Brainner
HireAIScore rates Brainner 46 out of 100 (grade F, Substantial gaps) under rubric v1.0, last reviewed September 25, 2026. Brainner ranks 73 of 160 vendors rated in Screening AI, against a category average of 46. That score is drawn from 37 evidence items across 7 rubric criteria for Brainner — 33 with a cited source, 4 recording that nothing was located.
Score breakdown
Brainner, criterion by criterion
Each rubric criterion is scored out of 100 on the cited evidence, then weighted into the total.
Weighted contribution shown to the right of each bar.
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Weight 20% · category avg 49
52
+10.4
Bias Audit Transparency
Weight 18% · category avg 41
42
+7.6
FRIA Support
Weight 15% · category avg 31
30
+4.5
Data Governance Disclosure
Weight 15% · category avg 53
53
+7.9
Human Oversight Design
Weight 12% · category avg 56
50
+6.0
Post-Market Monitoring
Weight 12% · category avg 40
45
+5.4
Customer Documentation
Weight 8% · category avg 58
58
+4.6
Total weighted score
46.4(rounded to 46 for display)
Category avg is the mean raw score on that criterion across the 160 Screening AI vendors in scope of this rubric, this one included.
Strongest criterion
Customer Documentation
58raw / 100
Contributes 4.6 to the total. 58 against a 58 category average.
Weakest criterion
FRIA Support
30raw / 100
Contributes 4.5 to the total. 30 against a 31 category average.
Cited evidence
The evidence behind the score
Every score is backed by at least one cited piece of evidence. Open a criterion to see what was found, when, and where.
Download diligence recordEvidence ledger
- Items
- 37
- Documentation
- 24
- Public statement
- 8
- Product feature
- 1
- Absence
- 4
- With a source URL
- 33 of 37
- Source hostnames
- 4
- Fewest items
- 4
- FRIA Support
These figures measure how thoroughly Brainner was reviewed, not how Brainner performed — an absence row, recording that nothing was located, is counted like any other item.
Article 11 Technical Documentation
5 items52
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Responsible AI page (last updated September 2026) sets out principles on human oversight, transparency and fairness and says every score is broken into individual criteria with plain-language justifications, but cites no framework such as NIST AI RMF or ISO/IEC 42001.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A help-center methodology article explains the scoring: mandatory criteria carry 80% of the weight and preferred criteria 20%, neutral criteria don't count, partly met criteria get half credit, and a score simulation previews the distribution.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/resume-screening-criteria-best-practices
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A 9 September 2026 release post describes an upgraded but unnamed model, a 'calculations agent' for tenure, gap and overlap arithmetic, and CV-anchored justifications, and claims gains only against unpublished internal benchmarks.
https://www.brainner.ai/blog/article/new-analysis-engine-now-live
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The pricing page claims '95%+' fraud detection accuracy across '300+' fraud signals but publishes no methodology, test data or false-positive rates.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No model or system card, validation study for the screening model, ISO/IEC 42001 certification or AI governance policy was found on brainner.ai, its help center or blog, or among the trust center's 20 listed resources.
Bias Audit Transparency
6 items42
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Brainner says Idiro Analytics ran a multi-state AI bias audit covering NYC Local Law 144, Illinois HB 3773, California FEHA and Colorado SB 26-189, 'renewed annually', but gives no audit date, data source or impact ratios and no link to a summary.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Vanta trust center lists an 'AI Bias Audit - Multi-State report' behind a 'Request access' form, so the results cannot be downloaded publicly (browser-verified; the page renders client-side).
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The pricing comparison lists 'Monthly AI bias audits' on every plan and an 'AI Bias Report' on Enterprise, which conflicts with the annual renewal claimed elsewhere; no periodic results are published.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Brainner's July 2026 buyer's guide says trustworthy tools 'publish independent AI bias audit results instead of just claiming fairness', a standard its own gated report does not meet.
https://www.brainner.ai/blog/article/what-to-look-for-before-you-buy-an-ai-resume-screening-tool
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A November 2024 post claims the model never considers names, gender, race or age and 'helps prevent any disparate impact', but gives no selection-rate or impact-ratio data.
https://www.brainner.ai/blog/article/eliminating-disparate-impact-in-resume-screening
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Idiro's AEDT audit service analyses selection rates, scoring rates and impact ratios by gender, race/ethnicity and intersectional group, and it says it cannot publish client names on hiring audits, so the Brainner audit cannot be confirmed through the auditor.
