Best European Alternatives to Greenhouse
Looking for a European alternative to Greenhouse? Greenhouse is a popular applicant tracking system and recruiting platform, but it's based in the US and processes sensitive candidate data on American servers. For European companies that need GDPR compliance and want to protect applicant privacy, European ATS alternatives are the better choice.
We've curated the best privacy-focused recruiting platforms built in Europe. These alternatives provide powerful hiring tools while keeping candidate data protected under European law.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
Why Choose a European Alternative to Greenhouse?
Candidate Data Protection
Sensitive applicant data stays in Europe, protected by GDPR.
Works Council Ready
Built-in support for European works council requirements in hiring.
Data Retention Rules
Automatic compliance with European candidate data retention requirements.
No US Surveillance
Free from CLOUD Act affecting sensitive recruitment data.
Best European Alternatives to Greenhouse
We've curated the best privacy-focused recruiting platforms from European companies. Each alternative has been evaluated for features, privacy, and GDPR compliance.
Rexx Systems
German HR software suite for HR management, recruiting and talent management.
Teamtailor
Swedish employer branding and applicant tracking system
Recruitee
Dutch collaborative hiring software for growing companies
Personio
German all-in-one HR with powerful recruiting module
Homerun
Job pages candidates actually finish, at a published price
TalentLyft
Sourcing, tracking and scorecards from Zagreb
softgarden
Volume hiring and candidate feedback from Berlin
d.vinci
Hamburg family business selling recruiting software on its own servers
JOIN
Publish a vacancy widely, starting on a free tier
Taleez
Toulouse ATS for French SMEs, hosted in France
eRecruiter
Poland's widely used ATS from the Pracuj.pl group
Carerix
Agency software with clients, vacancies and placements
RecMan
Norwegian recruitment CRM with a lighter in-house ATS plan
Key takeaways
- Greenhouse holds ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701:2019, ISO 42001:2023 and SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports, so "it is not secure" is the wrong criticism.
- What its own documentation never names is a European region: it handles Europe through the EU-US Data Privacy Framework rather than through EU storage.
- An ATS is the one HR system holding data about people who never signed anything with you, which is why the transfer question bites harder here.
- Greenhouse does not publish prices; Recruitee publishes plans from about €199 a month and Personio from about €2.88 per employee per month.
- TPG took majority ownership of Greenhouse in January 2021, so the company behind the product is private-equity controlled rather than founder-run.
- Several of the newer entries below print an exact figure too — d.vinci from €785 a month, RecMan from €8.90 per user a month — where Greenhouse's own pricing page still asks you to talk to sales.
- Taleez names the actual French data centre (OVHcloud, Gravelines) its candidate files sit in, which is more specific than Greenhouse's own security page, which describes AWS infrastructure without naming a region.
Why people leave Greenhouse
Greenhouse is good at the thing it is famous for. Structured interviews, scorecards, interview kits and the discipline of deciding what "good" looks like before you meet anyone are genuinely better than what most European vendors ship, and teams that leave rarely say the hiring process got better afterwards.
They leave because of where the applications end up. Greenhouse Software, Inc. is in New York, its own security page describes AWS infrastructure without naming a European region to select, and states that cross-border transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The privacy policy is plainer still: the primary offices are in the United States and personal information may be processed in any of the countries where the company and its partners operate.
That lands harder in recruiting than anywhere else in HR software. A personnel file belongs to somebody who signed a contract with you. An applicant tracking system holds CVs, interview notes and rejection reasons about people who applied for a job and did not get it, gave you their data for one purpose, and retain every right to ask what happened to it.
- No European region is documented Several American vendors answer the residency question by opening an EU data centre and letting you pin your tenant to it. Greenhouse's published documentation names no such region: it describes AWS infrastructure and handles the European question through transfer mechanisms instead. That is a legitimate legal route and it is a different answer from keeping the data here, and for a procurement rule written as "stored within the EEA" it is not an answer at all.
- The transfer framework is the third of its kind Greenhouse relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, with the UK Extension and the Swiss-US version alongside it. Two predecessors of that arrangement were struck down, in 2015 and 2020, and each time the companies relying on them had to rebuild their legal basis at short notice. Nothing about the current framework is unlawful today. The point is that its durability is a decision somebody else makes, and you inherit the outcome.
- Rejected candidates are the part nobody plans for Most of the people in your ATS are people you turned down. Their data has a retention period that differs by country, they can ask for deletion, and a hiring manager who keeps a shortlist in a spreadsheet has put that data outside every control you configured. Greenhouse gives you the tools to handle this; what it cannot do is put the processing inside the jurisdiction that writes the rules.
- You cannot find out what it costs Core, Plus and Pro exist as names, and the pricing page says the figure is customised to your hiring needs. So the comparison a European buyer wants to run — this many hires a year, this many users, is it worth it — cannot be run without a sales cycle. Most of the alternatives on this page publish at least a starting price or a plan you can read before you talk to anyone, and that is a real difference in how you get to a decision rather than a talking point.
