Both Hire Forge AI and Manatal market themselves to small teams that want AI in their hiring process. But they solve fundamentally different problems, and choosing the wrong one means six months of workflow debt before you realise the fit was off.
A quick transparency note: this post is written by the Hire Forge AI team. We've done our best to give Manatal a fair assessment and to name the scenarios where it's genuinely the better choice. Where that's true, we say so plainly. Apply the usual scepticism.
For a broader look at the full landscape of AI recruitment tools, start with our best AI recruitment software guide for SMBs.
Hire Forge AI is a standalone AI screener (from £25/month flat, no per-user charges). Manatal is a full ATS with AI features, from $15/user/month annual. Adding AI to an existing workflow: choose Hire Forge AI. Building your first proper ATS: choose Manatal. Over half of organisations have recruiters managing 20+ open roles simultaneously (SHRM, 2025) — pick the tool that fixes your actual bottleneck.
What's the Real Difference Between Hire Forge AI and Manatal?
Over half of organisations have recruiters managing around 20 open requisitions simultaneously, according to SHRM's 2025 Recruiting Benchmarking data. That workload creates two distinct problems: pipeline management and screening quality. Hire Forge AI solves the second. Manatal solves the first, with AI features added on top.
Hire Forge AI is a standalone AI screener. It scores and ranks CVs against your job criteria. It doesn't post jobs, manage candidate pipelines, send offer letters, or track interviews. If you already have a workflow, even a shared inbox and a spreadsheet, Hire Forge AI slots in as a dedicated screening layer.
Manatal is a full applicant tracking system. It handles job posting to 2,500+ boards, Kanban-style pipeline management, candidate communication, LinkedIn enrichment, and AI-assisted candidate scoring. The AI is a feature of the ATS, not the product itself.
This distinction matters more than any feature comparison. Neither tool is "better" in the abstract. They serve different stages of different hiring workflows. A team with no ATS who's drowning in pipeline chaos will not solve their problem with Hire Forge AI alone. A team with a working ATS that can't efficiently screen 200 applications per role doesn't need to migrate to a new ATS, they need better screening.
Not sure whether you need a full ATS or a dedicated screener? See our ATS vs dedicated AI screener guide for SMBs.
How Does the Pricing Really Compare?
37% of organisations that are actively integrating generative AI in hiring save an average of 20% of their work week (LinkedIn Future of Recruiting, 2025). But the cost of getting there varies wildly depending on which tool you choose and how your team is structured.
Hire Forge AI Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Credits | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | £0 (7 days) | 100 | Full platform, no card required |
| Starter | £25/month | 350 | AI CV scoring, skill matching, filtering |
| Professional | £50/month | 1,000 | + Advanced filtering, analytics |
Pricing is in GBP. Approximate USD equivalents: Starter ~$32/month, Professional ~$64/month at current exchange rates. Credits are simple: 1 credit = 1 CV screened. There's no per-user charge. A 3-person HR team all accessing the platform pays the same flat fee as a solo recruiter.
Manatal Pricing
| Plan | Annual Billing | Monthly Billing | Active Jobs | Key Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | $15/user | $19/user | 15 | No workflow automations |
| Enterprise | $35/user | $45/user | Unlimited | Full automations unlocked |
| Enterprise Plus | $55/user | $68/user | Unlimited | + API access |
The automation wall is the critical detail here. Workflow automations, automatic stage moves, bulk email triggers, scheduled actions, are locked behind the Enterprise tier at $35/user/month (annual). A 3-person team on Professional pays $45/month but must manually manage pipeline actions. That same team on Enterprise pays $105/month to get the automations most small teams assume are standard.
Our finding: For a 3-person HR team, Manatal Professional costs $45/month on annual billing, cheaper than Hire Forge AI Professional at ~$64/month. But without automations, Manatal Professional requires manual pipeline management for every candidate movement. The moment you factor in the time cost of that manual work, the economics shift. Enterprise at $105/month brings the functionality most buyers expect when they sign up for the Professional tier.
For a full pricing breakdown across eight AI recruitment platforms, see AI recruitment software pricing 2026: what SMBs actually pay.
