TestGorilla pricing in 2026 and what small businesses actually pay

TestGorilla’s pricing page says Core starts at $215 a month. That’s true, in the same way a $2,580 sofa is “just $215 a month” if the store makes you pay for the whole year before it’s delivered.

That’s the part the monthly number hides, and it’s the first thing to check on any AI candidate screening software pricing page. The $215 is quoted billed annually, upfront. The pricing page now shows a pay-monthly toggle, but TestGorilla’s own help center still says monthly billing isn’t available. Either way, what you’re actually buying is a block of credits that belong to that contract year and nowhere else. If you don’t spend them, they don’t come back as a discount or a rollover. They just expire.

For a small business that hires in bursts (three roles this quarter, none for the next two), that detail matters more than the sticker price. Here’s what TestGorilla’s plans include, what its own terms say about your money once you’ve paid it, and what the real annual cost looks like for a team that doesn’t hire on a steady drip.

What TestGorilla’s plans actually include

TestGorilla runs three tiers, checked against its live pricing page in October 2026. US prices went up in late September.

Two things to notice before the number itself. First, AI interviews and your own video questions aren’t on Core, which only gets TestGorilla’s library video questions. If screening candidates on camera with your own questions matters to you, the real entry price isn’t $215 a month, it’s the $520-a-month Plus tier, or $6,240 a year. Sourcing isn’t on Core either; it’s now a separate product, Gorilla Sourcing. Second, Core caps you at 2 full-access seats. A third person reviewing candidates means either sharing a login or moving to Plus.

Credits work the same way across both paid tiers: 1 credit per assessed candidate (TestGorilla’s help center says an assessment of up to 5 skills tests costs 1 credit per candidate), 1 for video questions, 1 for an ID verification. 2 credits for an AI interview or a job simulation. Resume scoring and qualifying questions are free to run. A credit is only spent once a candidate actually starts the assessment, which is fair. If you’re comparing this against other tools in the candidate screening software category, the credit structure itself isn’t the outlier. What happens to the credits you don’t spend is.

The part of the bill nobody quotes

TestGorilla’s own terms of service spell it out plainly: credits “are single-use… and expire at the end of the applicable subscription term.” Not the calendar year. Your subscription term, which for Core and Plus is 12 months from whenever you signed.

That single line changes the math on the $215 figure. You’re not renting access to a testing platform at a monthly rate you can walk away from. You’re pre-purchasing a year of testing capacity, in full, and whatever portion of it you don’t use by renewal day is gone. It doesn’t discount next year’s bill. It doesn’t extend. It just lapses.

The same terms page is direct about the money too: “all payment obligations are non-cancelable, and Fees, once paid, are non-refundable.” There’s a 15-day money-back guarantee, but read the fine print before you count on it. It requires you to have already tested at least one assessment on one real candidate, it’s limited to one refund per customer, and it applies “only on initial purchase,” never to a renewal. If your second year doesn’t go the way the first one did, there’s no guarantee waiting for you, only an automatic renewal: TestGorilla’s contract “will automatically renew for additional successive periods of equal duration” unless you cancel it yourself, in writing, before the term ends.

None of that is hidden, exactly. It’s written into the terms page for anyone who reads it. But almost nobody reads a terms page before signing up for a $215-a-month plan, because $215 a month sounds like something you can cancel next month if it’s not working. TestGorilla’s terms say the opposite: you signed a year, and the year is what you’re on the hook for. If you want the full breakdown of how that compares against the rest of the category, our candidate screening software pricing guide walks through several platforms side by side.

What that actually costs a business that hires in bursts

Say you’re a small business on Core, paying $2,580 for the year. You post three roles in a six-week stretch in Q1: an office coordinator, a bookkeeper, and a service tech. Together they pull around 120 applicants. You run a skills test and a video question on each one, 2 credits per candidate, so that hiring push burns through 240 of your 750 annual credits in about a month and a half.

Then, like most small businesses, hiring goes quiet. No open roles in Q2. Maybe one in Q3. The credits sitting in your account for those quiet months aren’t earning you anything. They’re not banked for next year. They’re a portion of $2,580 you already paid for, waiting to expire on your renewal date, whether you post another role or not.

This is the shape of the pre-employment assessment tool category generally: most of it is built and priced around continuous testing volume, not the bursty, seasonal pattern that a small business actually hires in. If you run assessments across dozens of roles spread evenly through the year, an annual credit pool can pencil out fine. If you hire the same handful of roles a few times a year, in short, heavy bursts, you’re paying full-year money for a fraction of a year’s use, on a contract you can’t cancel or get refunded once the 15-day window closes.

