Pre-employment screening, priced like it should be.
A national criminal search costs about what it costs to run — $5, flat. County records, sex offender registries, FBI Most Wanted, and federal courts, all in one report. Address history is included at no charge, FCRA paperwork is handled automatically, and there's no subscription sitting underneath it.
of working-age adults have no record that would ever surface¹
$5
flat rate, per verified report
50
states searched for sex offender registry hits
72hr
average turnaround, start to finish
¹ National Employment Law Project estimates roughly 70 million Americans — about 1 in 3 adults — carry an arrest or conviction record that can surface on a routine background check, meaning roughly two-thirds carry none.
Why $5
Most background check quotes aren't the real price.
The number on a screening vendor's pricing page is a starting bid, not an invoice. Once monthly platform fees, per-seat licenses, setup charges, and court pass-through fees are layered on, industry pricing analyses show the real cost of a “comprehensive” report routinely landing 40–70% above what was quoted.
Meanwhile, the National Employment Law Project estimates that roughly 70 million Americans — about 1 in 3 adults — carry an arrest or conviction record that could surface on a routine check.¹ Put differently: for the other two-thirds of candidates, you're paying a premium price for a report that was always going to come back clean. PreHireBadge charges what the search actually costs to run. No tiers to upsell you into, no platform fee hiding under the per-check price. That number is $5.
Typical Vendor Quote
What the pricing page says
Before the invoice arrives
- Entry-level package (advertised)$20–$40
- Comprehensive package (advertised)$80–$200+
- Monthly platform fee$100–$250/mo
- Setup / implementation fee$250–$1,000
- Jurisdiction pass-through feesBilled separately
- What actually hits your card40–70% above quote
PreHireBadge
What the invoice says
Same number, every time
- Entry-level package (advertised)$5
- Comprehensive package (advertised)$5
- Monthly platform fee$0
- Setup / implementation fee$0
- Jurisdiction pass-through feesIncluded
- What actually hits your card$5. Every time.
¹ National Employment Law Project, “Faulty FBI Background Checks for Employment.” Pricing benchmarks from SHRM's reliable-background-check cost analysis and industry fee disclosures.
Under the Hood
From application to answer in three screens.
No account managers, no onboarding calls. Here's the exact path a candidate's information takes from the moment they apply to the moment you get a decision-ready report.
Candidate Application
Northgate Logistics Inc.
Full Name
Email Address
Send the candidate a link
The application carries its own FCRA disclosure and e-signature — no separate consent form to chase down, no legal review needed on your end before it goes out.
Employment history that checks itself
Candidates attach a paystub or offer letter for each employer in their history. We pull the details automatically, confirm them against the employer's own HR email and the candidate's LinkedIn, and try a manager reference — then roll every signal that lines up into one confidence score instead of a lonely checkmark.
Employment History
Cross-checking...4 signals collected
Confidence score
Weighted across documents, employer email, LinkedIn, and reference response.
National Criminal Search
Michael ChenCLEAR
No disqualifying records across county, state, federal, and all 50 state registries
Get a report you can act on
County, state, and federal courts, the sex offender registry in all 50 states, and federal watchlists — searched in parallel and returned as a plain-language summary, not a raw data dump.
Four things every screening plan needs.
One price covers all of them.
Most vendors sell these as add-ons. They're part of the $5.
National Criminal Check
$5 per report
Every $5 report pulls from county, state, and federal court records, the sex offender registry in all 50 states, FBI Most Wanted, OFAC sanctions, and global watchlists — searched in parallel, not sequentially. If a county record can't be verified to FCRA standards, we say so and issue a refund instead of guessing.
- Court searches run at the county, state, and federal level
- Every U.S. state's sex offender registry gets checked
- Cross-referenced against FBI and OFAC watchlists
- Results come formatted to FCRA reporting standards
Employment History Verification
Free. Always.
Candidates attach a paystub or offer letter for each employer, and we take it from there: OCR pulls the details, an HR-email magic link confirms the employer, LinkedIn gets cross-checked, and a manager reference rounds it out. Every signal that lines up feeds one confidence score — not a lonely, misleading checkmark.
- Documents matched automatically, no manual review needed
- Employer confirmed via a magic link sent to their HR email
- Cross-checked against the LinkedIn profile candidates provide
- Runs before you spend a single criminal-check credit
NLP Interface
Included at no extra cost
Skip the form entirely. Type or say something like "run a check on Michael Chen, born March 4, 1988, last address in Tucson," and the request is parsed, submitted, and tracked from there — including flagging when a result requires an adverse action notice.
