An AI CV formatter takes a CV somebody else wrote and rebuilds it into your agency's branded, client-ready template, without changing the person's career history. That is not the same as AI resume optimisation, which rewrites and scores one person's own resume against a job ad to improve job-fit. The short version: an AI CV formatter changes layout and branding, a resume optimiser changes content. If you send candidate CVs to clients, you want an AI CV formatter, also sold as CV formatting software. If you are polishing your own resume for one application, you want a resume optimiser.
AI resume optimization tools are built for job seekers, not for you. Teal, Kickresume, Rezi and Jobscan are sold to the person applying for a job. They tailor that person's own resume to one job ad, score it, and export it in a design that person picked. None of them publishes a workflow where a recruiter uploads a candidate's existing CV and gets it back in the agency's house template. That job belongs to a different category, CV formatting software, which is sold to recruitment and staffing agencies. If you send candidate CVs to clients, that is the category you want.
Two products blur the line, and it is only fair to say so up front. Enhancv's help centre lists custom branding, unlimited users and commercial use for the Business plans, though Enhancv does not publish Business plan pricing. Rezi Enterprise is $99 a month per 200 users and names recruiting agencies on its own enterprise page. So the split is not purely about audience. The real difference is the shape of the work and the shape of the bill. Resume tools price per user seat, and they expect the candidate to build the document themselves. CV formatters price on CV volume, and they expect you to upload a CV that somebody else wrote.
That difference decides which tool fits your desk. This guide covers what each category does, what each one publishes for pricing, where the resume tools genuinely win, and how to pick. If you want to test the CV formatting side while you read, RefineCV gives you 10 free CVs with no credit card.
Key takeaways
- An AI CV formatter rebuilds a candidate's CV into your agency's branded template without changing their career history. AI resume optimisation instead rewrites and scores one person's own resume for a job ad. Formatting changes layout, optimisation changes content.
- AI resume optimization tools are built for job seekers. Teal, Kickresume, Rezi and Jobscan sell to the person applying for a job, so the output is that person's own resume in a design that person picked.
- CV formatting software is built for agencies. Allsorter, HireAra, iReformat, CVFormatter and RefineCV take a CV somebody else wrote and re-render it in your house template, ready to send to a client.
- Two resume tools do cross over, and it is fair to say so. Enhancv's help centre says Enhancv Business adds custom branding to templates, though Enhancv does not publish Business plan pricing. Rezi Enterprise is $99 a month per 200 users and names recruiting agencies on its own enterprise page. Both are seat-priced and builder-first.
- Pricing model is the cleanest difference. The resume tools bill per person, per seat allowance or per client slot, and none of them publishes a per-CV rate. RefineCV is $0.40 per CV, or $50 a month for 200 CVs, which works out at $0.25 each.
- Heavily designed "AI optimized" resumes are the wrong output for client submissions. Bullhorn asks for lightly formatted CVs with no images, headers, footers, columns or tables, and warns that a highly formatted resume may not parse at all.
Two categories, two buyers
Two different products get called "AI resume software", and they are not sold to the same person.
Category A: AI resume optimization tools. Consumer software, sold to an individual job seeker. You import or type your own career history. The AI rewrites your bullet points, scores your resume against a job ad, and tells you which keywords are missing. You pick a template, style it, and download a PDF. Teal, Kickresume, Rezi, Jobscan and Enhancv are in this group.
Category B: CV formatting software. Business software, sold to a recruitment or staffing agency. You upload the CV a candidate emailed you. The tool reads the file, pulls out the content, and rebuilds it inside your agency's template. Your logo, your fonts, your section order, your recruiter's contact details. You send the result to a client. Allsorter, HireAra, iReformat, CVFormatter and RefineCV are in this group.
The demand behind category A is real, and it comes from candidates. Greenhouse's survey of 4,136 people, 2,900 job seekers and 1,236 recruiters and hiring managers across the US, UK, Ireland and Germany, published 19 November 2025, found 74% of US job seekers are personally using AI and 49% are submitting more applications than a year ago.
So both categories are busy. They are just busy on opposite sides of the desk.
