Xref 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
User Interface
Popular Alternatives
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

Xref

4.7

(95)

Pricing

Pricing available upon request

About Xref

Xref is an online platform for recruiters and HR departments that performs automated candidate reference checks. Key features include criminal background checks, employment and skills qualification checks, visa entitlements, financial credit checks, and psychometric assessments.

Xref software is suitable for executing real-time identity verification. The app uses facial recognition and liveness detection technology to reduce identity fraud. It aims to reduce hiring times and help businesses hire good staff by identifying potential issues before bringing candidates on board.

The Xref platform helps HR professionals benchmark applicants based on values and competencies that the business prioritizes as top hiring factors. The software comes with built-in reference questionnaires that can help acquire data about candidates. The platform is available in multiple languages and complies with all GDPR standards required for candidate data processing.

Wondering if Xref is right for your organization?

Our Human Resources Software selection experts can help you in 15 minutes or less.

Xref User Interface

Popular Xref Alternatives

Main Product

Xref

4.7

(95)

Ratings Breakdown

4.68Ease of use
4.51Value for money
4.67Customer support
4.60Functionality

Pricing

Available upon request

Get Price

Alternative Product

Employment Hero

4.4

(239)

Ratings Breakdown

4.39Ease of use
4.33Value for money
4.11Customer support
4.22Functionality

Pricing

Available upon request

Get Price

Alternative Product

Discovered

4.6

(126)

Ratings Breakdown

4.51Ease of use
4.60Value for money
4.82Customer support
4.47Functionality

Pricing

Starting at $125.00 per month

Get Price

Alternative Product

VidCruiter

4.6

(125)

Ratings Breakdown

4.44Ease of use
4.67Value for money
4.86Customer support
4.47Functionality

Pricing

Starting at $5000.00 per year

Get Price

Alternative Product

Deel

4.8

(4260)

Ratings Breakdown

4.84Ease of use
4.69Value for money
4.70Customer support
4.78Functionality

Pricing

Starting at $5.00 per month

Get Price

Alternative Product

ADP TotalSource

4.2

(456)

Ratings Breakdown

4.15Ease of use
3.86Value for money
4.12Customer support
4.21Functionality

Pricing

Available upon request

Get Price

Xref Pricing and Plans

Starting price: Connect with an advisor for pricing

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

Pricing available upon request

No plan information available

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Xref Features

Popular features found in Human Resources
Applicant Tracking
Benefits Management
Compensation Management
Employee Management
Onboarding
Payroll Management
Performance Management
Recruitment Management
Time & Attendance
More features of Xref
Activity Dashboard
Alerts/Notifications
API
Background Screening
Benchmarking
Bulk Reference Request
Candidate Scoring
Compliance Management
Customizable Branding
Customizable Questions
Customizable Reports
Customizable Templates
Data Import/Export
Data Verification
Education Verification
Email/Online
Email Reminders
Employee Database
Employee Engagement
Employment Eligibility Verification
Feedback Management
Fraud Detection
HR Management
Identity Verification
Mobile Access
Offboarding
Online Applications
Performance Metrics
Question Library
Real-Time Notifications
Real-Time Reporting
Records Management
Reference Checking
Reference Request Automation
Reminders
Reporting/Analytics
Reporting & Statistics
Screening Services Integration
Secure Data Storage
Self Service Portal
SSL Security
Status Tracking
Summary Reports
Survey Builder
Survey Library
Surveys & Feedback
Talent Management
Third-Party Integrations

Xref Integrations

iCIMS Hire

SmartRecruiters

JobAdder

Avature

Bullhorn ATS & CRM

Xref User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.7

Ratings Breakdown

72%

25%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.7

Value for money

4.5

Customer support

4.7

Functionality

4.6

Ben G.

Verified reviewer

Transportation/ Trucking/ Railroad

5001-10000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Great for all applications

This revolutionised how we complete references. We have increased the content gathered from a reference and improved the relationships with the hiring managers as they get the feedback verbatim

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to access and simple user interface. The option to bulk load people is a plus when working on large campaigns. The customer service team are very responsive.

Cons:

The candidate searches section of the software (for those who said they would like to be contacted). An opportunity to categorise them on their experience would be good.

Vendor Response

Thank you for providing such a great review, Ben. Our Customer Success team will be very happy to hear you find their support valuable. We're glad to hear that you and your team are taking advantage of the option to bulk upload and are benefiting from all the time-saving benefits of using Xref. With regards to your feedback on our People Search feature, we'll pass it on to our product team. Thanks again for leaving us a review.

Replied August 2022

Meagan D.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Easy Compliance, candidate self-referral

X Ref has sped up our hiring process and taken the responsibility for references out of the hands of managers, who are busy with so many other things. It's a simple process for administrators and candidates, but when we have needed help the service was quick and efficient.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

X Ref is super easy to use for the collection of references, and takes care of the process without active involvement from the team administering references. The best feature is the ability for references to include their information to explore future opportunities with your company, giving you free access to an additional candidate pool.

