Head to head · Recruiting candidates · October 2026 research run
Greenhouse vs Lever
Greenhouse scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against Lever's 53.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Lever leads on payments & pricing. Both do recruiting candidates.
Which one, for what
Good for An agent working inside a company that already runs hiring on Greenhouse and needs to read pipelines, move applications, schedule interviews or draft offer records under scoped OAuth.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 55
- Security & auth, 85 against 60
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 21
Watch for
No public price, free tier or trial. Pricing is customised through sales, and the sandbox is a Pro-tier feature
Lever D
Good for An agent working inside a company that already runs Lever, for reading the pipeline, adding candidates, moving stages, writing notes and feedback and scheduling externally managed interviews.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 5 against 0
Watch for
No public price, free tier or self-serve signup. OAuth apps and sandbox accounts are issued by Lever staff after a partner application
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Greenhouse | Lever | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 71 | 73 | Lever +2 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 79 | 55 | Greenhouse +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 63 | 65 | Lever +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 85 | 60 | Greenhouse +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 5 | Lever +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 65 | 21 | Greenhouse +44 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 79 | 75 | Greenhouse +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 64.8 · B | 53.6 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Greenhouse | Lever |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Greenhouse Software, Inc. | Employ, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://harvest.greenhouse.io/v3 | https://api.lever.co/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Greenhouse's Master Subscription Agreement. The docs repository for the older APIs on GitHub is Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Lever's terms of service. The postings-api and integrator-resources repositories on GitHub hold documentation and example code |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-04-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-02-01 | 2023-08-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-28 | 2023-09-25 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
Verdicts
Greenhouse
Harvest v3 pairs per-endpoint OAuth scopes with Markdown docs that embed an OpenAPI 3.1 definition for each call, and the beta MCP server blocks every DELETE. Access needs a paying customer account, with no public price, trial or self-serve sandbox, and no numeric rate limit or idempotency key was found in the reviewed documentation.
Lever
The Data API covers about 100 operations with read and write OAuth scopes per resource, field selection and a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment. Access depends on a paying customer or partner approval, with no public price, no OpenAPI file and no official SDK. The status page records three critical incidents between 14 July and 21 August 2026.
Before you call either
Greenhouse
- Request a token from https://auth.greenhouse.io/token with client credentials, then send it as a Bearer token to https://harvest.greenhouse.io/v3. Tokens expire, so repeat on 401
- Put filters and
per_pageon the first list request only. Acursormust be the only query parameter, or the call returns 422 - Send the current stage as
from_stage_idwhen moving an application. It guards against stale moves. Other writes have no idempotency key, so check before retrying - Read
X-RateLimit-Remainingon every response and wait forRetry-Afteron 429. The window is 30 seconds - Expect empty list results or 403 unless the token's user is a Site Admin with the needed permissions
Lever
- Send
perform_aswith a Lever user id on creates and most updates. Opportunity, note, feedback, panel and interview writes reject requests without it - Use the Opportunities endpoints. The Candidates endpoints were deprecated in 2020 and the old candidate id works as the opportunity id
- Stay under 10 requests a second per key and back off exponentially on 429 and 503. Application POSTs are limited to 2 a second
- Create interviews on a panel with
externallyManagedtrue. Panels made in the Lever app can't be changed through the API - Pass
includeto trim fields and follownextwhilehasNextis true. Anoffsetmust come from a previous response - Send a full object on PUT to panels and interviews. Missing fields are deleted
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Greenhouse or Lever?
Greenhouse scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against Lever's 53.6 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Lever leads on payments & pricing.
Do Greenhouse and Lever need an API key?
Greenhouse uses an OAuth sign-in. Lever takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Greenhouse and Lever without installing anything?
Yes. Greenhouse has a hosted endpoint at https://harvest.greenhouse.io/v3 and Lever at https://api.lever.co/v1.
Other comparisons with Greenhouse or Lever
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/greenhouse-vs-lever.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/greenhouse.json·/api/v1/tools/lever.json - From a terminal
anchor compare greenhouse lever(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "greenhouse", "b": "lever"}at/mcp, no key