Free ATS Resume Checkers Compared (October 2026)

A free ATS resume checker takes your resume (CV), sometimes a job description as well, and returns a score with a list of fixes. Nine of them earn a place on this page. Each has a free tier with different limits, and none of them is the system an employer runs. I checked each tool’s official site in October 2026 for what the free tier includes, what the score measures, and whether your file leaves your browser. The comparison below covers that, then explains when a checker is the wrong tool for the job in front of you and what to use instead.

What a free ATS resume checker measures

Two kinds of tool share the name. The first takes a job description and reports overlap: which of the posting’s terms appear in your resume, expressed as a percentage. Jobscan, SkillSyncer, Resume Worded’s Targeted Resume and Teal work this way. The second scores the file on its own, with no posting attached, and reports whether a parser can read it, whether standard sections exist, and how the writing holds up. Resume Worded’s Score My Resume, Enhancv, LiveCareer and the two open-source checkers at the end of the table work this way, with a job description as an optional extra in some.

Both kinds produce estimates. The systems employers run parse your file into fields, store it, and let recruiters search and filter; some rank, in bands or on scales they don’t publish. The checker on your screen has no access to any of that and reproduces a guess at it. What is an ATS score? explains where the number comes from and why two tools disagree on the same file, and how resume matching algorithms work covers the ranking mechanics. This page sticks to the tools.

The checkers compared

Free tiers, prices and features below come from each vendor’s own pages as of October 2026. Prices change; the links go to the pages I read.

Tool	Free tier	Job description?	Account?	Your file	Paid from
Jobscan	5 resume scans a month, 5 ATS and recruiter findings, job tracker, builder	Yes (match rate)	Yes	Uploaded	$29.98/month billed $89.95 a quarter; $49.95 monthly
Resume Worded	Score My Resume (30+ checks) and Targeted Resume, both free	Optional (Targeted Resume)	Yes	Uploaded	Pro pricing not shown on the pages I could read
SkillSyncer	1 resume, 2 job match scans a week, 10 AI credits a week, PDF export	Yes (0 to 100 score)	Yes, no card	Uploaded	$14.95/month; $11.62/month billed quarterly
Teal	Unlimited resumes and job tracking, top 5 keyword matches, basic analysis, 10 templates	Yes (top 5 keywords free)	Yes	Uploaded	Teal+ at $13/week, $29/month or $79 a quarter
Enhancv	Checker with 27 checks; free version covers ATS compatibility	Optional	Not stated	Uploaded, 2 MB max	Pro; see note below
Rezi	1 resume, 3 PDF downloads, limited Rezi Score	Yes	Yes	Uploaded	Pro $29/month; Lifetime $149
LiveCareer	Checker for 30+ issues with full report, by its own description	No	Not stated	Uploaded	Builder plans (not checked)
Reactive Resume ATS Checker	Full tool, free	Optional keyword match	No	Stays in your browser	None
OpenResume parser	Full tool, free	No	No	Stays in your browser	None

Kickresume also runs a checker, but its pricing page lists the ATS checker as a paid feature ($9 for a month, $18 for three, $48 for a year) with free access for verified students and teachers, so it sits outside this comparison.

Jobscan

Jobscan is the best-known tool in this category. Its plan page gives the free account five resume scans a month plus five ATS and recruiter findings, a job tracker and a resume builder. Paid plans unlock unlimited scans and keyword comparisons, a synonym detector and an AI job match, at $29.98 a month billed quarterly as $89.95, or $49.95 billed monthly. The homepage describes the match rate as resting on five priorities in order: hard skills, education level, job title, soft skills and other keywords. Jobscan recommends 75% and warns that going higher may require stuffing the resume with keywords. Five scans a month suits someone applying to a few roles with care; anyone sending twenty applications a month will hit the cap in the first week.

