Criteria Corp Pricing 2026 Starts at $5,000 a Year for HireSelect
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Short answer: Criteria Corp does not publish prices. Every plan, whether Criteria Assess, Criteria Interview or the combined Criteria Hire, is sold by quote and "built around your headcount," in the vendor's own words. Third-party contract data from Vendr puts the median annual Criteria contract at $13,225, with most deals landing between $9,580 and $19,200, and small teams testing 100 to 500 candidates a year paying roughly $5,000 to $15,000. There is a 14-day free trial for employers. If you have a Criteria demo on the calendar and want to know what the number will look like before the sales call, this page walks through what drives the quote, what the same money buys elsewhere, and when a $49-a-month tool does the job instead.
Criteria Corp pricing plans in 2026
Criteria (the company behind the CCAT cognitive test and the old HireSelect platform) sells three packages. None of them has a public price. What the pricing page does tell you is what each package contains, which matters because the quote follows the package.
| Package | Published price | What it includes | Add-ons sold separately |
|---|---|---|---|
| Criteria Assess | Quote only | All assessments (cognitive, personality, emotional intelligence, risk and skills), TestMaker for custom tests, template library, non-AI proctoring, branded candidate experience, standard ATS integrations, SSO and MFA | AI proctoring, AI scoring and summaries, premium integrations |
| Criteria Interview | Quote only | Async and live video interviewing with transcripts, summaries and insights, branded experience, standard ATS integrations, SSO and MFA | AI Interview Agent, AI features, premium integrations |
| Criteria Hire | Quote only | Everything in Assess plus everything in Interview | Criteria Develop (post-hire development), AI features, premium integrations |
The phrase "built around your headcount" is the tell. Criteria prices on the size of your organization and the volume of candidates you expect to assess, not on a per-seat menu you can add up yourself. That is why two companies with the same package can pay very different amounts.
How much does Criteria Corp cost?
Because Criteria will not tell you until you talk to sales, the best available numbers come from procurement platforms that see the signed contracts. Vendr's marketplace data for Criteria, at the time of writing, reports a median annual contract of $13,225, a typical range of $9,580 to $19,200, and a full span from $5,000 to well over $100,000 for enterprise deployments. Broken down by deployment size, Vendr lists:
| Deployment size | Annual contract (Vendr data) | Effective cost per assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Small team, 100 to 500 assessments a year | $5,000 to $15,000 | $10 to $25 |
| Mid-market, 500 to 2,000 assessments a year | $12,000 to $35,000 | $8 to $18 |
| Enterprise, 2,000 to 10,000+ assessments a year | $25,000 to $100,000+ | $5 to $12 |
Treat these as a planning range, not a price list. Directory sites disagree wildly, with one listing a $1,200 starting price and another showing $0, and none of them are quoting a current Criteria contract. The Vendr figures at least come from transactions. The same pattern applies to Vervoe, another quote-only vendor, and the Vervoe pricing breakdown uses the same contract data. Your own quote will move on five things: annual assessment volume, which premium assessments you add (Vendr notes $5 to $50 extra per use for some), contract length, integrations and API access, and the support tier. Mid-contract overages are the item that surprises buyers most, reportedly billed at a 20 to 40 percent premium over the contracted rate.
What a Criteria contract buys that cheaper tools do not
It is worth being clear about why a five-figure contract can be the right call. Criteria's core assets are validated, normed tests. The CCAT is one of the most widely used cognitive aptitude tests in US hiring, and the personality and emotional intelligence instruments come with norm groups and adverse-impact reporting that a legal team can defend. If you hire 300 warehouse associates a year and your employment counsel wants documented validity evidence behind every screening step, that documentation is what you are paying for.
The bundle also includes things a small tool will not have: proctoring, ID-style candidate experience controls, SSO, a formal ATS integration with Greenhouse or Workday, and a support team that will map your job families to the right test battery. For an HR department with a compliance officer in the room, that is the product.
When Criteria pricing does not make sense
Run the per-hire math before the demo. A $13,225 contract for a company that makes 25 hires a year is $529 per hire in assessment cost alone, before anyone's time. Even at the low end of the small-team range, $5,000 across 25 hires is $200 per hire. That is defensible for a role with a $70,000 salary and a high cost of a bad hire. It is hard to justify for a front-desk coordinator or a seasonal crew.
The other mismatch is role variety. Criteria's library is built around standardized job families. If your open roles this year are a bookkeeper, a field service technician, a marketing coordinator and a bilingual dispatcher, you will spend more time mapping roles to tests than actually screening. A tool that writes a role-specific test from the job description gets you a usable screen in minutes, and when you are already setting defensible pay bands for those same postings, keeping the assessment budget proportionate to the salary is the sensible order of operations.
