Comparison
HireAll Boost vs LinkedIn Recruiter: price, speed and results (November 2026)
Prices and facts checked 2 November 2026
- PriceBoost
- To first interviewsBoost
- Your timeBoost
- Who you reachLinkedIn Recruiter
- Fake-CV riskBoost
- ContractBoost
No card. 1 credit = one candidate who gets an invite.
In short: Recruiter sells a recruiter the best search on LinkedIn for about $8,000–12,000 a seat a year,2 and someone still has to do the work. Boost does the work and charges $0.50 for each person it invites. A seat's year pays for 26–40 months of Boost at the Fast pace.
At a glance
Boost and LinkedIn Recruiter, row by row
| HireAll Boostwins 5 of 6 | LinkedIn RecruiterCorporate seat | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | ✓ Boost wins9–13× less per person contacted$0.40–0.50 per invite, 100 free. ≈ $14–17 per interview estimate | ≈ $8,000–12,000 per seat a year; LinkedIn quotes each deal2,3 |
| To first interviews | ✓ Boost winsstarts today, no recruiter or contract needed~3–7 days, by pace estimate | As fast as your recruiters work |
| Your time | ✓ Boost wins10 minutes instead of a recruiter's week10 minutes to brief, then approve or skip | A recruiter's working week |
| Who you reach | Passive: people who aren't applying | ✓ LinkedIn Recruiter winsevery member, active and passivePassive and active, all LinkedIn members4 |
| Fake-CV risk | ✓ Boost winsplus your questionnaire before any callLow only people who said yes and filled in your questionnaire | Low you pick who to contact |
| Contract | ✓ Boost winsno yearly contract to remember to cancelNone: prepaid credits that don't expire | A yearly contract per seat, renewing itself5 |
Prices as of November 2026, from each vendor's public pages, or a published estimate where the vendor quotes privately. Product names belong to their owners; HireAll is not affiliated with them.
Price
What one role costs for a month
One open role for one month, side by side. LinkedIn doesn't publish Recruiter's price: it "does not have a single standard price" and is sold through one- to multi-year agreements.3 Vendr, which sees buyers' contracts, puts the list price at $8,000 to $12,000 per seat a year, with discounts of 15–30% common.2 That's $667–1,000 a month, whatever the month brings. Boost's price is the pace you pick, and it stops when you pause it.
To turn a seat into results you need a response rate, and LinkedIn doesn't publish an average. Its InMail policy warns any seat whose responses fall below 13% over 14 days,6 so we assume 15%: a careful sender in good standing. Every response within 90 days returns its credit,7 which is why 150 credits stretch to about 176 messages.
HireAll Boost
Pick a pace: people invited a day
- Invites this month
- 600
- At $0.50 a credit
- $300
- With the 2,000-credit pack
- $240
- Interested people estimate
- ≈ 61
- First interviews estimate
- ~5 days
About $17 an interview estimate, $14 with the biggest pack. The first 100 credits are free.
LinkedIn Recruiter
Corporate seat
- Seat, list price a year
- $8,000–12,000
- The same, a month
- $667–1,000
- InMail credits
- 150 a month; unused ones roll over up to 4× that8
- Price per credit
- $4.44–6.67
- Messages sent, credits back included
- ≈ 176
- Responses at 15%
- ≈ 26, a "no, thanks" included
Interviews: as many as those 26 responses turn into, once a recruiter has asked the questions and found a time.
The two totals aren't the same step of the funnel. A Recruiter "response" is anyone who answers, including the people who say no. A Boost "interested" person said yes to hearing more, at about $5 each estimate, and an interview at about $17 estimate. Bigger credit packs bring an invite down to $0.40, and the first 100 credits are free.
