What is the best CRM for a recruitment agency?

The one that works the employer while your recruiters work the candidates: it answers the hiring manager the day the brief arrives, books the intake call, writes the fee proposal from your own terms, reads the client's terms of business against yours and invoices each stage of the fee, at a price that does not grow with each recruiter. By their own pages read October 25, 2026, Bullhorn, Recruit CRM, Loxo, Manatal and Vincere are each an ATS and a CRM in one, priced per user, with a client pipeline next to the candidates and AI that drafts emails, runs outreach sequences or scores candidates; the fee proposal and the client's terms are not on their pages. Tommos keeps no candidates: its agents take the employer's inquiry to the signed terms and the paid fee, per agency, and your ATS keeps the search.

Does a recruitment agency need an ATS and a CRM, or one tool?

Both jobs have to be done; whether one tool does them is the choice. Bullhorn, Recruit CRM, Loxo, Manatal and Vincere keep candidates, jobs and a client pipeline in one place per user, by their own pages read October 25, 2026, and your recruiters type the client side into it between candidate calls. Tommos is the other shape: the ATS of your choice keeps the candidates, and Tommos works the employers, where the tommos write the reply, the recap, the fee proposal and the invoices. There is no sync between Tommos and an ATS today; a won search becomes a job order in your ATS by your hand.

Which recruitment CRM writes the fee proposal and reads the client's terms of business?

By their pricing and feature pages read October 25, 2026, none of the five recruitment platforms states a fee proposal or a review of the client's terms; Recruit CRM and Loxo invoice from placements, Bullhorn bills with timesheets in its Middle Office on a quote. In Tommos, Tommo Closer writes the fee proposal from your terms sheet on Close: the percent, the stages, the guarantee, as you set them, never invented. On Sign, Tommo Legal reads the client's agreement for recruiting services or vendor terms against the positions you wrote once, returns a clause memo and, for a Word file, the tracked changes; Tommo Legal drafts your own fee agreement from your template, and you sign in the card. The memo is research, not legal advice.

Can Tommos invoice a retained fee in stages, or a contract placement by the hour?

A retainer in stages, yes, on Sign: once the search is won, Tommo Closer reads the signed agreement and puts the payment schedule on a card, for example a third at signing, a third at the shortlist and a third at the accepted offer, each with its date or event; you accept or change it, and each invoice is then made and sent by two presses through Mercury, with reminders written on their day after the due date and sent by one press. A contract placement billed by the hour is invoiced on the rhythm the agreement sets, from the timesheets your team sends in; the contractor's payroll is not in Tommos.

What does a five-recruiter agency pay a year?

On the vendors' own prices read October 25, 2026, for five users: Bullhorn Starter $5,940 and Core $9,900, with the sales pipeline on Pro at a quoted price; Recruit CRM Pro $5,700 at the listed monthly rate, less up to 17% on an annual plan; Loxo Core $8,940; Manatal Professional $900; Vincere Core £5,700. At two recruiters: Bullhorn Starter $2,376, Recruit CRM Pro $2,280, Loxo Core $3,576, Manatal Professional $360, Vincere Core £2,280. At ten: Bullhorn Starter $11,880, Recruit CRM Pro $11,400, Loxo Core $17,880, Manatal Professional $1,800; Vincere Core ends at seven users, Pro is on a call. Tommos Close is $5,748 a year for the agency ($479 a month on the annual plan) and Sign $8,628, whether two recruiters or twenty use it, with the agents and the model inside. The per-user price buys each recruiter a database and a pipeline to type into; the agency price buys the employer answered, booked, proposed, signed and invoiced while the recruiters are on candidates.

Which CRM lets my recruiters keep using Claude or ChatGPT?

Recruit CRM names an MCP server from its Business plan and Manatal a public beta for Enterprise Plus, by their own pages read October 25, 2026; Bullhorn, Loxo and Vincere do not state one on the pages we read. Tommos's server is at app.tommos.ai/api/mcp, and what your agent finds inside is the employer deal already moving: the brief, the intake call, the fee proposal and the paper on one record. Our page for agents lists what it can do.

