Bullhorn vs SmartRecruiters

Bullhorn

The REST API covers 91 documented entities with required field selection, Lucene and JPQL queries and an event queue. Access is by support ticket or a paid partner contract, and the API Fair Use Policy bars connecting third-party AI or LLM tools or MCP without Bullhorn's written permission. No OpenAPI file or numeric rate limit was found.

SmartRecruiters

OAuth client credentials limited by 49 scopes, a system role and an access group, with per-operation OpenAPI definitions, llms.txt and a dated changelog. Access needs a paid SmartRecruiters account, with the lowest plan starting at $14,995, and no free tier, official SDK or idempotency key was found.

Bullhorn

1. Confirm the customer holds Bullhorn's written permission for AI or LLM access before any call. The API Fair Use Policy forbids it otherwise
2. Call /rest-services/loginInfo?username= first to learn the data centre, then use the returned OAuth and REST URLs and follow any 307 redirect
3. Log in once and reuse BhRestToken until a call returns 401, then use the refresh token. Bullhorn limits login rates and may block frequent logins
4. Send BhRestToken as a header, never in the URL, and always pass fields. fields=* is blocked outside /meta
5. On 429 wait one second and retry. Writes have no idempotency key, so read the record back before repeating a PUT

SmartRecruiters

1. Ask the customer's admin for an OAuth client ID with only the scopes needed. An API key reads and writes all company data and never expires
2. Exchange the client ID and secret at https://api.smartrecruiters.com/identity/oauth/token and refresh every 30 minutes
3. Stay under 10 requests a second and 8 concurrent. GET /candidates allows 1 concurrent request, and job publication 2 a second
4. Move a candidate with PUT /candidates/{id}/jobs/{jobId}/status. The variants without jobId act on the most recently updated application
5. Page with limit (maximum 100, default 10) and pageId from nextPageId. Use the Reporting API for bulk reads, which returns CSV