GoodHire Pricing in 2026Three packages, one quiet acquisition, and a lot of stale numbers
GoodHire lists three background check packages: $29.99, $59.99, and $94.99 per check. Almost every comparison site you will find still quotes a mid tier at $54.99 and a top tier at $79.99. Those packages do not exist anymore. Here is what GoodHire charges today, what gets added on top, and why the price sheet now looks exactly like Checkr's.
GoodHire packages at a glance
$29.99
per check, starting from
$59.99
per check, starting from
$94.99
per check, starting from
Package contents and prices as published on GoodHire's pricing page in August 2026. Third-party access fees are billed separately. Confirm current rates with GoodHire before you commit.
How GoodHire structures its pricing
GoodHire sells background checks by the check. You pick a package, order it against a candidate, and pay when the report runs. No platform fee is advertised on the self-serve packages, no setup fee, no stated annual minimum. That model is why GoodHire won a lot of small business accounts: a four-person company can run one check on a Tuesday without a contract or a procurement cycle.
The split point is 50 checks a year. Below that, GoodHire steers you to custom packages you assemble yourself. Above it, you get pre-set packages and a custom quote from sales. Both paths land on the same three tiers underneath, with more than 100 add-on screening options bolted on.
Screening is regulated, not administrative. TheFair Credit Reporting Actsets the rules for consent, adverse action notices, and disputes. TheEEOClimits how a criminal record can factor into your decision. GoodHire runs the workflow. The legal exposure stays with you.
This piece is the budget view. For the process itself, read our guide torunning a pre-employment background check, and for the wider market seethe background check vendors worth shortlisting. One question here: what does GoodHire actually cost when the invoice clears?
Check your source
Most published GoodHire prices are two package names out of date
Search for GoodHire pricing and you will get a consistent answer from the review sites: Basic+ at $29.99, Essential at $54.99, Professional at $79.99. It is consistent because they copy each other. It is also wrong. GoodHire renamed its top tier from Professional to Complete and repriced two of the three packages, and the aggregators never followed.
Common aggregator listings
Entry
$29.99
Mid
$54.99
Top (Professional)
$79.99
GoodHire's own pricing page
Entry
$29.99
Mid
$59.99
Top (Complete)
$94.99
The gap on the top package is $15 per check. At 300 checks a year that is $4,500 of budget that never existed.
I check vendor pages directly for exactly this reason. Software directories monetise listings, not accuracy, and a background check package that changed name and price is nobody's priority to update. The entry tier happens to still be right at $29.99, which makes the stale numbers more dangerous, because the one price you might spot-check is the one that did not move.
The practical damage is small per check and real at volume. A company modelling 300 Complete checks a year off a directory listing budgets $23,997 and gets billed $28,497 before a single court fee lands. That is a rounding error to a large enterprise and a genuine problem for a 40-person company.
The Checkr overlap
GoodHire and Checkr now charge the same prices for the same packages
Checkr acquired GoodHire from Inflection inApril 2022, in a deal reported at roughly $400 million. At the time both companies said customers should expect no immediate change to product, brand, or pricing. Four years on, the pricing has converged completely.
Published self-serve pricing, August 2026
Line item
GoodHire
Checkr
Entry package
$29.99
$29.99
Mid package
$59.99
$59.99
Top self-serve package
$94.99
$94.99
Package names
Basic / Essential / Complete
Basic / Essential / Complete
High volume
Custom quote
Custom quote
Same three package names. Same three prices to the cent. Same package contents, down to the ordering of the searches. The GoodHire site carries a GoodHire, A Checkr Company lockup, and its help centre documentation now redirects to Checkr's support domain. Two storefronts, one engine behind them.
My view is that this simplifies a decision most buyers overthink. Teams spend a week building a GoodHire versus Checkr comparison matrix when the answer at list price is that there is nothing to compare. What still differs is the interface, the onboarding, which ATS integration is already built for you, and what a salesperson will do on a volume quote. Ask both for a quote and let them bid.
It also means the olderCheckr pricingcomparisons floating around, including the tier names Basic+ and Professional, describe a price list neither brand uses now. If a vendor comparison you are reading still shows those names, it predates this convergence.