Cons:

The only thing we do not like is that there is no option to combine the references into a single PDF when they are complete and you export them - it is annoying to have to rename 3 individual files.

Reasons for choosing Xref

The mobile experience was superior, and we hire a lot of younger generations where ease of use and mobile friendly is critical

Vendor Response

Thanks for taking the time to leave us a review, Meagan. It's great to hear that you're making the most out of the People Search feature. We are confident that it will aid your recruitment with a smart and compliant approach to business development. Xref is passionate about ensuring the right people are recruited into the right roles, so we're pleased to hear that you've been able to experience the benefits of an automated and mobile-friendly platform. With regards to your feedback on the exporting references, we'll be sure to pass this on to our development team. Thanks again.

Replied August 2022

Dylan S.

Verified reviewer

Human Resources

51-200 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Review

Generally I like it but it but it could be better.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

Ease of acquiring references, not having to call every reference .

Cons:

Requests often go into spam folders or are thought to be spam by both candidates and references.

Vendor Response

Hi Dylan, Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We're glad to hear you find Xref saves you time and increases efficiencies as your team does not need to chase candidates and referees. We would love to know more about how we can improve the Xref experience for you, please feel free to reach out to our customer support team at support@xref.com. Thanks again for your feedback.

Replied August 2022

Claire P.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2020

The best online reference check solution

Xref have been great to deal with, from the initial sales meeting with [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], to giving us a trial period and then great support from [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and the team once we committed 100% to the product. We hire over 1000 staff a year so to have a tool that will support a quicker turnaround time is brilliant. We couldn't be as effective as we are without it.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Easy to use as set up of candidates takes less than a minute, ability to customise templates, which s great for us as we have many different role types to reference against, ideal for volume recruitment as you don't have to spend time chasing phone references when you have so many other recruitment activities to do, the IP address tracking - we have had a number of candidates trying to be dishonest and this has assisted us in ensuring we are hiring the right people into the organisation who are going to uphold our values.

Cons:

Would like the ability to turn off or change the reminder emails to referees and candidates so that they don't send on a weekend or public holiday. If you are setting your candidate up the day before for example they get reminder emails coming through on their "day off". We do get complaints from referees on occasion.

Reasons for choosing Xref

Better functionality by Xref and an easier tool to use and customer support is better.

Vendor Response

Thank you for your great review, Claire. It's good to hear that we have been able to help streamline your recruitment process. We are always working to improve our platform and we value feedback from our customers. We will pass this on to the relevant team internally. Please feel free to contact your Customer Success Manager if you ever have any further thoughts or feedback to share. Thanks again for your great feedback.

Replied April 2020

Astha G.

Verified reviewer

Government Administration

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Great Product

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Very easy to use. Great tracking and get notifications if there is suspicious activity, which is a very good feature. Makes life so much easy as a recruiter for me as I don't need to chase the referees.

Cons:

Too many notifications if a candidate has not responded. Sometimes candidates are contacting their referees to check if they will be okay to provide references before providing their details. I, as recruiter would get uncountable emails saying candidate has not responded. The alerts should be delayed for at least 48 hours and then send them if candidate still has not responded for 2 days or more.

Vendor Response

Thanks for sharing your review, Astha. It's wonderful to hear that you're making the most of all that the Xref platform has to offer. We agree that one of the significant advantages of using Xref is the ability to flag suspicious candidate activity. With regard to your feedback about notifications, our Customer Success would be able to help you adjust the frequency of the alerts. Please reach out to our dedicated Customer Success team at support@xref.com if you would like assistance. Thanks again for sharing your feedback.

Replied August 2022

Bhawana G.

Verified reviewer

Insurance

201-500 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed September 2023

Best platform to use for Professional Reference Check!!!

Overall i would highly recommend this platform for mid size companies who only wants to do professional reference checks.It's convenient, value for money and faster.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Very easy platform to use..Easy to put references in system and for recipient to put details of referrers , if any referrer decline to provide the recommendation, recipient can add more referrers details without back & forth.Instant email goes to candidate after details are entered. Not like other products where internal teams has SLA of 48 hours to approve and then Reference check initiated.They highlight if referrers and referee has been on same IP... which helps to detect false recommendation.

Cons:

The credit is lost if recepient doesn't fill the details in 2 weeks time which is quite a loss for company. They should credit it back to the account in such case.

Vendor Response

Hi Bhawana, Thank you for giving us a 5-star rating. We're glad to hear you're enjoying the many benefits of our user-friendly Xref platform. Regarding your feedback on recipients not responding to requests, you could use the 'replace' button on the platform. The 'Replace' button in Xref allows you to ask your candidate to submit the details of another reference provider. The replace feature is available for 21 days from when a request has been sent but is still awaiting completion. Please contact our dedicated Customer Success team at support@xref.com for assistance. Once again, thank you for taking the time to leave us a review.