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What Features Do You Get with Each Tool?
61% of talent acquisition professionals believe AI can improve quality of hire, and AI-assisted tools correlate with a 9% improvement in hiring success rates (LinkedIn Future of Recruiting, 2025). But which features actually deliver that improvement depends on where AI is applied in your workflow.
| Feature | Hire Forge AI | Manatal Professional | Manatal Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI CV scoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Skill matching | Yes | Basic | Yes |
| Advanced filtering | Yes | No | Yes |
| Screening analytics | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Job board posting | No | Yes (2,500+ boards) | Yes |
| Candidate pipeline (Kanban) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Workflow automations | No | No | Yes |
| Email templates | No | Yes | Yes |
| LinkedIn enrichment | No | Yes | Yes |
| API access | No | No | Enterprise Plus only |
| Per-user pricing | No, flat fee | Yes ($15/user) | Yes ($35/user) |
| Free trial | 7 days, 100 credits | 14 days | 14 days |
| Credit-based billing | Yes | No | No |
Manatal wins on breadth. It's a complete ATS with AI added. Hire Forge AI wins on screening depth and pricing simplicity. The table isn't a measure of which is better overall, it's a map of the trade-offs.
Which Tool Has Better AI Screening Quality?
Recruiters spend 22% of their work week reviewing CVs, for a 200-application role, initial screening takes between 5 and 15 hours (Shortlistd.io, 2025). AI tools can reduce that time by up to 75%, pushing recruiter productivity from 8 to 14 roles managed per month (Second Talent, 2025). The quality of the AI screening determines whether those time savings actually translate to better hires.
Manatal's AI scoring works by matching candidate profiles against job descriptions and enriching them with LinkedIn data. On G2 it holds a 4.3/5 rating; on Capterra it's 4.6/5 across 141 verified reviews (Capterra, April 2026). User feedback is consistently positive on pipeline UX and LinkedIn enrichment. The recurring criticisms in reviews are weak reporting, inflexible search, and AI match scores that sometimes miss strong candidates.
Non-English CV handling is a real gap. Multiple Manatal user reviews flag that the AI scoring is less reliable for CVs written in non-English formats, British understatement, Dutch directness, South Asian formality, even when the content is strong. The AI was trained predominantly on English-language, North American CV conventions.
Our finding: When building Hire Forge AI's scoring model, we discovered that AI screeners trained on English-heavy datasets produce systematically lower match scores for non-native English speakers, even when the underlying skills and experience are a strong fit. We built explicit bias mitigation into our scoring to account for this. It's not a solved problem for any tool in the market, but it's worth testing directly if your applicant pool includes non-native English writers.
Screen for context, not just keywords
Hire Forge AI understands what careers actually represent—not just what parsers extract. See how contextual screening preserves signal instead of burying it.
Who Should Choose Hire Forge AI?
AI adoption among small businesses with 10–99 employees reached 31% in 2025, up from just 8% in 2022, a 288% increase in three years (Second Talent, 2025). Most of that growth isn't teams replacing their entire recruitment stack. It's teams adding a focused AI layer to an existing process.
Hire Forge AI fits best in three situations.
You already have a workflow and want better screening. If you're using a free ATS, a job board's built-in tracker, or even email and spreadsheets, Hire Forge AI adds CV scoring without requiring a system migration. You keep what works and upgrade the screening step specifically.
Your hiring volume is inconsistent. Credit-based pricing means you pay for what you use. A team hiring intensively for 3 months then going quiet for 6 months doesn't keep paying for unused capacity. Monthly flat-fee tools still charge during quiet periods.
You want screening depth over ATS breadth. The Professional plan (1,000 credits/month) handles high-volume screening with detailed skill matching and filtering. If screening quality is the bottleneck, not pipeline management or job posting, dedicated screening beats ATS AI features.
For a complete walkthrough of how AI CV screening works in practice, see our complete guide to AI resume screening for SMBs.
Who Should Choose Manatal?
The average cost-per-hire for non-executive roles is $5,475, and time-to-fill averages 44 days nationally (SHRM, 2025). When those numbers apply to your business, having a proper ATS that tracks every candidate, every stage, and every communication isn't a nice-to-have. It's the infrastructure that makes repeatable hiring possible.
