Original observation, one date, every page saved
We found no public paid price for 4 of 12 pre-employment assessment products
A pricing transparency index built the slow way: on 2 September 2026 we checked seller-controlled pricing and commercial pages for 32 study products and four appendix products, signed out, from the United States, and recorded what an anonymous buyer could see. This page gives the method, the roster and all 36 rows.
Searching for an assessment product’s price often leads to plan names without amounts and then to a form. We wanted to measure that pattern, so we counted it on one day and saved the pages we read.
The numbers
On 2 September 2026, 4 of the 12 pre-employment assessment products classified as pure-play in Capterra’s category showed no public paid price to an anonymous US visitor. That is 33 percent. The four are Criteria, eSkill, Wonderlic Select and Vervoe. The other 8 showed an amount, and 8 of the 12 could be bought without a sales call.
That first sentence is designed to be quoted because its denominator was fixed before any price was coded: a category list was pulled from Capterra on 29 July 2026 and filtered to include assessment products rather than applicant tracking systems with a test attached. The method lists the filter and all thirteen exclusions so readers can audit or dispute the classification.
The two supplementary cohorts are reported separately because they were selected using different criteria. Cohort 2 contains 17 products for which Google Ads reported monthly search volume of at least ten for a query combining the product name with pricing, price or cost in either roster pull; 13 of the 17 showed no public paid price. Because selection is based on cost-query demand rather than a market roster, that share describes only this cohort. Cohort 3 contains the 3 incremental products from the earlier frozen DISC comparison; all 3 showed an amount on 2 September 2026.
Across all 32 products, 17 showed no public paid price and 15 showed one. Of the 15 that showed one, 12 could be bought without talking to anyone.
How to cite this page
Quote the headline sentence with the date and a link, and it stays checkable:
On 2 September 2026, 4 of 12 pure-play pre-employment assessment products on Capterra showed no public paid price to an anonymous US visitor (SharpAssessment, Assessment pricing transparency index, https://sharpassessment.com/assessment-pricing-transparency/).
If you need a single figure for the wider set, use “17 of 32 products studied” and say that the wider set includes products selected for having cost-related search demand. Both numbers are recomputed from the row data on this page by a script; if the rows change on the quarterly recheck, the sentence changes with them and the change log below notes the date.
Method
Unit of observation. We treat each independently purchasable assessment product brand as one unit of observation and use pages from the company that sells it today. We use Talogy’s site for Caliper and HighMatch’s for Berke; Everything DiSC and PXT Select are two Wiley brands sold separately, so each has its own row. SharpAssessment publishes this page and is not included in any denominator.
Roster, locked before any price was coded. The roster has three incremental cohorts, with each product counted once in the first cohort in which it appears:
- Cohort 1, the headline denominator. Capterra’s pre-employment testing category contained 25 listings when pulled on 29 July 2026, of which 12 offered assessments as their main product. The other thirteen were excluded with reasons recorded at the time: isolved (HR suite, assessment one feature of dozens), Manatal (ATS), Hireology (ATS with HR and payroll), Wizehire (ATS with DISC+ as a feature), CareerPlug (ATS), Keka (HR suite), Mitratech TalentReef (ATS), Oorwin (talent suite), Relias (healthcare training), IdealTraits (ATS), EasyHire (video interviewing and pre-screening), SkillPanel, formerly Devskiller (post-hire skills mapping), QuestBase (general test builder). Two borderline products from that pull were retained: HackerRank (pure-play, technical segment) and Discovered (listed in four Capterra categories, primarily sells tests; the product site uses the name The Hire Talent).
- Cohort 2 contains 17 products with their own cost-related search demand: any product for which a query of the form “product pricing”, “product price” or “product cost” carries Google Ads volume of ten or more in either our 29 July or our 2 September pull. Generic category queries do not qualify a product. Gallup CliftonStrengths has such demand but its buyers are individuals and coaches, so it is excluded as consumer-facing.
- Cohort 3 contains 3 products carried over from the DISC comparison on this site. That comparison’s table was frozen on 30 July 2026 independently of any price outcome.
Four more products were read the same day but qualify for no cohort (Equip, Adaface, Canditech, Thomas International). They appear in an appendix and in no denominator.