What you have to replace, not just match
Greenhouse is bought for three different reasons and the European market splits them across different products, so be honest about which one is yours.
The first is hiring discipline: scorecards, structured interview kits, defined attributes per role and the reporting that shows whether any of it improved the decision. The second is the candidate-facing surface — the careers site, the job pages, the application flow, everything that decides who bothers to apply. The third is throughput: hundreds of roles, agencies, approvals and an internal recruiting team.
Teamtailor is the strongest answer to the second and treats it as the product rather than as a template. Recruitee is the closest to Greenhouse's shape for collaborative hiring and publishes its prices. Personio replaces the ATS entirely for companies that hire occasionally and would rather have one system. None of the three matches Greenhouse's structured interviewing, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Rexx Systems | Hamburg, Germany | Quoted on request | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | Teamtailor | Stockholm, Sweden | Quoted per company | EU (Sweden) |
| #3 | Recruitee | Amsterdam, Netherlands | From about €199/month (Launch plan) | EU (Netherlands) |
| #4 | Personio | Munich, Germany | From about €2.88/employee/month | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | Homerun | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Published plans per month | EU (Netherlands) |
| #6 | TalentLyft | Zagreb, Croatia | Published plans per month | EU (Croatia) |
| #7 | softgarden | Berlin, Germany | Quoted per company | EU (Germany) |
| #8 | d.vinci | Hamburg, Germany | Applicant management from €785 per month (unlimited users and job ads); onboarding from €1,020/month; career pages from €399/month; VAT treatment not stated; one-off implementation workshops charged extra | EU (Germany) |
| #9 | JOIN | Switzerland | Free tier / paid plans per month | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #10 | Taleez | Toulouse, France | Quoted per company (size, hiring volume, modules), unlimited users and recruitments; prices excl. VAT | EU (France) |
| #11 | eRecruiter | Warsaw, Poland | START from PLN 249 per month excl. 23% VAT (up to 15 recruitment projects a year); CORE and PRIME quoted | EU (Poland) |
| #12 | Carerix | Rotterdam, Netherlands | Per user per month, quoted | EU (Netherlands) |
| #13 | RecMan | Oslo, Norway | Recruiter LITE (in-house ATS) €8.90, Recruiter (agency CRM) €115, Workforce €165, each per user per month; VAT treatment not stated | EEA, not EU (Norway) |
How each alternative compares to Greenhouse
Rexx Systems
the one that puts applicant tracking inside a wider HR and talent suite, in the cloud or on-premises
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany and Switzerland (ISO-certified data centres, as stated by the vendor); on-premises installation also offered.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001:2022 (stated by the vendor); GDPR.
Best for: Mid-sized and large employers (50 to 50,000 employees) that want recruiting to share one record with HR and talent management
Rexx Systems GmbH is headquartered in Hamburg (Amtsgericht Hamburg, HRB 78749), with offices in Vienna and Zurich. Recruiting is one of three parts of its suite, next to HR management and talent management. The recruiting side includes an applicant tracking system, a job portal, multiposting, WhatsApp applications, CV parsing, online assessments, referral management, vacancy analysis and an AI hiring recommendation.
The case against Greenhouse is the suite and where it can run. A hire flows from the applicant record into onboarding and the personnel file without a second integration, and the vendor states that it operates in data centres in Germany and Switzerland and holds ISO 27001:2022 certification. Rexx is also available on-premises, which a pure recruiting tool seldom is. It is designed for 50 to 50,000 employees and used in more than 30 countries.
Two limits to weigh. We could not find a published price, so a quote comes through a demo request, as it does with Greenhouse. And Rexx is a suite sold to employers who want HR and recruiting together. If your only problem is structured interviewing for a small team, a focused ATS from this page will be lighter.
What Rexx Systems does better than Greenhouse
- Recruiting, HR management and talent management in one suite and one data model
- Cloud in German and Swiss data centres, or on-premises, as the vendor describes it
- Multiposting, job portal, WhatsApp applications and CV parsing are part of the recruiting module
- German company with ISO 27001:2022 certification stated by the vendor
- Built for 50 to 50,000 employees rather than for small teams
Where Rexx Systems is a step down from Greenhouse
- No published price list that we could find, so you compare one quote with another
- A broader product than a company needs if it only wants an ATS
- Recruiting is one module of three, so depth in structured interviewing is not what the suite is sold on
- Smaller outside the German-speaking market than Greenhouse
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the only entry here whose applicant tracking can run on your own servers as part of a full HR suite.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Sweden). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Employers whose hiring problem starts before the pipeline does
Teamtailor AB in Stockholm sells the careers site as much as the tracking, and for a lot of employers that emphasis is correct. Greenhouse assumes the applications arrive and its job starts there; Teamtailor assumes the applications are the problem and builds the pages, the content and the employer brand that decide who bothers.
