§ The result
Handshake leads Fountain by 6 points.
Handshake scores 50 and Fountain 44 under rubric v1.0 — a 6-point gap inside the Screening cohort. The 7 criteria split 4 to 1 in favour of Handshake, with 2 level: Handshake is ahead on Bias Audit Transparency and Fountain on Article 11 Technical Documentation. One criterion, Bias Audit Transparency, is both the widest raw gap (Fountain 30, Handshake 52) and the heaviest weighted swing, and at 18% weight it makes up 68% of the weighted advantage Handshake holds across the 4 criteria it leads.
Vendor profile
Fountain
AI-powered high-volume hiring platform that automates sourcing, applicant screening (including a voice-based AI Recruiter), interview scheduling, and onboarding for frontline workforces.
Vendor profile
Handshake
Handshake is an early-career recruiting network whose employer tools use AI to rank applicants against employer-set criteria, find and message matching students and graduates, and target job promotions.
§ The record
Fountain and Handshake are both filed under Screening AI. They also share 1 secondary category: Sourcing.
Both are in scope of EU AI Act, NYC LL 144, Colorado AI Act and Illinois HB 3773.
| Record | Fountain | Handshake |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Enterprise | Mid |
| Headquarters | US | US |
| Founded | 2014 | 2014 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 63% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Fountain 30 · Handshake 52
4.0 weighted points to Handshake
12% weight · 79% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Fountain 40 · Handshake 48
1.0 weighted points to Handshake
8% weight · 89% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Fountain 52 · Handshake 60
0.6 weighted points to Handshake
20% weight · 95% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Fountain 50 · Handshake 48
0.4 weighted points to Fountain
15% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Fountain 55 · Handshake 57
0.3 weighted points to Handshake
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 5 figures above sum to -5.5 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 6.3 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -6 beside that -5.5.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Fountain minus Handshake.
| Category | Weight | Fountain | Handshake | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 50 | 48 | +2 | +0.4 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 30 | 52 | -22 | -4.0 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 30 | 30 | - | - |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 55 | 57 | -2 | -0.3 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 58 | 58 | - | - |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 40 | 48 | -8 | -1.0 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 52 | 60 | -8 | -0.6 |
| Total | 100% | 44 (F) | 50 (F) | -6 | -5.5 |
§ Evidence
Cited sources and documented absences, criterion by criterion.
An absence is a finding, not a blank: the reviewer looked for a named artefact and recorded that it is not located. Where a source sits is a fact about hosting only.
| Criterion | Weight | Fountain | Handshake | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 5 | 1 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 14 | 6 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 27 | 7 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Fountain has 20 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 14 with a source URL, 6 documented absences; Handshake has 34 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 27 with a source URL, 7 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Handshake sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 54 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 20 for Fountain, across 2 distinct source domains, and 34 for Handshake, across 2 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Fountain last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Handshake last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
HireAIScore scores are editorial research, not legal advice, and no vendor pays for placement, scoring or removal — see the methodology, conflicts policy and terms.
§ Where next