Dover vs Lever: Which Recruiting Platform Is Better? (December 2025)
Dover
December 8, 2025
•
3 mins
Lever is a talent acquisition system used primarily by mid-size and growing companies, though some startups use it as well. Launched in 2012, Lever has become one of the more recognizable names in recruitment tech.
The core product, LeverTRM (Talent Relationship Management), combines applicant tracking system functionality with CRM features adapted for recruiting. This lets you manage both active candidates in your pipeline and passive prospects you're nurturing for future roles.
Lever covers the full recruiting lifecycle: candidate sourcing, interview stage tracking, scheduling coordination, and offer approvals. The system includes analytics dashboards, customizable workflows, and integrations with other HR tools.
The tool is designed for companies with dedicated recruiting teams or HR departments who will actively manage the system and drive hiring efforts.
Dover takes a different approach to recruiting with a free ATS paired with access to a marketplace of vetted recruiters who work as an extension of your team.
The ATS covers candidate management basics, while the recruiter marketplace handles time-intensive work like sourcing qualified candidates, conducting initial screens, and guiding prospects through your interview process.
This hybrid model lets you manage what you want in-house through the ATS, then bring in recruiting expertise by the hour when you need extra support on a particular role or during a hiring sprint. You're not locked into either DIY software or expensive agency contracts.
Dover is built for startups and growing companies making their first 100 hires, where budgets are tight and recruiting teams are small or nonexistent.
Lever's LeverTRM combines ATS and CRM functionality with customizable pipeline stages, automated email campaigns, and calendar-synced scheduling. The system includes resume parsing that extracts candidate data into structured profiles and works well for teams wanting a mature recruiting software with built-in CRM for nurturing passive candidates.
Lever runs on a subscription model at $6 to $8 per employee per month. Features are bundled into add-ons without transparent pricing tiers, requiring a sales conversation to get accurate quotes. Lever supports e-signature through integrations with tools like DocuSign and Adobe Sign, allowing teams to send and track signed offer letters from within Lever.
Dover's ATS is free with unlimited users and jobs. The system includes AI-powered resume screening that automatically scores and ranks candidates, one-click posting to 100+ job boards, and automated scheduling with customizable templates. You also get a no-code careers page builder, employee referral tracking, and an AI interview notetaker that transcribes calls and completes feedback forms automatically.
The Chrome extension lets you find candidate emails on LinkedIn and send personalized outreach instantly, making proactive sourcing faster without requiring expensive third-party sourcing tools.
Recruiting Support and Service Model
Lever provides an ATS and CRM without recruiting services. You handle sourcing, outreach, screening, and interview coordination yourself. This works for companies with dedicated recruiters or HR teams who can manage daily sourcing on LinkedIn and candidate communication. Without that capacity, you'll need to hire external recruiting agencies.
Traditional recruiting agencies charge 20-25% of first-year salary on contingency. For a $120,000 hire, that's $24,000 to $30,000 per placement. You also manage separate vendor relationships outside your ATS.
Dover combines software with on-demand recruiting expertise. When you need help, you work with one dedicated recruiter from our marketplace who learns your hiring needs and integrates with your team. They handle sourcing, outreach, initial screens, and coordination inside the same ATS you use.
There are no retainers or long-term commitments. Engage a recruiter for one role or scale up during hiring sprints, then scale back when needs change. You're not paying for unused capacity or hiring full-time recruiters for temporary surges.
Reporting and Search Capabilities
Lever's reporting is strong but may require higher-tier plans or BI tools for fully customized data extraction. Teams that need specific metrics or tailored reports often hit walls with the preset dashboards, making it difficult to track recruiting performance beyond standard views.
The search functionality supports keyword and Boolean matching, though some teams may find the filtering options less flexible than specialized sourcing tools when filtering through large candidate databases. Teams needing detailed recruiting metrics or sophisticated search queries find these limitations restrictive.
Dover delivers real-time analytics across your entire recruiting funnel. The reporting and analytics dashboards show all submitted candidates as well as hiring data across all jobs.
Every recruiter on Dover's marketplace displays actual cost-per-hire data, giving you transparent pricing information before making hiring decisions. This visibility into both recruiting metrics and marketplace performance creates accountability that goes beyond what software-only solutions offer.
Why Dover Is the Better Choice
Lever supports hiring needs for over 5,000 companies and provides solid ATS functionality for organizations with dedicated recruiting teams and larger budgets. Companies with dedicated talent acquisition departments may find value in Lever's CRM features for nurturing passive candidate relationships.
Dover works better for most startups and growing companies by removing the barriers that make traditional ATS solutions inaccessible. The free, full-featured ATS combined with on-demand access to vetted recruiters solves two problems: expensive software costs and expensive agency fees.
Transparent pricing, unlimited usage, and flexible recruiting support make Dover the more practical solution for companies in their first 100 hires who need to move quickly without breaking the bank. Because Dover brings software and recruiting help into one place, small teams can ramp up hiring when needed and pull back just as quickly. This keeps overhead low and gives founders room to focus on product, customers, and day-to-day growth without sacrificing candidate quality or momentum.
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