It is Swedish with EU hosting, so a European employer is contracting with a company established here and the transfer question that runs through this page does not arise. It is also one of the few European names in this category that candidates recognise outside its home market, which matters when the careers page is a public document.
Two things to plan for. The tracking underneath is competent rather than remarkable, and if you came to Greenhouse for scorecards and interview kits you will notice the difference immediately. And pricing is quoted per company at the higher end of the European market, so you are comparing one quote with another rather than gaining transparency.
What Teamtailor does better than Greenhouse
- Swedish company with EU hosting, so candidate data does not travel under a transfer framework
- Careers pages and employer brand are the product, where Greenhouse treats them as a template around the pipeline
- Editable by a marketing team without a recruiter or an implementation consultant in the loop
- Recognised by candidates across Europe, which a careers page needs and a US brand does not automatically provide here
Where Teamtailor is a step down from Greenhouse
- Structured interviewing is much lighter than Greenhouse's scorecards and interview kits
- Quoted pricing at the higher end, so you gain jurisdiction without gaining price transparency
- A smaller integration catalogue for assessments, background checks and HR systems
- Too much product for a company hiring three people a year, which Greenhouse is too
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the only entry here that treats the public half of recruiting as the product, which is the half Greenhouse was never designed to solve.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Hiring teams who want the same collaborative pipeline without a sales cycle to find out what it costs
Recruitee B.V. on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam is the most conventional choice on this page, and that is the recommendation rather than a complaint. Hiring managers are first-class users, interviewer feedback is structured, and the pipeline is shared rather than owned by a recruiter — which is the shape Greenhouse made standard.
The difference a buyer feels first is commercial. Recruitee publishes its plans, from about €199 a month, priced per company rather than per employee. Greenhouse names three tiers and quotes. For a company of fifty deciding whether an ATS is worth it at all, being able to answer that from a web page changes how the decision gets made.
On candidate data it is doing the thing this page is about: a Dutch company with EU processing, so retention periods and deletion rights for rejected applicants are handled by a vendor subject to the same rules you are. Worth knowing that it is part of Tellent rather than independent, and that the imprint lists a German GmbH alongside the Dutch B.V., so check which entity your contract names.
What Recruitee does better than Greenhouse
- Dutch company with EU processing, so candidate records stay under the law that created their rights
- Published plans from about €199 a month, where Greenhouse customises every quote
- Priced per company rather than by hiring volume, which suits an employer with an uneven hiring year
- Careers site builder and job distribution included rather than assembled from partners
- Retention and deletion for rejected applicants designed against European rules rather than adapted to them
Where Recruitee is a step down from Greenhouse
- Interview scorecards and structured hiring are thinner than Greenhouse's
- Automation features push you up the plans quickly, so the entry price is not the whole story
- Owned by Tellent rather than independent, and two entities appear in the imprint
- A smaller integration ecosystem, particularly for assessments and background checks
Standout against Greenhouse. It does what Greenhouse does at a European address with the price printed, which for most mid-sized employers is the entire argument.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union (AWS Frankfurt).
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Companies that hire a dozen people a year and re-key every one of them into an HR system
Personio SE & Co. KG in Munich is not an applicant tracking system; it is an HR platform with applicant tracking inside it, running on EU infrastructure in AWS Frankfurt at about €2.88 per employee per month. That makes it the odd entry on this page and, for a large share of the people reading it, the right one.
The argument is about what happens after the offer. Greenhouse ends at the yes: the pipeline closes, someone exports a name, and a different system starts an employee record from scratch. In Personio the candidate becomes the employee without anything being retyped, so the interview history, the signed offer and the contract sit in one file.
The limits follow directly from that. As an ATS it is a module rather than a product: lighter on sourcing, lighter on structured interviewing, and not built for a recruiting team filling a hundred roles. For a company hiring continuously it is the wrong tool. For a company hiring occasionally it removes an entire subscription.
What Personio does better than Greenhouse
- The candidate becomes an employee in the same system, where Greenhouse stops at the offer and hands over a name
- German company processing in Frankfurt, so applicant data stays inside the EU rather than travelling under a framework
- A published price per employee, and no separate ATS subscription for a company that hires occasionally
- European employment administration — contracts, working time, statutory leave — sits behind the hiring, which no ATS on this page covers
Where Personio is a step down from Greenhouse
- Recruiting is a module, not a product: sourcing and structured interviewing are much lighter than Greenhouse's
- Wrong shape for a recruiting team hiring at volume or working with agencies
- The careers site is functional rather than a selling point, which both other entries here beat
- Priced per employee, so a small team hiring heavily pays for headcount rather than for hiring
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the only entry that questions the purchase itself: for occasional hiring, the ATS was an extra system rather than a missing one.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Small teams of twenty to fifty people who hire a handful of times a year and care what the candidate sees before they apply
Homerun B.V. in Amsterdam built its applicant tracking system around the part Greenhouse treats as a template: the page a candidate actually lands on. Job pages are designed rather than generated and the application flow is short, on the premise that a bad landing page loses more hires than a weak pipeline ever will.
