Almost every paid job-search tool has the same shape: a subscription that gives you N applications a month. 80, 200, 600. Pay more, get more.
On the surface it's a clean SaaS model. In practice it's the wrong incentive — for the user, for the tool, and for the labour market the tool claims to serve. Here's why JobSwitch will never adopt it.
Metered counts reward the wrong thing
The metric a metered tool optimizes for is "applications submitted." That's the thing the customer paid for, that's the thing the dashboard shows, that's the thing the marketing brags about. "Submit 200 applications a month!"
The metric that actually matters for the candidate is replies. Then interviews. Then offers. Submissions are the first and worst proxy for any of those.
When you pay per submission, the tool has every incentive to encourage more submissions and zero incentive to filter for fit. Predictable consequence: people burn through their monthly quota in a week, on a heap of roles that didn't really fit, and conclude that the tool doesn't work. The tool worked. The incentive was wrong.
Rationing is the wrong feeling for a job search
A job search is already an anxious activity. Adding "have I used too many of my monthly applies?" on top of "have I applied to enough things?" is cruel. It makes people apply less than they should to roles they should, and apply more than they should to roles they shouldn't, just to feel like they've used the thing they paid for.
A generous monthly allowance is the correct ceiling. If a role is a fit, apply. If it isn't, don't. The tool's job is to help you decide which, not to ration the decision.
An honest note about beta
During beta, JobSwitch does have a monthly cap — 30 applications per calendar month, per user, free. That's because every application runs an LLM tailoring pass and a live form submission, both of which cost us real money. The cap is how we serve every beta user well within a sustainable compute budget.
It's also temporary. The paid product won't be priced per application. Beta is metered for cost reasons; the eventual paid tier won't be metered for incentive reasons. Those are different decisions and we want to be honest about both.
So what do we charge for?
Honestly, we don't know yet. We're still in beta and we'd rather get the product right before we lock in a price. A few principles we already know:
- Not per application. See above.
- Probably a flat monthly fee with a generous allowance — enough that you don't feel rationed — and a free tier so the product stays accessible.
- Beta users keep a discount, permanently. Not for a year, not until we change minds — permanently. We're asking you to use something rough; that earns you a real thank-you.
- No surprise charges. When we leave beta, we'll ask you to opt in. We won't have your card until you give it to us.
What we want to be measured on
Replies, not submissions. The number of roles where you actually heard back. The number of interviews you went into. The percentage of those where the resume we drafted you was the version you ended up sending.
Those are harder to put in a marketing slide than "80 applications a month." That's fine. They're the right numbers.
More on the current pricing direction lives on the pricing page. If you have an opinion on what's fair, write to us — we mean it.