Comparison
HireAll Boost vs LinkedIn Recruiter Lite: price, speed and results (November 2026)
Prices and facts checked 1 November 2026
- PriceBoost
- To first interviewsBoost
- Your timeBoost
- Who you reachTie
- Fake-CV riskBoost
- ContractBoost
No card. 1 credit = one candidate who gets an invite.
In short: Lite sells you a search box and 30 InMails for $170 a month, and the work stays yours. Boost does the work, reaches 20× more people a month at the Fast pace and charges $0.50 for each person it invites.
At a glance
Boost and LinkedIn Recruiter Lite, row by row
| HireAll Boostwins 5 of 6 | LinkedIn Recruiter Litesearch seat | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | ✓ Boost wins9–11× less per person contacted$0.40–0.50 per invite, 100 free. ≈ $14–17 per interview estimate | $170 a month or $1,680 a year per seat, 30 InMails a month2,3 |
| To first interviews | ✓ Boost winsruns while you work on something else~3–7 days, by pace estimate | As fast as you search, write and follow up |
| Your time | ✓ Boost wins10 minutes instead of hours a week10 minutes to brief, then approve or skip | Hours a week: search, InMails, follow-ups |
| Who you reach | Tieboth reach people who aren't applyingPassive: people who aren't applying | TiePassive and active, up to your 3rd-degree network1 |
| 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 seat, nothing to cancelNone: prepaid credits that don't expire | A seat, monthly or yearly2 |
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. Lite's price is a seat, the same whether you send 30 InMails or none. Boost's price is the pace you pick, and it stops when you pause it. LinkedIn shows Lite's price only at checkout, so the figures here are the ones buyers and reviewers report: $170 a month, or $1,680 a year, which is $140 a month.2,4
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,5 so we assume 15%: a careful sender in good standing. Every response within 90 days returns its credit,6 which is why 30 credits stretch to about 35 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 Lite
search seat
- Seat, billed monthly
- $170 a month
- Seat, billed yearly
- $1,680 ÷ 12 = $140 a month
- InMail credits
- 30 a month; up to 70 more can be bought3
- Price per credit
- $4.67–5.67
- Messages sent, credits back included
- ≈ 35
- Responses at 15%
- ≈ 5, a "no, thanks" included
Interviews: as many as those 5 responses turn into, once you've asked your questions and found a time.
The two totals aren't the same step of the funnel. A Lite "response" is anyone who answers, including the people who say no. Put Boost on the same footing, at the same 15% response rate, and a response costs about $3.33 estimate: $0.50 an invite ÷ 15%. 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 bigger cost is the one neither invoice shows: your time. With Lite every step after the payment is yours. You run the search, write each InMail one at a time (bulk InMail is only for Recruiter contracts6), chase the people who went quiet, ask your questions and find a slot in two calendars. Boost does those steps. What's left for you is the brief and, in Manual mode, a yes or a no on each person.
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. Lite gives you the tools; Boost does the steps.
| With Boost | With LinkedIn Recruiter Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 20+ filters and save it; LinkedIn sends alerts and daily recommendations.1 |
| Find the people | Reads every matching profile in full and checks each one against your must-haves. | Page through the results and open the profiles, within your 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-degree network.1 |
| 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 each InMail yourself and send it one at a time: 30 credits a month.3 |
| Follow up | At most two short follow-ups, sent for you. | Yours to remember and write, for everyone who hasn't answered. |
| Screen | Everyone who says yes gets your two-minute questionnaire. You read the answers first. | A call or a message thread to ask your questions. |
| 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.7 So with Lite, the time to a first interview is mostly the time it takes you to search and write. With Boost it's set by the pace: the first interviews 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
Both reach people who aren't applying anywhere, and that's what sets them apart from a job post. Job posts now draw about 291 applications per hire, against roughly 100 in early 2021,8 and the people you'd most like to hire are rarely among them: they're busy doing good work. With Lite you write to them yourself, within your 1st- to 3rd-degree network.1 Boost finds the ones who match your must-haves, and HireAll recruiters invite them.
