Bullhorn alternative
Bullhorn is the established staffing-agency ATS and CRM. Its published rates are $99 per user per month for Starter and $165 for Core, and timesheets, invoicing and pay-and-bill are sold as a separately priced back-office module. Digital Arrow includes back-office in every paid plan and charges a flat $189 per month at the Growth tier.
Bullhorn is the reference point for staffing software and has been for twenty years. It is bought for depth, for its integration marketplace, and because procurement teams already recognise the name. It is priced accordingly, on a per-user annual contract, with the modules a contract-staffing firm needs quoted on top.
Pricing side by side
Bullhorn is sold per user, per month. Digital Arrow is sold flat, so the gap widens as a team grows and narrows as it shrinks.
| Product | Published price | 20 seats / month |
|---|---|---|
| Bullhorn | $99/user Starter, $165/user Core; back office quoted separatelyper user, per month | $4,100 |
| Digital Arrow — Growth | $189flat, per month · up to 60 accounts | $189 |
Reported add-on module pricing is $30–50 per user per month on top; Pro and Max tiers are quote-only, and annual contracts are required.
Source: Noon, Bullhorn pricing 2026. Vendors change prices; check theirs before deciding.
What Digital Arrow includes in every paid plan
No modules, no per-feature add-ons. This is the whole product at every tier; the tiers differ by how many accounts and AI credits they carry.
- Applicant tracking
- Configurable drag-and-drop pipeline stages, applicant search, and notes and scorecards on the board.
- Interview scheduling
- Google and Outlook calendar connections, free/busy checking across both, and iCalendar invitations.
- Screening
- Reusable questionnaires with text, choice and timed video-answer questions.
- Timesheets and time off
- Manual or timer entry by project, date-range totals, PDF export, and time-off requests.
- Client invoicing
- Branded PDF invoices, optionally built from an applicant's tracked time and an hourly rate.
- Placements and margin
- Bill rate and pay rate per placement, with margin and markup reported by client and by contractor, weighted by hours actually logged.
- Contracts and onboarding
- Multi-party e-signature contracts, plus onboarding material with quizzes and completion tracking.
- Careers page and job feed
- A branded careers page per company and an Indeed-format XML feed for aggregators.
- Public API and webhooks
- Scoped API keys with per-key rate limits, and signed webhooks for job and application events.
- GDPR tooling
- Candidate consent capture, retention policies, and erasure records.
Where Bullhorn is stronger
- The largest integration ecosystem in staffing software, including job boards, VMS platforms and payroll providers.
- Twenty years of deployments at enterprise scale, with implementation and support organisations to match.
- Pay-and-bill and compliance depth built for high-volume temp and contract staffing, well beyond margin reporting.
- A name procurement already trusts, which shortens enterprise evaluations.
Choose Bullhorn if
- You are running high-volume temp staffing with payroll, statutory compliance and VMS integrations, where the depth is the product.
- You need a specific integration from their marketplace that no smaller vendor has.
- Your buyer requires an established vendor with references at your scale.
Choose Digital Arrow if
- You want timesheets, invoicing and placement margin without a second module on the invoice.
- You are a small or mid-size agency where a per-user annual contract is the largest software line you would carry.
- You want to run the numbers before committing, without going through a quote process.
What Digital Arrow does not do
- No LinkedIn Recruiter integration or LinkedIn job posting API — that requires LinkedIn Talent Solutions partner approval, which we do not hold.
- No sourcing browser extension for capturing profiles from LinkedIn or GitHub.
- No SSO or SAML.
- No built-in candidate texting or SMS.
- A much smaller integration marketplace than any established vendor.
Questions
What is the cheapest Bullhorn alternative that still does timesheets and invoicing?
Digital Arrow includes timesheets, client invoicing, and placement margin reporting in every paid plan, starting at $49 per month flat. Bullhorn publishes $99 per user per month for Starter and $165 for Core, with back-office functionality sold as a separately priced module. Prices checked September 2026.
How much does Bullhorn cost for a 20-person agency?
Using published rates of $165 per user per month for Core plus a reported $30–50 per user for the back-office module, a twenty-seat agency is roughly $4,100 per month. Bullhorn requires annual contracts and quotes its Pro and Max tiers individually. Digital Arrow's Growth plan is $189 per month flat and covers up to 60 accounts.
Is Digital Arrow a full replacement for Bullhorn?
Not in every case. Bullhorn has a far larger integration marketplace, deeper pay-and-bill and compliance tooling for high-volume temp staffing, and enterprise implementation support. Digital Arrow does not offer SSO, a LinkedIn Recruiter integration, or a sourcing extension. It is a fit for small and mid-size agencies that want front office and back office in one flat-priced product.
See it against your own numbers
Pricing is published in full, so there is nothing to request. Put a placement in and the margin report shows bill against pay, weighted by the hours actually logged.
Bullhorn is a trademark of its owner and is named here only to identify the product being compared. Digital Arrow is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a partner of Bullhorn. Competitor pricing shown is the vendor's published list price, or a third-party report where the vendor does not publish one, read on .