Workable vs Greenhouse: Best ATS for Australia 2026

Head-to-head verdict

Our pick: Workable. The verdict below says who should buy the other.

Pricing figures updated 6 September 2026: USD prices are converted at the current rate (1 USD ≈ 1.40 AUD, verified 5 September 2026) and shown ex-GST, replacing the retired 1.55 + GST basis. A GST-registered Australian business that supplies its ABN is not charged GST on an imported digital service; other buyers should allow ~10% on top (Methodology).

Verdict (TL;DR): These two applicant tracking systems suit different-sized hiring teams. Workable (17/25) is the faster, cheaper ATS for a business filling a handful of roles a quarter. Greenhouse (19/25) is the structured-hiring platform for a scaling company that wants interview kits, scorecards and DEI reporting baked in. For the typical Australian buyer — a small or growing business hiring occasionally — Workable wins on speed, price and self-serve simplicity. Cross into a 150-plus-staff company with a real recruitment function, and Greenhouse earns its premium.

Both tools reviewed separately. Scores carried over here, not re-scored. Last reviewed: 30 June 2026 by Adam.

The tension

Both are proper applicant tracking systems. Both bolt AI onto the core hiring workflow. But they are built for different buyers, and the gap between them is wider than one score point suggests.

Workable is the self-serve choice. It publishes its prices, you can start a trial this afternoon, and a non-specialist can run a pipeline without a heavy setup. Greenhouse is the process heavyweight. It hides pricing behind a sales call, runs into five figures a year, and is built for companies that hire continuously and want every hire to follow the same defined path.

So the real question is not "which is better." It is "how much hiring rigour do you actually need." A business filling three or four roles a quarter buys speed and low cost. A scaling company running eight concurrent pipelines buys structure, scorecards and reporting depth. Get the match wrong and you either overpay for rigour you won't use, or you outgrow a lighter tool mid-hiring-spree.

In our standalone reviews, Workable scored 17/25 and Greenhouse 19/25. Two points apart. As products, the distance between them is greater than that — and so is the distance between the businesses they suit.

AUD pricing at a glance

This is the clearest line between the two. Workable publishes everything. Greenhouse publishes nothing.

	Workable	Greenhouse
Pricing model	Public, self-serve	Quote-only via sales
Entry plan	Standard — US$299/mo (US$3,588/yr) ≈ A$419/mo (~A$419 ex-GST)	No published entry price
Mid plan	Premier — US$599/mo (US$7,188/yr) ≈ A$839/mo (~A$839 ex-GST)	Core / Plus / Pro tiers, dollar amounts not disclosed
Top plan	Enterprise — US$719/mo (US$8,628/yr) ≈ A$1,007/mo (~A$1,007 ex-GST)	Enterprise quote
Indicative annual cost	~A$5,556/yr for a Standard team	~A$9,300–A$15,500/yr for a small business (industry estimate, not a vendor quote)
Free trial	15-day, full Standard feature set, no card	None; no self-serve trial
Billing currency	USD only	Not disclosed; USD per industry reporting

AUD conversions at approximately USD 1.00 = AUD 1.40 (September 2026). "Inc GST" figures add 10% for illustration; whether GST is charged depends on the supplier's treatment. Both are overseas suppliers, so GST on imported services typically falls under the reverse-charge rules for GST-registered businesses — confirm the treatment for your circumstances with your accountant.

The Workable figures come straight from its own pricing page, re-verified on the day of writing. Standard is pitched at 1–20 employees and is headcount-scaled, so the A$419 entry point climbs as your team grows. Budget for the trajectory, not just the first invoice.

The Greenhouse figures are different in kind. Greenhouse lists three tiers — Core, Plus and Pro — but shows no dollar amounts at all. Every figure in the Greenhouse column is an industry estimate, not a Greenhouse quote. Treat it as a planning range, not a price.

The practical effect: you can sign up for Workable today and know exactly what you'll pay. With Greenhouse, you book a demo, sit through a sales process, and wait for a custom quote before you can even compare cost to budget. For a busy operator, that opacity is a real friction point. One caveat cuts the other way, though — neither vendor bills in AUD, so both carry exchange-rate exposure, and neither confirms an ABN tax invoice on its pages.

