§ The result
Lever and Stepstone tie at 49.
Lever (ATS-integrated) and Stepstone (Screening) tie at 49 under rubric v1.0, arriving there from different criteria. Lever leads 4 of the 7 criteria and Stepstone 2, with 1 level, yet the two totals land on the same number. One criterion, Bias Audit Transparency, is both the widest raw gap (Lever 42, Stepstone 50) and the heaviest weighted swing, and at 18% weight it makes up 71% of the weighted advantage Stepstone holds across the 2 criteria it leads.
Vendor profile
Lever
Lever is an AI-powered applicant tracking system and recruiting CRM that centralizes sourcing, candidate relationship management, AI candidate matching (Talent Fit), and hiring analytics for high-growth employers.
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
Lever is filed under ATS-integrated AI, Stepstone 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 | Lever | Stepstone |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | US | DE |
| Founded | 2012 | 1996 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 37% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Lever 42 · Stepstone 50
1.4 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 59% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Lever 45 · Stepstone 38
0.8 weighted points to Lever
20% weight · 74% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Lever 52 · Stepstone 55
0.6 weighted points to Stepstone
15% weight · 86% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Lever 58 · Stepstone 55
0.4 weighted points to Lever
15% weight · 94% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Lever 32 · Stepstone 30
0.3 weighted points to Lever
12% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Lever 60 · Stepstone 58
0.2 weighted points to Lever
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 6 figures above sum to -0.2 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 3.9 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads 0 beside that -0.2.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Lever minus Stepstone.
| Category | Weight | Lever | Stepstone | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 52 | 55 | -3 | -0.6 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 42 | 50 | -8 | -1.4 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 32 | 30 | +2 | +0.3 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 58 | 55 | +3 | +0.4 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 60 | 58 | +2 | +0.2 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 45 | 38 | +7 | +0.8 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 58 | 58 | - | - |
| Total | 100% | 49 (F) | 49 (F) | - | -0.2 |
§ 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 | Lever | Stepstone | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on a separate domain | 5 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | Sources on a separate domain | 3 | 1 | Audit reportSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 1 | 1 | Sources on a separate 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% | 2 | 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 domainSources on a separate domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 13 | 6 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 29 | 4 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Lever has 19 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 13 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 Lever and Stepstone sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 52 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 19 for Lever, across 2 distinct source domains, and 33 for Stepstone, across 6 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Lever 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