AI resume tools vs CV formatting software at a glance
Every price and plan detail in this guide comes from the vendor's own site, checked on 31 July 2026.
| AI resume optimization tools | CV formatting software | |
|---|---|---|
| Who buys it | The job seeker, for their own resume | The recruitment or staffing agency |
| Input | Your own career history, typed or imported | A CV a candidate wrote, uploaded as a file |
| Output | One person's resume in a design they chose | A candidate profile in the agency's house template |
| Whose brand is on it | The candidate's, or the tool's on free tiers | The agency logo, colours and contact details |
| Pricing model | Per user seat, subscription, or client slot | Per CV or per annual CV volume |
| Published entry price | Rezi Pro $29/mo. Rezi Enterprise $99/mo per 200 users. Jobscan Coach $99/mo for 2 client slots. Enhancv Business price not published | RefineCV $0.40 per CV or $50/mo for 200. CVFormatter $79/mo for 100 credits. HireAra 180 pounds/mo plus VAT. Allsorter and iReformat not published |
| Team seats | Rezi Enterprise banded per 200 users. Enhancv's help centre lists unlimited users for Business | Unlimited seats on RefineCV, CVFormatter, HireAra and iReformat. Allsorter says pricing is usage based, not headcount based |
| Free entry | Rezi free plan permanent, no card. Jobscan 5 scans a month permanent. Enhancv free plan valid 7 days and watermarked | RefineCV 10 CVs, no card, no expiry. CVFormatter 5 credits, no card. Allsorter 14 days and 50 uploads, sales-gated. iReformat card-free after a call. HireAra none |
| Anonymisation for blind submission | Not a feature, the resume is meant to identify the person | Published by CVFormatter, Allsorter and RefineCV. HireAra references anonymised CV output in customer testimonials. iReformat does not publish it |
| Published security certification | Kickresume states it runs external penetration testing but does not name the auditor, and publishes no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 on its security pages | Allsorter ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus. HireAra ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials. RefineCV publishes neither |
What AI resume optimization tools do
The workflow is the same across the category. You import or write your resume. The AI rewrites your bullet points and your summary. You paste in a job description and the tool tells you which keywords are missing. You pick a template, style it, and download a PDF. Most add extras around that core: a job tracker, a cover letter writer, mock interviews, a Chrome extension that saves postings from job boards.
That is what "AI resume optimization" means here. One candidate, one resume, one target job, owned and edited by the candidate.
Kickresume published its own 2025 platform usage data, and it shows what people do with these products. 1.22 million people used its AI features that year. 773,000 of them, 64%, used AI to check and analyse a resume for ATS compatibility. 586,000 used AI to write or improve resume content. Only 43,000, 3.5%, tailored a resume to a specific job description. Source: Kickresume press page, "Over 1.2 Million Job Seekers Used AI in 2025", published 30 April 2026, covering 2025. These are Kickresume's own anonymised product figures, not independent research.
Who they are built for
The buyer is the individual candidate, and the sites say so plainly.
Teal frames the product as the job seeker's answer to employers: companies have recruiters, and you have Teal. The only commercial links in its footer are Sign Up, Log In, Teal+ Pricing, About Us, Open Positions and an Affiliate Program. No business, team, enterprise or recruiter plan is published.
Kickresume sells to the person writing their own resume, with a student angle on top. The nearest thing to an institutional offer on the site is the ISIC Career Center, which gives students free Premium when they show an ISIC card. No agency or team plan is published.
Jobscan writes to the candidate throughout. Its Coach product does serve employment agencies, career coaches and university career centres, but it sells them client management and usage tracking on top of the same scoring tools. There is nothing on Jobscan's site about applying an agency logo, a house template or branded output to a CV.
What they cost
| Tool | Free tier | Paid pricing | Agency tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teal | Free Forever, $0, no credit card. Unlimited resumes and job tracking, 10 templates, capped AI credits | Teal+: $13 every 7 days, $29 every 30 days, $79 every 90 days. No annual plan published | None published |
| Kickresume | Free to use with no expiry, built on 4 free resume templates, unlimited downloads | Premium list prices: $9/month (one month), $6/month (three months), $4/month (one year), each prepaid in one payment. 14-day money-back guarantee | None published |
| Rezi | Permanent free plan, $0, no card. 1 resume, 3 PDF downloads | Pro $29/month, or $149 one-time lifetime. 30-day money-back guarantee | Rezi Enterprise from $99/month per 200 users, higher tier custom priced |
| Jobscan | Free account, 5 scans a month, permanent, no watermark | Premium pricing is shown inside the app and is not published on a readable plan page | Jobscan Coach $99/month or $999/year, starting with 2 client slots, volume discounts on extra slots |
| Enhancv | "Free plan" at $0 but valid for 7 days, Enhancv branding on output, capped at 12 section items | Pro billed monthly, quarterly or semiannually, prepaid for the period. Pricing page localises by region | Enhancv Business: price not published, 14-day free trial, custom branding, unlimited users, commercial use allowed. No tier table published |
Two notes on that table. Kickresume was running a 20% promotion on 31 July 2026, so the price you see may be lower than the list prices shown. And Enhancv's pricing page localises by region, so check the currency before you compare.
Every one of these plans bills a fixed amount per period, no matter how many CVs you produce. Not one of them publishes a per-CV rate.