Choose Manatal in these situations.
You have no ATS and need one now. If you're tracking candidates in a spreadsheet and losing track of where people are in the process, Manatal Professional gives you a functional ATS with AI scoring for $45/month (3 users, annual). That's a reasonable entry point.
You consistently manage 10–15 active roles. Manatal's Professional plan caps at 15 active jobs. If you're near that cap regularly, the per-job limits fit your volume. Teams with variable volume may find credit-based tools more efficient.
Your applicant pool is primarily English-language CVs. Manatal's AI scoring performs best with English CVs. If your applicants write primarily in English and follow conventional CV formats, the accuracy concerns above are less relevant.
You want a 14-day trial before committing. Manatal's trial is generous, 14 days, no credit card required. If you want to test a full ATS before paying anything, that's a meaningful advantage.
One important warning on automations: Don't sign up for Manatal Professional expecting automations. They're not there. If workflow automations are part of your plan, budget for Enterprise at $35/user/month from day one.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on team size and which Manatal tier you need. Manatal Professional for a 3-person team costs $45/month (annual billing), lower than Hire Forge AI Professional at ~$64/month. But Manatal Professional has no workflow automations. Manatal Enterprise with automations costs $105/month for 3 users, which is more expensive than Hire Forge AI at any tier. Hire Forge AI's flat fee also means no per-user scaling as your team grows.
No. Hire Forge AI is a dedicated CV screener, not a full ATS. It doesn't post jobs, manage candidate pipelines, send offer letters, or track interview stages. Teams that need a complete ATS with job posting, pipeline management, and candidate communication need Manatal or a comparable ATS. Hire Forge AI works alongside an existing ATS or as a standalone screening layer for teams using email-based recruitment workflows.
Yes. Manatal offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. All features available on the plan you select are accessible during the trial. Hire Forge AI also offers a free trial, 7 days with 100 CV screening credits included, no card required. AI adoption among small businesses (10–99 employees) reached 31% in 2025 (Second Talent, 2025), and both trial structures are designed to let teams test before committing.
The most common complaint from Manatal users is the automation wall. Workflow automations, automatic pipeline moves, bulk email triggers, scheduled follow-ups, are locked behind the Enterprise tier at $35/user/month (annual). Professional at $15/user/month requires manual action for every pipeline stage change. For a small team expecting to automate routine candidate communication, this is a meaningful gap that only surfaces after sign-up. Manatal holds a 4.6/5 rating on Capterra (Capterra, April 2026), but this issue appears across multiple reviews.
If you have no ATS: start with Manatal Professional ($30/month for 2 users, annual billing). It gives you pipeline management, job posting, and basic AI scoring within a tight budget. If you already have a workflow and screening quality is the bottleneck: Hire Forge AI Starter (£25/month) adds AI CV scoring without requiring a system change. Recruiters using AI tools manage 14 roles per month compared to 8 without AI assistance (Second Talent, 2025), the right choice is whichever tool closes your actual gap.
The Verdict
These two tools solve different problems. The right choice comes down to which problem you actually have.
Choose Hire Forge AI if:
- You already have a recruitment workflow and want to improve screening quality
- Your hiring volume varies month to month (credit pricing fits)
- You want a flat fee regardless of how many team members need access
- Screening depth matters more to you than pipeline management features
- You hire from a diverse, international applicant pool
Choose Manatal if:
- You have no ATS and need one from scratch
- You consistently manage 10–15 active roles and need structured pipeline tracking
- Your applicants write primarily in English using conventional CV formats
- You want a 14-day trial before committing any budget
- You're prepared to budget for Enterprise ($35/user) if automations are part of your plan
Neither tool does everything. Knowing which problem is yours is the decision.
For a side-by-side comparison of eight AI recruitment tools across features, pricing, and use case fit, see our best AI recruitment software guide for SMBs.
About the author
Ben Lovis·Founder, Hire Forge AIA professional recruiter who built and deployed AI-powered screening systems internally before founding Hire Forge AI. He now designs AI recruitment systems for hiring teams worldwide.
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