Best pre-employment assessment tools for small businesses

Four types of pre-employment assessment tools

Pre-employment assessment tools fall into four broad types, and most buyers need only one or two.

Skills testing platforms offer a library of short tests, such as reasoning, customer service judgement, Excel, typing or a programming language, which you combine for each role. They cover the widest range of jobs and are the natural first choice for a small business.

Cognitive testing specialists focus on general aptitude, often with a well-known instrument such as the CCAT. They suit teams that want one consistent measure across many roles.

Coding assessment tools test developers with programming tasks and code review, usually with plagiarism detection. They matter if you hire engineers regularly.

Video interviewing platforms record or run interviews at scale. They organise the interview step rather than test a specific skill, and are aimed at larger, high-volume employers.

Talent assessment tools, candidate assessment tools and recruitment assessment tools are all names for the same broad category; the four types above are a more useful way to compare them.

HireValid: skills testing on monthly plans

HireValid is our product, so weigh this section accordingly. It is a skills testing platform for small teams that hire a few times a year. Plans are monthly by default and cancellable any time: Free covers five candidates a month, Starter is $49 a month for 50 candidates and Growth $129 a month for 200, in US dollars, and a $9 Pause plan keeps your account between rounds.

The library of 24 tests covers cognitive ability, situational judgement, practical, technical and language skills, combined into eleven role bundles. Every result has an Integrity Score for human review. The library is far smaller than the largest platforms here, and there is no personality questionnaire or video interviewing.

Testlify: skills testing with a very large library

Testlify lists 3,500+ tests and 150+ interview templates, and publishes its price: Starter is $139 a month, billed at $1,668 a year, for 100 credits, with one credit per candidate. Extra credits cost $21, unused credits expire at the end of the cycle and three user seats are included. Its pricing page lists a 7-day free trial and proctoring features including face detection and AI assistance detection.

Best for teams that test across many roles and are happy with annual billing.

Adaface: skills testing on low-cost annual credits

Adaface's annual plans start at $180 a year for 12 credits, rising to $500 for 50 and $900 for 100. A candidate invite uses one credit, and adding a ready-to-use test uses five as a one-time charge. Its library lists 500+ tests across programming, data, finance, aptitude, languages and typing, with a 14-day free trial.

Best for low-volume hiring where an annual commitment is acceptable; the pricing page mentions proctoring options without detailing them.

Canditech: skills testing with many anti-cheating settings

Canditech lists over 500 ready-to-use test sections and four tiers, from Individual to Enterprise, with a free start and no credit card. Its pricing page lists monitored ChatGPT and Google search, question randomisation, webcam snapshots, IP and location tracking, copy-paste detection and timed questions. Prices were not shown in the page text when we checked.

Best for teams that want a long list of integrity settings and are willing to get a quote.

Vervoe: skills testing through job simulations

Vervoe emphasises practical tasks such as spreadsheet work, coding challenges, presentations and video responses, graded with AI. Its pricing page asks you to request pricing and lists advanced generative AI detection for enterprise customers.

Best for roles where a realistic work sample matters more than multiple-choice questions, in organisations comfortable with a sales-led purchase.

iMocha: enterprise skills intelligence

iMocha describes itself as a Skills and Work Intelligence Platform for enterprises, with 10,000+ real-world evaluations covering hiring, talent management and workforce planning. Pricing is through a demo.

Best for large organisations that want skills data across hiring and internal mobility; likely more than a small business needs.

Criteria: cognitive testing with the CCAT

Criteria offers the CCAT, 50 items in 15 minutes drawn from an item bank of thousands, and a wider Criteria Assess suite of cognitive, personality, emotional intelligence, risk and skills tests. Video interviewing and AI proctoring are available. Prices are not published; a free trial is offered.

Best for teams that specifically want the CCAT or one vendor for testing and interviewing. Our HireValid vs Criteria page compares the two in detail.

Wonderlic: cognitive ability, personality and motivation

Wonderlic Select measures cognitive ability, personality and motivation in one assessment, with role-specific scoring, structured interview guides and integrations with systems such as Greenhouse, JazzHR and iCIMS. Pricing depends on the package and your employee count.

Best for organisations that want broad traits measured across many roles. See HireValid vs Wonderlic for a side-by-side.

