Kit vs Greenhouse: Governance you enforce, or a role you open in an hour.
Greenhouse makes the scorecard mandatory and syncs requisitions with Workday. Kit ships a pipeline per role and a candidate portal with no login, for a team hiring its first ten people.
Who should choose what?
Choose Kit if you're:
- A startup of 5-50 people opening a role a few times a year
- Want the first role live the same afternoon
- Don't need training manuals or onboarding consultants
- Driving the ATS from Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT over MCP
- Prefer scheduling in the box over one more connector
Choose Greenhouse if you're:
- Hiring 50+ people per year with dedicated recruiters
- Need enterprise compliance (GDPR, SOC 2 + SOC 1, multi-region)
- Require 400+ integrations (HRIS Link, assessment tools, background checks)
- Want to enforce Structured Hiring methodology company-wide
- Have recruiting ops team to manage complex workflows
- Need BI connector for Tableau/Snowflake integration
What makes Greenhouse special
Greenhouse is famous for three things: structured hiring methodology, enterprise compliance, and governance.
Scorecard-Driven Evaluation
Before you see a single resume, Greenhouse makes you define what success looks like in a Scorecard. Each interviewer gets two or three focus attributes to assess, so no competency goes unasked. The scorecard is not optional; it is how the system works.
Why this matters: Every interviewer's rating lands in the same shape, which is the record you want in hand if an EEOC audit ever arrives.
HRIS Link Middleware
HRIS Link translates between Greenhouse and an enterprise HRIS like Workday. Finance approves a position in Workday and the requisition appears in Greenhouse. You hire someone and the employee record writes itself back, with no ticket to IT.
Why this matters: A company on Workday or ADP stops retyping the same hire into two systems.
MyGreenhouse Candidate Portal
Candidates log into MyGreenhouse to see their application status in real-time ('Under Review,' 'Interview Scheduled'). They can update their resume, self-schedule interviews, and even flag one application per month as their 'Dream Job' to signal high intent.
Why this matters: The 'black hole' experience kills your employer brand. Greenhouse fixes it by giving candidates visibility and control.
What Kit does well
Four things Kit does differently, starting with the person who has no login.
Your MCP client drives Kit
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Copilot connect to Kit over MCP. Every published tool is labelled read-only, destructive, or reaches a real person before it runs.
You can see which tool only reads and which one is about to email a candidate.
Candidates never make an account
A candidate clicks a magic link and lands in their portal. No password to set, no account to recover, no seat on your bill.
Security researchers and training participants get in the same way. Nobody outside your company shows up on the invoice.
Scheduling without a second tool
Candidates self-book from your team's real availability, and the Google Meet link is created with the slot. No Calendly or ModernLoop subscription.
The interview lands on the calendar with the room already attached.
A pipeline per role
A GitHub code assignment for engineers, a portfolio review for designers, a recorded answer for remote roles. Pipeline definitions are files you can version-control.
The pipeline you argued about last quarter is in a diff, not in someone's memory.
What Kit doesn't have
Five things Greenhouse does that Kit does not, and what we plan to do about each one.
Enterprise Reporting & BI
Greenhouse has 40+ essential reports, custom report builder, and BI connector for Tableau/Snowflake. Kit has pre-built dashboards.
Will we add this? Unlikely. Startups don't need Tableau integration.
HRIS Link Middleware
Greenhouse's HRIS Link automates Workday/ADP sync bidirectionally. Kit requires CSV import/export.
Will we add this? Maybe. Depends on customer demand for enterprise HRIS.
400+ Integrations
Greenhouse has HRIS Link middleware (Workday, ADP), 100+ assessment tools, 50+ background check providers. Kit builds its integrations in rather than brokering them, and has no HRIS, assessment, or background-check connectors at all.
Will we add this? Selectively. We prioritize core workflows over integration counts.
Custom Role Definitions
Greenhouse has granular RBAC (site admins, job admins, hiring managers, coordinators) and lets you define your own roles. Kit ships eight fixed account roles, a per-module access level, and per-item grants on individual jobs and reports — but you can't author a role of your own.
Will we add this? If needed. We'll add as customers grow.
Structured Hiring Enforcement
Greenhouse enforces Scorecards, mandatory interview kits, and calibration reports. Kit has flexible workflows without enforcement.
Will we add this? Partially. We support structure but don't enforce it.
Philosophy differences
These tools reflect different worldviews about how hiring should work.
Kit: Open a role in an hour
Startups hire a few times a year rather than every week, and the software should say so. You open your first role in an hour. No training manual, no onboarding consultant, no six-week rollout plan.
Greenhouse: Structured, governed, scalable
Greenhouse believes in 'Structured Hiring': define attributes upfront, enforce process discipline, generate compliance-grade data. Built for recruiting teams hiring at constant velocity with dedicated recruiting operations professionals.
Pricing reality check
Kit
$8/seat/month
$8/seat, no feature tiers
- Hiring and security training in the seat price
- Unlimited job postings and applications
- Scheduling and Google Meet links included
- MCP tools for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Copilot
- Magic-link portal, no candidate seats
Greenhouse
Not publicly disclosed (estimated $6,000-50,000/year)
- Core/Plus/Pro tiers
- Enterprise-negotiated pricing
- Volume-based discounts
- Add-on costs for integrations
- Implementation fees typical
Pricing reality check
Greenhouse does not publish a price; you negotiate one. Kit's is on the website, per seat, with no feature tiers, and VDP, Outreach and Compensation bill on top of that seat. If you hire 200 people a year, Greenhouse's depth may still be worth the negotiation.
Switching from Greenhouse?
You'll love Kit if:
- Overwhelmed by Greenhouse's setup
- Paying for governance features nobody on your team switched on
- Don't have a dedicated recruiting ops team
- Want Claude or Cursor running the pipeline over MCP
Stay with Greenhouse if:
- Rely on HRIS Link for Workday integration
- Need structured hiring enforcement (Scorecards mandatory)
- Have 100+ hires per year
- Require SOC 1 Type 2 for enterprise sales
Data portability: Greenhouse exports to CSV cleanly. Kit imports CSVs.
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