Tool Reviews

Gem vs Ashby vs boilr: Why the Fastest-Growing ATS Platforms Still Don’t Solve Agency BD

An honest, sourced comparison of Gem and Ashby against boilr for recruitment agencies - what each platform actually does well, who each is genuinely built for, and why in-house TA tooling and agency BD signal detection are different jobs.

TB Team Boilr

· August 19, 2026 · 15 min read

Abstract dark liquid-metal texture with three interweaving ribbons, representing Gem, Ashby and boilr compared side by side

TL;DR

Gem and Ashby are both genuinely excellent, fast-growing recruiting platforms, and searching "Gem vs Ashby" is a reasonable thing for a recruitment agency to do in 2026. Ashby is the most-connected single ATS in Pin's 2026 market-share data, holding 15.6% of live ATS connections among 600+ recruiting teams, ahead of every other named platform [1]. Gem grew its native ATS 11x in 18 months and now serves 800+ talent acquisition teams, including 100+ unicorns [2]. Neither company is hiding what it built them for: Ashby's own site organises its entire pitch around startup, growth-stage and enterprise in-house hiring teams, with no mention of agencies or RPO [3], and Gem says directly it is "trusted by 1,200+ talent acquisition teams" [4]. Both manage a company's own candidate pipeline against its own open roles. Neither is built to scan the outside world for which companies are about to need a recruitment agency's help, score them against an agency's ICP across its whole book of business, and draft the outreach. That is a different job, and it is the one boilr does. This guide compares what each platform actually is, honestly, so you don't buy the wrong tool for the wrong job.

Why "Gem vs Ashby" Is a Real Search in 2026, and Why the Comparison Misses the Point for Agencies

Both platforms show up constantly in recruiting-software roundups, and for good reason:

Ashby leads live ATS connections. Among 600+ recruiting teams with a connected ATS tracked by Pin in 2026, Ashby holds 15.6% share, more than any other named platform, rising to 27.0% among teams with six or more recruiting seats [1].
Gem is one of the fastest-growing recruiting CRMs. Its native ATS, launched in September 2023, grew 11x in 18 months to roughly 500 ATS customers by mid-2025 and has since doubled its total customer base past 800 [2].
Both are well-reviewed by the people who use them. Gem sits at 4.8/5 on G2 with 97% of reviewers rating it 4-5 stars [5]; Ashby's users report filling roles in an average of 14 days and 95% rating candidate quality better than their previous sourcing tool [6].
Both are genuinely well-funded, credible companies. Gem raised a $100M Series C at a $1.2B valuation [7]; Ashby counts customers across startup, growth and enterprise segments and publishes tiered pricing from $400/month for up to 100 employees [8].

None of that is marketing spin. It's also almost entirely irrelevant to whether either tool solves a recruitment agency's business development problem, because the market these numbers describe is in-house talent acquisition, not agency BD.

What Gem and Ashby Are Actually Built For

Read past the review-site star ratings and both companies are unambiguous about their target customer:

Gem: A Sourcing, CRM and ATS Platform for In-House Talent Acquisition Teams

What it does: an AI Sourcing Agent that searches 800M+ profiles and resurfaces past candidates with verified contact details, an AI Application Review Agent that ranks applicants, fraud detection on candidate applications, a talent CRM for nurture sequences, a native ATS, scheduling and pipeline analytics [4].
Who it names as customers: Anthropic, GitLab, Figma, DoorDash, eBay, Reddit, Asana and other in-house talent teams hiring for their own headcount [4].
Deployment model: either replace the whole recruiting stack, or layer Gem's AI agents on top of an existing ATS (Greenhouse, Workday, Lever, iCIMS) without migrating [4].
Pricing shape: no published standard tiers; quoted by team size, annual hire volume and integration needs, with startups getting six months free then 50% off [4].
Reviewer-flagged limits: no LinkedIn InMail automation, limited note export, and it is "best suited for large organizations with sufficient budget" rather than smaller teams [9].

