# SmartRecruiters vs Zoho Recruit

> SmartRecruiters and Zoho Recruit score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.4 (C) and 59.8 (C). Zoho Recruit leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do recruiting candidates. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smartrecruiters-vs-zoho-recruit
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smartrecruiters-vs-zoho-recruit.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smartrecruiters-vs-zoho-recruit.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smartrecruiters-vs-zoho-recruit.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

SmartRecruiters and Zoho Recruit score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.4 (C) and 59.8 (C). Zoho Recruit leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing. Both do recruiting candidates.

- SmartRecruiters: grade C, 60.4/100, rank #403 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smartrecruiters.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/smartrecruiters.json
- Zoho Recruit: grade C, 59.8/100, rank #421 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/zoho-recruit.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/zoho-recruit.json

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Schema & documentation, 75 against 46
- Maintenance & community, 58 against 48

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

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

### Zoho Recruit (C)

Good for: Small businesses and staffing agencies on Zoho that want an agent to read and write candidates, job openings, applications and interviews with narrow scopes, and teams that want a free edition with API access.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 64 against 51
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 8

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No OpenAPI description found. The public repository zoho/recruit-oas is empty


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | SmartRecruiters | Zoho Recruit | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 78 | 76 | SmartRecruiters +2 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 46 | SmartRecruiters +29 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 64 | Zoho Recruit +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 65 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 8 | 35 | Zoho Recruit +27 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 48 | SmartRecruiters +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 77 | SmartRecruiters +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.4 · C** | **59.8 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | SmartRecruiters | Zoho Recruit |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | SmartRecruiters, Inc. (an SAP company) | Zoho |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.smartrecruiters.com` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the SmartRecruiters Master Subscription Agreement | Proprietary service under Zoho's Terms of Service |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-05 | none |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2022-03-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-12-22 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | 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 | not found in the text |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Zoho Recruit.** OAuth scopes narrow to one module and one operation, the docs have an llms.txt index with a Markdown page per endpoint, and the Free edition includes 5,000 API credits a day. No OpenAPI description, official SDK, SLA or dated API changelog was found, and the documented token refresh puts the client secret in the URL.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Zoho Recruit

1. Use the `api_domain` returned with the token, or the regional host (recruit.zoho.com, recruit.zoho.eu, recruit.zoho.in and others). Tokens from one data centre fail on another
2. Send `Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken <token>` and refresh hourly. Put refresh parameters in the POST body, not the URL
3. Pass `fields` on list calls and page with `page` and `per_page` (200 at most) until `more_records` is false
4. Create through `/{module_api_name}/upsert` with `duplicate_check_fields` so a retry updates instead of duplicating
5. Move a candidate with `PUT /{module_api_name}/status`, not upsert. Pass `trigger: []` on writes to skip workflows, approvals and blueprints

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, SmartRecruiters or Zoho Recruit?

SmartRecruiters and Zoho Recruit score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.4 (C) and 59.8 (C). Zoho Recruit leads on agent ergonomics and payments & pricing.

### Do SmartRecruiters and Zoho Recruit need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call SmartRecruiters and Zoho Recruit without installing anything?

SmartRecruiters has a hosted endpoint at https://api.smartrecruiters.com. No hosted endpoint is listed for Zoho Recruit.


## For agents

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

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