What these tools are genuinely good at
They are good products. They are good at a different job.
- Jobscan is the best of the group at the narrow thing it does: telling you how well one resume matches one job posting and which keywords are missing. Its free account gives 5 scans a month, permanently, with no watermark.
- Rezi has a permanent free plan with no card and no expiry that includes the AI resume writer, plus a $149 one-time lifetime option that no agency CV formatter offers.
- Teal's job tracker is the real differentiator. A free Chrome extension saves jobs from over 40 job boards into a tracker with statuses and notes, and that tracker is unlimited on the free plan.
- Kickresume wins on price and editorial depth: a $4 per month list price on the annual plan, 40+ resume templates with 40+ matching cover letter templates, 1,500+ resume examples, 400+ job-specific guides, and 20,000+ pre-written phrases across 3,200+ job titles.
- Enhancv publishes hundreds of templates and resume translation in 30+ languages.
If you also coach candidates on their own job search, these tools are worth knowing. That is a different activity from client submission.
Why they do not solve an agency's problem
Four reasons, and none of them are criticisms of the products.
1. The wrong person owns the document. These tools are built around one account editing one person's own resume. Your job runs the other way. You take a CV that somebody else wrote, in whatever state they sent it, and turn it into your firm's document.
2. The brand on the page is the candidate's, not yours. A job seeker picks a template they like. An agency needs every CV to carry the same logo, fonts, colours and section order, no matter which recruiter produced it. Teal and Kickresume publish no agency house template, no client-facing branding layer, no team seats and no bulk processing.
3. Design-led output can break at the client's end. A job seeker CV is meant to impress a human. An agency CV usually has to survive a parser first. Bullhorn asks for lightly formatted CVs with no images, headers, footers, columns or tables, and warns that a highly formatted resume may not parse at all. More on that below.
4. The pricing model does not match how agencies buy. You do not buy CVs by the recruiter. You buy them by the document, and volume moves week to week. The consumer plans are priced per person, so 5 recruiters means 5 subscriptions. The agency tiers change the shape but not the unit: Enhancv's help centre lists unlimited users for Business but does not publish Business plan pricing, Rezi Enterprise is banded at $99 a month per 200 users, and Jobscan Coach starts at $99 a month for 2 client slots with volume discounts on extra slots. None of them publishes a per-CV rate, so what you pay tracks seats and subscriptions rather than CVs formatted.
Where the line blurs: two resume tools that do sell to agencies
It would be wrong to say AI resume tools are only for job seekers. Two of the five publish an agency-facing tier, and you should know what they are.
Enhancv Business is a real offer. Enhancv's for-recruitment page is headlined "Deliver professional resumes fast, at scale." and names recruitment companies, staffing firms and corporate talent acquisition teams. Its help centre says that with Enhancv Business "you can fully customize your team's templates to reflect your brand identity, ensuring consistency across every resume sent", and that custom branding is available only on Business plans. The help centre also lists unlimited users and commercial use for Business, which Pro does not allow, and offers a 14-day free trial you can begin without a sales call. Enhancv publishes no Business plan price and no tier table, so what Business costs and includes is not published. Enhancv publishes import from PDF, DOCX and LinkedIn, but it does not publish an agency reformatting workflow, so ask for a demo of that exact flow.
Rezi Enterprise is a white-labelled resume builder. An organisation runs it under its own branding, with bulk resume creation, company watermarks, team roles, single sign-on, and login limited to your own email domain. Rezi's enterprise page names "Recruiting Agencies" among its target organisations and cites recruitment agency BMA Group using the white-labelled platform for standardised resume formatting across candidates. The model is still seat-based, at $99 a month per 200 users, and it is framed as giving job seekers their own branded builder account. The recruiter-uploads-a-candidate-CV workflow is not published on Rezi's site.
So the honest line is not "these tools are for job seekers only". It is this: these tools are built for job seekers, and their agency tiers are bolt-ons. They are seat-priced and builder-first. CV formatting software is built the other way round, around the recruiter's job of taking a CV somebody else wrote and returning it in the house template, priced by the document rather than by the head.
What an AI CV formatter does
You upload the CV a candidate sent you. The tool reads the document, pulls out the content, and rebuilds it inside your agency's own template. You get back a file you can send straight to a client.
Four things make that a different job from an AI resume builder.
- The CV is not yours. Someone else wrote it, in their own layout, and sent it as a PDF, a Word file, or a scan. You did not choose the format and you cannot ask them to redo it.
- The template is the agency's. The point is that every CV leaving your business looks the same. A job seeker wants their resume to stand out. You want yours to look consistent.
- The reader is a client, not a job board. The document is a sales asset for your agency as much as a record of the candidate.
