Which Kind of ATS Checker Should You Use?

Resume checkers are sold three ways, and the pricing model tells you more about what you will get than the feature list does. We build one of these, so read the last section first if you would rather see the case against us.

From the team behind PassATS. Free to read, no email required.

Free checkers

What they charge: your email address, and usually your resume.

What you get: a score, a few generic observations, and a prompt to upgrade before the specifics appear.

When it is the right choice: when you want a rough sanity check and do not mind the follow-up email sequence. A free score does tell you whether something is badly wrong.

The catch worth naming: the product is the lead. That is not dishonest, it is just what you are paying with, and it is worth knowing before you upload.

Subscription tools

What they charge: a monthly fee, usually with a minimum term or an awkward cancellation.

What you get: unlimited scans, and typically a suite around them — templates, tracking, sometimes a rewrite service.

When it is the right choice: genuinely, when you are applying at volume over months and will tailor for each posting. If you are running twenty applications a week, per-scan pricing is worse for you and a subscription is the rational buy.

The catch worth naming: most people need this for three weeks and pay for six months. Check the cancellation path before you start, not after.

One-off reports

What they charge: a single fee per report.

What you get: one analysis. This is what PassATS is: $2.99, no account, nothing stored, and the file discarded when the request finishes.

When it is the right choice: you have one resume you care about, you want to know what is wrong with it, and you do not want a subscription or an account to cancel later.

The catch worth naming: if you want to re-check after every edit, per-report pricing gets expensive fast. That is a real limitation of the model, not a detail.

What no checker can do

This part is true of all three and rarely said.

Every checker reads extracted text, not your rendered page. None can reliably tell you whether your two columns interleave, whether something is hidden, or whether the layout looks right. Open your file and try to select a sentence. That ten second test catches what no tool can.

No checker knows how a specific employer has configured their system. Anyone promising a pass rate for a named company is guessing.

And no checker can tell you whether you are qualified. It measures how legible your case is, not how strong it is.

When not to use PassATS

We would rather say this than have you find out after paying.

If you are going to iterate ten times. Ten reports is thirty dollars. A subscription is cheaper and better suited.

If your resume is an image. Run the select-a-sentence test first. If no text highlights, no tool can read it and a report will tell you only that.

If you want it rewritten for you. We tell you what to change and why. We do not write it.

If you already know the problem. If you know you have no Skills section and inconsistent dates, go and fix those. You do not need us to confirm it.