Giig vs Bullhorn: which recruitment CRM makes sense for a small agency?

By Luke, founder of Giig · Updated October 2026 · Prices checked against public pricing pages

Bullhorn is the big name in staffing software. It’s been around since 1999, it’s used by thousands of agencies, and if you’ve worked at a mid-size or large recruiter there’s a decent chance you’ve used it (and have opinions about it).

Giig is the opposite end of the scale. It’s a UK-built recruitment CRM and ATS for independent recruiters and small agencies, with a free plan, published per-user pricing and no contracts. We’re tiny compared with Bullhorn – I’m one of the people who answers the support emails.

So this isn’t a fair fight on feature count, and we won’t pretend it is. The real question is: if you’re a 1–20 person agency, which one is the better fit? Here’s an honest answer, including where Bullhorn wins.

Giig vs Bullhorn at a glance

Prices exclude VAT/sales tax. Competitor details come from their public websites and review sites as of October 2026. Things change, so check before you sign anything.

Pricing: what a 3-person agency actually pays

Here’s the bit Bullhorn can’t really compete on. Every Giig price is sat on the pricing page for anyone to see: free for one user, then Starter £12.50, Plus £37.50 and Giig AI £49.17 per user per month on annual billing (+VAT), a little more if you pay month to month. No implementation project, and nobody needs to “scope your requirements” before telling you what it costs.

Bullhorn now publishes two entry prices, which is more than it used to. Starter is $99 per user per month and is aimed at 1–2 users. Core is $165 per user per month and adds the marketplace, custom fields and workflows, LinkedIn integrations and the email sidebar. Everything above that – Pro (which is where the recruitment CRM, AI search and match, automation and AI CV formatting live) and Max (agentic workflows, AI outreach) – is quote-only.

Quick back-of-a-napkin sum for a three-person agency:

• Bullhorn Core: 3 × $165 = $495 a month (about $5,940 a year), before any add-ons, and that’s without the Pro-tier CRM and AI features.
• Giig Plus: 3 × £37.50 = £112.50 a month billed annually. Bump everyone to Giig AI and it’s 3 × £49.17 = £147.51 a month, including the Claude connector.

Third-party write-ups (CostBench, 100Hires, Spott and others) also flag extras on larger Bullhorn deployments – implementation, customisation, training and automation add-ons. Your mileage will vary, and a small agency on Starter or Core may never see most of them. But it’s worth asking for the full, all-in number in writing before you sign.

Features: where Bullhorn wins (and it does)

Let’s be straight about this. Bullhorn is a much bigger platform than Giig, and for some agencies that matters a lot.

• Contract and temp back office. Timesheets, pay & bill, invoicing, onboarding and 100+ VMS integrations. If you’re placing dozens of contractors every week, this is Bullhorn’s home turf and Giig doesn’t do it.
• Marketplace. 300+ partner integrations. Whatever obscure tool you use, there’s probably a Bullhorn connector for it.
• Scale. Bullhorn is built for agencies with lots of desks, lots of permissions and lots of reporting layers.
• Heavyweight AI agents. Bullhorn’s Amplify range covers sourcing, screening, scheduling and outreach agents – though most of it sits in the quote-only tiers.

If those are deal-breakers, go with Bullhorn. Honestly.

Where Giig wins for small agencies

Small agencies don’t usually leave Bullhorn because it lacks features. Review sites and alternatives articles keep coming back to the same handful of reasons: it can feel slow and clicky, there’s a learning curve, and the total cost creeps up once you add the bits you actually wanted. On Capterra, “value for money” is its lowest-scoring category (3.7/5).

That’s the gap Giig was built for:

• Simple to run. Drag-and-drop pipelines for jobs, interviews and business development. You can be working in it the same day, without a project plan.
• Price you can see. Every plan is on the website. No quote, no “discovery call”.
• No lock-in. No annual contract. If Giig stops being right for you, export your data and go – no exit fee.
• Built for one to twenty people. We’re not trying to be an enterprise platform. That’s a feature, not an apology.
• Support from humans. Not a ticket queue. Usually me or Andy.

AI and Claude: the biggest difference right now

Bullhorn has invested heavily in AI with its Amplify agents, and they’re impressive on paper. The catch for a small agency is that most of it sits in the quote-only Pro and Max tiers, and it’s Bullhorn’s AI working inside Bullhorn.

Giig takes a different approach. Instead of building our own chatbot, we plugged Giig into Claude, which is probably already the best AI assistant you’ve got open in another tab.

The Giig AI plan includes a native MCP connector that lets Claude work directly inside your Giig account. So instead of paying for a quote-only agent tier, you use the Claude subscription you’ve probably already got. Ask it to pull every candidate you’ve placed with a client, draft the shortlist email and log it against the job. It can read and write candidates, jobs, contacts, companies, notes and tasks, and you decide what each role is allowed to touch. New to MCP? Here’s our plain-English explainer.

As of October 2026 we couldn’t find an official Bullhorn MCP connector for Claude (there are third-party ones). If that changes, we’ll update this page.

Switching from Bullhorn to Giig

If you’re thinking of moving, the usual steps are:

• Check your Bullhorn renewal date and notice period, so you don’t accidentally roll into another term.
• Start on Giig’s free plan to kick the tyres.
• Choose how to bring your data across. A CSV import of your candidates, contacts, companies and jobs is free on any paid plan. Or, if you want everything, we can do a full restoration of your database from an SQL or .bak backup file. That’s a paid service – contact the team for pricing.
• We’ll tell you exactly what’s involved up front, before you commit.

The verdict

If you’re running a big contract or temp business, Bullhorn is still one of the safest choices in the market, and Giig isn’t trying to replace it there.

If you’re a solo recruiter or a small perm-focused agency who wants something simple, cheap, contract-free, and that works properly with Claude, Giig is the better fit. Try the free plan and you’ll know within a day.

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