Checkr review

Checkr runs background checks on a per-report basis, no subscription, starting at $29.99 for a Basic check and topping out at $94.99 for its most thorough Complete package. It rates 4.0 out of 5 here. The pricing itself is straightforward and published; what’s worth knowing before you buy is that the sticker price excludes pass-through court and database fees, and that support runs AI-first with reported delays reaching an actual person.

What Checkr is for

Checkr fits a small business that needs background checks occasionally rather than constantly, since there’s no subscription or minimum-volume commitment to worry about. The Workforce line is the relevant one for most small-business hiring: Basic covers an SSN trace, sex offender registry, global watchlist and national criminal search; Essential, Checkr’s “Most Popular” tier, adds identity verification and unlimited county criminal search; Complete adds unlimited state and federal criminal search on top of that. Checkr also runs separate pricing tables for Personal Profiles, Tenant Screening and Mortgage verification, different products with their own fee schedules that shouldn’t be confused with the Workforce numbers here.

Pricing by report

One term worth reading closely: all of this pricing excludes standard third-party court and database access fees, which get passed through at cost. The advertised number is a floor, not a guaranteed final charge, and a separate Trustpilot complaint describes a price actually jumping from the advertised $29.99 to $49.99 mid-purchase with no explanation given. Neither of those is proof of a systemic upsell pattern on a single data point, but it’s worth confirming your total before you submit payment rather than after.

Turnaround and integrations

Checkr states most checks complete within 1 to 3 business days, and that 89% of criminal searches finish within an hour through real-time database access, a claim we haven’t independently timed ourselves. It integrates with more than 100 applicant-tracking systems by name, including Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, BambooHR, Rippling and ADP, which cuts setup friction for a business already running one of those tools, including Rippling from this same guide.

What users say in reviews

G2 rates Checkr 4.5 out of 5 from 399 reviews, and Capterra matches that 4.5 from 301 reviews. Trustpilot’s 1,029-review sample at 3.9 out of 5 is large enough to trust as a genuine cross-check rather than a thin sliver, unlike Trainual’s roughly 25-review Trustpilot count in this same category. The one-star complaints that recur are AI-only support with slow human escalation, the identity-verification step hanging or failing mid-check, and the price-jump issue described above.

Who should skip it

Checkr is a weak fit for anyone who needs a human on the phone quickly when something goes wrong; the AI-first support model, with reported multi-day delays to reach a person, is a real friction point if a check gets stuck. It’s also worth budgeting conservatively rather than assuming the advertised $29.99-$94.99 range is the final bill, given the pass-through court-fee structure. For the payroll side of hiring, see Best Payroll and HR Software for Small Businesses, which covers OnPay, Gusto, Rippling, QuickBooks Payroll and Trainual side by side.