Criteria Corp pricing compared with TestGorilla, Testlify and Assessing.ai
Every number below except Criteria's was read on the vendor's own pricing page. Criteria's row uses the Vendr median because the vendor publishes nothing.
| Vendor | Entry price | Billing | How candidates are metered | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criteria Corp | Quote only; Vendr median $13,225 a year | Annual contract | Priced on headcount and expected volume, overages at a premium | Validated cognitive and personality testing at volume, compliance-driven hiring |
| TestGorilla Core | $142 a month, billed $1,704 a year | Annual only | 1 credit per skills test candidate, 2 per AI interview | Library of 350+ tests for standardized roles |
| Testlify Standard | $1,668 a year | Annual, price locked 24 months | 100 credits a year, $21 per extra | Library testing with a 30-day money-back window |
| Assessing.ai Starter | $49 a month, or $288 a year | Monthly or yearly, no contract on monthly | Up to 500 responses a month, no credits | Small employers writing role-specific tests, recorded video answers |
| Assessing.ai Plus | $149 a month, or $888 a year | Monthly or yearly | Up to 2,000 responses a month | AI question generation, 10 collaborators, score distribution |
The gap is not subtle. Twelve months of Assessing.ai Plus at $149 a month is $1,788, which is under 14 percent of the median Criteria contract, and it comes with no annual commitment. What you give up is the validated library, proctoring and the ATS integration. What you get is a test the AI writes for the exact role, choice questions scored the moment a candidate submits, recorded video answers in the same test, and a results view that ranks everyone by score. For a fuller side-by-side, see the AI assessment software comparison, and if the TestGorilla row caught your eye, the TestGorilla pricing breakdown has the full plan detail. Wonderlic is the other quote-only name on most Criteria shortlists, and our Wonderlic cost breakdown shows how its packages are priced. If you have already decided a Criteria contract is more than you need, our Criteria Corp alternative page compares the options for small employers.
If you are pricing a team rather than a single recruiter, seat limits change the answer as much as the base price. Our pre-employment assessment software pricing comparison lists eleven vendors, including how each one charges for extra hiring managers.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Criteria Corp cost?
Criteria does not list prices. Contract data from Vendr shows a median of $13,225 a year, with most deals between $9,580 and $19,200 and small teams paying roughly $5,000 to $15,000. The quote depends on your headcount, expected assessment volume, contract length and which add-ons such as AI proctoring or premium integrations you include.
Does Criteria Corp have a free trial?
Yes. Criteria offers a 14-day free trial for employers that includes access to its assessments, score reports, interviewing tools and development resources. The trial page does not state candidate limits. It is a sales-led trial, so expect a call from an account executive during the two weeks.
What is HireSelect?
HireSelect was the name of Criteria Corp's original pre-employment testing platform. The company now sells the same capability as Criteria Assess, alongside Criteria Interview and the combined Criteria Hire bundle. Directory listings that still show HireSelect prices are describing a product name Criteria no longer uses on its pricing page.
What features does HireSelect include?
HireSelect features now ship as Criteria Assess: the cognitive, personality, emotional intelligence, risk and skills test library (including the CCAT), TestMaker for custom tests, non-AI proctoring, a branded candidate experience, standard ATS integrations and SSO. AI proctoring, AI scoring and the AI Interview Agent are paid add-ons. If you only need a short test about your own job, a HireSelect alternative with monthly billing costs a fraction of the contract.
Is Criteria Corp worth it for a small business?
It depends on hiring volume and legal exposure. A company making 100 or more hires a year into standardized roles, or one whose counsel requires validated tests with adverse-impact reporting, gets real value from the library. A business making 10 to 40 hires a year into varied roles usually spends less and moves faster with a flat monthly tool that writes a test for each role.
What is the difference between Criteria Corp and TestGorilla?
Both sell libraries of pre-built tests on annual contracts. Criteria is priced by quote and leans on validated cognitive and personality instruments such as the CCAT, with a strong compliance story. TestGorilla publishes its prices, starting at $1,704 a year for Core, and offers a broader catalog of skills tests with credit-based candidate metering. Criteria typically costs several times more.
Can I get Criteria Corp pricing without talking to sales?
No. Criteria's pricing page only offers a request-pricing form and the 14-day trial. The closest you can get is third-party contract data, which is why this page cites Vendr's ranges. If you want a number you can see before you commit, TestGorilla, Testlify and Assessing.ai all publish theirs.
What to do next
If you are testing hundreds of candidates a year into standardized roles and need validated instruments, take the Criteria trial and negotiate: Vendr reports that volume commitments and competitive quotes routinely take 15 to 30 percent off list. If you are hiring a few dozen people a year into roles that do not repeat, build the screen for your next open role in the generator at the top of this page, send the link, and see ranked results the same day. Plans start at $49 a month on the pricing page, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and no contract, and the skills assessment software for small business guide covers a typical setup.