At a glance
| Â | LinkedIn Recruiter | RealGreatDevs |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Professional network | Technical sourcing |
| Pricing model | Annual seat licence | Self-serve monthly or annual subscription, no placement fees |
| Coverage | Over 1 billion members worldwide, per LinkedIn. | 2.5M indexed engineer profiles |
| Data source | Self-reported profiles, plus engagement signals from the network itself. | Public GitHub activity: repositories, languages, contribution history and stated location. |
| Roles covered | Varies by product | Software engineering only |
What each one costs
LinkedIn does not publish Recruiter pricing publicly. Widely reported figures put Recruiter Lite in the low thousands per seat per year and Recruiter Corporate substantially higher, negotiated per contract.
Plans are self-serve with a free account to start, billed per workspace with seats included and no per-hire or placement fee. Aggregate data like the skill and country pages is public and free to browse.
LinkedIn Recruiter pricing last checked 2026-08-04. Most vendors in this category sell quote-based annual contracts, so treat published ranges as a starting point for negotiation rather than a quote.
Where each one wins
LinkedIn Recruiter is stronger at
- Effectively every professional has a profile, so coverage is unmatched
- InMail reaches people where they already are, and response norms are established
- Non-engineering roles are covered just as well as engineering ones
Where LinkedIn Recruiter falls short
- Profiles are self-reported: nothing verifies a claimed skill
- Engineers are among the least active groups on the network, and many keep minimal profiles
- InMail credits cap outreach volume independently of seat cost
RealGreatDevs is stronger at
- Every profile is backed by public code you can read, not a self-reported skill list
- Filter on activity itself: contribution volume, repository count, language mix and country
- Self-serve, so you can evaluate it without a sales call or an annual commitment
Where RealGreatDevs falls short
- Engineering only. If you also hire sales, finance or design, you need something else alongside it
- Coverage depends on public code, so engineers who work only in private repositories are underrepresented
- Not an ATS or a CRM: it finds and contacts people, it does not manage them through a hiring process
Choose LinkedIn Recruiter if
Teams hiring across many functions who need one tool that covers all of them.
The core difference
LinkedIn tells you what a developer says about themselves. RealGreatDevs tells you what they have committed, in which languages, how recently and how consistently. The two answer different questions, and plenty of teams use both.
Frequently asked questions
Is RealGreatDevs cheaper than LinkedIn Recruiter?
LinkedIn Recruiter pricing model: Annual seat licence. LinkedIn does not publish Recruiter pricing publicly. Widely reported figures put Recruiter Lite in the low thousands per seat per year and Recruiter Corporate substantially higher, negotiated per contract. RealGreatDevs is sold differently: Self-serve monthly or annual subscription, no placement fees, so a small team can start without a sales call or an annual commitment. For a large team with an existing contract, the comparison depends entirely on the terms you negotiate.
What can LinkedIn Recruiter do that RealGreatDevs cannot?
Effectively every professional has a profile, so coverage is unmatched. InMail reaches people where they already are, and response norms are established. Non-engineering roles are covered just as well as engineering ones. Teams hiring across many functions who need one tool that covers all of them.
Can I use both RealGreatDevs and LinkedIn Recruiter?
Yes, and plenty of teams do. LinkedIn Recruiter covers professional network; RealGreatDevs covers engineering sourcing from public code. They draw on different data, so using both widens the pool rather than duplicating it.
Where does RealGreatDevs get its data?
Public GitHub activity: repositories, languages, contribution history and stated location. Every profile is built from activity that is already public, and the aggregate figures on our skill and country pages come from the same index you search.
Sources
Figures are as published or independently reported at the date noted above. Vendor pricing changes; verify before budgeting.
Other comparisons
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A free account gets you into the index. No sales call, no annual contract, no placement fees.