Testlify vs. Total Testing: Which Skills Assessment Platform is Best for HR Teams?

Testlify vs Total Testing comes down to one question: do you want a per-candidate assessment platform with interviews, proctoring and integrations built in, or a per-test catalogue you dip into when a clerical role opens up? Testlify is the first. Total Testing is the second. Both will score a candidate's Excel skills. Only one of them will also run a proctored, AI-interviewed, ATS-synced screening round for a whole hiring class.

The short answer: pick Testlify if you hire more than a handful of people a year, need proctoring you can defend, or want video and voice interviews in the same tool as the tests. Pick Total Testing if you run a few clerical or MS Office hires a year, want to pay $30 a test with no contract, and are happy to supervise a confirmation test on site.

This comparison uses Total Testing's own published figures (pulled from its site in September 2026), Testlify's live pricing page, and the selection research both vendors' claims should be checked against. Where a vendor doesn't publish a fact, the table says so instead of guessing.

TL;DR

• Total Testing sells tests one at a time: $30 per completed test on Pay-As-You-Go, down to $12 per test if you pre-pay for 1,000 to 2,500 of them. Testlify sells candidate credits: from $139 a month on an annual Starter plan, one credit per candidate who starts an assessment, however many tests are inside it.
• Total Testing's catalogue is 800+ validated tests, strongest in clerical, MS Office, accounting, industrial and personality. Testlify's library is 3,500+ tests across coding, cognitive, role-specific, software, language and psychometric categories, with 25+ custom question types.
• Total Testing does have an integrity model, but it's a two-stage one: an unproctored test, then a supervised confirmation test at your office. Testlify proctors the remote test itself, with three presets and an optional second camera on the candidate's phone.
• Total Testing is test-only. Testlify adds one-way and conversational AI video, voice and phone interviews, with the AI score switchable to advisory so a human keeps the final call.
• Both integrate with an ATS, with a catch on each side: Total Testing lists ATS integration under its Pre-Pay account, and Testlify sells its 100+ ATS integrations as a $2,388-a-year add-on on self-serve tiers.
• For most teams hiring more than about ten people a year with a multi-test battery, Testlify is cheaper per hire and gives you more evidence per candidate. For occasional single-test screening, Total Testing's no-contract model is hard to beat.

What is Testlify?

Testlify is a pre-hire assessment and interviewing platform. You build an assessment from a library of 3,500+ tests or from your own questions, invite candidates, and get back scored, benchmarked, proctored evidence for every person who took it. The same platform runs AI video, voice and phone interviews, so the test and the interview sit in one candidate report.

Here's what that looks like in practice, taken from the product's own screens rather than a sales deck.

1. Build the assessment

The Testlify test library covers thirteen categories: blue collar, coding, cognitive ability, engineering skills, language, personality and culture, programming skills, psychometric, role-specific skills, situational judgement, software skills, simulation and gamified. Every test has exactly three difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard). You can also generate an assessment from a job description with AI, capped at 20 questions per run.

2. Add your own questions

There are 25+ question types. The ones worth knowing about: Google Docs, Sheets and Slides tasks and Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint tasks that run inside the real apps; coding questions with an embedded VS Code editor, up to 20 test cases and SQLite database cases; a typing test scored 60% accuracy and 40% speed by default; file-upload and practical work samples; and a "vibe coding" format where the candidate directs AI tools to a working solution instead of typing syntax. Questions can be scored, non-scored, weighted x0 to x5 per test, and negatively marked in two distinct modes.

3. Interview in the same tool

Testlify runs one-way asynchronous video, two-way conversational AI video, audio and voice questions, and outbound AI phone interviews (phone time is metered at $0.18 a minute). You pick the AI avatar, the voice and the persona, write custom prompts or use one of 150+ templates, and set attempts, recording time and preparation time. Transcripts are automatic and multilingual, the AI scores the answer, and a reviewer can override it. The product's own disclaimer is the important part: "AI scores and insights are for guidance only. Use human judgment for final decisions."

4. Proctor the session

Three presets (Standard, Strict, Custom) switch on measures like full-screen enforcement, tab-switch detection, photo ID verification with a face match, periodic webcam snapshots, screen and camera recording, multi-monitor restriction, AI-tool and browser-extension detection and IP proctoring. The standout is dual-device proctoring: the candidate's phone becomes a second camera pointed at them and their laptop screen, and the assessment won't start until it's active. The full list lives on the anti-cheating and proctoring page.