Ashby: An ATS with Sourcing CRM and Analytics for Direct-Hire Teams

What it does: applicant tracking, integrated CRM sourcing, automated interview scheduling, and analytics the platform's own marketing calls "the clear leader in actionable analytics capabilities" [3].
Who it's for, in its own words: three tiers, all internal-hiring segments - startups (1-100 employees), growth stage (101-1,000 employees) and enterprise (1,000+ employees). Agencies and RPO providers do not appear anywhere in that segmentation [3].
Pricing model: priced on the customer's total employee headcount, not on the number of recruiters using the tool - a 250-person company with three recruiters is billed on 250 employees. Published pricing starts at $400/month (Foundations, up to 100 employees); 100-300 employees runs $30K-$70K/year, and 300-500 employees runs $60K-$120K/year [8].
Reviewer sentiment: 4.7-4.8/5 on G2, with reviewers frequently citing that it replaces multiple point tools (including Gem, in some workflows) under one price [6].

Read Ashby's own pricing model again: it charges by the hiring company's total employee count. That is a coherent way to price a tool that helps one company staff itself. It has no natural mapping onto a recruitment agency's business, which doesn't have "total employees" in the sense the pricing model assumes, it has a book of client companies and a bench of consultants working BD across all of them.

Gem vs Ashby vs boilr, Side by Side

Here is what each platform actually is, based on public sites, pricing pages and third-party review data as of August 2026:

Platform	What it is	Built for	Finds new client companies?	Pricing (public)
Gem	AI sourcing, CRM and ATS for candidate pipelines [4]	In-house talent acquisition teams [4]	No - sources candidates, not client companies	Custom quote; from $135/mo referenced by reviewers [9]
Ashby	ATS with CRM sourcing, scheduling and analytics [3]	Startup to enterprise in-house hiring teams [3]	No - manages roles a company already has open	From $400/mo, priced on total employee count [8]
boilr	AI sales employee: signal detection, ICP scoring, Company Brain, drafted Tasks [10]	Recruitment agency BD/360 consultants and owners	Yes - this is its core job	Not published, demo/trial-led

The Actual Difference: Candidate Pipeline vs Client Signal Detection

Strip away the feature lists and the difference is structural, not a matter of one tool being "better":

Gem and Ashby both start from a role that already exists. A hiring manager opens a requisition inside the company; Gem or Ashby then helps that in-house team source, track and hire candidates against it. The unit of work is a job.
A recruitment agency's unit of work is different: a client relationship that doesn't exist yet. Before there is a mandate to fill, there has to be a company that needs help hiring and doesn't know your agency exists, or hasn't been reminded of it recently.
Neither Gem nor Ashby monitors the external market for hiring intent at other companies. Their sourcing tools search candidate databases (Gem's 800M+ profiles, Ashby's sourcing CRM) to find people, not signals of which companies are about to start hiring and would be worth approaching for a search mandate.
Neither scores a book of client accounts against an agency's ICP. Both platforms have analytics on hiring performance for the single company running them. Neither has a concept of "our top 200 target clients, ranked by fit and urgency" because that concept doesn't exist in an in-house hiring tool.
Funding rounds, exec hires and expansion signals are outside both products' scope. These are exactly the kind of external buying signals a recruitment agency needs to time outreach, and they simply aren't inputs either platform tracks, because an in-house TA team doesn't need to watch itself for signs it's about to hire.

This is not a criticism of either company. Gem and Ashby were not designed to solve this problem, and they don't claim to. It's the honest reason "Gem vs Ashby for recruitment agencies" is the wrong framing for an agency's BD problem: both answers are "excellent, for a different question."