- Describe who to screen in a normal sentence
- Results come back explained, not just listed
- Drafts the adverse action notice when one's needed
- Reachable from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or our API
API & Webhook
Included at no extra cost
Fully documented REST API and webhook support, built to sit inside your ATS or HRIS rather than next to it. Every check draws down the same credit balance whether it's kicked off from the dashboard, a mobile browser, or a single API call.
# Run a check via API
POST /v1/checks
{
"first_name": "Michael",
"last_name": "Chen",
"dob": "1988-03-04",
"state": "AZ"
}Identity Verification
A clean record only matters if it belongs to your candidate.
Names and Social Security numbers can be borrowed, mistyped, or shared across the wrong person's file. Every PreHireBadge report closes that gap with a live selfie matched against a government photo ID, then cross-checked against the SSN trace and address history already pulled for the search — so the “clear” result is tied to a verified person, not just a name on a form.
Biometric facial match
A live liveness selfie — proof a real person is present, not a photo.
Government photo ID
The selfie is matched face-to-face against their official ID document.
SSN + address triangulation
Identity cross-checked against the SSN trace and address history on the report.
The identity-proofing standard financial institutions rely on, bundled into a $5 report instead of sold as a separate product.
No Subscription Required
The $5 covers the check. Everything else is just the platform.
Tracking candidates, staying audit-ready, and knowing who's cleared shouldn't cost extra on top of the screen itself — so it doesn't. Every account gets the full toolset, unlimited seats, at no separate charge.
Candidate Pipeline Tracking
Log every candidate by requisition and hiring stage. Know exactly who's screened, pending, or cleared to start.
Tracks candidates across every req
Audit-Ready Compliance Reports
One-click PDF and CSV exports auditors and leadership actually ask for — screening completion rates, turnaround times, adverse-action logs. Branded with your company's name and logo.
Export to PDF & CSV
Compliance Status Board
Every screened candidate and employee sits on one board, color-coded by status — cleared, expiring soon, or lapsed — so a question like "is anyone starting Monday still pending?" is a glance, not a spreadsheet search.
Status at a glance
Automated Re-screening Alerts
Configurable re-screening intervals with alerts at 30 and 7 days before expiration — built for roles that require annual or periodic re-checks. One-click re-run reuses the candidate's existing profile.
Alerts before anything lapses
AI Offer & Policy Assistant
Powered by Claude. Drafts offer letters, background-check policies, and adverse-action correspondence using your real PreHireBadge data. No PII ever sent to the model.
Powered by Claude AI
Portable Badge for Candidates
Candidates can get screened once and carry a verified PreHireBadge for 90 days — shareable with multiple employers. Fewer redundant checks, faster time-to-hire.
One check, many employers
$0
/month included free
∞
admin users, always free
90
days a portable badge stays valid
$5
the only thing you ever pay for
Plain-Language Requests
Type a sentence. Skip the form.
A background check request doesn't need a multi-field form behind it. Describe who you're screening — in the dashboard, or through an AI assistant you already use — and the request gets parsed, submitted, and tracked without touching a dropdown.
When a result crosses into adverse-action territory under the FCRA, the notice is drafted automatically. You review it and send it — the compliance sequencing isn't left to memory.
PreHireBadge · NLP Interface
Click below to see it in action.
Three ways to pay. One price per check.
Buy checks one at a time or in a bundle — the per-report cost doesn't change. The platform itself has no separate bill.
Pay As You Go
One check, one charge — nothing to commit to upfront.
- Federal, state & county court records, searched in parallel
- All 50 state sex-offender registries
- FBI Most Wanted, OFAC & global watchlists
- Free biometric identity verification
- Human review of every record, FCRA-compliant
- Free address-history check on every application
Starter Pack · 10 Credits
$4.50 per check. Credits never expire.
- Everything in Pay As You Go
- 10 background check credits
- 10% savings vs single-check rate
- Credits roll over, never expire
- Bigger bundles up to 25% off in-app
- Usage dashboard & reporting
Platform Access
Bundled into every account — no separate license required.
- Everything in Pay As You Go
- Candidate pipeline tracking
- Audit-ready PDF & CSV reports
- Compliance status board
- Automated re-screening alerts
- AI offer & policy assistant (Claude)
Screening is always pay-as-you-go. Every management feature is included free.
FAQ
Everything employers want to know before they start screening candidates.
$5 per check, whether you buy one at a time or grab the 10-credit Starter Pack for $45 (a small discount over buying individually). There's no monthly fee, no setup charge, and credits don't expire, so occasional hiring doesn't cost more per-check than high-volume hiring.
Your next candidate is one $5 report away.
No credit card to sign up, no expiration on what you buy. Run one report for $5, or stock up with the 10-pack for $45 and use them whenever hiring picks up.