Is there a free alternative to Jobscan?

Partly, and Jobscan itself is one of them: its $0 forever plan includes five resume scans a month. On Second Round the resume roast is free and you can read the tailored rewrite before paying, with payment required only to export the finished file. If five scans a month covers your search, the honest answer is that you do not need to pay either of us.

How much does Jobscan cost?

Checked on 27 July 2026: $49.95 per month billed monthly, or $89.95 every three months on the quarterly plan, which Jobscan displays as $29.98 per month. Both are recurring subscriptions you cancel yourself. There is also a free plan at $0 with five scans a month. Prices change, so confirm on their pricing page before buying.

Does Second Round charge a subscription?

No. The three options are one-time payments: $5 for 30 days, $12 for 90 days, and $39 for a year. Nothing auto-renews and there is no card kept on file for a future charge, so when the pass runs out it just ends.

What does Jobscan do that Second Round does not?

Quite a lot. Jobscan detects the applicant tracking system behind a posting and tunes its advice to it, and bundles a job tracker, a cover letter generator, a LinkedIn optimizer and auto-apply credits. Second Round does none of that. It scores your resume against one posting, rewrites it, and exports a file built to be machine readable.

Jobscan alternatives: one-time pricing instead of a subscription

Jobscan is an ATS resume checker. You upload a resume, paste a job listing, and get a match rate showing the hard skills, soft skills, job title and keywords the posting asks for that your resume does not contain. It is sold as a recurring subscription: $49.95 per month, or $89.95 every three months, on top of a free plan that allows five resume scans a month.

Second Round answers the same question, how well does this resume match this specific posting, and then rewrites the resume to close the gap. It is sold as a one-time pass instead of a subscription: $5 for 30 days, $12 for 90 days, or $39 for a year. None of them renew, so there is nothing to cancel.

For a three month search, the published prices are $89.95 at Jobscan and $12 here. That gap is the entire reason this page exists; the rest of it is about the things Jobscan does that Second Round does not.

Second Round and Jobscan, side by side

Feature and pricing comparison between Second Round and Jobscan, verified 27 July 2026.
	Second Round	Jobscan
Price	$5 for 30 days, $12 for 90 days, $39 for one year.	$49.95 per month, or $89.95 every 3 months (billed quarterly, which they show as $29.98 per month).
Billing model	One-time payment. No subscription, no auto-renew; access simply ends.	Recurring subscription, cancel any time. The quarterly plan is offered with a 7-day free trial.
Free tier	The resume roast is free, and you can read your tailored resume before paying. You pay only to export it.	A $0 forever plan: 5 resume scans a month, 5 ATS and recruiter findings, plus the job tracker, resume builder, resume manager and Chrome extension.
What paying unlocks	Unlimited tailored resumes and downloads for the length of the pass, one rewrite per job you apply to.	Unlimited resume scans and AI optimizations, AI cover letter and bullet point generators, LinkedIn Optimizer, AI Job Match, keyword synonym detection and Auto Apply credits.
Scope	Resume tailoring only: score against one posting, rewrite, export. No job tracker, no cover letters, no LinkedIn tooling.	A broad job search suite: scanning, resume and cover letter building, LinkedIn optimization, job tracking and auto-apply.
Sold to organizations	No. Individual accounts only.	Yes, through a separate organizations track. That pricing is not published.

Jobscan pricing checked on July 27, 2026 at jobscan.co/pricing, jobscan.co. Prices change without notice; verify on their site before you buy.

When Jobscan is the better pick

There is a version of this page where every row favors us, and it would be dishonest. Jobscan has been at this far longer, and there are searches it fits better than we do.

You want per-system detail. Jobscan’s pitch is that it identifies the applicant tracking system behind a given posting and shapes its recommendations around that system’s parsing behavior. Second Round does not do that. It builds one clean, single-column, plain-text format designed to survive any of them, and spends its effort on the content instead of the parser. If you want to reason about a specific ATS, that is Jobscan’s ground.
You scan five jobs a month or fewer. The free Jobscan plan covers five scans a month at $0 forever, and it includes the job tracker. Five dollars is not much, but zero is less. Use their free plan.
You want one subscription covering everything. Cover letters, a LinkedIn profile optimizer, auto-apply credits and application tracking all sit inside the Jobscan subscription. Second Round is a single-purpose tool and will leave you shopping for the rest.
You are buying for a team or a program. Jobscan sells to organizations. We do not; there are individual accounts and nothing else.

Where the difference actually is

Both tools read a job posting and tell you what your resume is missing. The disagreement is about what happens next, and about how you pay for it.

A match rate tells you the gap exists. Second Round is built around closing it: the tailored resume is written for you, then critiqued the way a recruiter would read it, and the export is a single-column file with real text rather than a picture of text. You can score your resume against a posting and read the rewrite before paying anything.

On price, the difference is structural rather than a discount. A subscription is priced for a search that runs indefinitely, and it keeps charging while you are interviewing, or after you have signed an offer and forgotten about it. A pass is priced for a search that ends. If yours wraps up in six weeks, you paid $5 or $12 and nothing else happens.

One thing we will not claim: that any tool measurably raises your interview rate. We do not have honest numbers for that yet, so there are none on this page.

Common questions

Is there a free alternative to Jobscan?: Partly, and Jobscan itself is one of them: its $0 forever plan includes five resume scans a month. On Second Round the resume roast is free and you can read the tailored rewrite before paying, with payment required only to export the finished file. If five scans a month covers your search, the honest answer is that you do not need to pay either of us.
How much does Jobscan cost?: Checked on 27 July 2026: $49.95 per month billed monthly, or $89.95 every three months on the quarterly plan, which Jobscan displays as $29.98 per month. Both are recurring subscriptions you cancel yourself. There is also a free plan at $0 with five scans a month. Prices change, so confirm on their pricing page before buying.
Does Second Round charge a subscription?: No. The three options are one-time payments: $5 for 30 days, $12 for 90 days, and $39 for a year. Nothing auto-renews and there is no card kept on file for a future charge, so when the pass runs out it just ends.
What does Jobscan do that Second Round does not?: Quite a lot. Jobscan detects the applicant tracking system behind a posting and tunes its advice to it, and bundles a job tracker, a cover letter generator, a LinkedIn optimizer and auto-apply credits. Second Round does none of that. It scores your resume against one posting, rewrites it, and exports a file built to be machine readable.

Try the free part first

Paste your resume and get the read a recruiter gives it in the first few seconds: a 0 to 100 screen score, the line costing you the most, and a rewrite of it. That part is free, so you can judge the output before deciding whether any of this is worth paying for.

Roast my resume

Last updated July 27, 2026. Second Round has no affiliation with Jobscan, and this page is not endorsed by them. Everything above about Jobscan was taken from their own public pages on that date.