It is a Dutch company on EU hosting, so the transfer question this page raises about Greenhouse does not apply, and it publishes its plans per month with a free trial rather than routing you through a sales conversation for a number. Its own pricing page does not print the exact figures where this review can verify them, so treat "published" as "readable before you talk to anyone" rather than as a specific price we can quote here.
What it does not have is Greenhouse's depth. There is no interview-kit or attribute-level scorecard system, no client or agency model, and reporting is sized for a company of twenty or fifty rather than a recruiting team filling a hundred roles. For the audience it targets, that trade is the right one.
What Homerun does better than Greenhouse
- Dutch company with EU hosting, so applicant data is not routed through a US transfer framework
- Publishes its plans and offers a free trial, rather than a customised quote after a sales call
- Careers and job pages are the core product, not a template wrapped around the pipeline
- A short application flow built to convert, where Greenhouse assumes the applications already arrive
Where Homerun is a step down from Greenhouse
- No interview kits or attribute-level scorecards to match Greenhouse's structured interviewing
- Not built for high-volume recruiting or an internal team filling a hundred roles
- No agency or client-placement model
- Reporting is proportionate to a company of twenty to fifty, not enterprise analytics
Standout against Greenhouse. It puts the candidate's view first: for a company hiring a few times a year, the applicants lost to a bad job page cost more than the software does.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Croatia). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Companies too small to justify an enterprise ATS contract, who still want sourcing, a pipeline, scorecards and reporting in one product
AdoptoTech in Zagreb sells TalentLyft as close to Greenhouse's own breadth as anything else on this page: sourcing, a candidate pipeline, job posting, a careers page, structured interview scorecards and reporting, all under one roof. Where Greenhouse quotes a customised figure for that bundle, TalentLyft publishes its plans monthly and offers a free trial, which changes how a small company gets to a decision rather than just what it pays.
The gap that remains is scale and visibility rather than features. It is a smaller vendor than Greenhouse, the integration catalogue is shorter, and outside central and eastern Europe the brand carries little weight with candidates — which matters on a public careers page in a way it does not in back-office software.
What TalentLyft does better than Greenhouse
- Croatian company with EU hosting, avoiding the transfer question this page raises about Greenhouse
- Publishes its plans monthly with a free trial, instead of a quote-only sales process
- Sourcing, pipeline, scorecards and reporting bundled at a price a small company can actually plan around
- Structured interview scorecards included at every published tier, not held back for an enterprise contract
Where TalentLyft is a step down from Greenhouse
- Interview kits and attribute-level scorecards are shallower than Greenhouse's
- A smaller vendor with a shorter integration catalogue for assessments, background checks and HR systems
- Limited brand recognition outside central and eastern Europe, which shows on a public careers page
- Support is thinner than an established enterprise vendor of Greenhouse's size
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the entry on this page that tries hardest to match Greenhouse's breadth — sourcing through scorecards — while still publishing a monthly price.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Multi-site employers running high application volumes with multi-step approval processes, the same segment Greenhouse serves
softgarden e-recruiting GmbH has been building recruiting software in Berlin since 2003 — older than Greenhouse itself — and it is aimed at the same end of the market: high application volumes, multiple approval steps, and hiring processes with more than one sign-off in them. Job distribution, a careers portal, structured selection and reporting are all present, and the German market focus means it fits works-council-shaped processes more naturally than a US vendor has to bolt on.
One genuine difference from Greenhouse is that it treats candidate feedback as a product feature, surveying applicants about the process rather than leaving that as an afterthought. What it does not fix is the pricing question: softgarden quotes per company just as Greenhouse does, so a buyer gains jurisdiction here without gaining the transparency that some of the other entries on this page offer.
What softgarden does better than Greenhouse
- German company processing in Germany since 2003, so candidate data does not travel under a transfer framework
- Built for the same volume-hiring, multi-step-approval end of the market Greenhouse serves
- Candidate feedback is a built-in feature, not something added afterward
- Fit with German works-council requirements a US vendor has to adapt to rather than build for
Where softgarden is a step down from Greenhouse
- The same pricing problem as Greenhouse: quoted per company, no published figure
- Structured interviewing and scorecards do not go as deep as Greenhouse's interview kits
- Strongest in German-speaking markets; brand and fit thin out elsewhere
- Implementation is a project rather than a self-serve start
Standout against Greenhouse. It matches Greenhouse's enterprise, volume-hiring posture closely, and does it from Berlin instead of New York.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany (Hamburg): own servers administered only by d.vinci, in the pop-interactive data centre.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. ISO/IEC 27001 (since 2011).
Best for: German employers who want the vendor itself, not a hyperscaler region, running the infrastructure their candidate data sits on
d.vinci HR-Systems GmbH is a Hamburg family business with no investor or parent named anywhere on its own pages, registered at the Amtsgericht Hamburg. Where Greenhouse's security page describes AWS infrastructure without naming a European region, d.vinci names the building: its own servers, administered only by d.vinci, in the pop-interactive data centre in Hamburg.