Codility: coding assessments for engineering hiring

Codility focuses on engineering. Its Starter plan costs $1,200 a year with up to 120 invite credits for screening or interviews and a limited library of engineering work simulations; larger plans add a bigger task library. All plans list plagiarism detection, core integrity signals and removal of leaked tasks from the library. Free trials are arranged through Codility's team rather than self-serve.

Best for companies that hire developers regularly. For occasional junior developer hiring, a general platform with Python, SQL and JavaScript tests may be enough.

HireVue: video interviewing at scale

HireVue's pricing page describes video interviewing, assessments and an assessment builder, an AI Interviewer for screening, scheduling and automation, and cheating and fraud mitigation, for mid-market to enterprise organisations. Prices are not published; you request a demo.

Best for large, high-volume employers that want to run the interview step at scale. It solves a different problem from a skills test, and many teams use a skills test first and an interview second.

Also worth a look

A few more tools appear on many shortlists. TestGorilla has a library of 350+ tests, with Core from $215 a month per account billed annually; our TestGorilla pricing page explains each plan. eSkill lists 600+ subjects and 70,000 questions with custom test building. We could not verify Toggl Hire's current plans on its vendor's site when we checked. The best TestGorilla alternatives page covers these in more detail.

What a pre-employment assessment should measure

Whichever tool you choose, the tests should measure what the job actually needs. Start from the two or three tasks that separate a good hire from a poor one, then pick tests that match them.

For a customer support agent, that usually means judgement with customers, accuracy with details and clear written English. For an office administrator, attention to detail, spreadsheet skills and prioritisation. For a junior developer, reading and writing code in the language you use, plus problem solving. A general reasoning test adds useful evidence for most roles, but on its own it says little about whether someone can do the specific work.

Keep the total short. Assessments of 30 to 45 minutes are long enough to produce reliable evidence and short enough that strong applicants finish them. Long, unfocused assessments lose good candidates and add little. Our role bundles show sensible combinations for eleven common roles.

What these tools cost over a year

Headline prices are hard to compare because vendors bill in different ways: per month, per year, per credit or per candidate. Convert everything to a twelve-month total at your real hiring volume.

An illustrative example. Suppose you hire in four months of the year and test about 30 applicants each time. On HireValid Starter with Pause in the other eight months, the year costs 4 x $49 + 8 x $9 = $268. Adaface's Pro plan, at $900 a year for 100 credits, would need more credits than that for 120 invites, before counting the credits used to add tests. Testlify's Starter plan covers 100 credits for $1,668 a year, with extra credits at $21. Codility's Starter plan is $1,200 a year for up to 120 invite credits, for coding roles only.

For vendors that only quote on request, ask for a twelve-month figure at the same volume so you can add it to the comparison. And remember seats: a recruiting team of five needs a plan that includes five users.

Fair and lawful testing for small employers

Any pre-employment test should be job-related and applied consistently. Give every applicant for a role the same tests under the same conditions, tell them in advance how long it takes and which tools are allowed, and make accommodations easy to request, such as extra time or a screen reader.

After each hiring round, compare selection rates across groups. A large gap is a signal to check whether a test measures something the job does not need. Keep records of which tests you used and why. In the United States, the EEOC's guidance on employment tests and selection procedures sets out the legal basics, including the duty to provide reasonable accommodations. Our fairness approach explains how we design and review tests, and the employer remains responsible for its own hiring decisions.

How to choose the best pre-employment testing software

Start from the decision you want to improve, not from the feature list. If you are choosing whom to interview from a pile of applications, a skills testing platform with role bundles will help most. If you hire developers every month, add a coding specialist. If interviews are your bottleneck at high volume, look at video interviewing.

Then compare four things side by side: what a year costs at your real volume, including quiet months; whether the tests match your roles and level; what integrity evidence each tool records and shows; and how quickly you can run a real round. Hiring assessment tools that need a demo before you see a price may suit procurement-led companies, but they slow down an owner who needs to hire next month.

Finally, check fairness. Test only what the job needs, offer accommodations, and review selection rates across groups after each round. The practical guide to pre-employment testing walks through a complete process.

How we compared

We grouped the tools by type and compared them on entry price, billing and free plan or trial, using only each vendor's own website, checked on 2026-10-02 and listed in the sources below. We did not use review sites, third-party comparisons or other vendors' claims. Where a vendor did not state a detail, the table says "Not verified; ask provider", which never means the tool lacks it.

Disclosure. HireValid is the publisher's own product and is listed first because this is our page; neither its position nor the order of the other tools is a ranking. To report an error, use the contact page and we will check and correct it.