Where boilr Honestly Fits: Alongside, Not Instead Of

boilr is not an ATS or a candidate CRM, and it does not compete with Gem or Ashby at their own job. An agency can, and many do, keep running Bullhorn, RecruiterFlow, Vincere, Loxo or another ATS/CRM for pipeline, delivery and candidate records, exactly the workflow Gem and Ashby serve for in-house teams. boilr sits at the top-of-funnel layer neither product covers:

Signals - scans 10,000+ verified sources (Companies House filings, LinkedIn, TechCrunch, Crunchbase, G2 and more) for funding rounds, new hiring activity, executive moves and tech-stack changes, typically surfacing 48-72 hours before a role is posted publicly, with every signal linked back to its source for verification before anyone dials [11].
Companies - identifies and enriches target client companies against a defined ICP, so consultants work a prioritised list rather than a cold spreadsheet [10].
Candidates - sources shortlisted candidates from market searches to back a warm approach with supply as well as demand-side signal [10].
Tasks - turns research into a drafted, ready-to-verify outreach task; the consultant reviews and sends, typically in 5-20 minutes a day, rather than starting outreach from a blank page [10].
Company Brain - the agency's shared memory of winning messages, high-ROI ICP segments and top openers, retained permanently when a consultant leaves instead of walking out the door with them [12].
Integrations - pushes enriched companies and drafted tasks into RecruiterFlow and HubSpot today, with Bullhorn, Vincere and Loxo on the roadmap, so the agency's system of record stays whatever it already uses [10].

In practice, an agency that already runs Gem or Ashby for a portfolio company they've partnered with, or an RPO desk sitting inside an enterprise account, doesn't need to rip anything out to add boilr. boilr feeds signal-qualified companies and drafted outreach into whatever CRM the desk already runs delivery on. It's an addition to the stack at the top of the funnel, not a replacement further down it.

How to Tell Which Tool You Actually Need

Your situation	Best fit	Why
In-house TA team hiring for your own company's open roles	Gem or Ashby	Both are purpose-built ATS/CRM platforms for exactly this job, with strong review data behind them [5][6]
Recruitment agency that needs to fill more mandates it already has	Your existing ATS/CRM (Bullhorn, RecruiterFlow, etc.)	Pipeline and delivery tooling, not a client-acquisition problem
Recruitment agency that needs to find and win more client mandates	boilr, alongside your ATS/CRM	Signal detection, ICP scoring and BD task drafting across your whole book of business, none of which Gem or Ashby is built to do [10]
Agency evaluating whether to add in-house-style sourcing tech	Gem or Ashby, as a candidate-sourcing layer, not a BD layer	Both are strong at finding candidates; neither replaces the need to find new clients first

Curious how signal detection would slot in next to your existing ATS? See boilr working alongside your stack in a live demo, or start a trial and connect it in a day.

Mistakes Agencies Make When Comparing Gem, Ashby and Signal-Led BD Tools

Mistake #1: Assuming an ATS Upgrade Will Fix a Weak Pipeline of Clients

Why it fails: Gem and Ashby both make candidate sourcing and pipeline management genuinely faster, but neither adds a single new client mandate to the desk. If the actual problem is not enough companies in the pipeline to fill roles against, a better candidate ATS doesn't touch it.

Fix: Separate the two problems explicitly. Candidate supply is an ATS/sourcing problem (Gem, Ashby, or your existing platform). Client demand is a BD-signal problem, which needs a tool built to monitor the external market, not the internal pipeline.

Mistake #2: Reading "AI-Native" as "Built for Agencies"

Why it fails: Both Gem and Ashby are legitimately AI-forward products, but "AI-native ATS" and "built for recruitment agency BD" are unrelated claims. Ashby's own segmentation runs startup to enterprise in-house teams with no agency tier [3]; Gem names in-house unicorns as its flagship customers [4].

Fix: Check who a vendor names as customers and how it prices, not just its feature list. A pricing model based on the buyer's total employee headcount is a strong signal the product was designed for a single hiring company, not an agency serving many.

Mistake #3: Trying to Make an ATS Detect External Buying Signals

Why it fails: Neither platform monitors funding announcements, executive moves or headcount growth at companies that are not already customers of the tool. Building that manually inside an ATS means spreadsheets, Google Alerts and hours of unpaid research the platform was never designed to save.