It also does something Greenhouse does not: it publishes a starting price, €785 a month for applicant management with unlimited users and job ads. That is a real transparency win, but not necessarily a cheap one — onboarding (from €1,020) and career pages (from €399) are separate modules on top, and the implementation workshops are billed separately again, so the first year costs more than the monthly figure suggests.
On certification it holds ISO/IEC 27001 since 2011, which is real and independently audited, but it is one standard against Greenhouse's broader set of ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 42001 and SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2. The honest comparison is: more concrete about where the servers are, less broadly certified than Greenhouse, and priced at a floor that rules it out for a team hiring twice a year.
What d.vinci does better than Greenhouse
- Owns and administers its own servers in a named Hamburg data centre, unlike Greenhouse's unnamed AWS infrastructure
- Publishes a starting price (€785/month, unlimited users and job ads) where Greenhouse only quotes
- ISO/IEC 27001 held since 2011, independently renewed
- German company, German hosting — the CLOUD Act and Data Privacy Framework questions this page raises about Greenhouse do not arise
Where d.vinci is a step down from Greenhouse
- €785/month is a floor, not an introductory rate, and onboarding and career pages are extra modules on top
- A narrower certification set: one ISO standard against Greenhouse's ISO 27001, 27701, 42001 and SOC 1/2 Type 2
- No self-serve trial — 14 days of test access only after a demo
- VAT treatment is not stated on its own pricing page
Standout against Greenhouse. It names the building and administers the machines itself, which is a more concrete answer to "where is my data" than Greenhouse's security page offers.
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. European Union.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Companies hiring occasionally whose real bottleneck is getting the vacancy seen, not running a scored interview process
JOIN Solutions AG comes at recruiting from the opposite end of Greenhouse's own logic. Greenhouse assumes the applications arrive and its job starts at the pipeline; JOIN's free tier lets a company publish a vacancy, push it out to a wide set of boards and aggregators, and manage what comes back, with paid plans adding pipeline and collaboration on top.
The jurisdiction answer is more nuanced than the rest of this page. JOIN Solutions AG is Swiss, which sits outside the EU and the EEA even though Switzerland is covered by an adequacy decision — data is hosted in the EU, but the contracting entity is not EU-established, so a procurement rule that specifically requires that will not be satisfied here, though it will not be satisfied by Greenhouse either.
Where JOIN actually beats Greenhouse is price: a genuinely free tier that distributes a live vacancy, against Greenhouse's complete absence of a free option. Read what the free tier covers before assuming distribution stays free, since a recruiting free tier usually earns on paid job promotion.
What JOIN does better than Greenhouse
- A genuinely free tier that publishes and distributes a live vacancy, where Greenhouse has no free option at all
- Wide job-board and aggregator reach out of the box
- Fast to start with no implementation, versus Greenhouse's sales-led onboarding
- Data hosted in the EU even though the contracting company is Swiss
Where JOIN is a step down from Greenhouse
- Switzerland sits outside the EU/EEA, so an "EU-established" procurement rule is not satisfied here either
- Structured selection is much lighter than Greenhouse's scorecards and interview kits — JOIN solves reach, not process
- The free tier's economics rest on paid job promotion, so confirm what is actually included before assuming distribution is free
- A far smaller integration catalogue than Greenhouse's
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the only entry on this page that competes with Greenhouse on price by charging nothing at all for the basic version.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. France, on OVHcloud (Gravelines) and Amazon Web Services EMEA (France region); anonymised analytics (Amplitude) and one matching step (OpenAI) processed in the US.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, CSA STAR and SOC 2 (held by the hosting providers OVH and AWS, per Taleez terms).
Best for: French SMEs that want to point at a specific data centre rather than take a vendor's word for "Europe"
TALEEZ SAS runs from Toulouse, registered at the RCS Toulouse, with its president named in the public register and no fund or parent company above him — a more legible ownership picture than Greenhouse's TPG-controlled structure. Where Greenhouse's own security page names an infrastructure provider and stops there, Taleez's data protection page names the actual building: OVHcloud's data centre at Gravelines, with an AWS EMEA France region alongside it, and unlimited users and recruitments on every quote.
Two things temper that. The ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, CSA STAR and SOC 2 marks that appear in Taleez's own terms belong to its hosting providers, OVH and AWS, not to Taleez itself, so there is no independent audit of Taleez the company to point to — a gap Greenhouse does not have, since its certifications are its own.
And not everything stays European: anonymised analytics go to Amplitude in the United States (an EU server is only planned for the second half of 2026), and one CV-matching step sends the job title and description to OpenAI in the US, without candidate names.
On price it does not improve on Greenhouse: everything is quoted on company size, hiring volume and modules, the same "call sales for a number" problem this page criticises Greenhouse for.