- It repeats, all day. Bullhorn's 2026 GRID report surveyed nearly 2,300 recruitment professionals in November and December 2025 and was published on 25 February 2026. It found 72% of firms that submit multiple candidates to a position fill roles in under 20 days. That makes CV output a volume problem, not a one-off design problem.
The output still has to survive a parser
Here is the part most people miss. When you send a formatted CV to a client, their system often reads it again. Bullhorn's own documentation for resume upload says the parser accepts .pdf, .doc and .docx, and adds: "For best results it is recommend [sic] that resumes are lightly formatted, do not contain images, and do not use headers, footers, columns, or tables."
Bullhorn is blunter in its parsing basics guide: "If a resume is highly formatted, you may either not get crucial information parsed or it may not parse at all."
Bullhorn's automatic parser pulls a fixed set of fields, including name, current company, job title, contact numbers, address, skills, education and work history. The structure of your document decides what data survives.
So a graphic-heavy, two-column, icon-covered design is the wrong shape for agency submissions, even if it is exactly what a job seeker's resume builder is proud of. CV formatting software is built to give you branding that stays readable to a machine.
Which CV formatter suits your agency
We rank these five in depth in the full CV formatting software roundup. This is the short version, framed against the AI resume tools above. Every fact comes from each vendor's own site, checked on 31 July 2026.
RefineCV: best for a published per-CV price and full template control
RefineCV formats one candidate CV at a time into your agency template and exports it as PDF or DOCX. It accepts 10 input formats: PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, CSV, TXT, ODT, RTF and Apple Pages. That is the widest published input list of the tools here. iReformat publishes PDF, DOC and DOCX. CVFormatter publishes PDF, DOCX, PNG or JPG and LinkedIn URLs. Allsorter and HireAra do not publish a full input list.
Pricing is published in full. Free: 10 CVs, no credit card, no expiry. Pay As You Go: $0.40 per CV, no monthly fee and no minimum. Pro: $50 a month including 200 CVs, which works out at $0.25 per CV, then $0.30 per CV over the allowance. Team seats are unlimited and free on every plan, including the free one, because you are billed per CV formatted, not per recruiter. You build the template yourself in a drag-and-drop builder and can change it whenever you like, and you can edit any extracted field before you export.
Where RefineCV does not lead: there is no ATS or CRM integration of any kind, and no batch or bulk multi-CV upload. You format one CV at a time. RefineCV also does not publish ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification, and both Allsorter and HireAra do.
If you want to see whether it works on your CVs, the 10 free formats need no card and never expire.
HireAra: best for candidate presentation beyond the document
HireAra formats candidate CVs into your branded template, then goes further with executive one-pagers, spec CVs, AI-filled client cover sheets, and candidate microsites with video intros, engagement tracking and instant bookings. It has been part of The Access Group since October 2024.
Pricing is published in pounds, plus VAT, billed against an annual candidate volume: Starter 180 pounds a month for 1,500 candidates a year, Scale 450 pounds a month for 5,000, Professional 950 pounds a month for 12,000, and custom Enterprise above that. Unlimited users on every tier. HireAra states that credits do not roll over, and that on renewal you move to a better fitting subscription size.
Genuine lead: it is the only tool here publishing candidate microsites, video intros and engagement tracking, and it publishes a complete rate card so you can budget without a call. It holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials with a public trust centre.
Trade-off: no free trial at all, by choice, so it can run live onboarding instead. No per-CV rate. Two-way CRM write-back is live in ARCRM, Vincere and Bullhorn, not across all 9 of its integrations.
Allsorter: strongest published security credentials
Allsorter has two products. One-click Formatting brands a CV, redacts details and attaches a cover sheet, and works on PDF as well as Word. Full Reformat rebuilds the CV into a bespoke agency template with side-by-side quality control against the original before export. It runs inside the ATS through 6 named integrations: JobAdder, Bullhorn, Salesforce including Bullhorn for Salesforce, Tracker, Vincere and Mercury.
Genuine lead: Allsorter publishes more security detail than anything else here. It holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus. Files are encrypted at rest and in transit. Hosting is in the EU. It names a Data Protection Officer. It deletes uploaded personal data after 7 days by default. It states in writing that it does not train AI models on customer or candidate data. If a client's compliance team asks hard questions, Allsorter has the best published answers.
Trade-off: no price is published. Allsorter's pricing page shows two tiers, Elite ("For teams of 5 or more") and Enterprise, both "Request Quote". Allsorter's own comparison post says pricing is "flexible and based on usage, not headcount", and publishes a 14-day trial with 50 uploads and unlimited users, arranged through its sales team. Export formats are not published.
