§ The result
Stepstone leads Fountain by 5 points.
Stepstone scores 49 and Fountain 44 under rubric v1.0 — a 5-point gap inside the Screening cohort. Stepstone leads 3 of the 7 criteria, including Bias Audit Transparency, while Fountain leads 1, including Post-Market Monitoring, and 3 are level. One criterion, Bias Audit Transparency, is both the widest raw gap (Fountain 30, Stepstone 50) and the heaviest weighted swing, and at 18% weight it makes up 71% of the weighted advantage Stepstone holds across the 3 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
Stepstone
Stepstone is a German job marketplace whose Stepstone Recruit employer platform includes an AI Screening Agent, which rates each application against requirements taken from the job ad, and a Talent Finder, which recommends candidates from a CV database of more than 4 million profiles.
§ The record
Fountain and Stepstone 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 | Stepstone |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Enterprise | Mid |
| Headquarters | US | DE |
| Founded | 2014 | 1996 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 68% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Fountain 30 · Stepstone 50
3.6 weighted points to Stepstone
20% weight · 86% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Fountain 50 · Stepstone 55
1.0 weighted points to Stepstone
8% weight · 95% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Fountain 52 · Stepstone 58
0.5 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Fountain 40 · Stepstone 38
0.2 weighted points to Fountain
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 4 figures above sum to -4.8 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 5.3 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -5 beside that -4.8.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Fountain minus Stepstone.
| Category | Weight | Fountain | Stepstone | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 50 | 55 | -5 | -1.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 30 | 50 | -20 | -3.6 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 30 | 30 | - | - |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 55 | 55 | - | - |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 58 | 58 | - | - |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 40 | 38 | +2 | +0.2 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 52 | 58 | -6 | -0.5 |
| Total | 100% | 44 (F) | 49 (F) | -5 | -4.8 |
§ 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 | Stepstone | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 3 | 1 | Audit reportSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | 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 domainSources on a separate domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 14 | 6 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 29 | 4 | 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; Stepstone has 33 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 29 with a source URL, 4 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Stepstone sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 53 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 20 for Fountain, across 2 distinct source domains, and 33 for Stepstone, across 6 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Fountain last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Stepstone 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