# Greenhouse vs SmartRecruiters

> Greenhouse scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against SmartRecruiters's 60.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. SmartRecruiters leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do recruiting candidates. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters.md (~2,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

Greenhouse scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against SmartRecruiters's 60.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. SmartRecruiters leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do recruiting candidates.

- Greenhouse: grade B, 64.8/100, rank #248 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/greenhouse.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/greenhouse.json
- SmartRecruiters: grade C, 60.4/100, rank #356 of 629. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smartrecruiters.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/smartrecruiters.json

## Which one, for what

### Greenhouse (B)

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:
- Agent ergonomics, 63 against 51
- Security & auth, 85 against 65
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 58

Watch for: No public price, free tier or trial. Pricing is customised through sales, and the sandbox is a Pro-tier feature

### SmartRecruiters (C)

Good for: An agent working inside a company that already runs SmartRecruiters, for reading jobs and candidates, adding candidates, moving applications between stages, creating interviews and pulling reports.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 78 against 71
- Payments & pricing, 8 against 0

Watch for: No free tier, trial or self-serve signup found. The Essential plan starts at $14,995 and the other three plans are quoted on request


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Greenhouse | SmartRecruiters | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 71 | 78 | SmartRecruiters +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 75 | Greenhouse +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 51 | Greenhouse +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 85 | 65 | Greenhouse +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 8 | SmartRecruiters +8 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 58 | Greenhouse +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 79 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.8 · B** | **60.4 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Greenhouse | SmartRecruiters |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Greenhouse Software, Inc. | SmartRecruiters, Inc. (an SAP company) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://harvest.greenhouse.io/v3` | `https://api.smartrecruiters.com` |
| 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 the SmartRecruiters Master Subscription Agreement |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-02-01 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-28 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| 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 | not found in the text |

## 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.

**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.

## Before you call either

### Greenhouse

1. 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
2. Put filters and `per_page` on the first list request only. A `cursor` must be the only query parameter, or the call returns 422
3. Send the current stage as `from_stage_id` when moving an application. It guards against stale moves. Other writes have no idempotency key, so check before retrying
4. Read `X-RateLimit-Remaining` on every response and wait for `Retry-After` on 429. The window is 30 seconds
5. Expect empty list results or 403 unless the token's user is a Site Admin with the needed permissions

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Greenhouse or SmartRecruiters?

Greenhouse scores 64.8 (B) on agent readiness against SmartRecruiters's 60.4 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. SmartRecruiters leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

### Do Greenhouse and SmartRecruiters need an API key?

Greenhouse uses an OAuth sign-in. SmartRecruiters takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Greenhouse and SmartRecruiters without installing anything?

Yes. Greenhouse has a hosted endpoint at https://harvest.greenhouse.io/v3 and SmartRecruiters at https://api.smartrecruiters.com.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-smartrecruiters.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "greenhouse", "b": "smartrecruiters"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare greenhouse smartrecruiters`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/greenhouse.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/smartrecruiters.json

## Other comparisons with Greenhouse or SmartRecruiters

- [Ashby vs Greenhouse](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ashby-vs-greenhouse.md)
- [Ashby vs SmartRecruiters](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ashby-vs-smartrecruiters.md)
- [Greenhouse vs Lever](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-lever.md)
- [Greenhouse vs Workable](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greenhouse-vs-workable.md)
- [Lever vs SmartRecruiters](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lever-vs-smartrecruiters.md)
- [SmartRecruiters vs Workable](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smartrecruiters-vs-workable.md)