AI Interviewer: 10 Tools Compared, 5 With Public Prices (2026)

An AI interviewer is software that runs the first-round interview for you. A candidate talks to it by voice, video, phone or text, at whatever hour suits them, and you get back a transcript and a score to check against your own rubric. Who moves to round two should still be your call.

Many search results for "ai interviewer" are written for the person being interviewed; Interviewer.AI's own candidate page is one of them. This post is for the employer buying the tool. If you are the candidate, AI agents for job seekers covers your side of the call.

The same 200 first-round interviews in a month cost $199 on Truffle and $1,233 on Interviewer.AI's conversational avatar at its starting top-up price, both billed annually, as of October 2026. About six times apart. Most of that gap comes from one choice: whether anything on the other side of the screen talks back.

Five of the ten tools publish no price at all. HeyMilo, Alex, Tenzo, HireVue and BrightHire Screen send you to a demo or a quote form, so the money column stays blank for them.

Scope: this post covers the tool that conducts the first round. The rest of a recruiter's week, from sourcing to scheduling, is in what AI recruiters screen and what they miss.

How I compared them

I read every pricing page, product page and regulator's page cited here on 7 October 2026, in both billing states where a page had a toggle. Then I priced one hiring workload on each tool that publishes a number and wrote out the arithmetic, so you can rerun it with your own volume.

Four questions did the sorting:

• Who talks to the candidate? A two-way AI that asks follow-ups, or a fixed question list the candidate records answers to.
• What is the unit? Interviews on Ribbon; the vendor's own credits on Truffle and Interviewer.AI.
• What does the cheapest plan covering 200 interviews cost? Overage and top-ups included, on both billing cycles.
• Is the price published at all?

What I did not do: run an interview, open an account, sit one as a candidate or compare how well any tool scores people. Bias-audit and compliance lines below are the vendors' own claims, attributed to them. Interview quality is yours to judge, in a demo.

I run an AI agent platform. For the same kind of priced comparison in that market, see the cheapest AI agent platforms list. Gravity is not in this comparison. It does not interview anyone.

Quick comparison

Read on each vendor's own pages on 7 October 2026. Starting price is the cheapest listed paid plan; annual figures are per month, billed yearly. HackerRank and CodeSignal are in their own section. Gravity is not in this table because it does not conduct interviews.

One role, 200 interviews: four bills and five blanks

The workload: one recruiter or founder, one role, 200 completed first-round interviews in a month. That is 200 phone screens nobody on a small team wants to run. For each tool I took the cheapest plan that covers it, added overage or top-ups, and divided by 200.

Cheapest qualifying plan on each vendor's published pricing, read on 7 October 2026. Per-interview figures are rounded to the cent. Interviewer.AI appears twice: a one-way video interview costs 1 of its credits, an avatar interview 2.

These rows are not one product at four prices. Truffle and the Interviewer.AI async row are one-way recorded video: the candidate answers fixed questions to a camera and nothing responds. Ribbon and the avatar hold a two-way conversation with follow-up questions. Compare inside a format first, then across.

The working, so you can check it:

• Truffle, $219 or $199. A video interview costs 5 of Truffle's credits, so 200 interviews use 1,000. Core includes 600, and the other 400 at 25 cents add $100 to the $119 or $99 plan. Team ties on annual at $199. Starter cannot do it: its 200-credit hard cap stops at 40 interviews.
• Interviewer.AI async, $649 or $616. 200 credits. Essential includes 50; three packs of 50 at $150 add $450 to the $199 or $166 plan.
• Ribbon, $999 or $899. Growth includes 100, and 100 more at $4.00 add $400 to $599 or $499.
• Interviewer.AI avatar, $1,299 or $1,233. 400 credits. Professional includes 120, and six packs (20 credits spare) add $900 to $399 or $333.

Both Interviewer.AI rows use its advertised "from $150 for 50 credits", the only top-up price I could verify; the page listing other packs returned a page-not-found on 7 October 2026. Bigger packs may be cheaper, so treat those two rows as a ceiling.

On annual billing the spread is $199 to $1,233, about six times. Inside each format it narrows: Truffle undercuts Interviewer.AI's one-way video by $417 a month, and Ribbon undercuts the avatar by $334.

Volume flips the per-interview cost

Price the same three tools at 50 interviews a month, a founder filling one role, and at 400. The order changes.

As of 7 October 2026. Interviewer.AI at 400 is $1,249 or $1,216 a month on the $150 starting pack. Truffle at 400 is $364 or $324 on the default 1,500-credit Team pool; bigger pools were not read.

Ribbon sells a bundle. At 50 interviews you pay for 100 and use half, so each costs $11.98 on monthly billing. Fill the Business bundle at 400 and the same two-way interview costs $3.00, or $2.50 billed annually, below Interviewer.AI's one-way video at $3.12 and $3.04 on its $150 starting pack. A conversation, cheaper than a recording, unless a bigger pack changes the maths.

Credit tools track volume instead. Interviewer.AI's top-ups work out at $3 a credit, so its per-interview cost barely moves once the included 50 are gone. Truffle keeps falling, from $2.38 to $0.91. Count your monthly interviews first, then price.

