A small agency can draft job adverts, write outreach, summarise intake calls and tidy candidate notes on free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini plans, plus a free notetaker such as Fathom. Pay when you need shared team context, candidate data kept off consumer accounts, or screening at volume, and never let any tool reject candidates automatically.
Two things limit the free route. None of the big chat assistants publishes a message count for free users, so you find the cap by working. And candidate CVs are personal data, which free consumer plans were not built to hold. The safe pattern is to put role facts, not people, into free tools, and to keep every hiring decision with a person. The sections below set out what free covers, using an agency's week as the example.
Which recruitment jobs free tools handle, in order of safety
Sort jobs by whether they need candidate data. The ones that don't are the natural home for free tools; the ones that do need a paid plan, anonymising, or a person doing the work.
| Job | Free tool that can do it | Candidate data involved | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job advert from an intake call | Free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini; Recruit CRM's free job description generator | None: role facts only | Low |
| Interview questions and a scorecard from a job spec | Free chat assistants; Recruit CRM's free question builder | None | Low |
| Outreach message variants for a role | Free chat assistants; Recruit CRM's free outreach email generator | None if you use [first name] | Low |
| Boolean search strings from a brief | Free chat assistants | None | Low |
| Candidate update and rejection-reason templates | Free chat assistants | None | Low |
| Summary of an intake call with a client | Fathom Free, Fireflies Free, Otter Basic | A client contact's voice and company details | Medium: consent and retention |
| CV summary for a client | Free chat assistants, after anonymising | Yes | Medium to high |
| Interview notes with a candidate | A notetaker, with the candidate's agreement | Yes, including voice | High |
| Matching CVs to a brief with a score | Recruit CRM's free screener, Truffle's trial, Metaview Free sourcing | Yes | High: bias, never for automatic rejection |
Notice that the low-risk rows are the ones that eat the most recruiter time: adverts, outreach and templates. If you want more depth on prompts for those, the ChatGPT prompts for intake, outreach and shortlists and the Claude version for specs and outreach go further than this tutorial does.
What each free plan actually caps
I read each vendor's pricing page in early November 2026. The pattern is that the chat assistants hide their limits and the specialist tools state them, usually in minutes, credits or profiles.
| Tool | Free allowance, as the vendor states it | What runs out first |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Free | $0; no message count published; 3 file uploads a day; Projects hold 5 files | The daily file uploads |
| Claude Free | Limited usage every five hours and every week; up to 5 projects | Long chats and large files, which drain usage fastest |
| Gemini Free | No number on the plans page; the paid tiers are described as two or four times Free's usage | Unknown, so measure it |
| Fathom Free | Unlimited recordings and transcriptions, instant AI call summaries; a bot-free option (in beta, on Mac) | Nothing quickly; advanced summaries and action items are paid |
| Fireflies Free | Unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, 400 minutes of storage per team, 20 AI credits | Storage: about 13 half-hour calls |
| Otter Basic | 300 minutes per user a month, 30 minutes per conversation | The monthly minutes: ten half-hour calls |
| Recruit CRM free hiring tools | Job description, interview question and outreach generators plus a resume screener; no account, but you enter an email to see results | Daily credits that refresh every 24 hours; the number isn't stated |
| Metaview Free | AI sourcing: the first 100 profiles sourced free | The 100 profiles; the page doesn't say whether it renews |
| Truffle trial | 7 days, 30 credits, no card; one credit screens one resume | 30 credits: one role's pile of applications |
Two of those rows deserve a second look. The Recruit CRM tools are free in exchange for an email address, so expect follow-up from a vendor selling a CRM, and don't paste a real CV into any free web form without reading what it does with the text. And the Truffle and Metaview offers are trials of paid screening products, not free tiers in the sense of permanent. They are useful for finding out whether you want the product, not for running an agency.