The best CRM for recruitment agencies: 6 compared

In 30 seconds

An agency runs two pipelines: candidates toward a job, and employers toward a signed fee. The recruiting platforms were built for the first and added the second as a tab; the second is where the money is decided.
Six CRMs in one table, each cell from the vendor’s own page, read October 25, 2026: Tommos, Bullhorn, Recruit CRM, Loxo, Manatal and Vincere.
After the client says yes. Recruit CRM and Loxo invoice from placements, Bullhorn bills with timesheets on a quote; none of the five states a fee proposal or a review of the client’s terms. Tommos writes the proposal, reads the terms, signs and invoices on the deal.
The unit of the price. Five charge each recruiter, from $15 to $165 a user a month, with the sales pipeline on a higher plan in one of them; one charges the agency.

Two pipelines, one agency: why the client side gets the least software#

A hiring manager writes at 4:40 PM with a role to fill, and the recruiter who would answer is on a candidate call until six. The brief waits until the morning; by then a second agency has answered, asked about the approved salary and the panel, and taken the intake call. On a contingency role that is the search lost before it started, because several agencies are usually briefed at once and the first to get terms signed is the one whose candidates count.

The software an agency buys is sized for the candidate side: the database, the parsing, the matching, the submissions, the shifts. The client side gets a pipeline tab where a recruiter types what happened, when there is time. The fee proposal is written in a mail client, the client’s terms of business go to whoever reads contracts, and the retainer invoice waits for the office manager’s Friday. The vendors below describe that client side in their own words, so the table starts there, and the rest of the page follows the employer from the brief to the paid fee.

Five things to check before you sign up#

1. Which half it keeps. Candidates, jobs and placements; or employers, briefs, fees and terms; or both in one record per user. The vendor’s page says it in the first line.

2. What the AI does when a hiring manager writes in. Drafts an email you send, runs a sequence you set up, or answers the brief, asks your intake questions and books the call. Read the verbs and the plan they sit on.

3. What happens after yes. Who writes the fee proposal, who reads the client’s terms of business, and where the retainer stages or the contract bill rate are invoiced; and what each of those costs on top.

4. Who approves in your name. A hiring manager reads an email as yours. Find out whether a person reviews each one, switches on an autopilot, or whether the page says nothing.

5. Per recruiter or per agency. A seat price grows with every recruiter, researcher and account manager who must see the client; a quoted plan grows at the renewal; an agency price is one number.

Six recruitment CRMs compared for an agency#

The cells come from the vendors’ own pages, read on October 25, 2026 (two Bullhorn pages on October 12); each number points to a source below. Vincere’s pricing page showed our reader pounds, so its prices stand in pounds. Where a cell says “not stated”, the page we read is silent; the vendor may still do it. The Tommos column comes from its own plans and documentation. Bullhorn alone is compared row by row on its own page.

