Review
Jobscan measures one real thing. It is not the thing the marketing says.
Jobscan compares a resume against one job description and returns a percentage. That comparison is genuinely useful and the tool is well built. The claim wrapped around it — that the percentage predicts how a particular employer's applicant tracking system will treat you — is the part we would not pay for, and it is the part with published evidence against it.
Everything on this page was read on 21 August 2026, and every claim links to the page it was read on. Prices and features in this market move monthly, so check the date before you rely on it.
The short version
Jobscan Corporation is a Delaware company in Seattle that has been shipping since January 2014 and was bootstrapped from a $35 start. It is one of the oldest products in this category and nothing about it is a scam.
What you get for $49.95 a month is a keyword-gap check: paste a resume and a posting, and it tells you which terms in the posting are missing from the document, weighted by the ones it thinks matter. As a proofreading step before you send something, that is worth doing and the free tier gives you five of them a month.
The reason we would not subscribe is the promise on top. Jobscan says it "reverse-engineered all the top ATS" and detects which system a company uses. A 2024 paper in the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research tried to reproduce that and reported that naming the target company changed nothing in the result. Separately, when Enhancv interviewed 25 recruiters in late 2025, 23 of them said their systems do not automatically reject anybody. So the number is a keyword overlap score, and it is best used as one.
The other thing to know before you pay: the refund window is two calendar days from the start of a billing period, the plan must be unused in that period, and there is a 3.5% fee on the refund itself.
What it actually is
One comparison, metered, with a builder around it.
A resume against one posting, scored out of 100
You paste both; it runs what it calls over 30 checks and returns a match rate. Generating the report and seeing the initial score is free, and Jobscan recommends aiming for at least 75%.
Jobscan, resume scanner page read 21 August 2026The score's actual ingredients, which Jobscan publishes
In its own order: hard skills, education level when a degree is specified, job title, soft skills, then other keywords. Its help centre also says word count and measurable results are not factored in at all — so a resume can be badly written, unreadably long and score well.
Jobscan help centre, how the match rate works read 21 August 2026A scan is any comparison, including a re-check
Editing your resume and scanning it again spends another scan. That matters on the free tier, because the natural way to use this tool — change a line, check the number, change another — is exactly the loop the meter counts.
Jobscan help centre, what counts as a scan read 21 August 2026Five free scans a month, which roll over to a cap of five
They land on your join-date anniversary and stop accumulating at five, so a month you do not job-hunt does not bank you anything for the month you do.
Jobscan help centre read 21 August 2026A free builder and tracker, and paid Auto Apply on top
The resume builder is free and unlimited with nine templates. Auto Apply, added in June 2026, is sold in credit packs — 5 for $8.50, 10 for $15, 25 for $35 — with two free credits topped up monthly, one credit per job.
Jobscan, resume builder page read 21 August 2026
The claim underneath the number
What Jobscan says it does, and what two independent sources found.
This is the only part of Jobscan worth arguing about, so here are the sentences rather than our summary of them. The first two are Jobscan's own.
Jobscan's home page
“Jobscan reverse-engineered all the top ATS”
Jobscan's help centre, on what the algorithm is based on
“Keyword presence, Keyword frequency and density, Exact-match keywords, Resume content parsing, Match scoring”
The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, testing whether naming a target employer changed the result
“a lack of evidence to support Jobscan's claimed ability to tailor feedback to specific companies' ATS”
Enhancv, after interviewing 25 recruiters about automatic rejection
“The ATS systems that I've worked with don't automatically disposition people—we have to go in and do it.”
Read together, these say the tool measures keyword overlap and the overlap is not a verdict anybody's software is about to deliver. That is still worth knowing — a posting asking for Terraform six times and a resume that never says it is a real gap. What it is not is a pass mark, and treating it as one is how people end up rewriting a good resume until it reads like a search query. Our own keyword finder does the same comparison, free and without an account, precisely because we do not think it is worth a subscription.
