§ The result
Wellfound takes the total, softgarden takes more of the criteria.
Wellfound sits 10 points above softgarden under rubric v1.0 — 52 against 42 — with Wellfound filed under Screening and softgarden under ATS-integrated. softgarden leads more of the criteria than Wellfound — 4 to 2 — but Bias Audit Transparency, which Wellfound leads, carries 18% of the rubric, and the weighted sum still falls to Wellfound. One criterion, Bias Audit Transparency, is both the widest raw gap (softgarden 22, Wellfound 82) and the heaviest weighted swing, and at 18% weight it makes up 85% of the weighted advantage Wellfound holds across the 2 criteria it leads.
Vendor profile
softgarden
softgarden is a German cloud applicant tracking system (multiposting, career sites, applicant management and onboarding) with optional AI features: AI-Assisted Applicant Matching, which highlights applicants who closely match a job's requirements, and a newer LLM-based Screening Assistant, which scores each applicant against screening criteria.
Vendor profile
Wellfound
Wellfound is a startup hiring marketplace and AI recruiting platform whose wellfound:ai suite auto-generates screening criteria from a job description, then scores and ranks inbound applicants (AI Resume Screening) and surfaces outbound candidates from a talent graph of 10M opt-in Wellfound profiles plus 500M+ enriched external profiles.
§ The record
softgarden is filed under ATS-integrated AI, Wellfound under Screening AI. They record no secondary category in common.
Both are in scope of EU AI Act, NYC LL 144, Colorado AI Act and Illinois HB 3773.
| Record | softgarden | Wellfound |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | DE | US |
| Founded | 2001 | 2012 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 70% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
softgarden 22 · Wellfound 82
10.8 weighted points to Wellfound
12% weight · 82% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
softgarden 44 · Wellfound 60
1.9 weighted points to Wellfound
15% weight · 91% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
softgarden 54 · Wellfound 45
1.3 weighted points to softgarden
12% weight · 95% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
softgarden 58 · Wellfound 52
0.7 weighted points to softgarden
20% weight · 98% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
softgarden 42 · Wellfound 40
0.4 weighted points to softgarden
15% weight · 100% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
softgarden 30 · Wellfound 28
0.3 weighted points to softgarden
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 6 figures above sum to -9.9 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 15.5 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -10 beside that -9.9.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is softgarden minus Wellfound.
| Category | Weight | softgarden | Wellfound | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 42 | 40 | +2 | +0.4 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 22 | 82 | -60 | -10.8 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 30 | 28 | +2 | +0.3 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 54 | 45 | +9 | +1.3 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 58 | 52 | +6 | +0.7 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 44 | 60 | -16 | -1.9 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 58 | 58 | - | - |
| Total | 100% | 42 (F) | 52 (F) | -10 | -9.9 |
§ 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 | softgarden | Wellfound | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 6 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 2 | Sources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Audit reportSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 2 | — |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 7 | 0 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 2 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 5 | 1 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate 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% | 31 | 5 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domain | 22 | 9 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
softgarden has 36 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 31 with a source URL, 5 documented absences; Wellfound has 27 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 22 with a source URL, 9 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Wellfound sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 63 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 36 for softgarden, across 3 distinct source domains, and 27 for Wellfound, across 3 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- softgarden last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Wellfound last reviewed
- August 2, 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