CVFormatter: best for multilingual output and anonymised blind CVs
CVFormatter takes a PDF, DOCX, PNG or JPG, or a LinkedIn URL, shows you the original next to the AI-extracted data, lets you edit online, then shares via weblink or exports to PDF or DOCX. One credit is spent per resume upload, and you can reformat or download that CV unlimited times afterwards.
Pricing: Free $0 with 5 resume credits, 10 enhance credits, your first branded template free and no card required. Standard $79 a month for 100 resume credits. Enterprise $299 a month for 500. Annual billing saves 20%. Extra branded templates carry a $49 one-time setup fee, and template updates are free for the first 3 per template then $24.99 each. By our own arithmetic from those published credits, Standard is about $0.79 per CV and Enterprise about $0.60. CVFormatter does not publish a per-CV rate itself.
Genuine lead: multilingual output plus anonymisation on every plan, including free, with employer names replaceable by industries. That is a real edge for blind-CV and government work. Team seats are unlimited at no extra cost. Its data security page publishes GDPR compliance, AES-256 encryption and 30-day automatic file deletion.
Trade-off: 4 input types. The same page says both "20+" and "30+" languages, so treat the count as approximate. CVFormatter does not publish a self-service template builder, so budget for setup fees if you change your branding often. Its "ISO 27001 certified data centers" claim covers its hosting provider, not CVFormatter itself, and SOC 2 is not published.
iReformat: best for Bullhorn-based staffing agencies formatting in batches
iReformat takes a PDF, DOC or DOCX, extracts what it describes as 50+ data points, and returns the resume in your existing branded template. iReformat offers bulk processing. The template model is bring your own: iReformat says it will set up your existing template so you get consistent, brand-accurate resumes with no redesign.
Genuine lead: bulk processing plus a native Bullhorn workflow, with unlimited team access and no per-user fee. It is built only for staffing agencies rather than adapted from a job-seeker product. RefineCV has neither batch upload nor a Bullhorn integration, so this is a real iReformat advantage.
Trade-off: nothing is published on price. The site says only "Customized pricing based on your volume with unlimited user access for your entire team", and every call to action is "Schedule a Demo". The free trial needs no credit card, but you have to book a call to get it set up, and the number of free resumes is not published. iReformat displays a "SOC 2 Compliant" badge but publishes no certificate or auditor, so treat it as a claim rather than a verified certification. Export formats are not published.
CV formatting software compared
| Tool | Built for | Pricing | Free trial | Genuine strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RefineCV | Agencies of any size, including solo recruiters, that want to control their own template | Free 10 CVs, then $0.40 per CV pay as you go, or $50/month for 200 CVs ($0.25 each), $0.30 overage | 10 CVs, no card, no expiry, self-serve. A free tier, not a trial | Lowest published per-CV price, self-service template builder, unlimited free team seats, 10 input formats, post-format editing |
| HireAra | Agencies that want candidate presentation beyond the document | 180 pounds/month plus VAT (1,500 candidates/year) up to 950 pounds/month (12,000/year), Enterprise custom. Credits do not roll over | None. HireAra says it skips trials so it can give live onboarding instead | Full published rate card, candidate microsites with video intros and engagement tracking, CRM write-back, ISO 27001 |
| Allsorter | Agencies of 5 or more that work inside their ATS and answer to compliance teams | Not published. Elite and Enterprise are both quote-only. Allsorter says pricing is usage based, not headcount based | 14 days, 50 uploads, unlimited users, arranged through sales | Strongest published security: ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus, 7-day retention, named DPO, 6 named ATS integrations |
| CVFormatter | Agencies needing multilingual output and anonymised blind CVs | Free (5 resume credits), Standard $79/month (100 credits), Enterprise $299/month (500 credits). 20% off annual. Extra templates $49 each | Free plan with 5 resume credits and first branded template free, no card | Multilingual formatting, anonymisation and industry-masking on every plan, including the free one |
| iReformat | Staffing agencies on Bullhorn that format in batches | Not published. Customised by volume, with unlimited user access | Free trial with no card, but you book a call to set it up | Bulk processing and a native Bullhorn workflow with unlimited team access |
This guide is published by RefineCV, and we include our own product in the table above. We rank the other four on their own merits and name where they beat us: Allsorter and HireAra publish ISO 27001 certification and we do not, iReformat has bulk upload and a native Bullhorn workflow and we have neither, and CVFormatter includes multilingual output that we do not publish. Every price and feature here comes from each vendor's own site, checked on 31 July 2026.
How to read that table
Three questions sort it quickly.
Can you see the price before you talk to anyone? Only RefineCV, CVFormatter and HireAra publish figures. Allsorter and iReformat are quote-only. If you are a small agency that wants to try something this afternoon, that alone narrows the field.