Price
One subscription, and a refund window measured in hours.
Jobscan's pricing page redirects to a JavaScript application, so the figures below are the ones Jobscan prints about itself on its promotions page and in its own comparison posts.
| Plan | Price | Where we read it |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Jobscan help centre read 21 August 2026published by the vendor |
| Premium, monthly | $49.95 a month | Jobscan's own comparison post read 21 August 2026published by the vendor |
| Premium, quarterly | $89.95 a quarter | Jobscan, promotions page read 21 August 2026published by the vendor |
The quarterly plan opens with a seven-day free trial, and the trial places a temporary $1 authorisation hold rather than a charge. Skipping the trial early does not save you anything — Jobscan's own policy says the full quarterly plan is charged immediately when you opt out of it.
Refunds are the part to read before you buy. Jobscan's cancellation policy allows a dispute only within 2 calendar days of the start of a billing period, only if the service went unused in that period, and takes a fee of 3.5% of the original payment. Cancelling on its own issues nothing.
Whether there is an annual plan depends on which Jobscan page you read. Its own February and March 2026 comparison posts say annual is "not currently offered"; a June 2026 post on the same blog quotes a monthly-equivalent annual rate. We could not resolve it, so we have not printed a yearly price.
Fit
Who should and should not buy it.
Worth your money if
- You are applying at volume to large employers and want a quick check that you have not missed the obvious terms in a posting.
- You are changing field, where the vocabulary gap between what you did and what the posting asks for is the actual problem.
- You want the free builder and tracker and will use the five scans as a monthly sanity check rather than as a workflow.
- You will treat the percentage as a to-do list and stop reading it once the list is empty.
Not your product if
- You believe the score predicts whether a company's software will reject you. The strongest published test of that claim could not reproduce it.
- You are in a field judged on a portfolio, a publication list or a security clearance, where the document is not the filter.
- You want the writing itself improved. Jobscan says outright that word count and measurable results are not part of the score, so nothing about the sentence you wrote is being assessed.
- You want to iterate. On the free tier every re-check costs a scan, which is the loop, not an accident of it.
- A two-day refund window with a 3.5% fee is not a purchase you are comfortable making.
Is Jobscan legit?
Yes, and it is the oldest product on this page.
Jobscan Corporation is a real Delaware company operating out of Seattle since January 2014, and the complaints that recur about it are about billing rather than about the product working.
Its founders published their own account of starting it: James Hu had the idea while job-hunting in 2013, and Michael Lee, an engineer from Google, joined in 2015. TechCrunch covered the launch in 2015 when it had scanned 100,000 resumes and was bootstrapped.
The unflattering evidence is worth printing beside that. Its Better Business Bureau profile carries a C- with five complaints and a note about not responding to one of them, and its SmartCustomer profile — the review site formerly called Sitejabber — sits at 3.2 out of 5 across roughly 1,700 reviews, where the recurring theme is charges after cancellation.
We have not quoted Trustpilot or G2. Both refused us, and reprinting a rating we could not read would be the same shortcut we are criticising elsewhere on this page.