Feature difference: speed vs hiring rigour

Both are mature ATS products with an AI layer. But they optimise for different jobs.

Workable optimises for breadth and speed. The recruiting core is complete: sourcing across 200-plus job boards, a large candidate database, a talent CRM, interview scheduling, scorecards, recorded video interviews and a careers-page builder. The AI layer — sourcing, semantic screening, and job-description and interview-question generation — sits inside the flow you're already in rather than as a separate module. On top sits a lighter HRIS layer (onboarding, time-off, e-signature, payroll prep), enough to run a small team's people admin in one tool. The pitch: get a role live and a shortlist moving fast, without a specialist.

Greenhouse optimises for structured hiring and reporting. Its whole design rests on putting every candidate through the same defined stages, assessed against the same scorecards. Its AI suite — confirmed feature names include automated hiring plans, AI insights, offer forecasting and key takeaways (interview transcription and summaries) — supports that process rather than replacing it. Resume anonymisation can blur names, photos and demographic data before review. The reporting layer is where Greenhouse pulls ahead: pipeline drop-off, time-to-hire, source attribution and offer-acceptance rates.

Here is the difference in one line. Workable helps you find and screen candidates fast, cheaply and without training. Greenhouse helps you run a consistent, auditable, measurable hiring process at scale.

Capability	Workable	Greenhouse
AI screening / scoring	Yes — semantic matching against the role	Yes — scorecards + AI-generated attributes
Sourcing reach	Broad — 200+ job boards, large candidate database	Marketplace-driven; sourcing via integrations
Interview kits & scorecards	Present, lighter	Best-in-class — the core design
DEI / bias tooling	GDPR/CCPA/EEO/OFCCP tooling; no confirmed AU-specific checker	Resume anonymisation before review
Reporting & analytics depth	Adequate; custom reports on Enterprise	Best-in-class
Setup time	Self-serve, hours	Guided enterprise implementation
HRIS / people admin	Lighter built-in layer	Recruiting-focused; HRIS via integrations

On the DEI point, be precise. Neither review confirmed a dedicated "DEI language checker" for job-ad copy by name from primary sources. What Greenhouse does confirm is resume anonymisation and AI-generated scorecard attributes — the bias controls sit at the screening stage, not the ad-writing stage. If a job-ad language tool matters to you, ask either vendor to demonstrate it rather than assuming it exists.

Our reviews scored Workable 4/5 on Feature Depth and Greenhouse a full 5/5. That gap is real — but it only matters if you'll use the depth. A team hiring occasionally will get more value from Workable's speed and its built-in HRIS layer than from reporting dashboards it never opens.

Australian fit

Neither tool is built for Australia. Both store data offshore. The difference is one of degree, and the SEEK question.

Data residency — offshore for both, no AU region. Workable is hosted and operated in the United States (and the EEA) via Workable, Inc., with no Australian data region; international transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and Data Privacy Framework self-certification. Greenhouse also runs on US-based AWS infrastructure with no Australian data centre confirmed in its primary sources, and its cross-border documentation references the EU-US framework with no equivalent instrument named for the Australian Privacy Principles. For HR data specifically — resumes, contact details, sometimes sensitive categories — this matters more than in most software. Under APP 8 you remain accountable for personal information sent overseas. Regulated buyers in finance, health, legal or government should get written confirmation of data handling before signing either contract.

Australian-law awareness — neither has it baked in. Workable's compliance tooling targets GDPR, CCPA, EEO and OFCCP — US and EU regimes, not the Fair Work Act, the National Employment Standards, modern awards or the Privacy Act. Greenhouse's structured-hiring framework helps indirectly: consistent, criteria-based scorecards push hiring managers away from questions that could stray into unlawful-discrimination territory under the Fair Work Act. That process rigour is a genuine, if incidental, local benefit. Neither product, though, encodes Australian employment law.

Support — neither has a confirmed local team. Workable shows no evidence of dedicated AU-based support on its pages; support appears global relative to Australian business hours. Greenhouse's public pages don't confirm AU-hours support either. On local presence, call it even — confirm timezone coverage with either vendor if it matters to you.