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Buy nowA four-person agency's week on free plans
The example agency has four recruiters and six live roles. The next table prices a typical week's low-risk work, with before and after times that are my assumptions for illustration: they are not measured results, so time your own team for a week before you trust them.
| Task | Per week | Minutes each, before and after | Minutes saved | Free tool |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job adverts from intake notes | 6 | 25, then 10 | 90 | A free chat assistant |
| Outreach message variants | 60 | 4, then 2 | 120 | A free chat assistant |
| Client intake call write-ups | 8 | 12, then 5 | 56 | Fathom Free |
| Candidate update messages | 30 | 3, then 1 | 60 | A free chat assistant |
| Total | 326 (about 5.4 hours) |
Now see where the free caps bite. Eight half-hour calls a week is 240 minutes, or about 960 a month. Otter Basic's 300 minutes would be gone in the second week. Fireflies Free's 400 minutes of team storage would hold about 13 calls, under two weeks of work. Fathom Free states no minute limit, which is why it is the natural choice for this job, though its summaries are the basic kind. For the chat assistants, the cap is invisible until you hit it, so log how many drafts you get through on each in a day and you have your real number.
The money side is simple. 326 minutes a week over about 4.3 weeks is roughly 23 hours a month, and at an assumed $30 an hour that is about $700 of time. A business chat plan for four seats costs $80 on annual billing or $100 monthly, which is 11 to 14 per cent of that figure. Even if the real saving were a third of my estimate, about $234, the seats would cost 34 to 43 per cent of it. The reason to pay for the seats is therefore not the time. It is that the paid plan removes the free-tier data risk, which the next sections cover.
Three prompts for the safest jobs, with what comes back
A job advert from intake notes
The rule that keeps this safe and useful is to tell the model what to do when facts are missing. Without it, a model fills gaps with plausible numbers.
Write a job advert of about 250 words for a warehouse operations supervisor at a client I'll call "a mid-sized logistics company".
Use only the facts below. If something is missing, leave a [PLACEHOLDER] rather than inventing it.
Facts: [paste duties, must-haves, nice-to-haves, hours, location type, process; no client name]
Rules: plain language, no age, gender or nationality cues, list only requirements the job truly needs, end with how to apply.An illustrative answer, written by me to show the shape:
Warehouse Operations Supervisor. A logistics company is looking for a supervisor to lead a day-shift team. You will plan daily pick-and-pack schedules, keep the team's safety checks up to date and report weekly figures to the site manager. You will need experience leading a warehouse team and a working knowledge of inventory software; a forklift licence is useful but not essential. Hours are Monday to Friday, 6am to 2pm, on site. Salary: [SALARY RANGE]. To apply, send your CV and a short note on a time you improved a process to [APPLICATION ROUTE].
What you would fix: check every claim against the intake notes, because models like to add a team size or a number of years that the client never gave. The slip I would watch hardest is a preference hardening into a requirement. If the notes say "forklift licence preferred" and the advert says "required", candidates without one never apply, and you won't know why the pile is thin. Leave salary and application route as placeholders until a person fills them.
Then check the wording. Adverts written by models, like adverts written by people, drift into coded language that puts off some groups. Run this swap list over any draft; the tutorial on job adverts without biased language goes through more.
| If the draft says | Consider |
|---|---|
| Young, energetic team | A team that works at pace |
| Digital native | Confident with modern software |
| Rockstar, ninja | Experienced; say what they will do |
| Native English speaker | Fluent English; state the level the job needs |
| Recent graduate | Early in your career, only if you can justify the limit |
Outreach in three tones
Write three versions of a first message of about 70 words to a candidate for the role below: one direct, one warm, one curious.
Use [first name] and [your name] as placeholders.
Do not claim to have read their profile or admired their work.
Include the salary range and one sentence on why the role might suit someone with [skill].
End with an easy opt-out line.
Role facts: [paste role facts only]One illustrative version of what you might get:
Hi [first name], I'm recruiting for a warehouse operations supervisor with a logistics client: day shifts, on site, [SALARY RANGE]. It tends to suit people who already lead a small team and want more say over safety and scheduling. If that sounds close to what you do, I can send the details. If now isn't the time, tell me and I won't message again. [your name]
What you would fix is the thing models do unprompted: invent a hook. "I loved your recent project" is a claim about the candidate that the model can't know, and the prompt forbids it for that reason. Keep the opt-out line, and keep a record of who asked not to be contacted again.
Call notes into a brief
Turn these call notes into a brief with headings: must-haves, nice-to-haves, deal-breakers, salary range, hiring process and timeline, questions still open.