5. Review, benchmark, decide

Reports show percentile rank, a "Better Than" comparison against other candidates, per-question timing and activity logs, and item-level statistics most buyers never see: a difficulty index, a discrimination index and a quality-risk flag on every question. Proctoring flags come in three tiers (green, yellow "a quick manual review is recommended", red), and auto-termination is a separate opt-in switch rather than something a flag triggers on its own.

6. Connect it to the rest of your stack

Testlify integrates with 100+ ATS platforms, including Greenhouse, Lever and Fountain, plus Zapier, webhooks and a public API. On the self-serve tiers that integration pack is a paid add-on ($2,388 a year) and it's included on the Custom plan. For teams that don't run an ATS at all, Testlify also ships a simple built-in one: post a job, take applications, move candidates through applied, reviewed, shortlisted and rejected stages. It's a light pipeline for small teams, not a replacement for a system of record you already trust. Security covers SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit logs streamed to your SIEM, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, with GDPR and CCPA compliance.

What is Total Testing (totaltesting.com)?

Total Testing is a web-based skills-testing supplier that has been selling pre-employment and current-employee assessments since 2002. Its site describes a catalogue of 800+ validated skills and behavioural tests, about 50,000 tests administered a year, and more than 3,500 unique clients over the past three years. It's a test catalogue with an admin portal, not an interviewing or hiring-workflow platform, and it's honest about that.

1. Pick or build a test

The catalogue is strongest where clerical and office hiring lives: every version of MS Office, accounting and bookkeeping, typing and data entry, industrial and mechanical skills, medical and nursing, legal office, call centre, retail and food service, plus aptitude ("Thinking") and personality tests. A "Build Your Own Test" tool lets you mix and match from more than 200 pre-validated scales, add your own questions, set time limits and customise the report, so you only test what the job needs.

2. Invite candidates from the portal

Administrators log in to the TotalView dashboard, pick a test and send the candidate a link. The candidate can take it remotely or on site. There's no candidate-facing white-label journey to configure and nothing to install, which is why Total Testing says accounts are set up within minutes and need no training.

3. Get the score by email

Every test is scored automatically and a report is emailed to the administrator as soon as the candidate finishes. Reports show an overall score, a comparison to other test takers, and skill or topic breakdowns, often with proficiency labels ("Proficient", "Intermediate") that non-technical managers find easy to read. What you don't get is a live analytics dashboard across roles and time; the scorecard is the product.

4. Confirm the result under supervision

Total Testing's answer to remote cheating is procedural rather than technical. Its process page describes two-stage testing: an initial unproctored assessment taken anywhere, then a proctored confirmation assessment administered at the employer's place of business, both online but the second one supervised by you. If the two scores agree, you trust the result. If they don't, you've caught something.

5. Pay per test

Three account types. Pay-As-You-Go bills $30 per completed test at the end of each month, with no contract and no charge in months you don't test. Pre-Pay lets you buy tokens in blocks of 25 or more at a discount; tokens don't expire, can be used on any test, and bottom out at $12 per test when you buy 1,000 to 2,500 of them. A Staffing account is priced for agencies running volume. ATS integration and custom test creation are listed under the Pre-Pay tier, and Total Testing describes its tests as validated and EEOC compliant.

Testlify vs Total Testing: feature comparison table

Every row below is something one of the two vendors states in its own product or on its own site. Where Total Testing doesn't publish a fact, the cell says "not published" rather than a cross.

Which has the bigger test library?

Testlify has the bigger and broader library at 3,500+ tests; Total Testing has the deeper clerical and office catalogue at 800+ tests. Size isn't the deciding factor. Coverage of your roles is. If you hire developers, salespeople, analysts and support staff, Testlify covers all of them. If you hire receptionists, bookkeepers and machine operators, both do.

Testlify test library

Thirteen categories, with a role-specific layer on top so a hiring manager can start from "customer success manager" rather than "personality test". The ones that matter in a head-to-head with Total Testing:

• Cognitive ability tests for problem solving, numerical and logical reasoning and attention to detail
• Role-specific skills tests mapped to thousands of job titles
• Software skills tests, including tasks run inside real Google Workspace and Microsoft Office files
• Programming tests and live coding challenges
• Psychometric and personality tests, which are qualitative and don't produce a single total score
• Situational judgement tests for decision making under realistic pressure
• Typing tests with configurable accuracy and speed weighting
• Language tests and blue-collar skills tests for frontline roles

Two details buyers usually miss. Question banks can run in "variable" mode, which draws unused questions randomly from a pool so no two candidates see the same paper, and the product warns you that small banks raise overlap. And tests translate in real time into the candidate's preferred language, which matters if you hire across borders.