The fee stack
Why GoodHire says starting from instead of naming a price
Read the pricing page closely and every tier says starting from. That phrasing carries weight. The package price pays GoodHire for running the search. It does not pay the county clerk, the DMV, the registrar, or the lab that holds the underlying record. Those parties set their own fees, and GoodHire passes them through at cost without a markup.
County court access is the biggest swing. Some counties publish records online and charge nothing. Others make a clerk pull a physical file and bill for the privilege. The fee repeats per county, and the Essential and Complete packages both include unlimited county searches, which sounds generous until you notice that unlimited describes GoodHire's service, not the courts' fees. A candidate who has lived in five counties in seven years triggers five separate access charges on one report.
The honest planning answer: you cannot forecast this from a resume, so do not try. Take the package price, add a working buffer, and reconcile monthly. For teams hiring in known geographies, pull three months of actual invoices and calculate your own average. That number beats any published benchmark because it reflects the counties you actually hire in.
Verifications behave differently but hurt in another way. Employment and education checks depend on a human at a school or a former employer responding, which adds days rather than dollars. Screening already averages a few business days through a consumer reporting agency, and verifications sit at the slow end. If your offer timeline is tight, read our notes onreducing time to hire, because this stage is a common silent delay.
Package breakdown
What each GoodHire package actually screens for
Match the package to the risk profile of the role, not to your budget. Over-screening burns money and slows the offer. Under-screening leaves you exposed on the one hire where it matters. The annual employer survey run by theProfessional Background Screening Associationputs the share of US employers who screen in the mid-90s as a percentage, so the real question is depth, not whether.
Basic at $29.99: identity and national database
Basic runs an SSN trace to confirm identity and surface address history, a national criminal database search, a global watchlist check, and the sex offender registry. It is a reasonable floor for low-risk hourly roles where nobody drives, handles money, or works unsupervised with vulnerable people.
The weakness is the national database. It is wide and shallow, assembled from sources that update on their own schedules, and it can miss or misattribute county-level records. Notice that Basic is also the only tier without identity verification. Treat it as a first pass, not a finished answer.
Essential at $59.99: identity verification plus county criminal
Essential is the package most employers should default to. It adds identity verification and unlimited county criminal searches, and the county search is the one that matters most for accuracy, because it pulls from the court of record rather than an aggregated database. Retail, operations, hospitality, and field roles belong here.
This is also where pass-through fees concentrate, since every county searched can carry an access charge. Budget Essential as a range, not a number. Pairing records with a human signal helps too, which is why our guide toconducting reference checksis worth reading alongside this one.
Complete at $94.99: state and federal criminal coverage
Complete layers unlimited state criminal searches and a federal criminal search on top of Essential. Federal is the one people forget. Federal courts handle a distinct category of offence, including most fraud, embezzlement, and interstate crimes, and none of it shows up in a county search. For finance, leadership, and anyone with access to money or sensitive data, that gap is the whole point of paying more.
Worth flagging what Complete does not include: education and employment verification are add-ons at every tier, not bundled into the top package. If you are hiring for a role where a claimed degree or a claimed five years somewhere matters, price the verification separately rather than assuming the $94.99 covers it.
Fit analysis
When GoodHire is the right call and when it is not
GoodHire works well when
- You hire at small or mid-market volume and want per-check billing with no contract
- You want to self-serve and get a first check running the same day
- Your roles are mostly hourly or operational, where Basic and Essential cover the real risk
- You want FCRA consent and adverse action workflow handled inside the product
- You value a simple interface over a dedicated enterprise account team
GoodHire strains when
- Your finance team needs a fixed per-check cost that pass-through fees make impossible
- You screen heavily outside the US, where per-country pricing and turnaround both stretch
- You hire across many high-fee court counties and the variance breaks your model
- You need custom adjudication matrices and white-glove enterprise support out of the box
- You need bundled verifications and assumed the top package already included them
The cheapest lever here is not the vendor. It is how many checks you run. Screening is a small line insidecost per hire, but it is one of the few you control precisely, because you decide when in the funnel the check fires. Teams that screen early, before interviews narrow the field, pay to investigate people they were never going to hire.