1. Ribbon: a two-way interviewer with its prices in public

Ribbon's homepage promises "real two-way conversations that adapt in real time", by voice or video, on any phone, in 10 languages, around the clock. Its FAQ keeps the final hiring decision with your team.

As of October 2026, Growth is $599 a month or $499 billed annually for 2 seats, 2 active roles and 100 interviews, then $4.00 each. Business is $1,199 or $999 for 5 roles and 400 interviews, then $3.00. Scale is $2,399 or $1,999 for 10 roles and 1,000 interviews, then $2.50. Enterprise is custom.

Growth plus overage beats Business until about 250 interviews

On monthly billing, Growth plus 150 extra interviews at $4 costs $1,199, the price of Business, so the break-even is 250 a month. Billed annually it is 225, since $499 plus 125 at $4 makes $999. Below the line, pay the overage.

Every paid plan's button says "Book a demo", and the pricing page lists no free plan, though the homepage links a "Start for free" sign-up. The homepage also displays a Local Law 144 bias-audit badge dated 2025.

2. Interviewer.AI: recorded video, with an avatar on the bigger plan

Interviewer.AI prices two interview types in its own credits. One credit buys an async video interview with an assessment report. Two buy a conversational interview, where an avatar asks adaptive follow-up questions.

As of October 2026, Essential is $199 a month, or $166 billed annually ($1,990 a year), for 50 credits that roll over, 20-minute interviews and 15 user licences, with no avatar.

Professional is $399, or $333 billed annually ($3,990 a year), for 120 credits and 30-minute interviews, and adds transcripts, fraud checks and the avatar. Enterprise is custom, with ATS integrations that include Workday and Greenhouse.

The top-up price sets your real cost per interview

Past the included credits, the only verified top-up is "from $150 for 50 credits", or $3 a credit. That is why the per-interview cost here hardly falls with volume. Ask sales for the bigger packs before you commit.

The free trial runs 14 days, and the page says nothing is charged until it ends. It does not say whether a card is needed, so check before you sign up.

3. Truffle: the smallest bill, if recorded video is enough

Truffle runs one-way video interviews. The candidate records answers to set questions, AI scores them, and you review. Nobody talks back.

Credits are Truffle's own unit: 1 per resume screened, 2 per assessed candidate, 5 per video interview. As of October 2026, Starter is $49 a month, billed monthly only, for a hard-capped 200 credits. Core is $119, or $99 billed annually, for 600; Team is $239 or $199 for 1,500. Both roll unused credits over for 12 months and sell extras at 25 cents. Seats and positions are unlimited.

Truffle bills only for a finished interview

Its FAQ says a credit is charged only when a screening gives you a result to act on, such as a submitted one-way interview. A candidate who never starts, or quits halfway, costs nothing. On a high-volume role full of no-shows, that rule is worth real money.

Best for

High-volume roles where a recorded answer tells you enough to pick round two.

Free trial

7 days with 30 credits, no credit card required.

4. HeyMilo: voice, video, SMS and forms in one screen

HeyMilo promises to screen and interview every applicant with structured AI voice, video, SMS and forms, 24/7, in more than 20 languages. The interviews are two-way, and scores sync to your ATS. On the day I read the homepage, a banner announced HeyMilo Red, a standalone cheat-detection product. Its demo page lists GDPR compliance, SOC 2 Type II and a monthly AI bias audit. Those are HeyMilo's own claims.

Pricing

No published price; demo only. The pricing address redirects to a demo booking page, as of October 2026.

Best for

A team that wants every applicant offered an interview, on whichever channel they answer.

5. Alex: an always-on first round by phone, video or text

Alex calls itself "your always-on first round interviewer" and lets the candidate pick the channel. In its words, that might be "a phone call on their commute, a video interview after dinner, or a quick text". It checks ID against a live selfie during the interview, proctors the session and books qualified candidates onto calendars.

Apriora now operates as Alex. The apriora.ai address redirects to alex.com and the footer reads "Apriora Inc. dba Alex", so count them once.

Alex keeps its price behind a demo request

The pricing address redirects to a demo request, as of October 2026. Homepage figures such as 30 languages and 33 supported ATS integrations are Alex's own.

If scheduling is your real bottleneck rather than screening, an AI agent for Google Calendar scheduling covers that step on its own.

6. Tenzo: phone or video interviews in 40-plus languages

Tenzo runs AI phone or video interviews around the clock and says it works in more than 40 languages. The line that stands out on its homepage is about bias: Tenzo says a de-biasing layer removes protected-class information from transcripts before evaluation. That is Tenzo's own claim, and I have no independent check of it. The pricing page shows "Get a tailored quote" and a demo form. No numbers, as of October 2026.

7. HireVue: the enterprise option, by its own description

HireVue's AI Interviewer page says it is "built for trust at enterprise scale", with natural interview conversations in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and more. The page also lists human approval of requirements and human review of candidates.

Its compliance list is the longest in this comparison, and every item is HireVue's own claim: fairness audits for Local Law 144, the EEOC and the OFCCP, plus equivalent non-AI pathways, consent options and accommodations. The pricing page adds SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP.