Replied September 2023

Amy S.

Verified reviewer

Mining & Metals

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed November 2020

Set and forget, enormously beneficial for a speedy recruitment process.

The account contacts were always readily available when needed. Making changes to the system was very simple. If anything I would suggest that if you were to use the platform as a company, ensure your questions are fit for purpose and that you are not requiring too much time from your candidates referees, while still ensuring that you have the information on hand that is required to make the right hiring decisions.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Xref is extremely easy to use. Setting up a ref check takes no time at all, and once the information is in the system Xref takes care of the automation and regular reminders to both the candidate and their referees to ensure the detail is completed in a timely manner. The ability to pick up on fraudulent references (through IP addresses) has been highly beneficial. The time savings of being able to 'set and forget' this part of the recruitment process is enormous.

Cons:

There are no issues that come to mind.

Vendor Response

Thank you for your great review, Amy. We are happy to hear that you have benefited from the ease and security that comes through online reference checks through Xref. We understand how important this step is within the hiring process and want to make it as compliant and efficient as we possibly can. Thanks again for your review.

Replied December 2020

Peter K.

Verified reviewer

Staffing and Recruiting

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed January 2020

We recommend XREF!

Over the past few years our organisation has been looking at tools and technologies to help improve the efficiency and productivity of our recruitment teams. We selected XREF for several reasons but primarily because it freed up our recruiters to find the next candidate, rather than them chasing referees of someone we had already placed. Our teams love it and as we have integrated the tool with our Candidate tracking system it ensures we maintain our workflow practices and compliance requirements.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Ease of use The XREF team can quickly customise templates for us to suit client specific needs Candidate experience is a positive one The quality and detail of responses was surprisingly good from the outset. My team is happy as it makes them more efficient. Reduces the post placement overhead. Provides for greater accuracy and integrity of the reference check process. Excellent support and customer care from the XREF team

Cons:

the concern we had was that we may miss out on leads being generated from the old style reference check. The new feature, People Search, which we have just started using should help alleviate this concern.

Reasons for choosing Xref

XREF is the only tool we have reviewed

Vendor Response

Thanks for your feedback, Peter. We are glad that you have been able to save time and benefit from automating your references. It's also great to hear that you have recently started using People Search, we are confident that it will aid your recruitment with a smart and compliant approach to business development. Thanks again for taking a moment to write this review, Peter.

Replied April 2020

Keira M.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

201-500 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Easy to use product

Easy to use, and well integrated with my recruitment software.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Love the API connection with my recruitment software program, it means initiating a reference check is as quick as pressing a button!

Cons:

Lots of email workflow to the admin user, If I am doing bulk recruitment (20 employees) all undertaking references checking the email workflows are high. Perhaps workflow for candidates who haven't responded and when the total of reference checks requested have been completed only?

Reasons for choosing Xref

unable to answer General feedback: When an account manager changes it would be good to be informed. I was experiencing issues and calling my account manager, I called the head office for three days to finally get a call back letting me know my previous account manager had moved from the business and I had a new account manager. No communication was sent to me to introduce me to the new account manager.

Vendor Response

Hi Keira, Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. We're glad to know that you find our online reference checking tool easy to use. Our aim in automating references is to save time and simplify the tedious parts of a recruiter's job. With regard to your feedback about notifications, you can adjust the frequency of those in your settings. Please reach out to our dedicated Customer Success team at support@xref.com if you would like assistance. We understand how important it is for account management updates to be shared; thanks for your feedback. We hope to give you the best experience possible for online reference checking. Thanks again for your review.

Replied August 2022

Verified

Reviewer

Human Resources

11-50 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2018

XRef makes the reference check process a lot easier!

XRef has completely sped up the reference process for us. This is fairly critical, especially when our candidates are often receiving multiple offers. We simply can't have any delays in our process, so XRef is very timely to finalize our offer stage! They've really got a great support team as well to monitor your account.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I work in recruitment and we used to call all of our candidates references individually, while transcribing their responses. As we scaled, this was time consuming. In came XRef. XRef has saved a lot of time for us. Instead of calling all of our candidates references, we can set the candidate up in the system and it is up to them to enter their references. Our reference questions are sent over and we often get the references back within 24 - 48 hours. A lot quicker than chasing down the references! It is super easy to download the reference's responses and send over to our hiring managers. It can even catch fraud - e.g., it will flag you if a reference is using the same IP address as the candidate. Better yet, they are a Canadian product!

Cons:

There's not much that I can say I don't like! Highly recommend. The one thing I'd say is it is a bit different as you aren't actually speaking to the references with the tool. You may miss out on verbal cues from the references.

Vendor Response

Thank you for your great review. We are happy to hear you have been benefiting from the time that has been saved through the simplicity of the Xref platform. We know how important it is for these matters to be handled in a timely and compliant manner. Thanks again for your review.

Replied April 2020

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