How Much Does It Cost to Switch ATS? Greenhouse & Lever Migration Costs (2026)

Switching applicant tracking system is rarely just a line swap on a software invoice. The new licence is usually the smallest part of the bill. The real cost of migrating off Greenhouse or Lever sits in the things vendors do not put on the quote: running two systems in parallel, exporting and re-mapping years of candidate data, rebuilding integrations and your careers site, and the productivity dip while recruiters relearn their daily workflow.

This guide gives an honest, itemised breakdown of what an ATS migration actually costs a UK SMB in 2026 — with every figure tied to a stated assumption so you can defend it internally. Figures are planning ranges to sanity-check against your own quotes, not fixed prices.

TL;DR: What an ATS Migration Costs (2026)

The table below assumes a UK company of 50–500 employees hiring 20–80 roles a year, with one to three years of candidate history to move and a handful of integrations (job boards, an HRIS, maybe background checks). Adjust up for larger data volumes or heavier integration stacks.

Cost component	Typical planning range (GBP)	What drives it
New ATS licence (year 1)	£4,500–£30,000+/yr	Headcount, tier, add-ons; enterprise tools are custom-quoted
Dual-running overlap (1–3 months)	£750–£7,500	Paying old + new licence simultaneously during cutover
Data migration (export + import)	£750–£11,000+	Candidate volume, field mapping, DIY vs vendor-assisted
Integration & careers-site rebuild	£400–£7,500+	Number of integrations, custom careers page, API work
Training & productivity dip	£1,500–£8,000	Recruiter/hiring-manager hours lost to ramp-up
Indicative all-in (excl. new licence)	£3,500–£25,000+	One-off switching cost on top of the ongoing licence

How to read this: the bottom-row figure is a rough all-in planning range, not a vendor quote. It is our own synthesis of the component ranges above — the one-off cost of moving (everything except the ongoing new licence) lands somewhere around £3,500 for a lean DIY migration to £25,000+ for a mid-market move with vendor-assisted data migration and integration rebuild. Treat it as an indicative starting point and always confirm against written quotes — your data volume and integration count move these numbers more than anything else.

If your underlying problem is screening speed rather than workflow, it may be far cheaper to add a screening layer than to migrate at all — more on that in When switching is worth it. For ongoing licence costs across all the major tools, see our ATS pricing guide for 2026.

The Five Cost Components of an ATS Migration

1. The new ATS licence

This is the only number most teams budget for, and it varies enormously by tool and headcount. As a 2026 baseline:

Greenhouse entry-level pricing starts around $6,500/year (≈ £4,900) for small teams, rising to roughly $20,000–$40,000/year (≈ £15,000–£30,000) for mid-market companies of 250–1,000 employees once tier and add-ons are included. (Leon Consulting)
Lever runs from around $6,000/year (≈ £4,500) for small teams. A rough per-employee benchmark of $6–$8 per employee per month puts a 200-employee firm at roughly $14,400–$19,200/year (≈ £10,800–£14,400) before negotiation. (Pin)

Both vendors quote custom and require annual contracts, so treat published figures as a starting point, not a price list. Reviews of both tools mention renewal increases in the 8–12% range, so factor next year's rise into the comparison too. (Pin — Lever)

2. Dual-running overlap (1–3 months)

You cannot flip a switch overnight. For a clean cutover you keep the old ATS live while you load and test the new one — typically one to three months of paying for both. If your existing Greenhouse or Lever contract costs, say, £750–£2,500/month, an overlap adds £750–£7,500 depending on how long you run in parallel.

The way to minimise this is to time your migration so the old contract's notice window and the new system's go-live line up. See How to cut the cost.