Mark anything the notes don't say as UNKNOWN. Do not infer.
Notes: [paste notes with the client's company name removed]A good answer has several UNKNOWN markers. Illustratively: timeline stated as offers by the end of next month; process stated as two interviews, the second with the site manager; budget UNKNOWN; deal-breakers UNKNOWN. Those markers are your questions for the next client call. If a model returns a brief with no gaps from a page of rough notes, it has filled them with guesses. The job intake form tutorial shows how to fill a fuller form from the call.
Where free plans stop being safe with candidate data
A CV holds a name, contact details, work history and often a photo, a date of birth or a home address. Pasting that into a free consumer chat puts it in an account built for individuals, and the retention rules differ by tool. ChatGPT's Temporary Chat is not used for training but may be kept for up to 30 days. Gemini's temporary chats are kept for up to 72 hours. Anthropic's pages say data can be kept for up to five years if its model-improvement setting is on. Each consumer plan lets you switch training off, but the labels move around, so check the current screen and treat a settings screenshot as out of date within weeks.
You have three options for CV text. Don't use AI on it. Anonymise it first. Or move to a business plan, where ChatGPT Business and Claude Team both list $20 a seat a month on annual billing, $25 monthly, with two seats as a minimum, and both say business content is not used for training by default. For HR teams weighing the same question about staff records, the free AI for HR professionals tutorial covers it from the employer's side. If you choose to anonymise, this is the minimum:
| In the CV | Before it goes into a free tool |
|---|---|
| Name | Replace with [CANDIDATE] |
| Email, phone, social links, address | Remove entirely |
| Photo | Remove |
| Date of birth, age, nationality, marital status | Remove, and don't let them influence a decision |
| Employer names | Replace with [EMPLOYER A], [EMPLOYER B] unless the brief depends on them |
| Hobbies, memberships, volunteering | Remove anything that could reveal religion, health or politics |
| Skills, job titles, durations, achievements | Keep: this is what the task needs |
Even then, a distinctive work history can identify a person to anyone who knows the sector, so anonymised is not the same as safe. It is a reduction in risk, not a removal. And a notetaker adds a separate problem, because it records a human voice. Tell candidates before you record, explain what the notes are for, and take a clear yes on the call. Fathom's free plan offers a bot-free option that its pricing page marks as a beta for Mac, which is one way to avoid a visible bot joining the call, but consent is still yours to obtain. The note-taker consent tutorial has wording for it.
No automated rejections: write the rule down
Free scoring tools tempt a small agency, because a match score from a pile of 200 CVs looks like a shortcut. A score from a model is an opinion with no explanation, and it can reflect patterns in how people write CVs rather than how well they would do the job. Recruitment is one of the places where some regulators and lawmakers treat automated decisions as high risk, with notice or audit duties in some places, so check the rules where your candidates live. Whatever the rules say, the safe line for a small agency is simple: AI may draft and summarise; people decide. Here is a policy paragraph you could adapt.
AI tools may help draft adverts, messages and summaries. No tool may decide who is rejected, shortlisted or ranked. A recruiter reads every application that is turned down and records the reason in the candidate record. Candidate CVs go only into the agency's paid no-training plan or into an anonymised form, never into free consumer accounts. Candidates are told when a call is recorded or summarised by an AI tool and may say no.
If you do use any AI-written summary or ranking to help a person decide, test it first. Take ten anonymised CVs, run each through the tool, then run each again with only the first name changed to one that suggests a different gender or background. If the summaries or scores differ in tone or number for any pair, the tool is not safe to use for ranking. My threshold would be identical results on at least nine of the ten pairs, but that is my rule of thumb and not a standard. The bias test checklist for small agencies sets out a fuller routine, with the checks to repeat when the tool or its settings change.