The seat is also the smaller part of the bill. Recruiter is a tool for a recruiter, and the person using it costs far more than the licence: searching, writing InMails, chasing replies, screening and booking are a working week. LinkedIn sells Hiring Assistant, its AI agent, to take some of that on, but as an add-on to the seat, at a price it quotes separately.1,9 And the contract outlives the role: LinkedIn's auto-renew order terms renew a subscription for another 12 months unless someone gives notice at least 45 days before the end.5 Boost credits come in packs from $50, don't expire, and wait for the next role.
estimate Boost's figures come from its product model, until the pilot reports: 2.9% of the people invited book an interview, and 10.1% say they're interested. A month here is 30 days.
Speed and effort
What you do with each, step by step
Where the hours go, from an open role to the first interview. Recruiter gives a recruiter the best tools LinkedIn has; Boost does the steps.
| With Boost | With LinkedIn Recruiter | |
|---|---|---|
| Say who you want | Describe the role in a chat or paste the job description. Boost turns it into must-haves and filters, and you fix anything that's off. | Build a search out of 40+ filters, AI-assisted search included, and save it to a Project your team shares.1 |
| Find the people | Reads every matching profile in full and checks each one against your must-haves. | Page through the results across every LinkedIn member and open the profiles.4 |
| First message | HireAll recruiters send a plain LinkedIn invite, then your intro once they accept. You see and edit the wording before it starts. | Write InMails one by one or in bulk: 150 credits a month per seat.1,7 With the Hiring Assistant add-on, it can draft and send them for you.9 |
| Follow up | At most two short follow-ups, sent for you. | A recruiter's to-do list, unless Hiring Assistant sends the follow-ups.9 |
| Screen | Everyone who says yes gets your two-minute questionnaire. You read the answers first. | A call or a message thread; Hiring Assistant can prescreen, in projects outside the EU.9 |
| Book the interview | They pick a free slot in your Google Calendar. | Agree on a time by message or email. |
InMail replies come quickly when they come: in LinkedIn's data 65% arrive within 24 hours and 90% within a week.10 So with Recruiter, the time to a first interview is the time your recruiters take to search and write, plus the weeks it takes to buy a seat on a quoted contract if you don't have one. With Boost it's set by the pace: you start today, and the first interviews come in about 3 to 7 days estimate, while you work on something else.
Quality
Whom you meet, and how they're checked
Passive and active candidates
Recruiter reaches further than anything else on LinkedIn: every member, not just your network, with filters such as "Open to Work" and "More likely to respond".4 That's its real edge, and why recruiting teams pay for it. Boost reaches people who aren't applying anywhere, the ones who match your must-haves. Both stay away from the job-post pile: posts now draw about 291 applications per hire, against roughly 100 in early 2021.11
Checked on substance, not keywords
With Recruiter the check is a recruiter, opening each profile and deciding, or Hiring Assistant working from the criteria they set.9 Boost reads every profile in full against the must-haves you set, invites only the ones that meet them and shows you why. In Manual mode you approve each person before the invite and again before the interview, and your "no, because…" teaches it whom to skip.
Fake CVs
Neither opens your inbox to strangers, which is how fake candidates get in. Gartner expects one candidate profile in four worldwide to be fake by 2028;12 34% of recruiters already spend up to half their week filtering spam applications;13 and a single North Korean remote IT worker scheme reached more than 70 US employers.14 With Recruiter you choose whom to write to, so the risk stays low. With Boost you meet only people who said yes and filled in your questionnaire, so you've read real answers before you spend an hour on a call.
Which one
When Boost wins, and when LinkedIn Recruiter still makes sense
Choose Boost when
- You're a founder or a hiring manager with no recruiter, and a seat would mean you doing a recruiter's job.
- You hire a few roles a year. A seat's yearly price pays for 26–40 months of Boost at the Fast pace.
- You need more than 150 people contacted a month for a role: at the Fast pace Boost invites 600.
- You'd rather not sign a yearly contract that renews itself. Boost has none: credits that don't expire and a pace you can pause.
- You want the questionnaire and the booking done before you meet anyone.