What Taleez does better than Greenhouse
- Candidate files at a named French data centre (OVHcloud, Gravelines) with an AWS France region alongside — where Greenhouse's own security page names no European region
- CV matching and its AI assistant run on Mistral, inside the EU
- French company since 2013 with its president named in the public register and no fund above him, unlike Greenhouse's TPG-controlled structure
- Posts to more than 90 job boards with unlimited users and recruitments on every quote
Where Taleez is a step down from Greenhouse
- Pricing is quoted, not published — the same "call sales to find a number" problem this page criticises in Greenhouse
- The ISO and SOC certifications in its terms belong to OVH and AWS, not to Taleez itself, unlike Greenhouse's own certifications
- Anonymised analytics go to Amplitude in the United States; an EU server is only planned, not delivered
- One CV-matching step sends the job title and description to OpenAI in the US
- Structured interviewing is far lighter than Greenhouse's interview kits and scorecards
Standout against Greenhouse. It names the actual building — Gravelines — where Greenhouse's own documentation names an infrastructure provider and stops there.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Poland). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Not stated for the ATS itself; privacy policy names Oktawave, Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud as hosting providers, mostly in Poland and the EEA; AI features run on Microsoft Azure.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Polish employers already recruiting through Pracuj.pl who want the job-board multiposting to come from inside the same group
eRecruitment Solutions sp. z o.o. is wholly owned by Grupa Pracuj S.A., the listed group behind Pracuj.pl, which gives it something Greenhouse has no equivalent for in Poland: multiposting to the country's biggest job board network from inside the same corporate family rather than through an integration. As a Polish company it is also reached by Polish and EU law rather than by the US CLOUD Act that applies to Greenhouse.
Its entry-level pricing is public — START from PLN 249 a month excluding 23% VAT, covering up to fifteen recruitment projects a year — which beats Greenhouse's quote-only approach at small scale. CORE and PRIME, the tiers a team the size of a typical Greenhouse customer would likely need, are quoted, so the transparency advantage narrows as you scale up.
Where it is honestly weaker than Greenhouse is the hosting story. Greenhouse's security page at least names AWS as the infrastructure, even without a region; eRecruiter's privacy policy lists four possible hosting providers without saying which one actually runs the ATS, and states that some processors sit outside the EEA without naming them. No independent certification such as ISO 27001 is published, against Greenhouse's unusually broad set including ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type 2.
What eRecruiter does better than Greenhouse
- Polish company under Polish and EU law: the CLOUD Act exposure this page raises about Greenhouse does not apply
- Multiposting to Pracuj.pl's Polish job boards comes from inside the same corporate group rather than a bolted-on integration
- Entry-level pricing published (START, from PLN 249/month excl. VAT), where Greenhouse has no published figure at any tier
- Employee referrals and an onboarding module included in the same product
Where eRecruiter is a step down from Greenhouse
- Does not state which of its four listed hosting providers actually runs the ATS, less specific than even Greenhouse's own (incomplete) AWS disclosure
- Its privacy policy admits some processors sit outside the EEA without naming them
- No independent certification such as ISO 27001 published, where Greenhouse holds ISO 27701 and SOC 2 Type 2 among others
- CORE and PRIME, the tiers most Greenhouse-sized teams would need, are quoted rather than published
- No free trial, only a demo environment or a sales meeting
Standout against Greenhouse. It solves a problem Greenhouse cannot — native distribution into Poland's biggest job board network — while being noticeably less precise than Greenhouse about where the servers actually are.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Netherlands.
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
Best for: Recruitment agencies and staffing firms placing candidates at client companies — not employers hiring for themselves
Be honest about the fit before anything else: Carerix BV in Rotterdam is built for agencies, and Greenhouse is not. Its data model has clients, vacancies belonging to those clients, and placements with a commercial value attached — none of which an in-house team replacing Greenhouse has any use for. If you are hiring for your own company, this is very likely the wrong product, and you would be paying for a client and commission model you will never touch.
Where it earns its place on this page is for the minority of readers running a desk: an agency currently patching Bullhorn or Greenhouse-adjacent tools together with spreadsheets for the client side gets a purpose-built model that neither Greenhouse nor any employer-focused ATS on this page offers. Carerix has been doing this in the Dutch and Belgian staffing market since 2000, longer than Greenhouse has existed, from a Dutch company on Dutch hosting.
On the ordinary comparisons this page runs — pricing transparency, structured interviewing — it does not beat Greenhouse: pricing is quoted per user with no published plans, same as Greenhouse, and there is no equivalent to Greenhouse's interview kits or scorecards, because agency workflow is the whole point here, not hiring discipline.