3. Data migration: DIY vs vendor-assisted

Both Greenhouse and Lever let you export your own data. Lever exports to CSV via Settings → Data Management → Export All Data, producing separate files for candidates, opportunities and feedback. Greenhouse exports are similar, though large datasets (10,000+ candidate records) can take days to process. (Lever Help Center, Treegarden)

The cost split is roughly:

DIY export/import — staff time only. Realistic for clean, low-volume data, but the field mapping (stages, scorecards, custom fields) is where it gets fiddly.
Vendor-assisted migration — where data migration is bundled into the new tool's implementation, it commonly lands in a $1,000–$5,000 (≈ £750–£3,800) basic tier and a $5,000–$15,000 (≈ £3,800–£11,300) complex tier covering custom workflows and large datasets. (Treegarden)

The dollar tiers above are US-published figures, converted to sterling at roughly 0.75 USD/GBP (the approximate June 2026 rate) for guidance only. Exchange rates move, so confirm the live rate and a UK vendor's written quote before you budget.

4. Integration and careers-site rebuild

Every integration you rely on has to be re-pointed at the new ATS: job boards (Indeed, LinkedIn), your HRIS, background-check and assessment providers, and any custom careers page that pulls live vacancies via API. Off-the-shelf integrations may cost only configuration time; bespoke API work or a careers-page rebuild can run into low thousands. Budget £400–£7,500+ depending on how custom your current setup is, and confirm against developer time or vendor professional-services quotes.

5. Training and the productivity dip

The cost everyone forgets. For a few weeks after go-live, recruiters and hiring managers are slower because they are relearning where everything lives. A reasonable planning assumption: 10–60 hours of combined recruiter, hiring-manager and ops time across training and ramp-up. At a blended £50/hour, that is roughly £1,500–£8,000 — re-cost it against your own team's rates.

Migrating Off Greenhouse Specifically

Contract terms. Greenhouse subscriptions auto-renew for a further one-year term unless either party gives written notice at least 30 days before the renewal date. If your term is a year or longer, Greenhouse will notify you of a pending auto-renewal at least 60 days before renewal. (Greenhouse Master Subscription Agreement) Missing that 30-day window is the single most expensive migration mistake — you can end up locked into another year you did not want.

Data export. Greenhouse supports a structured export, but large datasets take time to process — plan for several business days, longer beyond ~10,000 candidate records. (Treegarden)

Gotchas to watch:

Scorecard and interview-kit history does not always map cleanly into another tool's data model — decide early what you genuinely need to keep.
Renewal price increases of 8–15% have been reported, so a "stay" decision is not cost-neutral either. (Leon Consulting)
Add-on sprawl — sourcing automation and onboarding modules are billed separately, so confirm exactly what you are leaving behind versus re-buying elsewhere.

For tools that replace or sit alongside Greenhouse, see Greenhouse alternatives and our BambooHR vs Greenhouse comparison.

Migrating Off Lever Specifically

Contract terms. Like Greenhouse, Lever requires annual contracts that auto-renew, and reviews report renewal increases around 8–12%. (Pin) The exact written-notice window to prevent renewal varies by agreement, so check the term clause in your own Order Form or subscription agreement and diarise the deadline the day you sign.

Data export. Lever's self-serve export (Settings → Data Management → Export All Data) produces CSVs split into candidates, opportunities and feedback. That structure is helpful, but the relationships between those files have to be rebuilt on import — which is where mapping time goes. (Lever Help Center)

Gotchas to watch:

Professional-services fees for configuration, migration, HRIS integration and training are quoted separately, typically $2,000–$10,000 (≈ £1,500–£7,500) depending on complexity. (Pin)
CRM/nurture data — if you use Lever's CRM for talent pools, that pipeline data is often harder to move than core candidate records. Confirm what transfers.

For alternatives and how specialist screening fits alongside Lever, see Lever alternatives.

Hidden Costs People Forget

These rarely appear on a migration quote but routinely show up afterwards:

Historic candidate data and GDPR retention. Under UK GDPR you must keep candidate data only as long as you have a lawful basis, then delete it. Migrating everything can mean importing data you should have purged — and paying to store it. Use the migration as a chance to apply your retention policy rather than copying records wholesale.
Scorecard and feedback history. Structured evaluation history is valuable for consistency and defensibility, but it is also the data most likely to need manual re-mapping.
Approval workflows. Offer-approval chains, requisition sign-off and permission structures usually have to be rebuilt by hand in the new system.
Reporting continuity. If you report on time-to-hire or source effectiveness, expect a gap while historic metrics are reconciled across two data models.
Re-training new joiners. If you onboard recruiters mid-migration, you are training them twice.