LinkedIn Recruiter still makes sense when
- You have recruiters on staff who source every day. For them a seat is the tool of the trade, and its price is small next to their time.
- You need every LinkedIn member and the deepest filters: Recruiter reaches the whole network, where Lite and Boost stop at narrower pools.4
- Your team shares candidates in Projects and syncs them with your ATS.1
- You want LinkedIn's own agent: Hiring Assistant, now in its second version, runs on top of a Recruiter seat.15
Using both
Boost alongside LinkedIn Recruiter
Keep Recruiter where your recruiters spend their days. Hard searches, named targets, a pipeline the team shares: that's what the seat is for, and the people your recruiters write to themselves should hear from them.
Let Boost take the roles nobody has time for. A hiring manager with an urgent role can brief Boost in ten minutes and get people with answers and a slot in the calendar, without a seat of their own or a recruiter's week.
Hold seats steady, add capacity by the month. When hiring peaks, Boost adds reach without adding seats to a yearly contract. When it slows, pause it; the credits wait.
FAQ
LinkedIn Recruiter vs Boost: questions people ask
How much does LinkedIn Recruiter cost in 2026?
LinkedIn doesn't publish a price: Recruiter "does not have a single standard price" and is sold per seat through one- to multi-year agreements.3 Vendr puts list pricing at $8,000 to $12,000 per seat a year, with discounts of 15–30% common.2
How many InMails do you get with LinkedIn Recruiter?
Up to 150 a month per seat.1 Unused credits roll over, up to four times the monthly allotment; the rest expire.8 A credit comes back when the person accepts, declines or replies within 90 days, and bulk InMail is available on Recruiter contracts.7
Does a LinkedIn Recruiter contract renew automatically?
Under LinkedIn's auto-renew order terms, yes: the order "will automatically renew for a 12 month subscription term" unless either side gives written notice at least 45 days before the end of the contract period.5 Check your own order form, which sets the terms of your deal.
What is LinkedIn Hiring Assistant 2?
The second version of LinkedIn's AI agent for recruiters, announced on 29 September 2026; customers who use Hiring Assistant in English get it free from November.15 Hiring Assistant itself is a paid add-on to a Recruiter seat. With instant outreach on, it sources, sends first messages and follow-ups and prescreens; candidates see the messages as sent by the recruiter's Hiring Assistant.9
Is HireAll Boost an alternative to LinkedIn Recruiter?
For a company without recruiters, or with a few roles a year, yes: Boost does the search, the invites, the follow-ups, the questionnaire and the booking, and charges per invite, with no seat and no contract. For a recruiting team that sources all day, Recruiter is the tool, and Boost adds reach next to it.
Does Boost use my LinkedIn account?
No. HireAll recruiters write, on behalf of your company, and Boost keeps each of them under LinkedIn's daily limits. You don't connect an account and nobody logs in as you.
Which is cheaper per person contacted?
Boost: $0.40–0.50 per invite, against $4.44–6.67 per Recruiter InMail credit at list price. But an invite and an InMail aren't the same thing, and a seat costs the same whether you use it or not, so compare what a month brings: about 26 responses from a Recruiter seat, and about 17 interviews from Boost at the Fast pace estimate.
What's the difference between LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Lite?
Recruiter, the Corporate seat, comes with 150 InMails a month instead of 30 and 40+ filters instead of 20+, and it reaches every LinkedIn member rather than your 3rd-degree network.4 Lite is sold by the month or the year at about $170 a month; Recruiter by quote.2
More comparisons
Stop sifting. Start hunting.
Describe the role, pick a pace and meet the first people who said yes.
Get 100 free credits →No card. 1 credit = one candidate who gets an invite.