Resume Worded

Resume Worded splits the job into two free tools, both behind a free account. Score My Resume runs 30 or more checks on the file alone: an ATS parse simulation, keyword and skill coverage, formatting traps such as date consistency and missing sections, and writing quality such as quantified results and buzzwords. It returns a 0 to 100 score and calls 85 or above good. Targeted Resume takes a posting, lists the keywords you missed, and produces a Relevancy Score, where below 80 means important skills from the posting are absent. An AI resume writer is offered alongside both tools, and I could not read a Pro price on the pages that loaded. The two-tool split is useful, since you get a structure check and a posting check as separate reports instead of one blended number.

SkillSyncer

SkillSyncer’s free plan covers one resume, two job match scans a week, ten AI credits a week and PDF export, with no card required. Premium costs $14.95 a month, or $11.62 a month billed quarterly, and raises the limits, shows the exact words to change and adds DOCX export. The scanner scores 0 to 100 against a pasted posting, ranks keywords by how often the employer repeats them, and lets you exclude any that don’t apply, which recalculates the score. SkillSyncer recommends 80 or above. Two scans a week looks tighter than Jobscan’s five a month and works out looser, since the weekly reset means eight or nine scans a month.

Teal

Teal’s pricing page describes a Free Forever plan with unlimited resumes and job tracking, ten templates, and job-description keyword matching limited to the top five keywords, plus basic analysis in the builder. Teal+ costs $13 a week, $29 a month or $79 a quarter, and unlocks all keywords from the posting along with a Match Score. Teal’s strength is the tracker: you save postings, take notes, track statuses and build a resume version per job. The free plan shows you enough keywords to confirm a gap exists and holds back the full list.

Enhancv

Enhancv’s resume checker runs 27 checks across seven groups: ATS essentials such as file type and header links, section presence and order, content checks such as quantified impact and repetition, job tailoring if you paste a posting, recruiter red flags, bias signals such as employment gaps, and seniority signals. Uploads are PDF or DOCX up to 2 MB. The checker page describes the free version as giving ATS compatibility steps, with recruiter-style checks in the paid version. The pricing page tells a different story: a free plan valid for seven days with Enhancv branding and a 12-item cap, and a Pro plan that lists an ATS check among its features. I could not reconcile the two pages, and the Pro price fields on the pricing page failed to render when I loaded it, so I am giving no price. Treat the checker as free to try and expect a paywall around the detailed report.

Rezi

Rezi’s free plan includes one resume, one AI interview, three PDF downloads and a limited version of the Rezi Score, which the site describes as 23 metrics for getting through applicant tracking systems. Pro costs $29 a month and Lifetime is a one-time $149. The pricing table marks the score as Limited on Free and Full on Pro, without saying how many of the 23 metrics free users see. Rezi is a builder first, and the checker is a reason to stay in it.

LiveCareer

LiveCareer’s checker accepts DOC, DOCX, PDF, HTML, RTF and TXT, or pasted text, and scans for 30 or more issues across formatting, keywords, sections and grammar. The page’s own comparison table claims no paywall on the full report and says fixes can be applied inside its builder. There is no job description input, so the keyword check looks at your skills section rather than a posting. The builder is the product being sold, and the checker’s suggestions lead into it.

Reactive Resume ATS Checker

Reactive Resume is an open-source (MIT) resume builder, and its ATS checker is free with no account. It reads your PDF in the browser with PDF.js, so the file stays on your device, and reports a 0 to 100 score that reflects how well text extracts from the file, across readability, layout, sections, contact details and dates. Pasting a posting adds a keyword match. The page says outright that the score measures extraction, with no claim about your odds of being hired, which is more candour than most of the paid tools offer.

If your question is “can a parser read my PDF at all”, start here.

OpenResume parser

OpenResume is an open-source (AGPL) builder whose parser playground shows you the fields it extracted from your PDF: profile, education, work experience and skills. The file stays in your browser. The parsing algorithm is documented on the same page in four steps: read text items with pdf.js, group them into lines, group lines into sections using bold uppercase headings, then score each text item for each field. It targets single-column English resumes. The repository’s last code push was in October 2024, so expect the tool as it is rather than updates.

There is no score, which is the point. You see what a simple parser recovered and where it broke, which tells you more about a two-column layout than any percentage.

How to pick one

Match the tool to the question you have.

