Head to head · Recruiting candidates · October 2026 research run
Lever vs SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Lever's 53.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Lever leads on agent ergonomics. Both do recruiting candidates.
Which one, for what
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
- Agent ergonomics, 65 against 51
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
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 73
- Schema & documentation, 75 against 55
- Security & auth, 65 against 60
- Maintenance & community, 58 against 21
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 this run | Lever | SmartRecruiters | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 73 | 78 | SmartRecruiters +5 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 55 | 75 | SmartRecruiters +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 51 | Lever +14 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 60 | 65 | SmartRecruiters +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 5 | 8 | SmartRecruiters +3 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 21 | 58 | SmartRecruiters +37 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 75 | 79 | SmartRecruiters +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 53.6 · D | 60.4 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Lever | SmartRecruiters |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Employ, Inc. | SmartRecruiters, Inc. (an SAP company) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.lever.co/v1 | https://api.smartrecruiters.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Lever's terms of service. The postings-api and integrator-resources repositories on GitHub hold documentation and example code | Proprietary service under the SmartRecruiters Master Subscription Agreement |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-04-30 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2023-08-25 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-09-25 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | 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 | yes | not found in the text |
Verdicts
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.
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
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
SmartRecruiters
- 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
- Exchange the client ID and secret at https://api.smartrecruiters.com/identity/oauth/token and refresh every 30 minutes
- Stay under 10 requests a second and 8 concurrent.
GET /candidatesallows 1 concurrent request, and job publication 2 a second - Move a candidate with
PUT /candidates/{id}/jobs/{jobId}/status. The variants withoutjobIdact on the most recently updated application - Page with
limit(maximum 100, default 10) andpageIdfromnextPageId. Use the Reporting API for bulk reads, which returns CSV
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Lever or SmartRecruiters?
SmartRecruiters scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Lever's 53.6 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Lever leads on agent ergonomics.
Do Lever and SmartRecruiters need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Lever and SmartRecruiters without installing anything?
Yes. Lever has a hosted endpoint at https://api.lever.co/v1 and SmartRecruiters at https://api.smartrecruiters.com.
Other comparisons with Lever or SmartRecruiters
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/lever-vs-smartrecruiters.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/lever.json·/api/v1/tools/smartrecruiters.json - From a terminal
anchor compare lever smartrecruiters(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "lever", "b": "smartrecruiters"}at/mcp, no key