Fix: Use a purpose-built signal layer (boilr) that watches the external market 24/7 and scores it against your ICP, and keep your ATS/CRM doing what it does well, running the desk once a mandate exists.

Mistake #4: Ripping Out a Working ATS to Chase a BD Feature

Why it fails: Migrating an entire agency off Bullhorn or RecruiterFlow to chase a sourcing feature is expensive, disruptive and usually unnecessary, since the actual gap is upstream of the ATS, not inside it.

Fix: Add a BD layer that integrates with the ATS you already run, rather than replacing the system of record to solve a problem it was never responsible for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Gem or Ashby better for a recruitment agency?

Neither is built for recruitment agencies specifically. Both Gem and Ashby are ATS/CRM platforms designed for in-house talent acquisition teams hiring for their own company's open roles [3] [4]. An agency evaluating either should treat them as candidate-sourcing tools, not as a solution to finding new client mandates, which is a different problem neither product addresses.

What's the actual difference between Gem and Ashby?

Gem started as a recruiting CRM and sourcing platform before adding a native ATS in 2023, and is generally regarded as further along on sourcing and candidate CRM depth [2] [9]. Ashby started as an ATS and is generally regarded as stronger on analytics and ATS depth, and leads live ATS connections in 2026 market-share data [1] [3]. Both now offer overlapping ATS, CRM and analytics functionality.

Does boilr replace Gem, Ashby or my existing ATS/CRM?

No. boilr is not an ATS or candidate CRM. It sits alongside whatever pipeline system an agency already runs (RecruiterFlow and HubSpot today, with Bullhorn, Vincere and Loxo on the roadmap), feeding it signal-qualified companies and drafted outreach tasks [10]. If an agency or an in-house team within it already uses Gem or Ashby to manage candidates, boilr does not conflict with that, it feeds a different layer of the workflow.

Why don't Gem or Ashby detect hiring signals at other companies?

Because that isn't the problem they were built to solve. Both platforms are designed for a single company to manage its own hiring, so their sourcing tools search for candidates, not for external companies showing early signs they are about to hire. A recruitment agency needs the opposite direction of signal, external companies that don't yet know they need the agency, which is what a signal-led BD layer like boilr is purpose-built for [11].

How much does Gem cost compared to Ashby?

Neither publishes full pricing. Ashby publishes an entry tier from $400/month for up to 100 employees, with 100-300 employees typically running $30K-$70K/year and 300-500 employees running $60K-$120K/year, priced on total employee headcount [8]. Gem does not publish standard tiers; pricing is quoted by team size and annual hire volume, with reviewers referencing a $135/month starting point in some configurations and enterprise deals priced individually [9].

Is Ashby really the most-connected ATS in 2026?

Among named systems, yes, in one specific dataset: Pin's 2026 ATS market-share report, based on live ATS integrations (not survey responses) across 600+ recruiting teams, shows Ashby holding the largest single share at 15.6%, rising to 27.0% among teams with six or more recruiting seats [1]. No single ATS holds a dominant share of the wider market; the report counted 23 distinct systems in use.

Can a recruitment agency use Gem or Ashby at all?

Some agency and staffing recruiters do use Gem for its candidate sourcing and CRM depth, and reviewers have noted it works "for both individual recruiters as well as an agency" for that purpose [9]. That's a candidate-sourcing use case, not a client-BD one. Neither vendor markets to agencies or prices for an agency's business model, and neither adds client-signal detection or ICP scoring across an agency's book of business.

What should an agency actually do first: fix candidate sourcing or fix BD?

Diagnose which is the real bottleneck before buying anything. If mandates are plentiful but candidates are slow to find, a stronger sourcing tool (Gem, Ashby, or upgrading within your existing ATS) is the right fix. If the desk has capacity to deliver but not enough client mandates coming in, the gap is upstream, in signal detection and BD, which is what boilr is built to close.

Sources

Information sourced from public company sites, pricing pages and third-party review platforms as of August 2026.

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