§ The result
Teal leads Sonara on all 7 criteria.
Teal finishes 16 points clear of Sonara under rubric js-v1.0 — 65 (D) against 49 (F) — across the Tracker and Auto-apply cohorts. Teal leads every one of the 7 criteria and 3 of them by 20 raw points or more, User Control & Transparency among them; Sonara leads none. User Control & Transparency is the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing at once (Sonara 52, Teal 78, 15% weight), but it accounts for only 24% of the weighted advantage Teal holds across the 7 criteria on that side of the table.
Vendor profile
Sonara
Sonara is an AI auto-apply service (now owned by BOLD LLC) that scans job boards, matches openings to a job seeker's uploaded resume and preferences, and auto-fills and submits applications on the user's behalf from a single tracking dashboard.
Vendor profile
Teal
Teal is a freemium platform for job seekers offering an AI resume builder, a job-application tracker/CRM, and resume-to-job-description keyword matching, plus a Chrome extension that saves postings from 40+ job boards; it does not auto-apply, so the user manually submits every application.
§ The record
Sonara is filed under Auto-apply tools, Teal under Application trackers. They also share 1 secondary category: Job matching.
| Record | Sonara | Teal |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | US | US |
| Founded | 2020 | 2019 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
15% weight · 24% of the movement so far
User Control & Transparency
Sonara 52 · Teal 78
3.9 weighted points to Teal
20% weight · 47% of the movement so far
Data & Credential Safety
Sonara 50 · Teal 68
3.6 weighted points to Teal
15% weight · 65% of the movement so far
Employer & ATS Legitimacy
Sonara 48 · Teal 68
3.0 weighted points to Teal
10% weight · 79% of the movement so far
Pricing & Cancellation Fairness
Sonara 45 · Teal 66
2.1 weighted points to Teal
20% weight · 91% of the movement so far
Application Honesty
Sonara 50 · Teal 60
2.0 weighted points to Teal
8% weight · 97% of the movement so far
Support & Accountability
Sonara 58 · Teal 70
1.0 weighted points to Teal
12% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Effectiveness Evidence
Sonara 40 · Teal 44
0.5 weighted points to Teal
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 7 figures above sum to -16.0 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 16.0 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -16 beside that -16.0.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Sonara minus Teal.
| Category | Weight | Sonara | Teal | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application Honesty | 20% | 50 | 60 | -10 | -2.0 |
| Data & Credential Safety | 20% | 50 | 68 | -18 | -3.6 |
| User Control & Transparency | 15% | 52 | 78 | -26 | -3.9 |
| Employer & ATS Legitimacy | 15% | 48 | 68 | -20 | -3.0 |
| Effectiveness Evidence | 12% | 40 | 44 | -4 | -0.5 |
| Pricing & Cancellation Fairness | 10% | 45 | 66 | -21 | -2.1 |
| Support & Accountability | 8% | 58 | 70 | -12 | -1.0 |
| Total | 100% | 49 (F) | 65 (D) | -16 | -16.0 |
§ 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 | Sonara | Teal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Application Honesty | 20% | 2 | 1 | — | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data & Credential Safety | 20% | 2 | 1 | — | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| User Control & Transparency | 15% | 2 | 0 | — | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Employer & ATS Legitimacy | 15% | 2 | 0 | — | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Effectiveness Evidence | 12% | 2 | 1 | — | 2 | 1 | — |
| Pricing & Cancellation Fairness | 10% | 2 | 0 | — | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Support & Accountability | 8% | 4 | 0 | — | 3 | 0 | — |
| All criteria | 100% | 16 | 3 | — | 20 | 2 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
Sonara has 19 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 16 with a source URL, 3 documented absences; Teal has 22 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 20 with a source URL, 2 documented absences.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 41 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 19 for Sonara, across 6 distinct source domains, and 22 for Teal, across 4 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- js-v1.0
- Sonara last reviewed
- July 17, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Teal last reviewed
- July 17, 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
The full profiles
Scored against