Budget about $200 to $300 a year if you're hiring 5 people. Budget somewhere around $3,750 to $5,550 if you're hiring 50. And if you're hiring 500 a year, stop looking at list prices altogether, because at that volume you should be negotiating your own rate, not paying whatever the homepage says.
Those aren't just three different totals. They're three different ways of buying, and the model that saves you money at one size costs you money at another. Here's how each one actually breaks down.
At five hires a year, you're hiring less than once every two months. There's no reason to pay for a package built around monthly volume, and there's definately no reason to pay a monthly platform fee for an account that mostly sits there empty.
Say each hire needs a national criminal database search and one county court search, a pretty normal ask for an office role. That runs roughly $20 to $65 a hire, depending on which county you land in. Five hires at around $40 to $60 average puts you at $200 to $300 for the year.
Add an MVR check for a driving role, or a drug test, and a single hire can run higher on its own. That's fine. At this volume you're pricing each hire on what the job actually needs, not on what a package happened to bundle in.
Fifty hires a year is about four a month. That's regular enough that a package stops being overkill and starts saving you real money, because you already know roughly what most roles need before you even post the job.
A Standard package, county search and employment verification included, usually runs $50 to $120 a hire. Say yours lands around $75. Fifty hires at $75 comes to $3,750 a year in per-check pricing alone.
Now add the part people forget to ask about: the monthly platform fee. If your vendor charges $150 a month just to keep the account open, that's another $1,800 a year, which brings your real total closer to $5,550. Spread across 50 hires, that's about $111 a hire fully loaded. Not the $75 the sales page quoted you.
At 500 hires a year, paying list price for anything is leaving money on the table. That's not me being cynical. I watched it happen. Vendors build room to negotiate once you're a real account, not a one-off customer.
But if you don't ask, you pay close to the same rate as somebody hiring five people. Take that same $75 to $85 Standard package rate and negotiate it. At real volume, $35 to $55 a hire is a realistic negotiated number, especially once you commit to a year and a dedicated account setup.
Five hundred hires at $45 a hire comes to $22,500. Compare that to $37,500 to $42,500 if you'd just paid list price. That gap is real money, and it exists because you asked for it, not because the vendor offered it first.
The monthly platform fee barely matters at this size. Even $250 a month only adds up to $3,000 a year, or $6 a hire once it's spread across 500 people. What matters is whether you actually negotiated, or just accepted the number you were quoted.
Here's the same numbers laid out together, so you can see the model shift as the volume goes up.
| Hires per year | Right pricing model | Rough per-hire cost | Rough annual total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Per-report, no monthly fee | $40–$60 | $200–$300 |
| 50 | Standard package | ~$75, ~$111 with platform fee | ~$3,750–$5,550 |
| 500 | Negotiated volume rate | $35–$55 negotiated | ~$22,500–$25,500 |
These are rough numbers built off the pricing ranges I've laid out in other pieces on this site, not a quote from any one vendor. Your actual number depends on which checks each role needs and where your candidates live.
Small companies overpay by picking a package built for volume they don't have, then getting stuck with a monthly fee they never use up. Mid-size companies overpay by staying on per-report pricing out of habit, long after their hiring crossed into package territory.
Big companies overpay too, just differently. They treat list price like it's fixed, when at real volume it almost never is. Dont assume your pricing model is set in stone either. If your hiring doubles, revisit the math. I've seen companies stick with the same setup for years after their volume completely changed, because nobody thought to ask if a better deal existed now.
One more thing, and it applies at every size on this list. A lower rate is never worth skipping a step that keeps you compliant. That's not a pricing question anymore, that's a legal one, and the specifics change by state often enough that I'd check with a lawyer before cutting anything to save a few dollars a hire.