Total Testing test library

Total Testing's 800+ tests are organised by job family rather than by science category, which suits a manager who wants "the bookkeeping test" and not a competency model. The published families:

• Behavioural and cognitive (personality, attitude, leadership, aptitude)
• Administrative and clerical, typing and data entry
• Microsoft Office, every version, plus other software skills
• Accounting and finance
• Industrial and mechanical skills
• Retail sales, call centre and customer service
• Legal office, human resources, medical and nursing, food service

Every test is described as independently researched and validated, and the Build Your Own Test tool draws on 200+ pre-validated scales. That's a real strength: a validated scale you assemble is more defensible than a question you wrote at your desk.

Verdict: Testlify wins on breadth, technical depth and language coverage. Total Testing wins on the depth of its clerical and office catalogue and the simplicity of its scale-based builder. For a company hiring across more than one job family, the breadth matters more.

Which custom question types do they support?

Testlify supports 25+ question types, including tasks completed inside live Google and Microsoft files, coding with hidden test cases, video and voice answers, and file uploads. Total Testing's builder supports multiple choice, short answer, long answer and fill-in-the-blank questions, assembled with its validated scales. If your role can be tested with a knowledge check, both work. If it needs a work sample, only one does.

Testlify custom question types

• Choice and structured: single select, multiple select, yes/no, true/false, dropdown, ranking, range, number, date, qualifier (a screening gate that can end the assessment early)
• Text: short answer, long answer, open ended, fill in the blank with free-text or dropdown blanks
• Work sample: coding (single file or multi-file project), typing, practical hands-on by file upload or URL, file upload, media
• Office apps: Google Docs, Slides and Sheets; Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, with the candidate signed into the real apps
• Interview: video, audio, voice, Video AI, Voice AI and Voice AI Call

Open-ended answers can be auto-scored by AI across documents, spreadsheets, presentations, source code, images and design files, and every AI score can be hidden from the reviewer or excluded from the final average. Candidates can be asked to justify an answer with a comment, and any question can be marked non-scored so it informs the interview without moving the number.

Total Testing custom questions

• Multiple choice
• Short answer
• Fill in the blank
• Long answer

The builder's value is the scale library behind it, not the question formats. Mixing 200+ validated scales into a job-specific test shortens administration time and keeps validity intact, which is exactly what Total Testing says it's for.

Verdict: Testlify, clearly, for any role where you want to watch someone do the work. Total Testing is enough for knowledge-based screening of clerical and administrative roles.

Does Total Testing have proctoring?

Yes, but not the kind most buyers mean. Total Testing's integrity model is two-stage testing: the candidate takes an unproctored test remotely, then sits a proctored confirmation test at your premises under your supervision. Testlify proctors the remote session itself, with webcam, screen, ID and AI-tool checks, so there's no second sitting to arrange.

The difference matters more in 2026 than it did in 2022. Gartner predicts that by 2028 one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake, and in its 2Q25 survey of 3,000 job candidates, 6% admitted to interview fraud, either posing as someone else or having someone pose as them (Gartner, January 2025). An unproctored first test tells you what someone at a keyboard can do. It doesn't tell you who was at the keyboard.

Testlify proctoring

Testlify's proctoring settings come as three presets, Standard, Strict and Custom, and the measures behind them cover identity, environment and behaviour:

• Identity: photo ID verification with a face match against the ID, face detection, multiple-face and different-person detection, private-invite verification
• Environment: full-screen enforcement, multi-monitor restriction, IP proctoring, location tracking, internet-speed enforcement, talking prohibition
• Behaviour: tab-switch detection, Focus Guard anti-cheat mode, copy-paste tracking, screenshot-attempt monitoring, mouse-out tracking, periodic webcam snapshots, screen and camera recording, per-question activity and timing logs
• AI: AI-tool and browser-extension detection, plus an AI checker that classifies written answers as human, AI-generated or mixed
• Dual-device: the candidate's phone acts as a second camera capturing them and the laptop screen; the assessment can't start until mobile monitoring is live, and ending it is logged and reported

What the recruiter sees is a three-tier flag with the wording chosen to stop snap judgements: green means no suspicious behaviour, yellow means "a quick manual review is recommended", and red means cheating was confirmed. Auto-termination is a separate opt-in with a violation threshold you set. Face-verification data is deleted after 30 days and candidates can withdraw consent at any time.

