Loxo Pricing in 2026: What the "New Look" Actually Changed

Loxo repackaged its plans during 2026. The published tiers are now Core at $149 per user a month and Professional at $199, both billed annually and paid up front, replacing the earlier Basic tier at $169 with an unpriced Professional above it. Entry pricing fell and transparency improved, which is good news for buyers. What has not changed is that the capability most agencies actually want, the sourcing graph and the AI agents, sits in the higher tier, and while the included credit allowance is published, the price of raising it is set by the account team.

Key takeaways

• Loxo now publishes two real prices: Core at $149 per user a month and Professional at $199, both billed annually and paid up front, with Enterprise still custom. (Source: Loxo pricing page, checked September 2026.)

• The entry price came down. The previous published tier was Basic at $169 per user a month, so Core at $149 is a genuine reduction at the entry point.

• Transparency improved in a category where most vendors publish nothing. Professional used to be a custom quote and now carries a number.

• The catch is what sits inside Professional. The sourcing database, contact reveals and AI agents live there rather than in Core, and agent work is metered in credits: the allowance is published, the cost of raising it is not.

• Older figures are still circulating online, including a $119 Professional price and a $169 Basic tier. Both predate the repackaging, so check the vendor's own page before you budget.

Before the change: a free tier, Basic at $169, and two plans you had to ask about

To see what moved, it helps to have the old structure in view. Through the first half of 2026, Loxo's published pricing looked like this:

• A free plan for a single user, covering the core applicant tracking system and recruiting CRM.

• Basic at $169 per user a month on annual billing, reported at $209 on monthly billing, adding the sales CRM, job board posting, multiple users, dashboards, analytics, resume parsing, reporting and technical support.

• Professional and Enterprise, both custom quoted. No public number.

(Source: independent pricing trackers citing Loxo's own pricing page, checked May to July 2026.)

The structural criticism of that model was straightforward. Basic did not include AI sourcing or outreach automation, which are the capabilities Loxo is best known for. So the tier with a visible price was not the tier most agencies were shopping for, and the tier they wanted required a sales conversation to price.

After the change: Core at $149 and Professional at $199, billed annually up front

The current published structure, as reported by independent trackers checking Loxo's pricing page in August and September 2026, is:

• Core at $149 per user a month. The applicant tracking system and CRM, with AI search and unlimited jobs.

• Professional at $199 per user a month. Adds the sourcing database, contact reveals, the AI agents and API access.

• Enterprise, custom quoted. Adds the integration and compliance layer.

Both Core and Professional are billed annually and paid up front.

Two things genuinely improved here, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than looking for the negative.

The entry price fell. Basic at $169 became Core at $149, a reduction of $20 per user a month at the entry point. On a five-seat desk that is $1,200 a year.

Professional got a published number. Moving a tier from custom quote to a visible $199 is a real improvement in a category where Bullhorn, Recruit with Atlas and most enterprise sourcing tools still publish nothing at all. You can now see two real numbers before speaking to anyone.

Loxo includes free migration for Core teams of three or more seats, with guided self-serve tooling below that. Professional and Enterprise migrations are scoped as fixed packages before signing. (Source: Loxo pricing page, checked September 2026.)

Credits, up-front annual billing and reported 5% renewal rises sit outside the seat price

Where the new look changes less than it appears is in what sits outside the seat price.

Credit metering on the AI agents. Professional includes 2,500 credits per seat a month, pooled across the team and refreshed in full each cycle. Boost levels are published as amounts (2× to 5,000 credits, 5× to 12,500), but the price of a Boost is sized by the account team rather than listed. (Source: Loxo pricing page, checked September 2026.) So the published seat price settles your base capacity but not your total if your sourcing volume is high.

Annual billing paid up front. This is a cash-flow point rather than a cost point, but it matters on a small desk. Paying a full year for several seats in advance is a different proposition from a monthly bill, particularly in a quarter where placements are slow.

Reported annual increases at renewal. Multiple reviewers report automatic 5% annual price increases written into their contracts. (Source: verified customer reviews on Capterra.) The figure you sign is therefore not the figure you pay in year two or three, so factor it into any multi-year comparison.