Do you pay per CV or per month? RefineCV is the only one with a true per-CV rate at $0.40, with no monthly fee and no minimum. CVFormatter and HireAra sell subscriptions against a credit or candidate allowance, and HireAra states credits do not roll over, so unused capacity is money spent. Allsorter and iReformat publish no pricing at all: Allsorter says its pricing is usage based rather than headcount based, and iReformat says pricing is customised by volume. If you format 5 CVs one month and 60 the next, a per-CV rate costs less.
What is the one thing you cannot compromise on? If it is a compliance certificate, Allsorter leads. If it is client engagement analytics and candidate microsites, HireAra leads. If it is translation and blind CVs, CVFormatter leads. If it is bulk uploads inside Bullhorn, iReformat leads. If it is cost per CV, template control, and getting your whole team on it without per-seat fees, RefineCV leads.
AI CV formatters for staffing agencies
Staffing agencies format CVs at volume and often work inside an ATS, so two questions decide the choice: does the tool fit the workflow you already have, and does the bill follow CV volume rather than headcount. Three AI CV formatters here are built for that job rather than adapted from a job-seeker product: RefineCV, iReformat and Saply. This is the section for the "which AI CV formatter is best for a staffing agency" question, and it is worth knowing the newer name in that search, Saply, alongside the established ones.
Saply is an AI CV formatter aimed at European staffing and consultancy firms. Its own site says it rebuilds a candidate CV in any file format into your own template, and formats a CV in under two minutes rather than the thirty minutes it estimates manual formatting takes. That thirty-minute figure is Saply's own assumption for its ROI calculator, not independent research, so treat it as a vendor claim. Saply reads native and scanned PDFs, Word files, images, phone photos of printed CVs and LinkedIn screenshots, and returns both an editable Word file and a client-ready PDF. It anonymises CVs, generates a candidate-to-vacancy matching score, translates across Dutch, English, French and German, and processes up to five CVs in one batch.
Genuine lead: Saply formats inside the tools recruiters already use. It runs as a plugin in Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Outlook, and integrates with the Bullhorn, Carerix, Spott, Loxo and Connecting Expertise systems, so a recruiter can format without leaving their inbox or their CRM. Its European focus includes support for EU-standard layouts such as the DIGIT-TM template. RefineCV has none of those plugins or ATS integrations, so for a Bullhorn-based European desk that is a real Saply advantage.
Trade-off: Saply does not publish a price. It uses a CV credit system billed monthly or annually, and you have to request pricing before you can compare it against tools that publish figures. Its free trial is 14 days with no credit card, but the CV limit is not published, so you cannot test it open-endedly the way a free tier lets you. You send Saply your template once and it integrates it for you, rather than building it yourself, and its ISO 27001 is listed as in progress rather than certified. RefineCV publishes $0.40 per CV, gives 10 free CVs with no card and no expiry, and lets you build and change your own template in a drag-and-drop editor.
| Tool | Pricing | Free entry | ATS and in-workflow | Template model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RefineCV | $0.40 per CV, or $50/month for 200 CVs ($0.25 each) | 10 CVs, no card, no expiry | None. Web app, one CV at a time | Self-service drag-and-drop builder you own |
| iReformat | Not published, customised by volume | Card-free trial, set up on a call, count not published | Native Bullhorn workflow, bulk upload | Bring your own, iReformat sets it up |
| Saply | Not published, CV credit system billed monthly or annually | 14 days, no card, CV limit not published | Bullhorn, Carerix, Spott, Loxo, Connecting Expertise, plus Word, Google Docs and Outlook plugins | Bring your own, Saply integrates it |
How to choose for your agency
1. Start from the document your client receives
Picture the file that lands in your client's inbox. If it carries your logo, your recruiter's contact details, your section order, and no candidate phone number, you need CV formatting software. If it is one person's own resume tuned to one job ad, an AI resume tool does that job better and for less money. Decide this first, because it rules out half the market in one step.
2. Check the tool can take a CV somebody else wrote
This is where most resume tools stop being useful to you. They assume the person in the document is the one typing. Rezi, Teal and Kickresume all build the resume with you in the editor. Agency work runs the other way round: the candidate wrote the CV, and you need it re-rendered in your template without rewriting their career. Enhancv publishes PDF, DOCX and LinkedIn import but does not publish an agency reformatting workflow, so ask for a demo of that exact flow. CV formatters are built around it.
