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Recruiting

Firefish

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Firefish Software Ltd · www.firefishsoftware.com

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Firefish: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Firefish: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Firefish at a glance

Vendor
Firefish Software Ltd
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026
Data hosting
Default not stated; pages mention Netherlands source, captured 3 Nov 2026
Free plan
Yes, per the vendor’s own page source, captured 3 Nov 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Firefish 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. Firefish Software Ltd is a recruitment CRM the vendor describes as built for UK recruitment agencies, supporting contract, temporary and permanent desks, with AI, automation and email sequencing. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 3 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 3 Nov 2026. all sources

Firefish alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Works Council Advocate

Weighted verdict

Sits on the Betriebsrat, which co-determines selection guidelines and questionnaires. Asks what any ranking evaluates, whether it can be switched off, who sees which applicant, and whether an internal candidate's file leaks into their personnel record. No answer, no agreement.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Works Council Advocate

Panel median The Works Council Advocate This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Works Council Advocate
Applicant management & hiring workflow 2 of 5 2 of 5
Multiposting, career page & candidate experience 2.5 of 5 2.5 of 5
Retention, deletion & talent-pool consent 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
AI screening transparency & control 3 of 5 2.5 of 5
HR handover, integrations & API 2 of 5 2 of 5
European sovereignty 2 of 5 2 of 5
Pricing transparency 0.5 of 5 0.5 of 5

Applicant management & hiring workflow

How this is scored

The daily work of hiring: pipeline stages per job, collaboration with hiring managers, structured evaluation, interview scheduling and candidate communication — judged on whether a decision is documented rather than merely made.

0 — Not an applicant tracking system; applications cannot be managed in the product.

3 — Applications collected per job with a status pipeline, notes or comments on each candidate, and email to candidates from the system.

5 — Configurable pipeline stages per job, hiring managers invited to rate or comment on candidates, and interview scheduling with calendar integration and email templates.

8 — Hiring-manager access limited to their own vacancies, structured scorecards or interview kits, approval workflows for requisitions and offers, bulk actions with automated but reviewable candidate communication, and a history on each candidate of every stage change and who made it.

10 — The pipeline is an auditable record of a fair process: every decision attributed and reasoned, evaluation criteria fixed before applications arrive, reporting on time-to-hire and drop-off per stage, and the full history exportable per candidate for an AGG dispute.

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The Works Council Advocate

Shortlists, interviews, offers and placements are managed per desk, applications flow directly from job boards into the CRM, and candidate profiles carry references, preferences and right-to-work documents. We found no public information on structured scorecards, on restricting which vacancies a hiring manager may see, or on a per-candidate history showing who moved them to which stage and why — without that attribution there is no record a works council could audit as a fair process. 1 3 4 5

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Multiposting, career page & candidate experience

How this is scored

Getting a vacancy in front of the right people and letting them apply: job-board distribution for the German market, the career page, and an application process that does not lose candidates on a phone.

0 — Not a publishing tool for vacancies; the product neither hosts job ads nor sends them to job boards.

3 — A hosted job list or career page with an online application form, and postings to free job boards or aggregators.

5 — A branded career page, multiposting to several named job boards including at least one major board in the German market (StepStone, Indeed, the Bundesagentur für Arbeit or similar), and an application form that works on a phone.

8 — Multiposting with booking and budget tracking per board from inside the system, the Bundesagentur für Arbeit and Google for Jobs covered, source attribution per applicant, a career page in several languages with an embeddable widget, application without an account, and the form configurable per job.

10 — Distribution is measured, not only broadcast: cost and applicants per channel reported, the career page meets a stated accessibility standard, one-click or CV-parse application on mobile, and candidates can see their own status and withdraw themselves.

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The Works Council Advocate

Adverts are multi-posted to StepStone and synced with Indeed from inside the system, applicant source data is tracked, and pre-screen questions can be added per advert. The StepStone coverage described is the UK and Ireland boards, and we found no public information on a branded career page with a mobile application form, on booking or budget tracking per board, or on the Bundesagentur für Arbeit and Google for Jobs. 5 6 9

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Retention, deletion & talent-pool consent

How this is scored

What happens to the data of people who were not hired: automatic deletion on a configurable deadline, talent-pool consent that expires, data-subject requests, and access logging — the criterion the employer is actually liable for.

0 — The vendor states that applicant data is kept with no means of deleting it, or the product holds no applicant data at all.

3 — Applicant records can be deleted or anonymised by hand, and GDPR compliance is stated for applicant data.

5 — Automatic deletion or anonymisation after a configurable period following rejection, and candidates asked for consent before they are kept in a talent pool.

8 — Retention rules per country or entity, talent-pool consent with expiry and automated re-consent requests, a documented way to answer access and erasure requests or candidate self-service, a log of who viewed or exported an applicant file, and permissions a works council can review.

10 — Governance that can be evidenced: deletion runs are logged and reportable, special-category data can be excluded or restricted by field, every export is recorded, and the vendor publishes how deletion propagates to backups and to the job boards and tools it syncs with.

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The Works Council Advocate

New candidate data from job boards triggers a GDPR workflow on entry to the CRM, automated communications are described as GDPR compliant, and candidates manage their own contact preferences. We found no public information on automatic deletion after a configurable period, on consent that expires or is re-requested for the talent pools candidates are said to be added to automatically, or on any log of who viewed or exported an applicant file — the points the employer is actually liable for. 4 6 7

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AI screening transparency & control

How this is scored

Whether any automated ranking, matching, parsing or rejection is disclosed, explained and switchable — recruitment is a high-risk use under the EU AI Act, and an undisclosed score next to a candidate's name is a co-determination matter (BetrVG §§ 94, 95). A product without AI features is judged on stating so.