FRIA Support
4 items30
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment template, EU AI Act Article 26/27 deployer guidance or instructions for use were found on Brainner's Responsible AI, security, GDPR, help-center or blog pages, or among its trust-center resources.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Brainner says the EU AI Act classifies recruitment AI as high-risk 'requiring explainability — Brainner meets these requirements', a claim not backed by deployer documentation; the 2026 guide itself sits behind a name-and-email form.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The security page calls Brainner 'EU AI Compliant' and says it adheres to EU AI regulations, without describing any risk-management, conformity or deployer-support measures.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The GDPR page offers a Data Processing Agreement with standard contractual clauses and a Transfer Impact Assessment on request; these are GDPR transfer tools, not inputs to a FRIA.
Data Governance Disclosure
6 items53
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Brainner states it does not use customer or candidate personal data to train or fine-tune its own or third-party foundation models, and that customers set retention and can delete individual or bulk candidate data at any time.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The security page discloses AWS us-east-1 hosting with an EU region on request, encryption at rest and in transit, backups every six hours kept up to 30 days, and no routine employee access to production data.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The trust center names five subprocessors: AWS, Neon, OpenAI ('AI-powered services and processing for specific features'), and IPQualityScore and Coresignal for data enrichment (browser-verified).
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The fraud-flag guide says phone, email and LinkedIn checks draw on third-party fraud and identity-enrichment data, flagging signals such as VOIP numbers, recently created email or LinkedIn accounts and low LinkedIn connection counts.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/understanding-red-flags
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The privacy policy, last updated 11 January 2024, names Brainner as processor and lists 'third party sources such as social media service providers', but does not describe identity-check enrichment, the fraud dataset or LLM processing.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A publicly viewable Vanta engagement letter says Brainner engaged Prescient Assurance for a SOC 2 Type 2 report 'with the audit engagement projected to start on September 01, 2026', while the site calls Brainner 'SOC 2 Type II Certified' and the report itself is request-access.
Human Oversight Design
6 items50
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Recruiters edit AI-drafted criteria, mark them mandatory or preferred, and can hover over each criterion bar to see the AI's reason a candidate met or missed it before advancing, archiving or holding them in the ATS.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The homepage FAQ says Brainner does not automatically reject candidates and that advancing or rejecting a candidate 'always requires human action'.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The help center documents Automation Rules that 'automatically advance or reject candidates' based on score, criteria or profile insights, contradicting the homepage claim.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/how-to-set-up-automation-rules
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Rules can archive High Risk identity-check results or below-threshold scores immediately and 'on autopilot', dismissing the candidate in the ATS under the chosen reason with no manual step.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/how-to-set-up-automation-rules-using-identity-check-results
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Rejection-email templates can be tied to archive reasons and sent automatically when candidates are archived.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/setting-up-rejection-emails-in-brainner
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Audit logs are listed only on the Enterprise plan; bulk rejections are on every plan and automation rules on Business and Enterprise.
Post-Market Monitoring
5 items45
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A Better Stack status page monitors five components (Website, API, Agent, and EU data-center API and Agent), all showing 100% uptime over the past 30 days.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The incident history shows 'No incidents reported' for every month checked from January to September 2026, with no postmortems.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A September 2026 post publicly announced a model upgrade pushed to every account with 'nothing to configure', but did not mention re-running bias testing.
https://www.brainner.ai/blog/article/new-analysis-engine-now-live
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The security page describes an incident-response procedure that includes notifying affected customers, and continuous SonarQube code scanning.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No security.txt (/.well-known/security.txt returns 404), vulnerability-disclosure policy, dedicated security contact or published results from the claimed monthly bias audits were found; contact routes are general hello@ and support@ addresses.
Customer Documentation
5 items58
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Product pages describe criteria extraction, ranking, filters, candidate reports and two-way ATS sync, with a separate integration page for each ATS.