- Legal entity
- Jobscan Corporation, a Delaware corporation with offices at 89 Yesler Way #203, SeattleJobscan, SaaS agreement read 21 August 2026
- Founded
- Idea in October 2013; launched January 2014; bootstrapped from a $35 startTechCrunch read 21 August 2026
- Founders
- James Hu, and Michael Lee, an engineer of eight years at Google, from 2015Jobscan, the founders' own account read 21 August 2026
- Better Business Bureau
- C-, not accredited, five complaints, one unansweredBetter Business Bureau read 21 August 2026
- SmartCustomer, formerly Sitejabber
- 3.2 out of 5, across about 1,700 reviewsSmartCustomer, formerly Sitejabber read 21 August 2026
- Refunds
- Within 2 calendar days of a billing period start, unused only, minus a 3.5% feeJobscan, cancellation policy read 21 August 2026
- Auto Apply
- Credit packs from $8.50 for 5, two free credits topped up monthly, one credit per jobJobscan, Auto Apply page read 21 August 2026
- The core claim
- "Reverse-engineered all the top ATS" and detects which one a company usesJobscan, home page read 21 August 2026
- What the algorithm is, per its own help centre
- Keyword presence, frequency and density, exact matches, parsing and scoringJobscan help centre, what the algorithm is based on read 21 August 2026
- Independent test of that claim
- Naming a target company produced no change in the evaluation (Purdue, 2024)Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, 2024 read 21 August 2026
- What recruiters say about automatic rejection
- 23 of 25 interviewed said their systems do not auto-reject on formatting or contentEnhancv, 25 recruiters interviewed read 21 August 2026
Alternatives
What else does this job.
The honest first answer is that the check itself does not need to be a subscription.
Our keyword finder, free and without an account
Paste a posting and it splits the requirements into required and preferred and names the terms it uses. Paste your resume too and it shows which of those terms are missing. Same comparison, no meter, no card.
Open the keyword finderTeal, if you also want the tracking
Its free tier shows the top five keywords from a posting; the full list and the match score sit behind Teal+. Closer to a filing cabinet with a keyword feature than to a scanner.
Read our Teal reviewJobright, if the problem is finding jobs at all
A matching feed with autofill and an agent that submits. A different job entirely — it will not tell you what a document is missing.
Read our Jobright reviewCV Rocket, if the document is the problem
Ours, and deliberately last. We do not score a resume you already have; we write one for the single posting you approve, from your career history, and 25 independent reviewers read it before you do. One payment, no subscription. If all you wanted was a keyword check, take the free tool above and keep your money.
How it works
We compete with Jobscan and you should read this page knowing that. Everything factual above links to the page we read it on, including the parts that are good for them.
Questions people search for.
Is Jobscan legit?
Yes. Jobscan Corporation is a Delaware company operating from Seattle, launched in January 2014 and covered by TechCrunch in 2015. It has a C- at the Better Business Bureau and 3.2 out of 5 on SmartCustomer, where the recurring complaint is billing after cancellation rather than the product not working.
How much does Jobscan cost?
$49.95 a month, or $89.95 a quarter with a seven-day trial that places a temporary $1 authorisation hold. The free tier gives five scans a month, which roll over to a maximum of five.
Is the Jobscan match rate accurate?
It accurately measures keyword overlap between your resume and one posting, weighted by hard skills, education, job title, then soft skills. It does not measure how a particular employer's software will treat you: a 2024 Purdue undergraduate research paper testing that claim found naming a target company changed nothing in the result, and Jobscan's own help centre describes the algorithm in terms of keyword presence, frequency and exact matches.
What match rate should I aim for?
Jobscan recommends at least 75%. Treat it as a checklist rather than a threshold — its own documentation says word count and measurable results are not part of the score, so a high number says nothing about whether the resume reads well.
Does an ATS automatically reject your resume?
Mostly not. When Enhancv interviewed 25 recruiters in late 2025, 23 said their systems do not automatically reject candidates on formatting or content, and only two had threshold rules at all. An applicant tracking system is primarily a database recruiters search.
Can you get a refund from Jobscan?
Only within 2 calendar days of the start of a billing period, only if you did not use the service in that period, and a fee of 3.5% of the original payment is deducted. Cancelling a plan does not issue a refund by itself.
Is there a free Jobscan alternative?
Our keyword finder runs the same comparison — a posting's required and preferred terms against your resume — with no account, no meter and no card. It is free because we do not think a keyword check is worth a monthly subscription.
A score tells you what is missing. It does not write the line.
We watch 667,633 live postings and write one CV for the single job you approve — from your career history, not from your old resume rearranged. 25 independent reviewers read it before you do, and it is one payment rather than a subscription.