The design principle is simple: identity checks, proctoring controls, AI-assistance detection and suspicious-behaviour signals feed reviewable evidence, and the final judgement stays with a human. A flag is a reason to look, not a rejection.

Total Testing proctoring

Total Testing doesn't publish a list of in-browser lockdown or webcam controls. Its published safeguard is the supervised confirmation test, which has a real advantage: a human in the room is still the hardest control to fool. The cost is logistics. Every candidate you want to verify has to come to you, which rules out remote hiring and adds a scheduling step per person.

Verdict: Testlify for remote or high-volume hiring, where a second on-site sitting per candidate isn't realistic. Total Testing's two-stage model is workable if every finalist visits your office anyway.

Does Total Testing offer AI or video interviews?

No. Total Testing is a testing platform and doesn't list video, audio or AI interview formats. Testlify runs one-way asynchronous video, two-way conversational AI video, voice questions and outbound AI phone interviews inside the same assessment as the tests, so a candidate's coding score, Excel task and recorded answers land in one report.

Testlify AI interviews

The configurability is the point, so here it is in full. You choose the AI avatar, voice and persona, give it context about the role, and write custom prompts or pick from 150+ interview templates. Per question you set the number of attempts (including no limit), the recording time, the completion time and a preparation window, and you can auto-start recording so the candidate can't rehearse. A reattempt deletes the earlier take. During a live AI voice interview the candidate is muted while the AI is speaking, which is how you know it's genuine turn-taking rather than recorded prompts.

On the reviewer's side you get the video, the audio, an automatic multilingual transcript (the AI detects the spoken language), an interview report you can regenerate, and AI insights listing strengths and improvement areas. The AI score can be displayed to reviewers or hidden, and a toggle decides whether it counts in the final average. Just 26% of job applicants trust AI to evaluate them fairly, according to a Gartner survey published in July 2025, and the ability to keep AI scoring advisory is how you answer that concern without giving up the speed.

One honest limit: Testlify doesn't schedule live human interview panels. It records and scores candidate answers; your calendar tool still books the final round.

Total Testing interviews

None. If you want a structured interview alongside a Total Testing score, you run it yourself and keep the notes somewhere else.

Verdict: Testlify, and it isn't close. This is the single biggest functional gap between the two platforms.

How do reporting and benchmarking compare?

Total Testing emails you a scorecard per test with an overall score, a comparison to other test takers and skill-level breakdowns. Testlify gives you a live report per candidate and per assessment with percentile rank, a "Better Than" benchmark, per-question timing, proctoring evidence and AI insights, plus item-level statistics on the questions themselves. Both export to PDF and CSV.

Testlify reporting

The reporting and analytics layer works at three levels: question, test and overall assessment. Per candidate you see percentile score and rank, section scores, the trust score with each proctoring flag explained, the interview transcript and the AI summary. Per assessment you see score and time distributions, median and average time, attempted and correct percentages, and the psychometrics: a difficulty index, a discrimination index and a quality-risk warning on any question with very low accuracy or a high skip rate. That last one is how you find and fix a bad question before it costs you a good candidate.

Report types include development, DISC, 16 personality traits, cultural fit, customer service, interview, compliance and reviewer score reports. Shareable report links have granular show/hide controls for AI insights, correct answers, proctoring detail and candidate info, so a hiring manager sees what they need and nothing they shouldn't.

Total Testing reporting

The emailed report is the product, and for a manager who wants an answer in their inbox that's a feature. Reports break results down by section, show percentiles against other test takers and label proficiency levels. There's no cross-role dashboard, no per-question statistics and no candidate-behaviour analytics, so comparing this quarter's applicants with last year's means a spreadsheet.

Verdict: Testlify for anyone who wants to improve the assessment over time or defend a decision with evidence. Total Testing's scorecards are perfectly usable for a one-off hire.

Does Total Testing integrate with an ATS?

Yes. Total Testing lists ATS integration under its Pre-Pay account, alongside custom test creation. Testlify offers 100+ ATS integrations, including Greenhouse, Lever and Fountain, plus Zapier, webhooks and an API, sold as a $2,388-a-year add-on on the self-serve tiers and included on the Custom plan. Neither vendor bundles ATS integration into its cheapest entry point.

Two things distinguish Testlify's integration story. First, depth: candidates can auto-advance to the next ATS stage when they meet a cut-off score, and a rejection inside Testlify leaves the ATS record untouched, so your system of record stays yours. Second, the fallback for teams with no ATS. Testlify's built-in pipeline handles job requisitions, an application form, job-board publishing and applied-to-rejected stages. It's deliberately simple, aimed at a company under about 200 people that doesn't want to buy two tools, and it isn't pitched against an enterprise system of record.