Order the check at the offer stage, on the finalist, afterpre-employment testingand interviews have done their job. AnAI-native ATSthat triggers screening at that exact point is the cheapest screening strategy available, and it costs nothing to adopt. TheBLS JOLTS seriesgives a sense of how much hiring volume this compounds across in a normal quarter.
Buyer checklist
Questions to ask before you sign with GoodHire
Sign-up takes minutes, which is the appeal and also the trap. These questions surface the costs that show up in month two rather than on the pricing page.
For the counties I hire in most, what do court access fees typically run per search?
Which searches are inside the package price and which are billed per use?
What does education and employment verification cost as an add-on at each tier?
At what annual volume do I move to a custom quote, and what discount comes with it?
What is the realistic turnaround for my package, including verifications, not the marketing number?
How are adverse action notices and FCRA disputes handled inside the product?
Does the ATS integration let me order and read results without leaving the candidate record?
Given the Checkr relationship, will you match a Checkr quote for the same package?
The last question is the one nobody asks. Two brands under one owner, quoting the same list price, both wanting the logo. Say so out loud and see what happens to the number. For where the check belongs in the sequence, our guide tothe steps in a hiring processlays out the order, andATS integrationscovers how to wire the results back into your pipeline.
Run fewer checks, not cheaper ones
Prepzo uses AI screening and AI interviews to narrow your field before the offer stage, so you only pay to background check the finalist you actually intend to hire. Lower screening spend, cleaner pipeline, faster offers.
Try Prepzo freeFrequently Asked Questions
How much does GoodHire cost per background check in 2026?
GoodHire publishes three packages: Basic starting from $29.99 per check, Essential starting from $59.99, and Complete starting from $94.99. The wording on the pricing page is starting from, not flat, because third-party access fees are billed on top of every package.
Why do other sites list GoodHire Essential at $54.99 and Professional at $79.99?
Those are older package names and older prices that review aggregators never refreshed. GoodHire's current packages are Basic, Essential, and Complete at $29.99, $59.99, and $94.99. If you are budgeting from a comparison site rather than the vendor page, you are likely $15 per check short on the top tier.
Is GoodHire the same company as Checkr?
GoodHire is a Checkr company. Checkr acquired GoodHire from Inflection in April 2022 in a deal reported at around $400 million. Both brands still sell separately, but the package names and per-check prices are now identical, and GoodHire's help documentation redirects to Checkr's support domain.
Does GoodHire charge a monthly subscription or setup fee?
GoodHire's published pricing is per check with no advertised monthly platform fee, setup fee, or minimum on the self-serve packages. Employers running fewer than 50 checks a year build custom packages. Above 50 checks a year, GoodHire points you toward pre-set packages and a custom quote.
What are GoodHire pass-through fees and how much do they add?
Pass-through fees are charges from courts, DMVs, schools, and past employers that hold the records. GoodHire bills them at cost with no markup. County court access fees commonly run from nothing up to about $40 depending on the jurisdiction, and they repeat for every county a candidate has lived in, so a multi-county history can add more than the package price itself.
Should I choose GoodHire or Checkr?
At list price the decision is not about money, because the packages cost the same. Pick based on the interface you prefer, the ATS integration you already have, and which sales team gives you a better volume quote. My honest read is that most teams should get a quote from both and treat them as one vendor with two front doors.
Resources & Further Reading
Related Guides
- Checkr Pricing: Real Cost Per Background Check
The other half of the same company
- How to Run a Pre-Employment Background Check
Consent, compliance, and adverse action steps
- Employment Background Check Cost
What the wider vendor market charges
- Best Background Check Companies for Employers
Shortlist beyond GoodHire and Checkr
External Sources
- GoodHire: Pricing and Packages
The only price list that is actually current
- Checkr: Pricing and Packages
Compare the two side by side yourself
- CFPB: Fair Credit Reporting Act (Reg V)
Consent, adverse action, and dispute rules
- EEOC: Arrest and Conviction Records Guidance
Limits on using criminal history in hiring