What Carerix does better than Greenhouse
- A data model built around clients, vacancies and placements — the agency workflow Greenhouse has no equivalent for
- Dutch company with Dutch hosting, avoiding the transfer question this page raises about Greenhouse
- Two decades in the Dutch and Belgian staffing market, longer than Greenhouse has existed
- Deep customisation for how a recruitment desk actually runs
Where Carerix is a step down from Greenhouse
- Wrong product for an employer hiring in-house — no reason to choose it over Greenhouse unless you run an agency
- Pricing is quoted per user with no published plans, the same opacity this page criticises in Greenhouse
- Interface reflects its age next to Greenhouse's more modern product
- No structured interviewing depth to match Greenhouse's scorecards and interview kits
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the one entry here not actually competing with Greenhouse for the same buyer — a European alternative to Bullhorn that happens to also replace Greenhouse for agencies — and that segment difference matters more than any compliance question.
- Which law reaches it. EEA, not EU (Norway). Greenhouse is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU/EEA, on Amazon Web Services (region not named).
- Source code. Closed source, as Greenhouse is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001; SOC 2 Type 1 report.
Best for: Staffing firms and recruitment agencies first; smaller in-house teams get Recruiter LITE as a lighter, cheaper ATS-only plan
RecMan AS in Oslo is agency software first, like Carerix, but it also sells Recruiter LITE, a cut-down plan aimed at a company hiring for itself rather than for clients — so unlike Carerix it is at least a partial like-for-like option for a team leaving Greenhouse. What it does better than Greenhouse immediately is price: €8.90 per user a month for Recruiter LITE is a published figure, against Greenhouse's customised quote for every tier.
It is also the only one of these newer entries with an independent audit to point to, ISO 27001 held for five consecutive years plus a SOC 2 Type 1 report — real, but narrower than Greenhouse's own set, which adds ISO 27701, ISO 42001 and a SOC 2 Type 2 rather than Type 1. Its infrastructure runs on AWS with the region never named, only the assurance that it stays "entirely within the EU/EEA."
Two things to weigh that Greenhouse does not have as an issue. Norway is in the EEA but not the EU, which some procurement rules treat as a different thing entirely. And nobody owns RecMan on paper as far as the public record goes — the Norwegian register lists no shareholders and the vendor names none — which is less transparent than Greenhouse's ownership, publicly known to be TPG since January 2021.
What RecMan does better than Greenhouse
- Published per-user pricing (from €8.90/month for the in-house ATS plan) where Greenhouse quotes every tier
- ISO 27001 held for five consecutive years plus a SOC 2 Type 1 report — an independent audit to check
- Fourteen-day trial with no credit card, versus Greenhouse's sales-led demo process
- Infrastructure stated to run entirely within the EU/EEA
Where RecMan is a step down from Greenhouse
- Norway is in the EEA but not the EU, which some procurement rules treat differently from a US vendor like Greenhouse
- Recruiter LITE, the in-house plan, is the cut-down edition of an agency-first product — the depth sits on the agency side
- AWS is the only host and the specific region is never named, only "entirely within the EU/EEA"
- No public record of who owns RecMan AS, where Greenhouse's TPG ownership is at least publicly known
- A narrower certification set (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 1) than Greenhouse's (which adds ISO 27701, ISO 42001 and SOC 2 Type 2)
Standout against Greenhouse. It is the cheapest published price on this entire page — €8.90 per user a month — for a genuinely lighter, agency-shaped product; know what you are buying before the number sells it.
What actually breaks when you switch
Published adverts are what actually break. Every job posting you have pushed to a board, embedded on your own careers page or shared in a newsletter points at a Greenhouse application URL, and those keep collecting applications into an account you are closing. Make the list before the cut-over and repoint them in one pass, because candidates who apply into the old system after the switch are invisible to everyone.
The second is the ecosystem you forgot you bought. Assessment tools, background check providers, scheduling links, the offer approval flow and the connection into your HR system were wired into Greenhouse over years. Each one is a separate reconnection, and a few of them will have no equivalent at the other end.
Third, the migration is a retention decision in disguise. Most records in the account belong to people you rejected, each with a clock running and a right to be forgotten. Copying everything across resets those clocks by accident. Move the active pipelines and the people who agreed to stay in a talent pool, and let the rest expire where they are before you close the account.
Greenhouse is heavily certified. Is the jurisdiction point not overstated?
The certifications are real and they answer a real question. ISO 27001 covers how the company manages information security, ISO 27701 extends that into privacy management specifically, and SOC 2 Type 2 means an auditor tested the controls over a period rather than on one day. Greenhouse carries more of this than most vendors in its category, European ones included.
What none of them does is change where processing happens or which state can compel disclosure. A certificate describes how carefully a company handles data. It does not describe which government can require the company to hand it over, and those are separate questions that get answered by different documents.
So the accurate criticism is narrow: the security posture is strong, and the location of processing is what a European employer may not be able to accept. Anyone arguing the first point is arguing the wrong one.
What does the Data Privacy Framework actually mean for my candidate data?
It means the transfer of personal data to the United States has a lawful basis: the company self-certifies to a set of principles, and the European Commission has decided that this provides adequate protection. Today that is a complete answer to the legal question, and anyone telling you Greenhouse is unlawful is wrong.