• “Does my resume cover this posting?” Use a tool that takes a job description: Jobscan for five careful scans a month, SkillSyncer for two a week, Resume Worded’s Targeted Resume for a free report behind an account, Teal if you already track jobs there. Run two and expect different numbers. Act on the missing-keyword lists, which overlap far more than the scores do.
• “Can a parser read my file?” Use Reactive Resume’s ATS checker or OpenResume’s parser. No upload, no account, and the output is the extracted text itself.
• “Is the writing any good?” Resume Worded’s Score My Resume, Enhancv or LiveCareer will flag unquantified bullets, repeated phrases and missing sections. Read these as an editor’s checklist, since the scores have no published link to interview rates.

Whichever you pick, the percentage is the least useful line in the report. The resume keywords guide covers how to turn a missing-term list into edits that a recruiter will believe.

Where checkers stop

A checker ends with a list: eight terms present, four missing, a score. The work that follows is rewriting your bullets in the posting’s vocabulary without claiming skills you lack, choosing which of your master resume’s bullets belong in this version, and producing a clean PDF. Paid tiers at Jobscan, Teal and Rezi sell AI help for that step. Each one works on a copy of your resume stored on its servers.

Reactive Resume covers some of the same ground in the open: its v6 editor matches keywords from a saved posting and can tailor a resume or draft a cover letter through an AI provider you connect, and you can self-host it with Docker. If you want a hosted account with a free checker and open code, it is the strongest option on this page.

A Jobscan alternative for tailoring, with the code in the open

If the step after scoring is the one you want help with, and you would rather run the software than upload to it, Resume Matcher is an open-source alternative built for that step. I maintain it, so read the paragraphs that follow with that in mind.

Resume Matcher is a free, Apache 2.0 AI harness used by over 200,000 job seekers. You download it, run it on your own machine (one Docker command, or Python and Node.js), and connect the model you already pay for or run: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Groq, or a local model through Ollama. There is no hosted version and nowhere to upload a file. It is a tailoring tool and makes no attempt to simulate any employer’s ATS.

Given a resume and a posting, it does three things:

• Keyword match. The JD Match tab shows the posting beside your resume, highlights the words they share, and reports the share of the posting’s meaningful words that appear in your resume. The arithmetic is plain keyword overlap with a stop list, computed by code, and the exact formula is in What is an ATS score?.
• Tailoring with guardrails. The model you connected proposes targeted edits to your summary, bullets and skills in the posting’s wording. Code then checks each edit: your name, contact details, employers, titles, dates and degrees cannot change, and any new number that is absent from your original is reverted. The one deliberate exception is a skill the posting names, which the model may add and which the preview flags as a high-risk change. You see a before-and-after diff and choose Confirm & Save or Reject & Regenerate.
• Output. Seven templates printed to text-based PDF by headless Chromium, A4 or US Letter, plus a cover letter, an outreach message, interview prep and a Kanban tracker for the applications you send.

The cost: with a cloud provider, your resume and the posting go to that provider on your own account, at their API prices, and nowhere else. With Ollama or another local model, nothing leaves your machine, and the app contains no analytics. The docs cover setup, Docker with Ollama covers the offline path, and the features page lists the guardrails in detail.

The trade is setup time for control. If you want a browser tab and an instant score, the hosted checkers above are the right tools and several of them are free enough. If you want the tailoring step on your own hardware with a model you chose, run it yourself.

Before you upload anywhere

A resume carries your name, phone number, address, employers and dates, and a checker needs the whole file. Of the hosted tools above, SkillSyncer states on its homepage that uploads are private, not sold, and deleted with the resume or account; Enhancv states on its checker page that it does not share data with third parties or use it for model training; LiveCareer shows a “Privacy Guaranteed” label without detail on the checker page. Read each policy before the first upload, and prefer the browser-only tools for a parse check when you can.

The score will differ from tool to tool. The missing terms will agree far more often. Fix those, keep what you can defend in an interview, and move on to the next posting.

If this post helped, star Resume Matcher on GitHub. Saurabh Rai builds it; follow him on GitHub, X and LinkedIn.