Greenhouse vs Lever vs Ashby: Are Fast-Growing Startups Really Switching ATS?

Ashby is the only one of the three that publishes a price: $400 per month for up to 100 employees, as of 13 October 2026, per Ashby's pricing page. Greenhouse and Lever sell by quote. The "startups are switching" story rests mostly on Ashby's own growth claims: Crunchbase News reported on 22 July 2025 that Ashby says its customers grew from about 1,300 to more than 2,700 in a year.

This guide separates what the vendors publish from what the internet repeats, then shows where each tool fits.

What does each ATS publish about price?

Only Ashby lists a number, and only for one plan. Greenhouse and Lever list none. All data below is from each vendor's own pricing page, checked 13 October 2026.

Ashby's Plus plan (101 to 1,000 employees) and Enterprise plan (1,000+) show only a "Get in Touch" button. So the $400 figure holds only for small companies, and a startup that grows past 100 people moves to a negotiated price.

Ask each vendor for a written quote with your headcount and expected hires.

What does Greenhouse include on each plan?

Greenhouse sells three tiers, and its pricing page says the choice depends on how much "structure, automation and governance" you need. Some comparison sites still use the old names Essential, Advanced and Expert.

• Core: sourcing and CRM, structured interview kits and scorecards, AI Notetaker, scheduling, reporting and analytics, SSO.
• Plus: everything in Core, plus texting, email automation, multi-brand job boards, an AI report filter, a Business Intelligence Connector and fraud and spam detection.
• Pro: everything in Plus, plus unlimited CRM events, an audit log, a developer sandbox and sync, and resume anonymization.

Structured interview kits and scorecards are included from the entry tier.

What does Lever offer, and who owns it?

Lever sells one "AI-Powered Hiring Platform" with ATS and CRM in a single product, according to Lever's pricing page. It lists reporting, AI-powered screening and unlimited AI interview transcripts and summaries in the core platform. Add-ons are Candidate Insights, AI Screening by VONQ and Onboarding, each quoted separately.

Lever is one of three brands, with JazzHR and Jobvite, sold by Employ. Employ's news page says those brands serve more than 23,000 customers across many industries (a company claim).

Lever's page says pricing "scales based on your team size and hiring needs". It does not say whether that means seats or employees, so ask which unit your contract uses.

Why would a startup move to Ashby?

The reasons that appear in public sources are price at small size, consolidation of tools, and growth momentum. Treat each with the evidence attached.

1. Entry price. A published $400 per month is easy to budget for. The comparable Greenhouse and Lever numbers are not public, so any "cheaper than Greenhouse" claim cannot be checked against a list price.
2. One product instead of several. Ashby's pricing page groups sourcing and CRM, scheduling, offers and approvals, and reporting and analytics in one plan comparison. Its Foundations plan includes unlimited offers and eSignature.
3. Momentum. Ashby says its customers grew from about 1,300 to more than 2,700 and its ARR rose 135% in the year before July 2025 (company claims, as reported by Crunchbase News). The article names Ramp, OpenAI, Harvey.ai, Notion, Cursor, Shopify and Snowflake as customers.

Notice what the growth figure does not say. It counts all new customers, including companies adopting their first ATS. It is not a count of Greenhouse or Lever customers who left.

What does the Foundations plan leave out?

Several things are capped or sold separately, per Ashby's pricing page as of 13 October 2026:

• Candidate experience surveys: limited to 1 survey on Foundations.
• Offer templates: limited to 1 on Foundations.
• Report filtering and grouping: basic on Foundations, advanced on the other plans.
• AI Notetaker: a paid add-on.
• Advanced Scheduling features: sold as a separate add-on, with no price on the page.
• Extra SMS messages: $90 per 1,000.

None of these is unusual for an entry plan, but together they mean the real monthly cost can exceed $400 for a team that interviews heavily or texts candidates.

How hard is it to migrate from Greenhouse to Ashby?

Ashby documents a read-only API migration from Greenhouse that "only retrieves data, and does not create, update, or delete anything" in Greenhouse. You can try it without risking your live system.

What moves: departments, offices, jobs, openings, job stages, custom fields, candidates and notes, users, scorecards, sources, tags, job posts, resumes, offers and offer letters, scheduled interviews, rejection reasons, EEOC data and email templates.

What does not:

• User permissions are not mapped, so you rebuild access rules.
• Offer letter templates are not pulled.
• Email template placeholder tokens are not replaced. Templates arrive archived until you fix the tokens and restore them.
• Prospect data is not mapped. Prospect-only candidates arrive with a Lead status and no job.
• Consent and retention dates are not pulled, though retention dates can be added by CSV.

What you need: an Organization Admin role in Ashby, access to manage API credentials in Greenhouse, a Harvest V3 (OAuth) credential with the read "List" scopes, and 15 webhooks. After the first sync, regular syncs continue hourly until your Ashby customer success manager disables the ATS sync. Edits made to migrated data in Ashby before then can be overwritten.

Compliance teams should plan for the retention gap. If you hire in the EU or in states with candidate data rules, set retention dates before the old system is switched off.

Which ATS fits which company?

This is a judgment based on the published facts above.

If your recruiting runs through a staffing agency model, requirements differ again. Agencies need client management, placements and billing that none of these three lead with. For broader tool-stack planning, see our guides on the best HRMS for a 50-person company and free HRMS options for small businesses.

What's still unclear?

• Whether startups are switching in meaningful numbers. No independent dataset is cited here. The public evidence is Ashby's own customer and ARR claims, and vendor-written comparison posts.
• Real prices at your size. Greenhouse and Lever publish none, and Ashby's Plus plan is quote-only.
• Per-plan feature detail on Ashby. This post covers only the Ashby plan limits stated explicitly on its pricing page, so check the live comparison table for the rest.
• Product direction at Lever. Lever shares a parent with two other ATS brands. Public sources give no verified roadmap, so ask the vendor.
• Weakest point of the case for switching. Ashby's migration tool covers a lot, but the gaps (permissions, templates, prospects) are the parts recruiters touch daily. Budget time for them.

Disclosure: we are affiliated with Sortinghat, an ATS/CRM for staffing agencies. It competes in the same software category as the tools discussed here, and it is not ranked in this comparison.