Checked on substance, not keywords
With Lite the check is you: you open each profile and decide. That's as good as your attention on the fortieth profile of the evening. 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;9 34% of recruiters already spend up to half their week filtering spam applications;10 and a single North Korean remote IT worker scheme reached more than 70 US employers.11 With Lite 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 Lite still makes sense
Choose Boost when
- You're a founder or a hiring manager, and the search is the part you don't have time for.
- You need more than 30 people contacted a month. At the Fast pace Boost invites 600 people a month for one role.
- You'd rather pay for what you use: no seat, no subscription, credits that don't expire and a pace you can pause.
- You want the questionnaire and the booking done before you meet anyone.
- You'd rather keep your own LinkedIn account out of cold outreach. Boost doesn't touch it.
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite still makes sense when
- You hire a few people a year and want a search tool, not a service. LinkedIn built Lite for exactly that.1
- You want every message to come from your own name and profile. With Boost, HireAll recruiters write, on behalf of your company.
- You're mapping a market: how many people with a skill live in a city, who works where, who just moved. Lite's filters, saved searches and alerts are made for that.
- Your shortlist is a handful of named people. Thirty personal InMails a month cover it, and nobody writes to them better than you.
Using both
Boost alongside LinkedIn Recruiter Lite
Keep Lite for the people you'd write to anyway. A former colleague, the one engineer at a competitor, a referral: 30 InMails a month cover that list, and those messages should come from you.
Let Boost do the wide pass. Everyone else who meets your must-haves gets an invite at the pace you set, and the ones who say yes arrive with answers and a slot in your calendar.
Brief Boost with what the search taught you. If a Lite search shows you who the role really is (the titles, the companies, the cities), put that into Boost's must-haves. Boost checks profiles only against what you tell it.
FAQ
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite vs Boost: questions people ask
How much does LinkedIn Recruiter Lite cost in 2026?
About $170 a month billed monthly, or $1,680 a year ($140 a month) billed yearly, per seat and before tax.2,4 LinkedIn shows the price only at checkout. Each seat includes 30 InMail credits a month.3
How many InMail credits do you get with Recruiter Lite, and what does one cost?
30 a month per seat, which comes to $4.67–5.67 a credit. You can buy up to 70 more a month and keep at most 120.3 A credit comes back when the person accepts, declines or replies within 90 days,6 so at a 15% response rate a message sent costs about $3.97–4.82.
Is there a free trial of Recruiter Lite?
Yes: one month, with a credit card on file, unless you used a Premium free trial in the last 12 months.2 Boost starts with 100 free credits and no card.
Is HireAll Boost an alternative to LinkedIn Recruiter Lite?
For a hiring manager who wants interviews rather than a search tool, yes: Boost does the search, the invites, the follow-ups, the questionnaire and the booking, and charges per invite. For a recruiter who wants to search LinkedIn and write every message, Lite is the tool, and Boost is a way to reach more people 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 $4.67–5.67 per Lite InMail credit. 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 5 responses from a Lite seat, and about 17 interviews from Boost at the Fast pace estimate.
Can sending a lot of InMails get a Recruiter Lite seat restricted?
LinkedIn's InMail policy sets a 13% response-rate threshold over 14 days: the first breach brings a warning, and later ones can put the seat in an InMail Improvement Period.5 Short messages written one by one to people who fit keep the rate up.7
What's the difference between Recruiter Lite and LinkedIn Recruiter?
LinkedIn 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.1 It is sold by quote, at about $8,000–12,000 per seat a year.4 Every plan and what it costs: LinkedIn Recruiter pricing.
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, 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
- Pin, LinkedIn Recruiter Pricing 2026: Full Cost Breakdown, Price Per Month and Per License, updated 4 October 2026: Recruiter Lite "~$170 (monthly billing)" or "$1,680 (~$140/mo)" a year, "verified October 2026"; "a one-month free trial with a credit card on file", not "if you used a Premium free trial in the last 12 months". "Corporate and Professional Services are quote-only"; "Corporate has no trial". Pin sells a competing product. Checked 2 November 2026
- LinkedIn Help, Recruiter Lite InMail messages FAQ: "Every Recruiter Lite license comes with 30 InMail credits each month"; up to 70 more can be bought a month; "You can also accumulate no more than 120 InMail credits in Recruiter Lite". Checked 1 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 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 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