ShortlistIQ Review (2026)AI Interviewer From $49 a Month
By Daan Haket · Researched and written with an AI assistant · who does what
No yearly prices are shown although the FAQ mentions yearly plans, and the cards do not name their currency.
small and mid-size teams and recruitment agencies that get more applicants than they can screen and want an AI to run the first-round interview and score each candidate.
you need a full applicant tracking system; you hire only a few people a year and screen them yourself; or you hire where automated screening needs a level of human review or disclosure you cannot set up.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 16 Oct 2026
Three paid plans, each labelled per month and metered by invited applicants per month: Basic $49 for up to 20 applicants and one AI assistant; Standard $199 for up to 200 applicants and unlimited AI assistants with live chat support; Premium $599 for up to 2,000 applicants with a dedicated account manager and personalised onboarding. All paid plans list unlimited job positions and no setup fees.
Every account starts on a free plan for up to 10 applicants, with no credit card. The FAQ mentions monthly and yearly plans that can be cancelled at any time, but no yearly price is shown. Payments run through Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record; the terms say there are no refunds or credits for partly used or unused service on early cancellation, except where the law requires them. Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: HR & People. Across the 14 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is about $32 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). ShortlistIQ’s entry price of $49 a month sits above that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Basic covers only 20 applicants a month with a single AI assistant. Unused or partly used service is not refunded on early cancellation, and the homepage selling point, that candidates cannot tell the AI from a person, puts the duty to disclose on you.
What ShortlistIQ does
AI recruiting assistant that runs first-round candidate interviews in chat, in a tone and persona you set, and returns a scoring report for each applicant; plans are metered by invited applicants per month.
You pay per invited applicant, not per hire
The plans meter invited applicants a month: 20 on Basic, 200 on Standard, 2,000 on Premium. At full use that is about $2.45 an applicant on Basic, $1.00 on Standard and $0.30 on Premium, our arithmetic from the plan prices. Job positions are unlimited on all three, so the question is how many candidates you send to the AI interviewer each month, not how many roles you have open. Basic gives you one AI assistant, which means one interviewer persona for every role.
Standard is the first plan with unlimited assistants, so you can set up a different interviewer per role or department, and it adds live chat support. Premium adds a dedicated account manager and onboarding with the founder. Twenty applicants a month on Basic is one small hiring round. If a single job ad brings in more than that, the realistic starting point is Standard.
How to actually use ShortlistIQ
Start on the free plan, which lets you invite up to 10 applicants with no credit card, and use it on a real but low-stakes role. Register, create your organisation, then build an AI assistant: give it a name and avatar, pick a tone and a level of detail, and train it on the job opening. Read the scoring reports it produces for each candidate next to your own judgement before you let it filter anyone out.
Decide up front how you tell candidates they are talking to an AI. ShortlistIQ's homepage says most people cannot tell the difference, and rules on automated hiring decisions differ by country, so check what applies where you hire. Count your monthly applicants before you pick a plan, and note that unused months are not refunded.
Where this section comes from: our research notes (99 words)
ShortlistIQ's own pages, read in a browser on 16 October 2026: shortlistiq.com/pricing (plan cards, comparison table and FAQ; the Pay annually label did not change the amounts when clicked), the homepage, and the service terms at shortlistiq.com/terms-of-service (sections 2.3 on Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record, 6.3 on refunds and 18 on Serbian law; the company is UNIT01 doo). The help centre pages on creating an account and organisation and on cancelling were read on 15 October 2026.
The per-applicant arithmetic is ours. ShortlistIQ is an affiliate partner of ours through Lemon Squeezy. We have not used ShortlistIQ ourselves.
ShortlistIQ vs Breezy HR, side by side
Each column shows the vendor’s own published entry price, read on the date shown. Entry prices can cover different services or units, so check what each one buys. We do not average them into a score.
Both names above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Neither changes what this table says.
The natural comparison is Breezy HR — Breezy HR is in our dossiers too, but it is an applicant tracking system: job posting, pipeline and candidate management, with a free plan for one open position and Startup at $157 a month billed annually when we read it on 27 September 2026. ShortlistIQ does not replace an ATS; it adds an AI that interviews and scores applicants in the first round..
Frequently asked questions
How much does ShortlistIQ cost?
Read 16 October 2026: Basic $49 a month for up to 20 applicants, Standard $199 for 200 and Premium $599 for 2,000, with unlimited job positions and no setup fees. A free plan covers 10 applicants. No yearly prices are shown, and the page does not name the currency.
Is there a free plan?
Yes. The pricing page says every account starts on a free plan for up to 10 applicants, and the FAQ says no credit card is needed.
Can I get a refund?
Not for unused time. Section 6.3 of the terms says there are no refunds or credits for partly used or unused services on early cancellation, except where the law requires one. Payments go through Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record.
Can I cancel at any time?
The FAQ says yes, with no long-term contract, and the terms say you can subscribe, change or cancel a plan on the subscription page inside the app. Each organisation has its own subscription.
Is this a hands-on review of ShortlistIQ?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Read 2026-10-16 in a browser on shortlistiq.com/pricing; the cards show a $ sign without naming the currency, and clicking Pay annually did not change the amounts.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
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