Pricing & independence
Why we charge an application fee.
EduRankAI takes no government subsidies, no advertiser money, no investor pressure on hiring outcomes, and no donations with strings attached. The platform you're using costs real money to run — people, infrastructure, verification, tooling, security. The small per-application processing fee is how we pay those bills honestly, while keeping the platform free of every other form of influence.
Where the money goes
Five line items, no leftovers.
People
Every application is read by a real human reviewer. Interview panels, talent ops, training leads, payroll. Real salaries, not donated time.
Infrastructure
Hosting, databases, the in-app mailbox, file storage, push notifications, proctoring models, identity verification, payment gateway, monitoring — every line item is a paid subscription.
Verification
Identity checks, credential cross-checks, reference calls, document validation. Fraud prevention. Every application is verified end-to-end.
Tooling
Test runner, AI interview platform, proctoring stack, mail server, CI/CD, secrets and security. We build a lot in-house — but the cloud compute under it still costs money.
Independence
Crucially, the fee buys us the right to take no advertiser money, no donations with strings attached, no investor pressure to ship roles a certain way. Your fee is the only stakeholder.
The honest version
Nothing about hiring is free.
When you apply to most companies, the cost is invisible. Either the company eats it (and passes it on to customers), or the platform you applied through is harvesting your data, or an ATS vendor is making money on volume, or a recruiter is paid on placement. The cost is there. You just don't see it.
We made a different choice. We charge a small, transparent fee per application — clearly disclosed, capped at the actual cost of processing your application, with a fee waiver for anyone who genuinely cannot pay. In exchange:
- No advertiser ever pays us to rank a role, surface a company, or influence who gets shortlisted.
- No donor ever attaches conditions to who we hire or what we research.
- No investor ever pressures us to ship roles we don't believe in.
- Your application data is never sold, never shared with third-party recruiters, never used to train a model.
That independence is not free either. It is exactly what your fee buys.
Questions we get
The fee, candidly.
Why a fee at all? Most application portals are free. +
Most "free" portals are paid for by someone — the recruiting company, an ATS vendor, the candidate's data being sold, or ads. We do none of those. The small per-application fee lets us be honest about who pays for the platform: the applicant pays for the processing of their own application. Nothing else.
Where does the money actually go? +
Salaries for the team that reviews applications, runs interviews, verifies identity and credentials, and operates the platform. Cloud bills for hosting, mail, database, and AI services. Payment gateway fees. The rest goes back into building better tooling so future applicants are processed faster and more fairly.
Does paying the fee improve my chances? +
No. The fee covers processing — not selection. Hiring decisions are made entirely on merit and the published rubric. You can read the rubric on the Recruitment Policy page. A paid application gets the same review as a waiver-approved one.
I genuinely can't afford this. Now what? +
Request a fee waiver. We review every waiver application manually. If your circumstances are genuine, we waive it — no questions about your performance, no second-class treatment, no record of the waiver in your file. The "Request a fee waiver" link sits on the same page as the payment button.
Is the fee refundable? +
It is non-refundable once verification begins, because the cost is incurred the moment our team starts processing the application. We make this clear before you pay. If something goes wrong on our side (duplicate charge, payment failed but money debited, etc.) we refund the same day — write to hr@edurankai.in.
Why are some roles' fees higher than others? +
Senior and leadership roles require deeper verification — more references, more credential checks, longer interview panels, structured background reviews. That work costs more, so the fee scales with the level. Intern and entry-level fees are the lowest.
Do I have to pay for the portal itself? +
No. There is no longer a separate "account creation" or "portal access" fee. The application fee is the only paid step. If you previously paid CHF 1 to activate an old account, that's the legacy flow — your account stays approved and you only pay the application fee from here.
What about non-applicants — partners, conference attendees, public users? +
Public reading is free. Browsing roles, reading research, reading the policy library, attending public events, signing up for a newsletter — none of that costs anything. Fees only apply when our team has to do verified work on your behalf (process an application, issue a certificate, run a paid event level).
Need a fee waiver?
If the fee is a genuine barrier — student in a low-income context, between jobs, family circumstances — request a waiver. We review each one manually. Approved waivers are completely silent: no flag on your application, no impact on review, no different treatment.