A lighter alternative to Homerun for small teams
Homerun is a hiring platform focused on employer branding and candidate experience. It combines custom career pages, applicant tracking, and team collaboration, designed for European startups and SMBs that want a modern, design-forward hiring workflow.
Why small teams look for something else
- -A beautiful careers page brings more applications in; the screening of them stays exactly as manual as before
- -Employer branding is front-of-funnel work, and the small-team pain lives mid-funnel, in the pile
- -The subscription is priced per active hiring, which stings for a shop that hires in bursts
The alternatives, and who each one suits
Another design-forward SMB hiring tool
Suits: Teams for whom the careers page is genuinely the recruiting asset.
Trade-off: Same category, same gap: presentation is solved, judgment is not.
A fuller mid-market ATS
Suits: Teams that outgrew page-plus-pipeline and need process.
Trade-off: More workflow to maintain, and the reading is still yours.
A spreadsheet and an inbox
Suits: Occasional hiring at readable volume.
Trade-off: It holds until one posting draws two hundred fluent, AI-written applications.
A screening-only tool such as SiftFirst
Suits: Small teams whose applications already arrive and need ranking, not attracting.
Trade-off: It will not make your jobs look good anywhere. It tells you who is worth an interview, with evidence.
Why a full ATS like Homerun can be more than a small team needs
- -Built around career-page hosting and employer branding, with features like custom job sites and candidate portals that require setup and design work before you can screen applicants.
- -Pricing is per-job or per-month subscription, designed for companies hiring continuously, not teams that post a role twice a year.
- -Setup involves building career pages, configuring workflows, and inviting team members. Overkill when your main need is sorting 100 resumes for a single role.
What SiftFirst does instead
- Screening-first: paste resumes, get a ranked shortlist with evidence-backed scores in minutes. No career pages to build, no workflows to configure, no setup.
- Transparent ranking: every candidate is scored on your exact criteria with a quoted line from their resume supporting each score. You see exactly why someone made the shortlist.
- Candidate-metered pricing (free for 50/month, $39 for 500, $99 for 1,500) means you pay for what you screen, not a monthly platform fee when you only hire occasionally.
If you hire episodically and mainly need to cut through the resume pile, SiftFirst gives you screening clarity without the branding and workflow overhead. Teams that want a custom career site and candidate experience will get more value from Homerun.
Screen your applicant flood in minutes
Paste your job description and the applications, get a ranked shortlist with a quote from each resume behind every score. You set the criteria; you decide every hire. Free to try, no signup.
Try a free screening →SiftFirst vs Homerun FAQ
Is SiftFirst a full ATS?
No. SiftFirst screens resumes and ranks candidates with evidence. It does not host career pages, manage interview scheduling, or build candidate portals. If you need those, keep Homerun. If you mainly need to screen the pile, SiftFirst is faster and lighter.
Can I use SiftFirst with Homerun?
Yes. Some teams use SiftFirst for first-pass screening (100 applicants down to 10), then move the shortlist into Homerun for interview scheduling and team collaboration. You can export SiftFirst results as CSV and import wherever you manage your hiring.
How does pricing compare?
Homerun charges a monthly subscription that scales with plan and features. SiftFirst charges per candidate screened: free for 50/month, $39/month for 500, $99 for 1,500. If you hire sporadically, you pay only when you screen.