GST — identical treatment. Both are overseas suppliers of imported services. For GST-registered Australian businesses, the reverse-charge rules typically apply. Neither bills in AUD. Verify your obligations with your accountant.

SEEK — where Greenhouse earns its edge. SEEK is Australia's dominant job board. Greenhouse lists "Apply with SEEK" in its integrations marketplace, letting SEEK applications flow into the same pipeline as other sources; the exact posting mechanics weren't fully detailed on the integrations page, so confirm them at the demo stage. Workable sources across 200-plus job boards, but our review did not confirm a native SEEK integration by name — a real gap for an Australian business where SEEK is the primary sourcing channel. If SEEK is central to your hiring, raise it with Workable before you commit.

The scores reflect the balance. Workable earned 2/5 on Australian Fit — US and EEA hosting, no AU region, no Australian entity or confirmed ABN, and no Fair Work awareness. Greenhouse earned 3/5 — the SEEK integration and its Fair Work-friendly structured framework lift it one notch above. Neither clears the bar for a local champion.

The Australian Fit gate: A five-star rating or a category Top Pick requires Australian Fit of at least 4/5. Both tools fall short — Workable at 2/5, Greenhouse at 3/5 — so both are capped at four stars and neither can be named the category Top Pick, regardless of raw score. See our Methodology page for the full framework.

A shared caution worth stating: both tools' AI ranks and screens candidates, but the employer remains fully responsible for every hiring decision under the Fair Work Act 2009 and state anti-discrimination law. AI screening carries documented bias and accuracy risk. Treat a shortlist as a tool, not a decision. Document who made the call, and why. Neither product replaces qualified HR or employment-law advice.

Who buys which

Buy Workable if you fill a handful of roles a quarter. You want a capable ATS live today, at a published price, with a 15-day trial to prove it first. You value self-serve speed over an enterprise audit trail, and the lighter built-in HRIS layer means you can run onboarding and time-off in the same tool. At A$419 a month to start, it's the pragmatic pick for most small and growing Australian businesses — provided you're comfortable with USD billing and US data hosting, and you layer your own Fair Work and Privacy Act compliance on top.

Buy Greenhouse if you are a process-mature scaling company. You have 150-plus staff, a dedicated recruitment function, and you hire 30-plus people a year. You want interview kits, scorecards, an audit trail, DEI-minded anonymisation and reporting depth that Workable doesn't reach — plus the native SEEK connection. The setup investment and five-figure cost only make sense at that volume. At that volume, they make a lot of sense.

The trap to avoid: buying Greenhouse before you've grown into it. The setup overhead and quote-only cost punish low hiring volume. Equally, don't push Workable past its ceiling — if you're running high-volume, multi-office hiring that demands deep analytics and structured scorecards across every pipeline, you've outgrown it.

The verdict

For the typical Australian buyer, Workable is the winner. Most businesses reading this hire occasionally, watch their costs, and don't need an enterprise audit trail. Workable gives them a mature recruiting engine, integrated AI screening and a published price, with a free trial to de-risk the decision. The self-serve speed and lower entry cost seal it.

Greenhouse is the stronger product — its 19/25 edges Workable's 17/25, and it's best-in-class at structured hiring and reporting. But "better product" and "right purchase" aren't the same thing. Greenhouse is the right purchase only once your hiring volume and process maturity justify the cost, the setup and the sales process.

So: business filling a handful of roles a quarter, start a Workable trial today. Process-mature scaling company, run the Greenhouse demo. And whichever you choose, get written confirmation of how applicant data is stored and protected before you sign — the offshore data-residency picture is the one due-diligence step neither tool lets you skip.

Neither can be crowned our category Top Pick — the Australian Fit gate stops both — but for speed and value at the volume most Australian businesses actually hire at, Workable is the call.

Note: Neither Workable nor Greenhouse replaces qualified HR or employment-law advice. Australian businesses should consult a Fair Work-specialist adviser or employment lawyer when designing hiring processes, particularly around interview practices, algorithmic candidate screening, and candidate-data handling.

Workable vs Greenhouse: Which ATS Should an Australian Business Buy?