Sources
- LinkedIn, LinkedIn Recruiter: "up to 150 InMails per month, per seat"; "unlimited access to LinkedIn's network of professionals, AI-Assisted Search, 40+ advanced search features"; Projects to share candidates with a team; integrations with your ATS; "Hiring Assistant is an add-on to LinkedIn Recruiter platform." Checked 2 November 2026
- Vendr, LinkedIn Software Pricing & Plans 2026, last updated February 2026: Recruiter: "List pricing typically ranges from $8,000 to $12,000 per seat annually"; "Discounts of 15–30% off list are common". Recruiter Lite: "around $140–$170/month per seat when billed annually". Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn, Recruiter pricing: LinkedIn Recruiter "does not have a single standard price"; it is "Priced through a one- to multi-year agreement"; licences "are typically purchased per seat". Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn, Recruiter Lite: Lite is "Best for individuals hiring just a few people a year, who need basic sourcing capabilities": "20+ smart filters, saved search alerts, and daily candidate recommendations", candidates "within your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree LinkedIn network", 30 InMail credits a month. Recruiter: 150 InMails, 40+ filters and "Unlimited access to all LinkedIn members". Checked 1 November 2026
- LinkedIn, Order Terms (subscription, auto-renew), 8 September 2025: "This order will automatically renew for a 12 month subscription term, unless either party gives the other written notice of non-renewal at least 45 days prior to the end of the Contract Period". The order form of each deal sets its own terms. Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn Help, Recruiter InMail Policy: "a 13% response rate threshold": under 13% over a 14-day period brings a warning, and a later breach can mean an InMail Improvement Period. Checked 1 November 2026
- LinkedIn Help, InMail messages in Recruiter FAQ: the credit comes back if the candidate accepts, declines or replies within 90 days; bulk InMail "is only available for Recruiter contracts", not Recruiter Lite. Checked 1 November 2026
- LinkedIn Help, InMail renewal and expiration process in Recruiter: unused credits "will roll over", but credits over "the account cap of four times your monthly recruiter allotment do not roll over and will expire". Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn Help, Create a project and set up instant outreach with Hiring Assistant: "Hiring Assistant is available as an add-on for LinkedIn Recruiter"; with instant outreach on it will "source candidates, draft and send initial and follow-up messages, and prescreen candidates automatically"; candidates see messages "Sent by [recruiter's first name]'s Hiring Assistant"; instant outreach is off for projects in an EU region. Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn Talent Blog, How to Improve Your InMail Response Rate, According to LinkedIn Data, 19 May 2022: of InMail replies, "65% arrive within 24 hours and 90% arrive within one week"; InMails sent one by one get response rates "roughly 15% higher" than bulk ones. Checked 1 November 2026
- Ashby, Recruiter Productivity Trends, reported by HR Dive, May 2026: "291 applications per hire, compared to roughly 100 in early 2021". Checked 1 November 2026
- Gartner, press release, 31 July 2025: "by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake". A forecast. In its surveys 6% of candidates admitted to interview fraud, "either posing as someone else or having someone else pose as them"; 39% used AI while applying, 54% of those to write resume text; 62% are more likely to apply where interviews are in person. Checked 2 November 2026
- Greenhouse, press release, 19 November 2025: 34% of recruiters spend up to half their week filtering spam and junk applications. In the US, 91% of recruiters have spotted candidate deception; 65% of hiring managers caught applicants using AI deceptively: reading AI-generated scripts 32%, prompt injections in resumes 22%, deepfakes 18%; 36% of job seekers altered their appearance, voice or background in video interviews. Survey of 4,136 people in the US, UK, Ireland and Germany. Checked 2 November 2026
- US Department of Justice, press release, 13 October 2026: one of the North Korean remote IT worker schemes charged "impacted more than 70 U.S. company employers". Checked 1 November 2026
- LinkedIn, LinkedIn Announces Hiring Assistant 2, 29 September 2026: "LinkedIn's AI agent for recruiters"; customers "who currently use Hiring Assistant in English" get it "for free beginning in November"; "over 20,000 companies are using LinkedIn's agentic hiring solutions". Checked 2 November 2026