What	Tommos	Bullhorn	Recruit CRM	Loxo	Manatal	Vincere
What the vendor says about agencies, and which half it keeps	Built for the client side of a recruitment, search or staffing agency of 1 to 50: the hiring manager’s brief, the intake call, the fee proposal, the client’s terms of business, the fee invoiced. No candidates, no job posting, no matching: your ATS stays	An ATS and CRM for staffing, per recruiter: on the small-agency plans “Client management” sits on Starter and “Recruitment CRM (sales pipeline)” on Pro; Bullhorn tracks a lead “from the first call to signed terms”¹²	“An AI-powered Applicant Tracking System and CRM” for recruitment and staffing agencies; a “Business Development Pipeline” to “move client contacts through your own sales stages”, a hiring manager portal, off-limits flags⁵⁶	“The complete AI-native ATS + CRM of record for firms that run the work themselves”; a Sales CRM to “build healthy sales pipelines” next to the recruiting⁷⁸	“Uniquely combines the functionalities of an ATS and a recruitment CRM”: “Track leads and manage clients with Manatal’s Recruitment CRM”, on Professional and up¹⁰⁹	Recruitment software sized by the team: “Startup, Core or Pro - the plan is set by your team size”; candidates, jobs and clients on “the same live pipeline”; “Client & business development tools” from the first plan¹³
What the AI does by itself when a hiring manager writes in	Tommo SDR answers in your voice with your intake questions and two or three times from your calendar, books the intake call and follows up on your schedule (Book); Tommo Closer writes the recap from the recorded intake call and the fee proposal from your terms sheet (Close)	“Bullhorn drafts emails” with AI; Amplify’s Outreach worker runs campaigns that “prospect new clients”; “Multi-step AI outreach” and a website chatbot on Max; a reply to a brief or a booking by itself: not stated²³¹	An AI Email Assistant to “draft recruitment emails, generate templates, and get reply suggestions”; outreach sequences, one on Pro, multi-channel on Business; the AI agents pitch and submit candidates; a reply to a client by itself: not stated⁶⁵	“Multi-step business development outreach flows, schedule meetings, set reminders” in the Sales CRM, “AI-Enhanced Outreach”; on Professional, “three Data Agents working under every record”; a reply by itself: not stated⁸⁷	The AI finds candidates, “AI-enhanced relevance scoring”, and enriches their profiles; the CRM tracks leads; an AI reply to a client: not stated¹⁰	Three AI modules “integrated with your CRM”, on a 3-6-week trial programme; what they do with a client’s brief: not stated on the pricing page¹³
After the client says yes: the fee proposal, the terms, the fee invoiced	The fee proposal as an email from your terms (Close); your fee agreement and NDA from your templates, the client’s terms of business read against your positions, your signature in the card; once the search is won, the stages of the fee as a payment schedule, each invoice made and sent by two presses through Mercury (Sign)	Invoicing and billing with timesheets in Middle Office and Bullhorn One, on a quote; a fee proposal or a review of the client’s terms: not stated⁴²	“Generate customised invoices from placements, email them to clients without leaving Recruit CRM”, on every plan; a fee proposal or the client’s terms: not stated⁶⁵	“Track and schedule invoices with an invoicing tool”; a fee proposal or the client’s terms: not stated⁸	Placements tracked; an invoice, a fee proposal or the client’s terms: not stated on the pages read¹⁰	Not stated on its pricing page¹³
Who approves what the AI sends in your name	A person presses “Send” or “Skip” on each card; after 12 clean replies of one kind on a form, a person may switch “Let Tommo send here”; a fee proposal never goes alone	Drafts you send; campaigns run as set up; an approval step: not stated²³	Drafts and reply suggestions you send; sequences run as scheduled; an approval step: not stated⁶	Outreach flows run as scheduled; an approval step: not stated⁸	Not stated¹⁰	Not stated¹³
Price, its unit, the trial	$299 a month per agency (Book), $599 (Close), $899 (Sign); no seats, the AI model included; 14 days, no card	Per user a month: Starter $99, Core $165, Pro and Max “Talk to us”, before VAT; the sales pipeline is on Pro; “Bullhorn does not currently offer a free trial”¹	Per user a month: Pro $95, Business $135, Enterprise $215, “Save up to 17%” on an annual plan; a 30-day free trial⁵	Core “starts at $149 per user / month, billed annually”; Professional and Enterprise on a demo; a 7-day trial of Professional, no card⁷	Per user a month on an annual plan: Professional $15, Enterprise $35, Enterprise Plus $55 ($19, $39 and $59 monthly); the CRM from Professional; a 14-day trial, no card⁹	Shown in pounds: Startup £150 a month for one user; Core £95 a user a month for two to seven; Pro above seven, on a call; a 30-day rolling contract on Startup and Core¹³
Your own AI gets in	An MCP server inside the CRM: Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor works your employer records as you	Not on the Bullhorn pages we read¹⁴	“Recruit CRM MCP” from Business⁵	Not on the Loxo pages we read⁷⁸	Manatal MCP, a public beta since January 19, 2026, “accessible to all Enterprise Plus users”: your AI searches and creates candidates, jobs and organizations and adds notes, through a URL unique to your company¹²¹¹	Not stated on its pricing page¹³