Definition. “No public paid price” means that on 2 September 2026 an anonymous US visitor could find no currency-denominated amount for access to the employer-facing assessment product on a page the seller controls, without creating an account, submitting personal data or contacting sales. These rules applied. A $0 plan alone is free-only, not a paid price. “From $X” counts as a public paid price and is flagged from-price, with quote-only higher tiers noted. An amount shown one step into checkout before account creation counts; an amount visible only after login is account-gated. Candidate preparation, certification and training courses, implementation fees, ROI calculator examples, discounts and third-party listings never qualify. Regional prices are recorded as seen from the US, with no currency conversion. “Buy without a sales call” is recorded separately from whether a price is public. The page says “we found no public paid price”, not “the seller publishes no price”, because a page we could not reach is a limit of the method, not a fact about the seller.
Status codebook. Public paid price: a currency amount for the employer product on the seller’s page. From-price: the seller states a starting amount (“starts at”, “from”), whether or not higher tiers are priced; flagged so that a reader can see which rows rest on a floor. Free-only: a $0 plan and no paid amount anywhere. Account-gated: an amount seen only after login or registration; used only where such an amount was actually observed, never inferred. No public paid price: none of the above. Unresolved: the seller’s pages could not be read on the observation date; the product stays in its denominator and is named. Amounts that never qualify: candidate preparation, certification and training, implementation fees, ROI calculator examples, discounts, and any figure on a page the seller does not control.
Procedure. For each product, we first checked the /pricing URL. If it returned a 404 or redirected, we checked the plans, subscription or product page returned by Google for “product pricing”. When the first page reached was a home page, we checked one further seller-controlled commercial page. The pages checked are recorded in each row. Using a signed-out session in the United States, we fetched and saved the pages on 2 September 2026. Fourteen pages rendered their plan cards with JavaScript, split amounts across elements or blocked automated fetches (HR Avatar, HackerRank, Discovered, Criteria, Vervoe, HireVue, HighMatch, Xobin, Mercer Mettl, eSkill, Thomas International, Wonderlic Select, The Predictive Index and SHL’s online store). We opened those pages in a browser the same day and transcribed them; for those rows, the transcript rather than the HTML is the evidence. Checkout depth was one step: a “Buy now” that shows an amount before an account is created counts. SHL’s online store shows a product list, a registration prompt and a basket note about tax, but no amount to a signed-out visitor. Because no amount was observed, the row is coded no public paid price rather than account-gated. No product was unresolved.
Counting. The headline denominator comprises all 12 products in cohort 1, including any unresolved row; the numerator is the number of rows coded no public paid price, account-gated or free-only. Cohorts 2 and 3 and the appendix are outside the headline. The counts on this page are produced by a script from the row data, one row per product with status, amount, unit, purchase gate, pages read and evidence, and every quarterly recheck reruns the same script on the same rows.