0 — The vendor describes AI that rejects or ranks candidates automatically with no human step and no way to switch it off.

3 — AI features (CV parsing, matching, text drafting) described with what they do, and a statement that a human makes the hiring decision.

5 — Each AI feature described with its purpose, AI features optional or switchable per account, and either the model provider named or a statement that candidate data is not used to train models.

8 — AI outputs shown with their reasoning to the recruiter, the model provider named as a subprocessor, candidates informed when AI is used, protected attributes stated to be excluded, EU processing available for the AI features, and the vendor's EU AI Act position published.

10 — The vendor treats recruitment AI as the high-risk system the law says it is: documentation a works council can base an agreement on, bias testing described and repeated, logs of every AI-assisted decision retained for audit, and every AI feature off by default until the customer enables it.

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The Works Council Advocate

An AI policy is published and aligned to the EU AI Act, the model provider is named as Azure OpenAI, AI processing is stated to stay within the vendor's EU Azure environments, candidate data is stated not to train models, and human oversight over decisions influenced by AI is declared. But the matching assigns a percentage score to candidates the moment a job is created, we found no public information showing the recruiter the reasoning behind it, on switching AI features off per account, on informing candidates, or on excluding protected attributes — and the vendor classifies itself as a deployer of limited-risk systems, a classification a works council would want to examine before agreeing to any ranking at all. 3 8 9

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HR handover, integrations & API

How this is scored

The hire does not end in the ATS: handover to the HR system and payroll, identity and calendar integration, e-signature for contracts, and an API a team can build on.

0 — A closed tool with no integrations, no API and no export.

3 — A CSV or Excel export of candidates, and a few named integrations such as email or calendar.

5 — Named integrations with calendar and video-interview tools, a handover of hired candidates to at least one named HR system, and a documented API or an integration platform such as Zapier.

8 — Maintained integrations with several named HR systems common in DACH (Personio, DATEV-connected systems, SAP SuccessFactors or similar) carrying the hire's data without retyping, SSO and SCIM, e-signature for offers and contracts, webhooks, and an API with published limits.

10 — Integration is designed rather than bolted on: a versioned API with a deprecation policy, handover that carries documents and consent status into the HR record, deletion that propagates to connected systems, and the vendor maintaining the German integrations itself.

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The Works Council Advocate

An open API with published documentation, an integrations marketplace with certified partners, email synchronisation and named job-board integrations are documented. We found no public information on a handover carrying hired candidates' documents into a named HR or payroll system, on single sign-on, or on e-signature — so whether an internal applicant's file can leak into their personnel record cannot be assessed from these pages. 1 5 10

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where applicant data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are — including the job boards, CV parsers and AI providers the system passes CVs to. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; weighted higher here than in categories holding the customer's own data, because every record belongs to a third party who never chose the vendor. Dimensions the evidence does not establish are unknown, not non-European.

0 — Vendor, contracting entity and hosting all shown to be outside the EU, with no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement offered, with hosting or the contracting entity outside the EU or not established.

5 — EU hosting stated and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, with a data processing agreement offered.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published with locations including CV-parsing and AI providers, and a DPA that covers applicant data as the customer's processing.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, certification published, and the AI and CV-parsing features run within the EU on providers the customer can see.

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The Works Council Advocate

The captured pages state that all data sits in Microsoft data centres in the Netherlands and Ireland with EU-only residency, and a data processing agreement is published. The same pages reference UK GDPR, standard contractual clauses and Scottish background checks, establish no EU contracting entity or representative, and name only one subprocessor — Azure OpenAI for the AI features — with no published list and locations, so the jurisdiction of the party we would contract with over applicants' data remains unestablished. 2 7 8

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: the pricing model (per employee, per open job, per recruiter seat), job-board posting costs, add-ons for AI, career page or integrations, and the minimum term.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A public "from" price, a free tier, or one priced tier, with the rest on request.

5 — Prices for each tier public with the billing period (per month or per year) and the pricing basis (employees, jobs or seats).

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its basis and limits, add-on prices listed, job-board posting costs or the booking model stated, minimum term and VAT treatment given.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given company size, number of open roles and recruiter seats, with every add-on, posting package and overage published.

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The Works Council Advocate

The pages name Basic, Professional and Enterprise packages, state the StepStone integration is free on all of them, and gate talent pools behind Professional. We found no public prices for any package, no billing basis, no minimum term and no VAT treatment — the offered path is a fifteen-minute demo call, so no annual cost can be computed by a buyer. 1 6 7

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Hosting options Not determined — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Firefish

Is Firefish European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Firefish is based.

Where does Firefish store data?

The default storage location for customer data is not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 3 Nov 2026. The vendor’s pages mention Netherlands as hosting location, per the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026.

Does Firefish have a free plan?

Yes. Firefish has a free plan, per the vendor’s page captured 3 Nov 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Firefish?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates Recruitee (3.5/5), Pinpoint (3.5/5) and softgarden (3.5/5) highest among the other 31 Recruiting products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Recruitee (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Firefish alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (11)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Security / trust page — found from the homepage www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Applicant management & hiring workflow — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Applicant management & hiring workflow — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Multiposting, career page & candidate experience — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Multiposting, career page & candidate experience — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Retention, deletion & talent-pool consent — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  8. 8 AI screening transparency & control — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  9. 9 AI screening transparency & control — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  10. 10 HR handover, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →
  11. 11 HR handover, integrations & API — found from sitemap www.firefishsoftware.com Checked 3 Nov 2026 Details →