How an agency wins and bills a search in Tommos#

Tommos (tommos.ai) is a CRM whose AI agents, the tommos, take a B2B inquiry to a signed contract. For an agency that is the employer’s half of the business, and only that half: the plans, and the agency’s own page, Tommos for recruitment agencies, with one retained search told card by card.

The reply to the brief is written before the candidate call ends. When a hiring manager writes through your form, Tommo SDR reads the brief, your “Playbook” and the record, and answers in your voice: the questions that set the fee (the approved base, who interviews, whether the role is public) and two or three times from your Google Calendar; the time they pick becomes the intake call. A manager who goes quiet hears again on your schedule (the defaults: after 4 days, then every 7, three times). Every reply first lands on a card: “Send”, “Skip”, or an edit, from your phone between calls.

The recap and the fee proposal are written while the brief is fresh. On Close, Tommo Closer turns the intake call, recorded with Google Meet or Granola and read onto the record, into a recap for everyone who was on it, asks you for the terms if the deal has none, and writes the fee proposal as a letter from your terms sheet: 25% of the first-year base in three stages, or a contingency fee at the start date, or a markup on the pay rate, whichever is yours; a percent, a guarantee or a date it does not have, it asks for. The same schedule chases the proposal, and the deal’s standing is reported to you. A fee proposal is never sent by a tommo alone.

The terms and the invoices do not wait for Friday. On Sign, Tommo Legal drafts your fee agreement and NDA from the templates in the “Templates” folder it shares with you; a client’s agreement for recruiting services or vendor terms is read against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions”, and the clause memo says what to accept and what to push back on, with the tracked changes in a Word file. Your signature is in the card, through the e-signature service in the Sign price; a client’s own envelope is signed in that envelope. Once the search is closed as won, Tommo Closer reads the signed paper and puts the payment schedule on a card, each stage with its date or its event; you accept or change it. Each invoice is then proposed on its day and goes out by two presses through Mercury; a reminder past the due date is written on its day and sent by one press.

Your agency’s name stays in your hands. Until you say otherwise, an outward email waits for your press. When 12 replies of one kind on a form have gone out clean (an admin can set the number from 1 to 100), Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; the switch is yours, on a paid plan.

Your recruiters’ Claude works beside the tommos. Point it at app.tommos.ai/api/mcp and ask which fee proposals wait on an employer. What an agent can do in Tommos. The candidates stay in your ATS; a won search becomes a job order there by your hand, since nothing syncs today.

Set up the client side of a recruitment agency in Tommos#

One afternoon between searches sets this up; from then on the tommos work every brief that comes in.