It also means your legal basis depends on an arrangement between institutions rather than on where you put the data. Two earlier versions of this arrangement were invalidated, in 2015 and again in 2020, and the companies relying on them spent the following months rewriting contracts.
Whether that history matters is a judgement about risk appetite, not a technical question. A recruiting team running twelve hires a year may reasonably decide it is fine. A public body, a hospital or a defence supplier will usually decide it is not, and for them the absence of an EU region ends the conversation.
Will I lose structured interviewing if I move to a European ATS?
Some of it, and it is the honest cost of this page. Greenhouse built its reputation on interview kits, per-attribute scorecards and the reporting that tells you whether a structured process changed who you hired. The European tools here have scorecards and templates; they do not have the same depth, and they do not push you towards the discipline as hard.
The discipline, though, is mostly yours rather than the software's. Defining the attributes for a role, assigning questions to interviewers and requiring a written verdict before the debrief are practices you can run in any tool that has templates and required fields.
If your hiring quality genuinely depends on Greenhouse's implementation of this and you have evidence for that rather than a belief, weigh it seriously against the transfer question. Both are real, and this is a trade rather than an upgrade.
How do I move candidate data without making the privacy problem worse?
Start by deciding what not to bring. Every rejected applicant in your Greenhouse account has a retention clock, and a migration is the natural moment to apply it rather than to copy everything into a new system and reset the clock by accident.
Export the active pipelines and the people who consented to be kept in a talent pool. Leave the rest, and let the retention rules in the old system run out before you close the account, which is usually a period of months rather than a single cut-over.
The second half is the integrations. Job boards, the careers page on your website, calendar links, the offer approval flow and any assessment tools all point at Greenhouse. Published job adverts with a Greenhouse application URL keep collecting applications into an account you are trying to close, which is how candidates get lost during a switch.
Which one to pick
If your objection is that candidate data leaves Europe under a transfer framework rather than staying here, every alternative on this page fixes it, and the choice between them is about what kind of hiring you do rather than about compliance.
If the people you want are not applying, Teamtailor is the answer and the careers site is where the money goes rather than a bonus feature.
If you want the Greenhouse workflow at a European address with a price you can read before calling anyone, Recruitee is the straightforward swap and the one most mid-sized employers should shortlist first.
And if you hire a dozen people a year and someone retypes each of them into an HR system afterwards, Personio is the honest recommendation even though it is the weakest applicant tracking system here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Teamtailor if the reason you hire badly is that the wrong people apply, because the careers site is the product rather than a template. Recruitee if you want the closest thing to Greenhouse's collaborative pipeline with plans you can read on the website. Personio if you hire a few times a year and would rather the ATS be a module in the HR system the new starter arrives in anyway.
Its published security documentation describes AWS infrastructure and does not offer a European region to select. The European question is handled through transfer mechanisms instead: cross-border transfers are stated as subject to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension and the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework. If your requirement is that candidate data is stored inside the EEA, that is not what this provides.
It can be used compliantly: there is a processing agreement, retention tooling for candidate records, and an unusually broad certification set including ISO 27701 for privacy management. Compliance is not the same as keeping processing inside Europe, and on that second point Greenhouse relies on a transfer framework rather than on an EU region.
It does not publish a figure. The pricing page lists Core, Plus and Pro and states that pricing is customised to your company's hiring needs, so the number arrives after a conversation.
Recruitee publishes plans from about €199 a month and Personio from about €2.88 per employee per month, and several of the newer additions on this page — Homerun, TalentLyft, d.vinci and RecMan among them — publish a figure too, which is a different way of buying software rather than simply a lower price.
TPG holds majority control, taken in January 2021 through an investment by TPG Growth and The Rise Fund. Greenhouse was founded in 2012 by Daniel Chait and Jon Stross and is no longer founder-controlled. That is not a criticism of the product; it is a fact about who sets the roadmap and the renewal pricing.
Structured interviewing in depth — interview kits, attribute-level scorecards and the reporting that shows whether the structure changed the outcome — plus an integration catalogue for assessments, background checks and HR systems that no European vendor matches. If your hiring process genuinely runs on those, treat this page as a trade rather than an upgrade.
You can export it, and the better question is how much of it you should take. Most records in an ATS belong to people you rejected, each with a retention period that varies by country and a right to ask for deletion. Migrating everything resets the clock on data you were about to be obliged to remove, so move active pipelines and consented talent pools and leave the rest to expire.
Two to six weeks for a company hiring at normal volume, and the work is mostly outside the software. Rebuilding job templates and interview stages is an afternoon. Repointing every published advert, the careers page on your own website, the job board feeds and the calendar integrations is the part that takes weeks and the part that loses candidates if it is done carelessly.
Being established in Europe does not make a vendor better at this automatically, but it does mean retention and deletion were designed against the rules you are subject to rather than added for an export market. Ask any vendor, European or not, to show you where the retention period is configured, what happens when it expires, and how a deletion request is executed across pipelines, notes and email.
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