Free ATS resume checker
Paste your resume and a job ad. See which keywords from the ad your resume is missing, and what might trip up a parser. It’s a quick gap check, not a score an employer sees.
- Nothing is uploaded or saved
- Results in a second
- Honest about what it can’t tell you
Uncovering the ATS myth
A checker is useful, but only if you know what it can’t do. The biggest myth is that an ATS is a gatekeeper robot hunting for reasons to bin your resume. Here’s the version that’s actually true.
The ATS auto-rejects resumes it doesn't like.
Most systems reject nothing. They store and organise applications so a recruiter can search them — and a person makes the call.
You have to beat an algorithm scoring your resume.
There's rarely a hidden score deciding your fate. There's a searchable database of candidates and a busy human skimming for fit.
A creative template gets you filtered out.
Plain, parseable text is safest, but the real filter is the recruiter's ten-second skim — not a font choice.
What an ATS actually scans
It’s a filing system, not a judge. Here’s what it really does with your resume.
Parses your text
It strips your layout and turns the resume into plain text — which is why tables, columns, and images can scramble.
Extracts your fields
Name, contact, job titles, dates, and skills get pulled into structured fields it can store and sort.
Indexes you for search
Recruiters search and filter that database by keyword, title, and location. This is where being findable matters.
Flags what it can't read
Anything it fails to parse cleanly can be dropped or garbled — the one place formatting genuinely hurts you.
Keywords aren’t the whole game
Keywords help a recruiter find you. They don’t get you picked. Stuffing a resume with terms only makes a human reject it faster.
What wins is relevant experience and clear, specific results — the keywords should fall out of writing about work you actually did.
A high score isn’t a high chance
A score checker gives you a number. The recruiter deciding your interview never sees it. A 95% “match” still loses to a clearer, more relevant resume sitting next to it.
Optimise for the person reading it, not the meter. The number is a starting line, not a finish line.
The tactics that actually move the needle
We put the specific, tested guidance — how to phrase impact, what recruiters really skim for, how to tailor without keyword-stuffing — into our Premium Tips. They’re free to read once you sign up for an account.
ATS questions, answered
Does this checker upload or store my resume?
No. The check runs in your browser, so what you paste is never sent to a server or saved. Closing the tab deletes it.
Is this the same score an employer's ATS uses?
No. It compares the keywords in a job ad with your resume and checks a few structure basics. No ATS publishes a universal score, and recruiters never see one, so treat the result as a way to find gaps, not a prediction.
Does an ATS automatically reject my resume?
Almost never. Most applicant tracking systems are databases that store and organise applications so recruiters can search them. A person reviews and decides — the software rarely rejects anyone on its own.
Do I need to match every keyword in the job description?
No. Keywords help a recruiter find you in a search, so the relevant ones matter — but matching every term won't help a weak resume. Relevance and evidence beat raw keyword volume every time.
Is a high ATS score enough to get an interview?
No. A high score from a checker means you're easy to find and cleanly parsed — not that you're the strongest candidate. Recruiters never see that number; they read the resume itself.
Will a creative resume template get me filtered out?
Usually not, but plain, single-column text is the safe choice because it parses reliably. The real filter isn't the template — it's the recruiter's quick skim for whether you fit the role.
So how do I actually stand out?
Make your relevant experience obvious and back it with clear, specific results. Our Premium Tips walk through exactly how to do that — and they're free to access when you create an account.
Are the Premium Tips free?
Yes, while we're in testing. You just need to sign up for a free account to unlock them.
Go deeper on the ATS
Stop optimising for the robot
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