1
Open one workspace for the whole agency
At tommos.ai/signup, sign in with the Google account of your business development mailbox; the workspace opens at once, 14 days of everything, no card, and there are no seats to count. On the start path press “Connect mail and calendar”: one Google consent covers both, and the start creates the “Intro call” meeting, 30 minutes with a Meet link, which becomes your intake call. On the Meetings step answer “Yes, with Google Meet” and connect it, or “Yes, with Granola” with your key: the words of each intake call then reach the record, and the recap is written from them; without a source of meetings there is no recap.
2
Put a “brief us on a role” form on your employer page
Create it on the “Forms” page, switch on “Tommo SDR works the leads from this form”, and embed it where hiring managers reach you today. Under “After submit” choose “Show the booking calendar”, so a manager in a hurry books the intake call at once.
3
Teach the Playbook your fee rules
At the start Tommo reads your site into the “Playbook”: the roles you place, the sectors, how you describe a search. Add the lines a recruiter never writes in a first email: no percent before the intake call, no shortlist date, no longer guarantee. Replies and proposals take their voice and their limits from these pages.
4
Approve the first replies between candidate calls
Each brief puts a card in front of whoever owns the client: the reply and the times; the recap and the fee proposal arrive as cards too: “Send”, “Skip”, or edit first. After 12 clean replies of one kind on the form, Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; switch it on when the voice is yours.
5
Add your fee agreement and your bank, on Sign
On Tommo Legal’s page, under “Documents”, press “Copy the folder’s address” and drop your fee agreement and NDA into the “Templates” folder in Drive; answer “Your contract positions” once on the start path, or later from Tommo Legal’s page: the positions Tommo Legal reads a client’s terms against, in its own questions, with “Do it later” at any point. For the money, in Mercury allow the address shown under “First, in Mercury, allow this address on the token”, paste the token and press “Connect Mercury”; a stage invoice is then “Make the invoice” and “Send”.

Which CRM to pick#

You want candidates, jobs and a client pipeline in one database, and your recruiters will write every client email themselves. Recruit CRM from $95 a user a month with invoicing on every plan, or Manatal from $15 a user a month on an annual plan with the CRM from Professional, by their pricing pages.⁵⁹
You run a larger desk and want the staffing suite, with the sales pipeline on the higher plan. Bullhorn, $99 or $165 a user a month and “Talk to us” for Pro, where the “Recruitment CRM (sales pipeline)” sits; no free trial.¹
You want an AI-native ATS with a sales CRM and data agents under each record, per user. Loxo, Core from $149 a user a month billed annually, Professional on a demo.⁷⁸
You are in the UK, one to seven consultants, and want a plan set by team size on a rolling contract. Vincere, £150 a month for one or £95 a user a month for two to seven.¹³
You keep your ATS and want the employer side done: every brief answered, booked, proposed, the terms read, the fee signed and invoiced on one record, each email on a card until you let Tommo send it. That is Tommos, priced per agency with the agents inside, and your recruiters’ own Claude welcome beside them.

