Ashby vs Factorial

Ashby is an all-in-one recruiting platform from a San Francisco startup founded in 2018. It combines an applicant tracking system, a candidate CRM with sourcing, automated interview scheduling and a recruiting analytics engine in a single product. Fast-growing technology companies adopted it because it removed the need for separate tools for scheduling (such as GoodTime), sourcing outreach (such as Gem) and reporting.

Hiring teams get structured pipelines with scorecards, approvals for jobs and offers, email sequences to passive candidates, self-scheduling and panel coordination across interviewer calendars, and AI-assisted application review and interview notes. Analytics are the main differentiator: recruiting ops teams can build custom reports on funnel conversion, time to hire, source quality and interviewer load without exporting data. Pricing scales with company size: the Foundations plan for companies up to 100 employees starts at $400 a month, larger tiers are quoted, and advanced analytics, scheduling and CRM capabilities sit in higher tiers.

Ashby fits companies where hiring is continuous and a dedicated recruiting team exists. Configuration takes effort, and the price is hard to justify for a business hiring a handful of roles a year, where Workable, Homerun or Teamtailor are simpler. Against Greenhouse, Ashby offers stronger built-in analytics and scheduling, while Greenhouse has the larger integration marketplace and a longer enterprise track record. Lever is the other common comparison, with similar ATS plus CRM scope but slower recent innovation.

Factorial is an HR platform from Barcelona that bundles the employee database, time off, time tracking, payroll preparation, performance reviews, recruiting and expenses in one system. It was founded in 2016 by Jordi Romero, Pau Ramon and Bernat Farrero, started with a free HR tier and became a unicorn in 2022. In June 2026 it raised a $150M Series D at a $2.5B valuation led by General Catalyst and says it serves over 16,000 companies.

Every account starts with Factorial Core: employee directory, onboarding and offboarding, document management with legal e-signature, payslip distribution and fillable PDFs. Modules are added on top: Time Off, Time Tracking, Shift Management, Performance, Recruitment, Engagement, Training, Expenses with Factorial Cards, Project Management, Procurement, and an IT suite with device management and SaaS management. An AI layer called Factorial One answers questions and runs tasks against company data and policies. Pricing is quoted per user and module, starting at $8 per user per month.

It fits companies of roughly 20 to 1,000 employees that want one system for HR admin, time and expenses. Personio is the closest European rival with stronger payroll in Germany, BambooHR is simpler and more US-focused, and Rippling goes deeper into payroll, IT and global employment.

Buying tip: because pricing is quote-based, list the exact modules you need before the demo; time tracking, shift planning and expenses add up quickly. Check that payroll in your country is processed natively rather than only prepared for an external provider.