- Product featureCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Workday page explains API-based import of job requisitions, real-time screening that filters out 'those who don't meet your criteria', and decisions syncing back to Workday.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The help center (more than 30 articles) includes detailed guidance on writing, weighting and calibrating criteria, plus a guide to interpreting fraud red flags.
https://www.brainner.ai/help/article/resume-screening-criteria-best-practices
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The GDPR page (January 2024) explains controller and processor roles and offers a DPA with SCCs and a Transfer Impact Assessment on request.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No employer guidance on NYC LL 144 candidate notices, Illinois HB 3773 notices, Colorado disclosures or EU AI Act deployer duties was found on brainner.ai, its help center or its trust center.
Editorial notes
Company overview
Brainner, Inc. is a small Delaware corporation; LinkedIn lists it as founded in 2023 with 2–10 staff. It sells an AI screening layer for applicant tracking systems (ATSs) including Workday, Lever, SmartRecruiters, Recruitee and Greenhouse, and can also act as a lightweight ATS for teams without one. The product drafts screening criteria from the job description. Recruiters edit them and mark each as mandatory (80% of the score), preferred (20%) or neutral. A language-model engine then scores and ranks applicants, with per-criterion justifications tied to lines in the CV; OpenAI is a listed subprocessor. A separate identity check flags suspected fake applicants using phone, email, LinkedIn and file-metadata signals from third-party data providers.
Regulatory exposure
Brainner scores and ranks applicants and can automatically advance or archive them, so employers using it for NYC roles likely need an annual independent Local Law 144 bias audit, a published summary and candidate notices. After a December 2025 State Comptroller audit found enforcement ineffective, DCWP committed to tougher enforcement. Brainner says Idiro Analytics audited it for NYC, Illinois, California and Colorado, but the report is available only on request and no public summary exists. Under the EU AI Act, recruitment screening is high-risk (Annex III point 4), with obligations now deferred to 2 December 2027. Brainner's claims of EU AI Act compliance come without technical or deployer documentation, and its auto-reject rules raise human-oversight questions. Illinois HB 3773 (from 1 January 2026) requires notice of AI use and bars zip codes as proxies; Brainner's advice to always include candidate location, as a filter or a scored criterion, deserves review. Colorado's SB 26-189 disclosures apply from 1 January 2027, and California's FEHA rules already require four-year record retention.
Path to a higher score
Publish the Idiro audit summary: audit date, data source, and scoring rates and impact ratios by gender, race/ethnicity and intersectional group. State whether the audit covers the September 2026 engine and the fraud flags, and settle whether audits are annual or monthly. Make the product match the marketing: remove fully automatic reject and archive rules, or require a human review queue and per-jurisdiction defaults, and offer audit logs on every plan. Publish a system card that names the underlying model, what candidate data is sent to OpenAI and what is redacted, plus validation results and false-positive rates for fraud flags. Add deployer guidance for LL 144, Illinois notices and EU AI Act Articles 26 and 27. Update the January 2024 privacy policy to cover identity-check data enrichment, clarify the SOC 2 Type II report status, and add a vulnerability-disclosure channel.
Regulatory frame
What applies to screening AI.
Treated as high-risk under Annex III §4 when the screening output is decisive. EU AI Act Article 13 transparency obligations apply; deployers must give candidates a way to contest.
Compare
Brainner against its nearest-scoring peers.
The closest scores in Screening AI, side by side.
- Side-by-sideBrainner vs HiBob46F
- Side-by-sideBrainner vs RippleMatch46F
- Side-by-sideBrainner vs Factorial46F
- Side-by-sideBrainner vs Korn Ferry46F
Ranking
Others rated in Screening AI
Ranked 73 of 160 by weighted total under rubric v1.0. The ordering is arithmetic on the rubric and carries no view on which tool suits a given hiring process.
- #70Interviewer.AI47F
- #71TestGorilla47F
- #72HiBob46F
- #73BrainnerThis profile46F
- #74RippleMatch46F
- #75Factorial46F
Conflicts of interest
No vendor pays for placement, scoring, or removal. Casework - the consulting firm that operates this directory - provides paid services to some vendors. Any active or recent (within 24 months) commercial relationship is disclosed on the affected vendor profile and the review is reassigned to an independent reviewer. See the full policy on About.
Casework has no commercial relationship with this vendor.