Free resume check · local by default
Free ATS Resume Checker
Upload your resume and inspect the text, structure, format signals, and optional job-description requirements before you apply.
What you get — sample report
Concrete fixes ranked by impact
Job-description keywords matched, hard vs. soft
Core sections & contact info checked
Concrete fixes ranked by impact
↔ Targeted rewrite — what the pack adds
A bullet on your resume today
Responsible for managing 18 client accounts and helping with renewals.
The same bullet after the rewrite
Managed a portfolio of 18 client accounts and built a 90-day renewal tracker that surfaced at-risk contracts for weekly follow-up.
$9.99 one-time · 20 successful rewrites · no automatic renewal
See the Job Application PackWhy this ATS resume checker shows its limits
- Your free check runs in your browser
- PDF, DOCX, and TXT text extraction and scoring happen locally after the page has loaded. A paid rewrite sends extracted resume text, the job description, and missing-keyword list to our service and generation providers; the original file is not sent.
- The score is a diagnostic, not a hiring verdict
- Different employers use different parsing and ranking systems. CheckATS reports signals from its own published rules; it cannot reproduce every ATS or predict an interview.
- Suggestions must match your experience
- A missing keyword is a prompt to check your evidence, not permission to add a skill you do not have. Keep dates, employers, licenses, and numbers accurate.
Which ATS systems does this checker simulate?
You may encounter Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, Oracle Taleo, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, or Jobvite while applying. These names identify recruiting platforms, not one shared scoring standard. An application portal may ask you to upload a document, review fields extracted from it, and answer separate screening questions. A recognizable platform name does not tell you which requirements the employer has chosen for that opening.
CheckATS does not simulate any of these ATS systems, connect to an employer account, or reproduce a private recruiter ranking. We use our own text extraction and v1 diagnostic rules. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by these vendors. A clean report here is an opportunity to improve your document; it is not a compatibility certificate for the platform named in the job posting.
Before submitting, follow that employer’s file instructions, inspect the resume preview if the portal provides one, and correct any application fields that were filled incorrectly. Keep your source document consistent with those fields. If a date, qualification, or skill is important to the job, state it accurately in ordinary text rather than relying on an icon, graphic, or keyword repeated out of context.
See what our method can and cannot checkWhat our ATS checker inspects
- 01Hard skills & tools — the concrete ones from the job ad
- 02Soft skills — leadership, communication, collaboration
- 03Buzzwords & industry lingo from the posting
- 04File & parse risks — extracted text, character errors, export warnings
- 05Section analysis — Experience, Education, Skills, more
- 06Contact block — email, phone, LinkedIn
How the ATS checker reviews your resume
Keyword and requirement evidence
When you provide a job description, the checker separates required, preferred, and negated wording, then looks for exact terms and a limited set of documented aliases. Each result should lead back to a sentence in the posting and evidence in the resume. Required terms receive more weight than preferred terms in our keyword sub-score; explicitly excluded requirements are left out. For example, AWS can match Amazon Web Services, but Java does not count as JavaScript. A missing term is a review prompt, not permission to invent experience.
Resume structure
The structure review looks for recognizable contact details and common sections such as experience, education, and skills. It reports what the extracted text contains. It cannot know whether one employer requires a particular optional section or whether a recruiter prefers a different order.
File and parsing signals
PDF, DOCX, and TXT files are checked for readable extracted text and common warning signs. A scan without a text layer, missing characters, or a scrambled reading order should be fixed before keyword editing. Because employer parsers differ, a clean result here is useful evidence rather than a universal compatibility guarantee.
Writing and next actions
Writing suggestions are kept separate from format risks. The report prioritizes a few changes so you can edit, export, and recheck the same target. The result displays three sub-scores: keywords, structure, and format. Writing advice is a separate channel, not a fourth measured sub-score. It does not grade personality, verify claims, or replace a human review of clarity, relevance, and accuracy.
ATS score checker: what the number means and score ranges
Without a job description, the result focuses on readable text, standard sections, contact details, and format signals. Job matching is shown as unavailable until you provide a JD.
With a job description, the result compares selected terms and groups them into hard skills, soft skills, and other wording. A match is evidence for editing; it is not an employer’s official ATS score.
A high number does not guarantee parsing by a particular employer, ranking, or an interview. A low number does not prove that a person will reject you. Use the result to choose the next edit, then read the file yourself.
What is a good ATS score here? These ranges describe the labels in the CheckATS v1 report when a job description is present. They are editing priorities, not validated hiring thresholds.
- 80–100: Stronger coverage of the signals our rules inspect. Read the remaining evidence and verify the file before applying; a high total can still hide an important missing qualification.
- 60–79: Some useful coverage, with gaps worth reviewing. Start with missing required evidence or a parsing warning instead of adding every term from the posting.
- 0–59: More review is needed under these rules. First check whether extraction lost text or the posting targets a different role; do not invent experience to raise the number.
Without a job description, the job-match score is N/A. Compare revisions against the same posting: scores from different jobs are not equivalent, and no range is an employer’s pass line.
Read the scoring rules and their limitsFree vs paid: checking or help with a rewrite?
The ATS check stays free
Run unlimited browser-based checks free. Read the diagnostic and requirement evidence, edit your own text, copy or download the report, and recheck the same job. You do not need to pay to see or fix the gaps.
Optional $9.99 Job Application Pack
Pay once for 20 successful job-targeted resume text rewrites, usable within 90 days of confirmed payment. Failed generations do not use a rewrite, and there is no automatic renewal. Paid rewriting sends the disclosed text to our service and generation providers; review the privacy notice first.
Choose the pack only if you want help drafting a revision. It does not change the checking rules or buy a passing score. Review every suggested sentence against your real experience before accepting it.
How to use the free ATS resume checker
- 1. Choose your file. Use a text-based PDF, DOCX, or TXT file. If the extracted text is missing or out of order, fix the source file before polishing keywords.
- 2. Add the real job description. Paste the posting when you want a job-specific comparison. Remove private information you do not need to share with the page.
- 3. Review and verify. Start with the most useful flags, make only truthful edits, and run the same file and JD again. The tool does not save a local check as a public page.
ATS resume guides and matching tools
See the method page for the rule boundaries, then use the format guide when you want to inspect a file. The guides use synthetic examples and say when an observation is only about CheckATS.
ATS resume check: review before you submit
Read the parsed text, not only the original file
A resume can look polished while its extracted text loses a heading, date, bullet, or reading order. Check the preview from top to bottom. If a line is missing or scrambled, return to the source document and simplify the layout before chasing a higher score.
Use the job description as the source of truth
Generic resume advice cannot tell you which requirement matters for one opening. Paste the complete posting, separate required qualifications from preferred ones, and review the source sentence beside the evidence found in your resume.
Treat a missing keyword as a verification question
Ask whether you have real experience, training, or a credential that supports the term. If yes, add a concrete example in the right section. If no, leave it out. A truthful gap is safer than a keyword that you cannot explain in an interview.
Recheck the same target after editing
Keep the job description fixed, change one or two important sections, and run the comparison again. Look for clearer evidence and fewer parsing risks rather than optimizing every sentence for a number.
Finish with a human reading pass
Open the exported file at normal zoom and read it as a recruiter would. Confirm that the target role is obvious, the most relevant recent evidence appears early, abbreviations are understandable, dates are consistent, and every link works. Then ask whether each bullet explains an action and outcome instead of only naming a responsibility. Automated checks can surface patterns, but they cannot decide which achievement is most persuasive, verify the history behind a claim, or judge the tone expected by one team. Save a clean copy for this application so later edits for another role do not silently replace it.