Total Testing doesn't name its ATS partners on the pages we could read, so ask which systems it connects to and whether results write back automatically or arrive as a link in the emailed report.

Verdict: Testlify for integration depth and for teams that need a pipeline as well as tests. Total Testing's Pre-Pay integration may be enough if you only need scores attached to a candidate record.

How much do Testlify and Total Testing cost?

Total Testing charges per completed test: $30 on Pay-As-You-Go, less on Pre-Pay blocks of 25 or more, down to $12 per test at 1,000 to 2,500 tests. Testlify charges per candidate credit on tiered plans from $139 a month billed annually. The unit is the whole story: a three-test battery costs Total Testing three tests and Testlify one credit.

Testlify pricing plans

Prices below are from the live Testlify pricing page, annual billing. One credit is consumed per candidate who starts an assessment; credits don't roll over. Extra seats are $15 per seat per month on every tier.

Monthly billing uses the same tier names with fewer credits: Starter is $198 a month for 10 credits, Basic $398 for 30, Business $998 for 100. Every plan comes with a 7-day free trial without a card, a 30-day money-back guarantee and a price locked for 24 months. Non-profits get 25% off. White labelling, the 100+ ATS integrations and SAML SSO are each $2,388 a year on the self-serve tiers and included on Custom. Metered extras: AI phone interviews $0.18 a minute, face verification $0.50 an attempt.

Total Testing pricing

Total Testing publishes three account types rather than tiers:

• Pay-As-You-Go: $30 per completed test, billed at the end of the month, no contract, no charge in a month with no completed tests
• Pre-Pay: buy tokens in blocks of 25 or more at a discount; tokens don't expire and work on any test; the published floor is $12 per test at 1,000 to 2,500 tests, described as a 60% saving; ATS integration and custom test creation are listed here
• Staffing: agency pricing built around volume, arranged by phone

The step prices between 25 and 1,000 tokens weren't visible on the pages we could read, so get them in writing before you compare.

A worked example: a 40-person marketing agency

Take an illustrative 40-person marketing agency that hires about 12 people a year and screens 100 candidates to do it, using a three-test battery: an Excel task, an attention-to-detail test and a written communication exercise.

• Total Testing, Pay-As-You-Go: 100 candidates x 3 tests x $30 = $9,000 a year, assuming every candidate completes all three.
• Total Testing, Pre-Pay: somewhere between $12 and $30 a test depending on the block you buy. Hitting the $12 floor means buying 1,000 tokens up front, $12,000, and the agency would take more than three years to use them.
• Testlify Starter, annual: 100 credits for $1,668. The three-test battery is one assessment, so one credit per candidate. Add $2,388 if the agency wants its own branding on the candidate journey, for $4,056 total.

Flip the example to a company that runs four bookkeeping hires a year with a single test each and Total Testing's $30-a-test model wins on cost: $120 against a $1,668 minimum annual commitment (or $198 for one month of Testlify Starter).

Verdict: Testlify is cheaper per candidate as soon as you test more than one skill per person or more than about ten people a year. Total Testing is cheaper for occasional single-test screening and carries no commitment at all.

Is Testlify a better alternative to Total Testing?

For most hiring teams, yes. Testlify gives you more evidence per candidate (tests, work samples, interviews and proctoring in one report), a bigger library, item-level analytics and a per-candidate price that falls as volume rises. Total Testing is the better choice for low-volume clerical hiring where a validated single test and an emailed scorecard are all the decision needs.

The research behind that answer is older than either product. The 2022 reanalysis of selection-method validity by Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, revised many earlier estimates downward and placed structured interviews among the strongest predictors of job performance, with years of education and general years of experience among the weakest. A single test score is one signal. A test plus a structured interview plus a work sample is the stack the evidence favours, and that stack is what the Testlify Multi-Signal Talent Evaluation Model describes: combine several role-relevant signals, assessments, interviews, simulations and reviewer feedback, so no single number carries the decision.

There's a second finding that decides how those signals should be combined. Kuncel, Klieger, Connelly and Ones' 2013 meta-analysis in the same journal found that combining assessment information mechanically, by a consistent formula, predicts outcomes as well as or better than experts re-weighting the same information by judgement. That's an argument for weighted, section-level scoring you set once and apply to everyone, which Testlify exposes as score-based or weights-based aggregation, over a manager eyeballing three emailed PDFs.