The table
Cohort 1, the headline denominator: Capterra pre-employment testing category, pure-play, 12 products
| Product | Status on 2 September 2026 | Lowest public amount and unit | Buy without a sales call | Pages read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TestGorilla (our page) | Public paid price | $142 a month, $1,704 billed annually (Core); Free plan $0 with 10 credits a month | Yes | testgorilla.com/pricing/ |
| Criteria | No public paid price found | None found | No | criteriacorp.com/plans-and-pricing, criteriacorp.com/request-pricing |
| eSkill | No public paid price found | None found | No | eskill.com/subscription-options |
| Wonderlic Select (our page) | No public paid price found | None found | No | wonderlic.com/select-hiring-assessment/, wonderlic.com/pricing/ (404) |
| TestDome | From-price (a starting amount is public) | $100 for 5 candidates ($20 each), down to $7 each at 600 | Yes | testdome.com/pricing |
| EmployTest | From-price (a starting amount is public) | $199 for 5 test credits | Yes | employtest.com/employtest-pricing/ |
| HR Avatar | Public paid price | $50 for one candidate credit; $350 for 10 | Yes | hravatar.com/pricing |
| Discovered (The Hire Talent) | Public paid price | $25 shown for the smallest credit package (10 Essentials credits selected; the page does not state whether that is per credit or per pack); Unlimited plan $117 a month billed annually ($1,400 a year) for 1 to 25 employees; free plan $0 | Yes | preemploymentassessments.com/pricing/ |
| Prevue Assessments | From-price (a starting amount is public) | $195 a month (Essentials, 1 to 25 employees) | Yes | prevuehr.com/pricing/ |
| HackerRank | Public paid price | $79 a month, $948 billed annually (Starter, 60 candidate attempts a year) | Yes | hackerrank.com/pricing/ |
| Vervoe | No public paid price found | None found | No | vervoe.com/pricing/ |
| Evalart | From-price (a starting amount is public) | $32 a month (plans starting); $136 a month for 50 candidates | Yes | evalart.com/pricing/ |
Cohort 2, incremental supplement: products with their own cost-shaped search demand, 17 products
| Product | Status on 2 September 2026 | Lowest public amount and unit | Buy without a sales call | Pages read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hogan (our page) | No public paid price found | None found | No | hoganassessments.com/, hoganassessments.com/assessments/ |
| The Predictive Index (our page) | From-price (a starting amount is public) | $10,000 a year (Talent plan) | No | predictiveindex.com/plans/ |
| HireVue (our page) | No public paid price found | None found | No | hirevue.com/pricing |
| Caliper (Talogy) | No public paid price found | None found | No | talogy.com/en/talent-management-solutions/assessments/caliper-personality-assessment/, calipercorp.com/getunlimited/ |
| Korn Ferry Assess | No public paid price found | None found | No | kornferry.com/capabilities/talent-suite/korn-ferry-assess, kornferry.com/capabilities/talent-suite |
| Berke (HighMatch) | No public paid price found | None found | No | forms.highmatch.com/pricing/, highmatch.com/berke-assessment/ |
| Harver | No public paid price found | None found | No | harver.com/pricing/ (404), harver.com/, harver.com/assessments |
| iMocha | No public paid price found | None found | No | imocha.io/pricing (redirects to /schedule-a-demo), imocha.io/ |
| Testlify (our page) | Public paid price | $139 a month, $1,668 billed annually (Starter, 100 credits a year) | Yes | testlify.com/pricing/ |
| SHL | No public paid price found | None found | Not determined | shl.com/products/, online.shl.com/us/en-us/products/productselection |
| HiPeople | No public paid price found | None found | Not determined | hipeople.io/pricing (404), hipeople.io/, hipeople.io/assessments |
| Xobin | No public paid price found | None found | No | xobin.com/pricing/ |
| Bryq | Public paid price | $69 a month, $828 a year (1 to 15 employees) | No | bryq.com/pricing |
| PXT Select (our page) | No public paid price found | None found | No | pxtselect.com/ |
| Codility | Public paid price | $1,200 a year (Starter, annual billing only) | Yes | codility.com/pricing/ |
| Mercer Mettl | No public paid price found | None found | No | mettl.com/en-us/pricing/, mettl.com/pricing/ |
| Extended DISC (our page) | No public paid price found | None found | No | extendeddisc.org/disc-pricing/ |
Cohort 3, incremental supplement: the DISC comparison, 3 products
| Product | Status on 2 September 2026 | Lowest public amount and unit | Buy without a sales call | Pages read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everything DiSC (Wiley) (our page) | Public paid price | $90.00 for one Workplace profile | Yes | discprofile.com/products/everything-disc-workplace-profile |
| DISCinsights (PeopleKeys) (our page) | Public paid price | $69.00 for one DISC report; $695.00 for the 10-assessment hiring bundle | Yes | discinsights.com/collections/hiring, discinsights.com/products/disc-hiring-essentials-bundle |
| Crystal (our page) | Public paid price | $99 a month, $990 billed annually (Basic, 5 participants a month) | No | crystalknows.com/pricing |
Appendix: read the same day, in no cohort, 4 products
| Product | Status on 2 September 2026 | Lowest public amount and unit | Buy without a sales call | Pages read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equip (our page) | Public paid price | $30 a month (Standard); $1 per candidate per test | Yes | equip.co/pricing/ |
| Adaface | Public paid price | $180 a year (Individual, 12 credits) | Yes | adaface.com/pricing |
| Canditech | Public paid price | $150 a month billed yearly (Team, 100 candidates a year) | Yes | canditech.io/pricing/, canditech.io/pricing-md/ |
| Thomas International | No public paid price found | None found | No | thomas.co/pricing |
What the rows show
Among the 15 priced study products, 12 could be bought without a call. Of the 17 study products with no public paid price, 15 were marked No for purchase without a sales call and two were Not determined. TestDome’s $100 five-pack and Evalart’s $32 monthly entry are examples of products that can be bought directly; Bryq’s $69 plan is public but every plan card on its page routes to a demo.
