Certn
The World's Easiest Background Checks
By Certn · 4.7/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- High-volume hiring teams that need criminal and identity checks completed in minutes rather than days
- Employers screening candidates in multiple countries through one platform covering all 195 countries
- Staffing, retail, hospitality, construction and manufacturing businesses that want pay-per-check pricing with no setup fees or minimums
- Talent teams already on Greenhouse, Lever or Workday that want screening embedded in the existing hiring workflow
Ideal size: 10–1,000+ employees people · Scaling employer with repeatable, high-volume hiring and a modern ATS
Not for
- Organizations that require an on-premise or self-hosted screening deployment
- Buyers who need fixed USD price certainty — published per-check pricing is in Canadian dollars and pass-through access fees may apply
- Teams expecting AI to make adverse hiring decisions — Certn states it keeps human oversight and does not use AI for automated decisions
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Same day — first check in minutes
~1 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
On request
Pay per check, billed per order; no setup fees and no minimums. Published prices are in CAD (e.g. CA$24.99 basic Canadian criminal record check).
Implementation Friction
1/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
No seat tiers or minimums — add team members as you grow and only pay for checks used
Add-on costs
- Pass-through access fees may apply on some checks such as employment verification and motor vehicle records
- Larger-scale implementation, bundled packages and tailored enterprise solutions are quoted separately
Company & support
Who is behind Certn, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsNot listed
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
Only a self-serve help centre is published for current customers; no support phone line, support email, live chat or support response SLA is stated on the pages reviewed. The 24/7 figure on the security page refers to automated security monitoring, not support hours.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Certn sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Certn
- WorkBright
- Ironscales
- Termly
- ApprovalMax
- Coolset
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Certn. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What Certn ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Privacy policy states Certn uses AI agents (AI-powered chatbots and voice agents) to automate internal processes and service delivery with human oversight, and does not use AI for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. Pricing page states social media checks use machine learning to flag risk indicators. No source names a model provider or describes AI billing.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Not recorded — ask the vendor
- Runs on
- Not recorded
- AI pricing
- Not recorded
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Certn is a background screening platform used by more than 20,000 companies, with checks available in all 195 countries from one dashboard. Screening includes criminal record, identity, employment, education and credential verification, credit, social media and driver records, many returned in minutes. Pricing is pay-per-check in CAD with no setup fees or minimums. Certn integrates through a REST API, out-of-the-box ATS/HRIS connectors such as Greenhouse, Lever and Workday, and holds SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.
Frequently asked questions
How quickly can we run our first background check?
Certn is self-serve: the homepage says teams can start running checks in minutes with no setup or integration, and many checks complete in minutes. The pricing page lists criminal record checks at 4–72 hours, identity and credit checks as instant, and public records checks in under an hour. Employment, education, credential and reference verifications are initiated by Certn's in-house team within one business day and then depend on how fast third parties respond.
What is the pricing model and is there an annual minimum?
Certn charges per check with no setup fees and no minimums, and you only pay for checks you use. Published prices are in Canadian dollars — for example CA$24.99 for the basic Canadian criminal record check and CA$4.99 for OneID identity verification — and pass-through access fees may apply to some checks. Larger-scale implementation, bundled enterprise packages and tailored solutions are quoted separately through the sales team.
Which checks are available?
Criminal record checks (Canadian basic, enhanced and Quebec SOQUIJ), identity verification (OneID), social media checks, credit reports, public records checks, employment, education and credential verification, reference checks, and driver abstracts / motor vehicle records for Canada and the US. Coverage spans all 195 countries, and availability of specific records varies by jurisdiction.
How does Certn fit into our existing hiring stack?
Three routes are documented: a RESTful API to embed checks in your onboarding flow, out-of-the-box integrations with Greenhouse, Lever and Workday and other ATS/HRIS tools, or the Certn dashboard with no setup or integration required. The security page states the platform is hosted in ISO 27001-certified cloud data centres in Canada, Australia, the UK and/or the EU depending on region, and that Certn does not run on-premise servers.
Is Certn secure and compliant enough for regulated hiring?
The security page reports a current SOC 2 Type 2 (Sept 2024 – Sept 2025) covering security, confidentiality and availability, a publicly available SOC 3 report, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. It also cites AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit, MFA and role-based access control, quarterly access reviews, annual external and quarterly internal penetration tests, and a data retention and disposal policy aligned to regulations such as PIPEDA, GDPR and FCRA.
Does Certn use AI, and does it make hiring decisions automatically?
Certn's privacy policy states it uses AI agents such as AI-powered chatbots and AI voice agents to automate internal processes and service delivery with full human oversight, and that it does not use AI to make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. The pricing page describes machine learning used within social media checks to flag possible risk indicators. No source names a foundation-model provider or describes AI-specific billing.