When free stops being enough: what to buy first, with prices
Pay in this order: data protection first, time-savers second, scoring tools last. The prices below are the vendors' list prices as I read them in early November 2026, so confirm the billing period before you compare.
| The need | Paid step | List price | What it fixes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keep candidate data off consumer accounts | ChatGPT Business or Claude Team | $20 a seat a month annual, $25 monthly; two seats minimum | No training on business content by default, one workspace for the agency |
| Meeting notes past the free caps | Fireflies Pro or Otter Pro | $10 or $8.33 a seat a month annual; $18 or $16.99 monthly | Unlimited AI summaries and more storage on Fireflies; 1,200 minutes a month on Otter |
| Sourcing past the first 100 profiles | Metaview Pro | $100 per user a month | 200 profiles sourced a month |
| Screening at volume | Truffle Starter or Core | $49 a month; $99 annual or $119 monthly | A monthly credit pool of 200 or 600, instead of the 30-credit trial |
| A system of record with AI built in | Recruit CRM Pro | From $95 per user a month, with a 30-day trial | Candidate records, pipelines and AI features in one place |
The last two rows deserve a warning. A paid screening tool is still a tool that scores people, so the no-automated-rejection rule applies to it just as it does to a free one. Paying doesn't make a score more reliable; it makes it more convenient. Buy those only after the first two rows are in place and the agency has a written policy and a bias check it repeats.
Free-tier traps to avoid
- A trial is not a free plan. Truffle's seven days and Recruit CRM's 30 days end, and Metaview's first 100 profiles may not renew. Put the end date in the calendar.
- Free in exchange for an email. Recruit CRM's free tools ask for an address before showing results. That is a fair trade for a job-ad draft and a poor one for a real CV.
- Caps nobody publishes. The chat assistants don't state free message counts, so measure them on a busy day before you build a process on them.
- Settings that drift. Training switches and retention options change. Check them each quarter and when a plan is renamed.
- One shared login. A team passing round a single free account mixes candidate data, loses the audit trail and makes consent impossible to track. Give each person an account or move to a business plan.
Start this week with the three low-risk jobs: adverts, outreach and call-to-brief. Time them before and after, as in the table above, and check the output against the notes each time. After a month you will know which free plan hit its cap first, whether the saving is real, and whether the next step is a business plan seat or nothing at all.
Free AI for recruiters: what agencies ask
Can a free AI tool screen CVs for me?
A free tool can summarise a CV or compare it with a brief, but a score is a guess, not a decision. Never let a tool reject candidates automatically. A person should read each application that is turned down, keep the reason, and run a bias check on any ranking before relying on it. Some places also regulate automated hiring decisions, so check the rules where your candidates live.
Is it safe to paste CVs into free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini?
Not with identifiers left in. Consumer plans have a model-training switch, but retention differs: ChatGPT's Temporary Chat can be kept up to 30 days, Gemini's temporary chats up to 72 hours, and Anthropic says data can be kept up to five years if its model-improvement setting is on. Remove names, contacts and photos first, or use a business plan for identifiable candidate data.
Do free AI notetakers need candidate consent?
Yes. Tell the candidate before you record, say what the notes are for, and get a clear yes on the call. Some notetakers join as a visible bot, and Fathom's free plan offers a bot-free option that is still in beta. Recording rules differ between places, so keep your own policy and don't rely on the tool's default settings.
What is the first upgrade worth paying for?
A shared business chat plan, because it removes the biggest free-tier risk rather than adding a feature. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team both list $20 a seat a month on annual billing ($25 monthly) with two seats as a minimum, and both say business content isn't used for training by default. Screening and sourcing tools come last.
Further reads
- Is AI CV Screening Fair? Bias Checks Every Recruiter Should Run — Bias tests to run before trusting any AI ranking.
- AI Sourcing Tools for Recruiters: Seat Costs and Consent Rules Compared — Paid sourcing tools compared on seat cost and consent.
- AI Boolean Search Generator for Recruiters: Prompts and Checks — Prompts that turn a brief into search strings.
- Recruitment CRM AI: Candidate Records, Duplicates and Follow-Up — Candidate records, duplicates and follow-up inside a CRM.
- AI Staffing Best Practices: A Checklist for Placements and Candidate Data — A checklist for placements and candidate data.
- How Recruiters Use AI to Write Candidate Summaries Clients Read — Write candidate summaries clients actually read.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: pricing pages for ChatGPT, Claude, Fathom, Fireflies, Otter, Metaview, Truffle and Recruit CRM, including Recruit CRM's free hiring tools page; Google and OpenAI data-controls information.