The rows also show two less clear-cut patterns. First, a “from” price: The Predictive Index states “Starts at $10,000/year” and then requires a demo; Prevue states $195 a month for Essentials and leaves Standard and Premium quote-only. TestDome, EmployTest and Evalart also describe their entry-level prices as starting prices, although their packs and plans show amounts, so the from-price flag records the wording rather than a purchase gate. Second, a store with a registration prompt but no observed amount: SHL’s online store lists assessments, includes the note “All prices displayed are before tax” and asks the visitor to register, but our signed-out read showed no amount.
Three cases required a closer read. HackerRank’s plan cards are rendered with JavaScript: the automated fetch contained no $79 or $948 amount, while the browser showed Starter at $79 a month and $948 billed annually. Canditech also provided a plain-text version of its pricing page at /pricing-md/. Xobin advertised a 14-day free trial and HiPeople said “Start for free”, but we found no amount on the pages recorded for either row. TestGorilla, by contrast, placed a $0 plan beside a $142 paid plan. Thomas International’s plan cards showed “From” with the amount blank, followed by a per-employee, per-month note and a minimum-spend condition.
The scope names nine products associated with long-tail pricing queries: Criteria, Caliper, Korn Ferry Assess, Berke, Harver, TestDome, Testlify, Vervoe and iMocha. TestDome and Testlify published amounts; for the other seven products, the recorded pages led to a form or sales prompt and showed no public paid price. The same search results contained twelve third-party articles. We read them and cite none of their amounts because a reported median contract or a “starting at” figure on a page the seller does not control does not meet this study’s definition.
Limitations
One observation date: prices and pages can change, so the result is not assumed stable. One locale: United States, signed out. TestGorilla lists five currencies, and our earlier read of its pricing page (30 July 2026, recorded on our TestGorilla reviews page) showed different credit tiers when the selected currency changed, so another visitor may see different pricing. The unit is the product brand, not the company; two brands owned by one company remain two rows. Cohorts 2 and 3 were selected by search demand and an earlier comparison, so their shares describe only those sets. The headline cohort is Capterra’s category on one date, not the market; unlisted or excluded products are not counted, and the pure-play classification is ours. Pages are dynamic, which is why fourteen rows rely on dated browser transcripts rather than saved fetches alone. The method cannot prove that no qualifying page existed elsewhere on a seller’s site; it records the pages reached through the stated discovery path. Nothing here establishes a private deal price.
Where SharpAssessment sits
SharpAssessment publishes three plans at pricing, each with its included volume and its cost per included assessment: $99 a month for 50 ($1.98 each), $249 for 150 ($1.66) and $499 for 400 ($1.25); no sales call is required. Because SharpAssessment publishes this study, it appears in none of the counts. Each row instead cites the seller-controlled pages used for coding. The comparison of pre-employment testing companies answers a different question for thirteen sellers; this page records only whether a price is public. The validity citation study reads the same roster’s pages for numerical validity claims and the sources they name.
Change log
- 2 September 2026: first observation, 32 products in three cohorts plus a four-product appendix. Headline 4 of 12; all cohorts 17 of 32.
- 2 September 2026, later the same day: Bryq’s purchase gate corrected from “Yes” to “No” after a re-read of its pricing page (every plan card ends in “Book a demo”); the count of priced products that can be bought without a call is 12 of 15, not 13.
- 2 September 2026: a link to the validity citation study was added; no row or count changed.
- Next recheck due by 2 December 2026.