3. Match the pricing model to your CV volume, not your headcount
Resume tools price per seat or per subscription. Rezi Pro is $29 a month and Rezi Enterprise starts at $99 a month per 200 users. Jobscan Coach is $99 a month or $999 a year, starting with 2 client slots. Enhancv does not publish Business plan pricing. Teal+ is $29 every 30 days. None of them prices per CV. CV formatters mostly price on volume. RefineCV publishes $0.40 per CV with no monthly fee and no minimum, or $50 a month for 200 CVs, which is $0.25 each, then $0.30 for anything over. CVFormatter publishes $79 a month for 100 resume credits and $299 for 500. HireAra publishes Starter at 180 pounds a month plus VAT for 1,500 candidates a year. Allsorter and iReformat do not publish prices at all, so budgeting means booking a call.
4. Count the seats you would actually pay for
Ask how the bill changes when you hire your next recruiter. Seat pricing punishes growth. Volume pricing does not. RefineCV, CVFormatter, HireAra and iReformat all include unlimited team members at no extra cost, so the whole desk works from one shared template set. Allsorter says its pricing is "flexible and based on usage, not headcount", and its own trial offer includes unlimited users. On the resume tool side, Enhancv's help centre lists unlimited users for Business, while Rezi Enterprise is explicitly banded by user count.
5. Check the output survives the client's ATS
Your CV gets machine-read after you send it. Bullhorn accepts .pdf, .doc and .docx, asks for lightly formatted resumes with no images, headers, footers, columns or tables, and warns that a highly formatted resume may not parse at all. Its automatic parser pulls a fixed field set, so document structure decides what data survives. Ask any vendor for a plain, single-column export and test it.
6. Check what security is published, not claimed
There is a real gap here. Allsorter holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus, encrypts files at rest and in transit, hosts in the EU, names a Data Protection Officer, deletes uploaded personal data after 7 days by default, and states in writing that it does not train AI models on your data. HireAra holds ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials, with a public trust centre listing its controls, its penetration test report and its certificate. CVFormatter publishes GDPR compliance, AES-256 encryption and 30-day automatic file deletion, and says it uses ISO 27001 certified data centres, which certifies its hosting provider rather than CVFormatter itself. iReformat displays a SOC 2 badge but publishes no certificate or auditor. RefineCV publishes neither ISO 27001 nor SOC 2. If your clients are in banking, government or healthcare, that difference may decide the purchase, and Allsorter genuinely leads on it.
7. Test on your worst file, using the free entry
Every tool handles a clean single-column CV. The ones that cost you time are the scanned PDF, the Canva design and the 4-page contractor CV. Test those. The free entries differ a lot. RefineCV gives 10 CVs, no credit card, no expiry, with every feature included and unused CVs carried over if you upgrade. CVFormatter gives 5 resume credits and your first branded template free, with no credit card. Allsorter's own comparison post publishes a 14-day trial with 50 uploads and unlimited users, arranged through its sales team. iReformat's trial is card-free but you have to schedule a call to set it up. HireAra states it does not offer free trials, because it wants to run live onboarding for every user instead. On the resume tool side, Rezi's free plan is permanent with no card, Jobscan gives 5 scans a month permanently with no watermark, and Enhancv's plan labelled "FREE PLAN" is valid for 7 days and watermarked, so treat it as a trial.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI CV formatter?
An AI CV formatter is software that takes a CV a candidate wrote, reads and extracts the content, and rebuilds it into a recruitment agency's branded, client-ready template. It changes the layout and branding, not the person's career history. That is different from AI resume optimisation, which rewrites and scores one person's own resume against a job ad. Tools in the AI CV formatter category include RefineCV, HireAra, Allsorter, CVFormatter, iReformat and Saply. They are sold to agencies and usually priced by CV volume rather than per user seat.
Which AI CV formatter is best for a staffing agency?
For a staffing agency, judge an AI CV formatter on whether it fits your workflow and whether the bill follows CV volume rather than headcount. RefineCV, iReformat and Saply are all built for agencies rather than job seekers. RefineCV publishes the lowest rate at $0.40 per CV, or $0.25 each on the $50 a month plan, with 10 free CVs and no card, and a self-service template builder, but it has no ATS integration and formats one CV at a time. iReformat offers a native Bullhorn workflow and bulk upload but does not publish a price. Saply formats inside Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Outlook and integrates with five systems including Bullhorn, but it does not publish a price either, and its free trial is limited to 14 days.
Can an AI resume optimization tool format a candidate CV for my clients?
No, not the ones built for job seekers. Teal, Kickresume, Rezi and Jobscan are sold to the person applying for a job, so the output is that person's own resume in a design that person picked, not a candidate profile in your agency's house template. Two agency-facing exceptions exist. Enhancv's help centre says Enhancv Business lists custom branding and unlimited users and allows commercial use, but Enhancv does not publish Business plan pricing. Rezi Enterprise is a white-labelled builder at $99 a month per 200 users, and Rezi's enterprise page names recruiting agencies. Neither publishes a workflow where a recruiter uploads a third-party CV and gets back an agency-templated document. Purpose-built CV formatting software does publish that workflow.
