 10 people who receive a referral notice, eight respond, six apply, four are interviewed and one is hired. Per the same article, that compares with job boards, where companies often need more than 50 to 60 applicants per hire. This is the vendor's own platform data.

Channel mattered in that dataset. According to SHRM, 55% of referrals were sent by email, 30% went out over social media and 10% by SMS, yet only 14% of hires came from social. ERIN's reading is that one-to-one referrals work better than blasting a link.

The share of all hires from referrals is much lower and inconsistent across sources:

One customer example: JLL told SHRM that, a little over four months after going live with ERIN, more than 13,500 employees had made over 11,000 referrals, leading to over 600 offers. That is JLL's self-reported figure.

How should you structure referral bonuses and payroll?

Pay on a schedule, define who is eligible, and tell payroll in advance. SHRM said it pays its referral bonus in two parts, half when the person is hired and half at the six-month mark. SHRM's Nicole Belyna also said anyone with influence over the hiring process, including HR, should not be eligible.

The ERIN CEO said in the same article that programs do better with some incentive on every job, and that the amount should reflect the role and how hard it is to fill. Neither SHRM nor ERIN gave a standard bonus figure, so set yours from your own cost per hire.

On the US tax side, IRS Publication 15 (2026) defines supplemental wages as wage payments that are not regular wages, and the list includes bonuses. It describes an optional flat 22% federal withholding method for supplemental wages identified separately from regular wages. State and local rules vary, and this is not tax advice. Confirm the coding with your payroll provider. Our payroll penalties guide covers common withholding errors.

What are the risks of a referral program?

The main risks are bias and data access. Referrals can reproduce the makeup of your current team, and an integration can ask for more data than you expect.

On bias, SHRM's Belyna warned that referrals carry potential baked-in bias, especially those from an admired or senior employee. She said the scrutiny you would give another candidate can slip. Her advice was to stick to interview guides and evaluate each candidate the same way. She also noted that you can end up with very similar people in a department, which hurts diversity of thought.

On data, Greenhouse's Boon documentation lists the access Boon requests. It includes creating and updating candidates and applications, uploading attachments, viewing scorecards and offers, and viewing EEOC data. Greenhouse recommends authorizing with a service account so the connection does not break if one person leaves. Before you sign, ask any vendor which permissions it needs and why.

Which option fits which company size?

Match the tool to how many referral hires you expect to pay for. This is a judgment from the documented features, not a ranking.

• Under about 50 employees, already on an ATS: use the native referral tab or link and track bonuses in your payroll process. A dedicated platform is hard to justify at a handful of referral hires a year. See our HR tech stack for a 100-person startup for what to buy and what to skip.
• 50 to 2,500 employees, many open roles: a dedicated platform may pay for itself in admin time. ERIN's free-until-first-hire plan lets you test with no spend until a referral converts, according to its pricing page. Get quotes from at least one other vendor, including Boon.
• Larger or regulated employers: ERIN's Enterprise tier is custom and lists SSO, custom integrations and a dedicated CSM. Check data permissions closely, as above.
• Staffing and recruiting agencies: referral tools built for employees of one employer may not fit candidate-network models. Test before committing.

What's still unclear?

• Hit rates are vendor data. The 1 in 10 conversion figure comes from ERIN's enterprise-level customers, as reported by SHRM. SHRM's own program converts about 50% of referrals into hires, which shows how much results vary by company size.
• Referral share of hires conflicts. The figures above (more than 30%, slightly more than 10%, 7.5%) come from different years, samples and definitions. Lever's 7.5% figure is Lever's own citation of an Employ report.
• Native bonus features. The Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby referral help pages do not describe bonus administration. Vendors may offer more in higher tiers or in other documentation, so ask.
• Other ATS vendors. See our Workable vs JazzHR vs BambooHR ATS comparison for other ATS options.
• Quality of hire. Claims that referred hires stay longer are common in vendor material, so treat them as vendor claims.