HireVue's price is a sales conversation

The pricing page has no prices as of October 2026, only a demo request. Its FAQ does say HireVue is free for candidates, with no app to download.

8. BrightHire Screen: an AI first round from an interview-notes company

Most of BrightHire is a different product. Its core is interview intelligence: it records, transcribes and summarises the interviews your people run. That part interviews nobody.

BrightHire Screen does. The company calls it an asynchronous, voice-based AI interviewer, sold with the full platform or on its own. Candidates respond whenever they like, with no scheduling, and interviews can be voice-only or video. The site's logo now reads "BrightHire by Zoom".

Best for

A team that already records its human interviews in BrightHire and wants the first round in the same place.

Pricing

No published price; every plan says "Request a Demo", as of October 2026.

Compliance

SOC 2 and GDPR compliance and a third-party bias audit, per BrightHire's pricing page.

Hiring engineers? HackerRank's Chakra and CodeSignal

Two assessment platforms sell AI interviewers for technical roles, priced from one pool shared with their tests and live interviews. So they get their own workload: 20 technical AI interviews a month, or 240 a year.

HackerRank counts an attempt when the candidate finishes

Chakra can run anything from logistical questions to technical work on a coding canvas or whiteboard. As of October 2026, Starter is $99 a month with 5 attempts, or $79 a month billed annually ($948) with 60 a year. Pro is $529 with 30 a month, or $419 a month annually ($5,028) with 360. Extra attempts cost $20.

For 20 a month, Starter monthly is $99 plus 15 extras at $20: $399. Starter annual is $948 plus 180 extras at $20, so $4,548 a year or $379 a month. Pro covers it outright at $529, or $419 billed annually.

CodeSignal charges a credit when the candidate starts

As of October 2026, CodeSignal's Build plan is $99 a month for 5 credits, or $79 a month billed annually with 60 a year, covering engineering, product and design interviewers. Grow is $599 for 35 credits a month, or $479 a month annually with 420 a year, and adds sales, customer success and marketing interviewers.

I did not read CodeSignal's overage price, so Grow is the cheapest plan I can price for 20 a month: $479 a month billed annually ($5,748 a year), which is $23.95 per interview at 240 a year, or $13.69 a credit only if you use all 420. CodeSignal spends a credit when a candidate starts, where HackerRank counts on completion. With plenty of mid-test dropouts, that gap adds up.

Rules that apply to AI interviews

I am quoting the regulators' own pages as read on 7 October 2026, and none of this is legal advice. Illinois also has its own AI video interview law, so read it on ilga.gov before using video AI interviews there.

New York City's Local Law 144 asks for a bias audit and notice

The city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) says Local Law 144 of 2021 "prohibits employers and employment agencies from using an automated employment decision tool unless the tool has been subject to a bias audit within one year of the use of the tool, information about the bias audit is publicly available, and certain notices have been provided to employees or job candidates." DCWP began enforcing it on July 5, 2023, and puts the notice at 10 business days before use.

If you hire in New York City and an AI interviewer's score substantially shapes who advances, check whether it counts as an automated employment decision tool under the law. Ribbon and HireVue both reference the law on their own pages.

The EU AI Act puts hiring tools in its high-risk tier

The European Commission's page lists "AI tools for employment, management of workers and access to self-employment" among high-risk uses. It says that "starting on 2 December 2027, high-risk AI systems will be subject to strict obligations", including risk assessment, logging and human oversight.

Two earlier dates matter now. Prohibitions took effect in February 2025 and include "emotion recognition in workplaces and education institutions", so ask any video vendor whether its scoring infers emotion. The page dates the transparency rules, such as telling people they are talking to a machine, to August 2026.

Which one should you choose?

Start with two facts from your last opening: how many first-round interviews you would run in a month, and whether a recorded answer would have told you enough.

Recorded answers enough? Truffle priced lowest at every volume I checked, with 200 interviews at $199 a month billed annually, as of October 2026. Interviewer.AI's Essential plan fits about 50 a month.

Want the AI to talk back? Ribbon and Interviewer.AI's avatar both publish prices, and at 200 a month Ribbon is the cheaper of the two, $899 against $1,233 billed annually, as of October 2026. Stay on Growth below roughly 225 to 250 interviews a month and move to Business above that.

Candidates on their phones point to Ribbon, which publishes prices, and to Alex, Tenzo and HeyMilo. Those three publish no price, so book their demos in one week and compare the quotes.

HireVue says its AI Interviewer is "built for trust at enterprise scale", and its page lists fairness audits for Local Law 144, the EEOC and the OFCCP, so it suits a large employer with audits to publish. A team already recording interviews in BrightHire can add Screen. For engineers, HackerRank Starter costs $379 a month for 20 interviews, billed annually, as of October 2026.

Hiring two people a year? Truffle's 7-day trial includes 30 credits, or 6 video interviews at 5 credits each, as of October 2026; the rest of a founder's admin is in the best AI agents for small business. Keep the near-misses warm with talent pipeline nurture.

Whichever you shortlist, sit the demo interview yourself before a candidate does. I did not, so that judgement is yours.

FAQ

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