Questions about CRMs for recruitment agencies#

What is the best CRM for a recruitment agency?: The one that works the employer while your recruiters work the candidates: it answers the hiring manager the day the brief arrives, books the intake call, writes the fee proposal from your own terms, reads the client's terms of business against yours and invoices each stage of the fee, at a price that does not grow with each recruiter. By their own pages read October 25, 2026, Bullhorn, Recruit CRM, Loxo, Manatal and Vincere are each an ATS and a CRM in one, priced per user, with a client pipeline next to the candidates and AI that drafts emails, runs outreach sequences or scores candidates; the fee proposal and the client's terms are not on their pages. Tommos keeps no candidates: its agents take the employer's inquiry to the signed terms and the paid fee, per agency, and your ATS keeps the search.
Does a recruitment agency need an ATS and a CRM, or one tool?: Both jobs have to be done; whether one tool does them is the choice. Bullhorn, Recruit CRM, Loxo, Manatal and Vincere keep candidates, jobs and a client pipeline in one place per user, by their own pages read October 25, 2026, and your recruiters type the client side into it between candidate calls. Tommos is the other shape: the ATS of your choice keeps the candidates, and Tommos works the employers, where the tommos write the reply, the recap, the fee proposal and the invoices. There is no sync between Tommos and an ATS today; a won search becomes a job order in your ATS by your hand.
Which recruitment CRM writes the fee proposal and reads the client's terms of business?: By their pricing and feature pages read October 25, 2026, none of the five recruitment platforms states a fee proposal or a review of the client's terms; Recruit CRM and Loxo invoice from placements, Bullhorn bills with timesheets in its Middle Office on a quote. In Tommos, Tommo Closer writes the fee proposal from your terms sheet on Close: the percent, the stages, the guarantee, as you set them, never invented. On Sign, Tommo Legal reads the client's agreement for recruiting services or vendor terms against the positions you wrote once, returns a clause memo and, for a Word file, the tracked changes; Tommo Legal drafts your own fee agreement from your template, and you sign in the card. The memo is research, not legal advice.
Can Tommos invoice a retained fee in stages, or a contract placement by the hour?: A retainer in stages, yes, on Sign: once the search is won, Tommo Closer reads the signed agreement and puts the payment schedule on a card, for example a third at signing, a third at the shortlist and a third at the accepted offer, each with its date or event; you accept or change it, and each invoice is then made and sent by two presses through Mercury, with reminders written on their day after the due date and sent by one press. A contract placement billed by the hour is invoiced on the rhythm the agreement sets, from the timesheets your team sends in; the contractor's payroll is not in Tommos.
What does a five-recruiter agency pay a year?: On the vendors' own prices read October 25, 2026, for five users: Bullhorn Starter $5,940 and Core $9,900, with the sales pipeline on Pro at a quoted price; Recruit CRM Pro $5,700 at the listed monthly rate, less up to 17% on an annual plan; Loxo Core $8,940; Manatal Professional $900; Vincere Core £5,700. At two recruiters: Bullhorn Starter $2,376, Recruit CRM Pro $2,280, Loxo Core $3,576, Manatal Professional $360, Vincere Core £2,280. At ten: Bullhorn Starter $11,880, Recruit CRM Pro $11,400, Loxo Core $17,880, Manatal Professional $1,800; Vincere Core ends at seven users, Pro is on a call. Tommos Close is $5,748 a year for the agency ($479 a month on the annual plan) and Sign $8,628, whether two recruiters or twenty use it, with the agents and the model inside. The per-user price buys each recruiter a database and a pipeline to type into; the agency price buys the employer answered, booked, proposed, signed and invoiced while the recruiters are on candidates.
Which CRM lets my recruiters keep using Claude or ChatGPT?: Recruit CRM names an MCP server from its Business plan and Manatal a public beta for Enterprise Plus, by their own pages read October 25, 2026; Bullhorn, Loxo and Vincere do not state one on the pages we read. Tommos's server is at app.tommos.ai/api/mcp, and what your agent finds inside is the employer deal already moving: the brief, the intake call, the fee proposal and the paper on one record. Our page for agents lists what it can do.

Sources#

Bullhorn, “Small agency software pricing”, read Oct 25, 2026
Bullhorn, “Small agency software”, read Oct 12, 2026
Bullhorn, “Amplify”, read Oct 12, 2026
Bullhorn, “Pricing”, read Oct 12 and Oct 25, 2026
Recruit CRM, “Pricing”, read Oct 25, 2026
Recruit CRM, “Features”, read Oct 25, 2026
Loxo, “Pricing”, read Oct 25, 2026
Loxo, “Sales CRM”, read Oct 25, 2026
Manatal, “Pricing”, read Oct 25, 2026
Manatal, “Features”, read Oct 25, 2026
Manatal Help Center, “MCP Server”, read Oct 25, 2026
Manatal, “Introducing Manatal MCP Server for ChatGPT & Other LLMs” (Jan 19, 2026), read Oct 25, 2026
Access Vincere, “Recruitment Software Pricing” (shown in pounds to a UK reader), read Oct 12 and Oct 25, 2026

The best CRM for recruitment agencies: six compared on the half of the business that pays the fee

Two pipelines, one agency: why the client side gets the least software#

Six recruitment CRMs compared for an agency#

How an agency wins and bills a search in Tommos#

Set up the client side of a recruitment agency in Tommos#

Open one workspace for the whole agency

Put a “brief us on a role” form on your employer page

Teach the Playbook your fee rules

Approve the first replies between candidate calls

Add your fee agreement and your bank, on Sign

Which CRM to pick#

Questions about CRMs for recruitment agencies#

Sources#

Read next

Let the tommos answer the next hiring manager while your recruiters are on candidates

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