Why the reviews back this up

TestGorilla’s own numbers back the tier structure. Its Trustpilot page shows a 3.6 out of 5 rating across 1,719 reviews as of this update, with billing and cancellation the most common thread running through the negative ones. One reviewer’s complaint sums up the pattern: “They changed our plan without our approval and then billed for an entire year.” Others describe slow, generic replies specifically when the request involves money, cancellation, or getting off a plan they signed up for expecting something more flexible than a 12-month lock.

None of that means TestGorilla is a bad product. Its test library, at 350-plus assessments, is genuinely one of the deepest in the category, and for a company running structured testing across a real recruiting program, the annual math is a normal cost of doing business. See our full rundown of what makes a hiring assessment worth using if depth of library matters more to you than contract terms. The pricing problem here is narrower than the product itself. It’s the gap between what the page implies (“$215/month,” a number that reads like a subscription) and what the terms actually commit you to: a full year, paid up front, non-refundable, credits that don’t outlive the term. For a wider look at how TestGorilla stacks up feature by feature, not just on price, see our TestGorilla alternatives breakdown.

What a small business should actually budget for

If you’re weighing TestGorilla, budget for the annual number, not the monthly one: $2,580 for Core, or $6,240-plus for Plus if you need AI interviews or your own video questions included rather than bolted onto a separate tool. Assume the credits you don’t use by renewal are gone, so size your plan to your quietest realistic year, not your busiest month, and expect to eat some waste either way. And don’t count on the money-back guarantee as a safety net past your first 15 days.

That’s the calculation an owner doing their own hiring usually doesn’t have time to run before a demo call talks them into Core. It’s also the reason we built Truffle differently. Truffle is an AI screening platform that combines resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments in one platform, priced around how small businesses actually hire: in bursts, with quiet stretches in between, not on a steady testing calendar.

The credit model is the same idea TestGorilla uses (you spend credits per candidate, not per seat) built around the opposite assumption about your year. A resume screened by AI Match costs 1 credit. An assessed candidate, all three assessments included, costs 2. A completed one-way interview costs 5, and on Core and above, whatever you don’t spend in a given month rolls over for up to 12 months, capped at three times your monthly pool, instead of expiring at a renewal date. Plans start at $49 a month with no annual commitment, video interviews are included from the first plan rather than gated behind a $520-a-month tier, and a 7-day free trial with 30 credits and no card gets you a real answer before you sign anything.

Post your three roles in Q1, spend what you need, and if Q2 and Q3 are quiet, the unused credits are still there in Q4 instead of having lapsed on a contract anniversary you didn’t choose.

Frequently asked questions about TestGorilla pricing

How much does TestGorilla actually cost per year?

Core starts at $2,580 a year ($215/month, billed annually, for 750 credits), and Plus starts at $6,240 a year ($520/month, billed annually, for 2,000 credits), both checked against TestGorilla’s live pricing page in October 2026. That works out to about $3.44 per credit on entry-level Core. The pricing page now shows a pay-monthly toggle, but TestGorilla’s help center still says monthly billing isn’t available. The Free plan is the only tier with no annual commitment, at $0/month with 10 non-rolling credits a month plus 5 essential tests that use no credits.

What happens to unused TestGorilla credits?

They expire. TestGorilla’s terms of service state that credits are single-use and expire at the end of your subscription term, which runs 12 months from signup on Core and Plus. Unused credits don’t carry into your next contract year and don’t reduce your renewal price.

Can I get a refund if I cancel TestGorilla mid-contract?

No. TestGorilla’s terms describe payment obligations as non-cancelable and fees as non-refundable. The one exception is a 15-day money-back guarantee available once, on your first purchase only, and it requires you to have already run at least one assessment on a real candidate. It doesn’t apply to renewals or to canceling partway through a later year.

Does TestGorilla have a plan for a small business hiring a few roles a year?

Not really, on the pricing side. Core’s $2,580 annual cost doesn’t flex down if you only hire twice a year, and TestGorilla’s help center says monthly billing isn’t available to match a lighter hiring pattern. A small business hiring in short bursts typically pays for a full year of testing capacity and uses a fraction of it. Truffle’s Starter plan, from $49/month with no annual lock-in, is built around that exact hiring shape.

Is TestGorilla worth it for the price?

It depends on your hiring volume and how evenly it’s spread across the year. If you’re running assessments across dozens of roles continuously, the annual cost divides across enough hires to make sense, and the 350-plus test library is a real advantage. If you hire a handful of roles a few times a year with quiet stretches between, you’re likely paying full-year money for partial-year use. See Truffle’s plans and credit pricing and run the math against your own hiring calendar before you sign a contract you can’t get out of.