How to Cut the Cost

You cannot make migration free, but you can avoid the expensive mistakes:

Time it around your renewal. Diarise the notice deadline (30 days before renewal for Greenhouse) the day you sign. Cutting over just before renewal minimises dual-running and avoids an unwanted auto-renew.
Phase the migration. Move active requisitions and recent candidates first; archive the long tail. This shrinks both data-migration cost and the productivity dip.
Decide what to leave behind. Not every scorecard, rejected applicant or talent-pool record needs to move. Less data = lower migration cost and a cleaner GDPR position.
Get migration in writing. Ask each prospective vendor to quote data migration, integration setup and training as line items, not "we'll sort it out." Bundling these into the first-year deal can save meaningfully versus buying them piecemeal. (Treegarden — Lever)
Negotiate the new licence. List pricing for mid-market ATS contracts often carries a 30%+ markup that disappears when buyers counter. (Pin — Lever)

When Switching Is Worth It — and When to Stay

Migration makes sense when the ATS is genuinely the bottleneck: broken workflows, missing compliance features, integrations that no longer exist, or pricing that has outgrown your usage. In those cases the one-off switching cost pays back through ongoing efficiency.

It is much harder to justify when the real pain is screening speed. If recruiters are drowning in CVs but the workflow itself is fine, you can spend £3,500–£25,000+ migrating and still have the same problem on the other side — because most ATS platforms manage tracking, not shortlisting.

This is where Marxel fits honestly into the picture. Marxel is an AI CV screening layer, not a full ATS — there is no per-seat licence and no multi-week implementation, so it carries effectively none of the migration costs itemised above. It sits alongside whatever ATS you already run. If the thing slowing you down is reading 200 applications per role, adding screening is usually faster and cheaper to deploy than ripping out Greenhouse or Lever. If your workflow is the problem, migrate — and budget properly using the ranges above.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average cost to migrate from Greenhouse to a modern ATS?

For a UK SMB of 50–500 employees with one to three years of data, the one-off cost of moving — dual-running overlap, data migration, integration rebuild and training — typically lands around £3,500 for a lean DIY migration to £25,000+ for a vendor-assisted mid-market move, on top of the new licence. The biggest variables are candidate-data volume and how many integrations you rebuild. Always confirm against written quotes.

What is the average cost to migrate from Lever to a modern ATS?

The same component ranges apply as for Greenhouse. Lever quotes professional-services fees of roughly $2,000–$10,000 (≈ £1,500–£7,500) for configuration, migration, integration and training depending on complexity. (Pin) Add dual-running overlap and internal time on top.

How much does ATS migration cost overall?

There is no single figure — it depends on data volume, integrations and whether you do it yourself or pay a vendor. Use the TL;DR table above as a planning baseline and replace each line with your own quotes.

What is the cost of switching applicant tracking system if I do it myself?

A DIY migration removes vendor data-migration fees but not the cost — you pay in staff time for export, field mapping, integration setup and training, plus any dual-running overlap. For clean, low-volume data it can be the cheapest route; for large or messy datasets, vendor-assisted migration often works out cheaper once you account for the hours.

Can I export my data from Greenhouse and Lever?

Yes. Both offer self-serve exports — Lever via Settings → Data Management → Export All Data (CSV), and Greenhouse via its export tools, though large datasets take longer to process. (Lever, Treegarden) The export is rarely the hard part; re-mapping fields and relationships on import is.

How long does an ATS migration take?

Plan for a one-to-three-month overlap for a mid-market team: data export and import, integration re-pointing, testing and training. Phasing the migration — active requisitions first, archive the rest — shortens the window and reduces cost.

Is it cheaper to migrate ATS or add a screening tool?

If your problem is workflow, migrate. If your problem is screening speed, adding a specialist CV screening layer avoids migration costs entirely because there is no per-seat licence or implementation project, and it works with your existing ATS. Diagnose the real bottleneck before committing to a switch.