What is the difference between AI resume optimization and CV formatting software?
AI resume optimization rewrites and scores one person's resume against one job description, and it is sold to that person. CV formatting software takes a CV written by somebody else and re-renders it into a recruitment agency's branded template, ready to send to a client. The buyer is different, the input is different, and the bill is different. Resume tools charge per user seat or per subscription, for example Rezi Pro at $29 a month, while Enhancv does not publish its Business plan price. CV formatters charge on CV volume, for example RefineCV at $0.40 per CV, or $50 a month for 200 CVs, which is $0.25 each.
Which is cheaper for a recruitment agency, an AI resume tool or a CV formatter?
For agency work, per-CV pricing is usually cheaper, because you pay for output rather than for seats. RefineCV is the lowest published rate in the CV formatting category at $0.40 per CV on pay as you go, or $50 a month for 200 CVs, which is $0.25 each. The resume tools that sell an organisation tier start higher and are priced per seat or per client slot, and none of them publishes branded agency CV output: Enhancv does not publish its Business plan price, Rezi Enterprise is $99 a month per 200 users, and Jobscan Coach is $99 a month for 2 client slots, with volume discounts on extra slots. Among CV formatters, CVFormatter publishes $79 a month for 100 resume credits, and HireAra publishes Starter at 180 pounds a month plus VAT for 1,500 candidates a year. Allsorter and iReformat do not publish pricing.
Do AI-optimized resumes parse well in an ATS like Bullhorn?
Not reliably, because "AI optimized" usually means heavily designed. Bullhorn's own documentation asks for lightly formatted resumes with no images, headers, footers, columns or tables, and warns that if a resume is highly formatted, you may either not get crucial information parsed or it may not parse at all. Bullhorn Automation accepts .pdf, .doc and .docx only. Keyword matching against a job ad is a separate thing from being readable by a parser, and a two-column graphic layout can score well on a keyword checker and still lose data on the way into the ATS. For client submissions, a clean single-column export is the safer output.
Can I try CV formatting software free before paying?
Yes, with some vendors. RefineCV gives 10 free CVs per agency with no credit card and no expiry, every feature included, and any unused free CVs carry over if you later start a paid plan. CVFormatter gives 5 free resume credits and your first branded template free, with no credit card. Allsorter's own comparison post publishes a 14-day trial with 50 uploads and unlimited users, arranged through its sales team. iReformat sets up a card-free trial after you schedule a call. HireAra states it does not offer free trials, because it prefers to run live onboarding, design support and training for every new user.
The bottom line
These two categories are not competitors. They serve different people. An AI resume optimization tool exists to help one person get one interview, and the good ones do that well. Rezi writes strong bullet points and keyword-matches a single job ad. Jobscan tells you precisely what a posting wants that a resume does not say. Teal keeps a whole job search in one place with an unlimited free tracker. Kickresume ships a large template and content library at a low published price. If you are advising a candidate on their own application, point them at those tools.
Your job is different. You take a CV a candidate wrote, put your agency's name on it, and send it to a paying client, then do it again for the next 4 candidates on the shortlist. That is a formatting and branding problem at volume, and it is what CV formatting software is built for. Judge that category on the shape of the workflow, on whether the bill follows CV volume rather than headcount, and on whether the export still parses cleanly in your client's ATS.
Be honest about the trade-offs before you buy. Allsorter leads on published security certification and ATS-native reformatting. HireAra leads on the presentation layer, with candidate microsites, engagement analytics and a published rate card. CVFormatter leads on multilingual output and anonymisation on every plan. iReformat leads on bulk uploads inside Bullhorn, which RefineCV does not offer at all. RefineCV leads on price and on control: the lowest published per-CV rate, a self-service template builder your team owns, unlimited free seats, 10 input formats, editing before export, and a real no-card free tier. Where RefineCV does not lead is integrations, since it has no ATS or CRM connection, and it formats one CV at a time.
The cheapest way to settle it is to run your own worst CV through both categories and look at what comes out.
If you are shortlisting inside the CV formatting category, see the roundup of CV formatting software for recruitment agencies, the head to head on Allsorter vs HireAra vs iReformat, and how to keep a formatted CV ATS friendly. For RefineCV itself, see what it does, transparent per-CV pricing, or the head to head pages for HireAra, Allsorter, CVFormatter and iReformat.
Put your agency's brand on every candidate CV you send
RefineCV takes the CV your candidate sent and re-renders it in your agency template, with your logo, your section order and your contact details. Start free with 10 CVs, no credit card, then $0.40 per CV or $50 a month for 200.