Contact data as a separate consideration. Contact reveals are allowanced rather than unlimited, and reviewers note that data hit rates vary by market. That is worth testing on your own niches during a trial rather than assuming coverage.

The $119 and $169 figures still circulating online are from the old plans

This is the practical hazard when researching Loxo pricing right now, and it is why the year matters in any figure you read.

Several older figures are still in wide circulation: a $119 Professional price, the $169 Basic tier, and Professional estimates ranging from $250 to $400 per user a month drawn from user reports during the period when that tier had no published price. Independent reviewers checking the current page explicitly flag the retired figures as out of date. (Source: independent review of Loxo's current pricing page, August 2026.)

There is no longer a free plan. Loxo now offers a 7-day free trial with full Professional access and no credit card required. (Source: Loxo pricing page, checked September 2026.) Older sources describing a permanent free single-user tier predate the repackaging.

For a 3-to-10 seat desk: choose the tier first, then model the credits

Three practical implications if you are running a small desk.

Decide which tier you actually need before comparing anything. Core at $149 is an applicant tracking system and CRM. If you are buying Loxo for the sourcing database and the AI agents, you are buying Professional at $199, and the comparison you should be running is against that number rather than the entry price.

Model the credits, not just the seats. Ask the account team for the credit allowance included at your seat count and the cost of the multipliers before you sign. This is the single most likely source of a surprise in year one.

Check the cash-flow shape against your billing. Annual payment up front for several seats is a real commitment for an agency whose income arrives in placement-sized lumps. If that is a constraint, it belongs in the decision alongside the headline rate.

It is also fair to say who the new structure suits. If high-volume outbound sourcing is your core daily activity, Professional bundles the database, the outreach and the agents into one subscription, and the consolidation maths often works out better than assembling the same capability from separate tools.

Shortlists is $120 all in, below Core and billed monthly rather than a year up front

Shortlists is a recruiting CRM built only for 3-to-10 seat UK agencies, and it is priced on a different model rather than as a cheaper version of the same one.

Shortlists is $120 per user a month, published, with everything included: the CRM, applicant tracking, interview notetaker, client portal, business development (BD) Radar, outreach and 40 enrichment credits per user a month. There is one plan, so no capability sits in a tier above yours, and there is nothing metered by a multiplier you have to negotiate.

Against the new Loxo tiers, that puts Shortlists below Core at $149 and well below Professional at $199 on published rates. The more useful difference is structural: billing is month to month rather than annual paid up front, there is no reported renewal increase, and enrichment is part of the base price rather than an allowance to top up. Migration in is free, run by the Shortlists team rather than an external partner, with most agencies live within 48 hours, and your data stays exportable at no charge. If you are part-way through an annual Loxo term, you can use Shortlists at $40 per user a month until it ends, so paying a year up front does not lock you out of switching.

Where Loxo is the better tool is high-volume outbound sourcing from a large external database. Shortlists is built to make your own database and relationships work harder, including surfacing hiring signals before roles are posted, which is a different job. Shortlists also does not handle temporary or contract placement, so if timesheets and contractor payroll are part of your billing, neither tool is the complete answer.

The pricing model follows from how the product is built. The software carries the admin so your team keeps the work that wins placements. AI takes the admin. The craft stays with you.

Shortlists is used by 55+ UK recruitment agencies. See the Shortlists pricing page, the full Shortlists and Loxo comparison, and how free migration works.

Frequently asked questions

Build a first-year total before you compare entry rates

Build a total first-year cost for the tier you actually need, including credits, implementation and any renewal uplift, rather than comparing entry rates. Then check the contract shape: billing frequency, minimum term, notice period and exit terms.

Shortlists is built for 3-to-10 seat UK agencies doing permanent recruiting, and used by 55+ of them, at one published all-in price.

• Try it free for 14 days and price it against your current quote.

• Book a Demo and we will map your requirements against one Shortlists price.

• See BD Radar, the candidate database, the pipeline, and the full comparison pages.