Pro Tip: Whichever platform you pick, ask for the reliability and validity evidence behind the specific tests you'll use, not the catalogue as a whole. Total Testing's "validated" label and Testlify's difficulty and discrimination indices are both worth more when you've seen the numbers for your test.

When Total Testing is the better pick

• You make a handful of clerical, bookkeeping or MS Office hires a year and want $30-a-test, no-contract pricing with nothing to configure.
• Every finalist visits your office anyway, so the supervised confirmation test costs you nothing extra and gives you a human-proctored result.
• You want a test assembled from validated scales by a supplier that has done exactly that since 2002, and you have no need for interviews, coding tasks or Office-app work samples.

When Testlify is the better pick

• You hire remotely or at volume and need proctoring that runs inside the test, including ID verification and a second camera.
• You want the interview and the test in one report, with AI scoring you can keep advisory.
• You hire across job families, from developers to support staff, and want work samples rather than knowledge checks.
• You want to improve the assessment over time using per-question statistics and benchmarks.
• You'd rather pay per candidate on a plan you can trial for 7 days and cancel inside 30.

How to choose between Testlify and Total Testing

Five checks, in the order they'll actually change your decision.

1. Count your tests per candidate. One test per person favours Total Testing's per-test pricing. Two or more favours Testlify's per-credit pricing, and the gap widens with every test you add.
2. Decide how you'll verify identity. If you can't bring finalists on site, Total Testing's supervised confirmation test isn't available to you, and Testlify's in-browser proctoring is the only remote option of the two.
3. Check adverse impact before you buy, not after. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures set the four-fifths rule: a selection rate for any group below 80% of the highest group's rate is treated by US federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact (29 CFR Part 1607). Ask both vendors for group-level pass rates on the tests you'll use, and plan to monitor your own.
4. Map the AI rules that apply to you. New York City's Local Law 144 requires an automated employment decision tool to have had a bias audit within a year of use, with the audit summary public and candidates notified (NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection), and the EU AI Act classes AI used for recruitment as high-risk, with obligations for human oversight, logging and documentation applying from 2 December 2027 (European Commission). Total Testing's scored tests are mostly outside that scope; Testlify's AI scoring is inside it, which is why the advisory-only toggle and the human-override workflow matter.
5. Run the same three candidates through both. Testlify's 7-day trial and Total Testing's no-charge-until-completion model both let you do this for almost nothing. Compare the reports side by side and ask which one you'd be comfortable showing a candidate who asked why they were rejected.

Ready to see the difference on your own roles? Book a Testlify demo and bring a job description; the team will build the assessment and run a sample candidate through it, proctoring and interview included. Or start the free trial from the pricing page and compare the reports yourself.

Key Takeaways

• The pricing unit decides the winner. Total Testing bills $30 per completed test (down to $12 pre-paid at 1,000+); Testlify bills one credit per candidate from $139 a month annually. A three-test battery for 100 candidates costs about $9,000 on Total Testing's Pay-As-You-Go and $1,668 on Testlify Starter, so multi-test screening tilts hard to Testlify, while occasional single-test hiring stays cheaper on Total Testing.
• Total Testing does have integrity controls, they're just procedural. Its two-stage model retests finalists under your supervision on site. That's a strong control for local hiring and unusable for remote hiring, which is where Testlify's in-browser proctoring, ID and face match, and dual-device camera earn their keep.
• Interviews are the biggest functional gap. Total Testing is test-only. Testlify adds one-way and conversational AI video, voice and phone interviews with avatars, prompts, attempt limits, transcripts and a human override, so the interview and the test share one report.
• Library size matters less than role coverage. Total Testing's 800+ validated clerical, Office and industrial tests cover office hiring well; Testlify's 3,500+ tests and Office-app, coding and vibe-coding work samples cover office hiring and everything else.
• Both integrate with an ATS, neither at the entry price. Total Testing lists ATS integration under Pre-Pay; Testlify sells its 100+ integrations as a $2,388-a-year add-on on self-serve tiers and includes them on Custom, and adds a simple built-in pipeline for teams with no ATS.
• The evidence favours a multi-signal stack, mechanically combined. Sackett et al. (2022) put structured interviews among the strongest predictors and Kuncel et al. (2013) showed formula-based combination beats expert re-weighting, which is the case for weighted assessments plus a structured interview over a single emailed score.
• Compliance questions are the same for both vendors. Ask for group pass rates against the four-fifths rule, a Local Law 144 bias audit if you hire in New York City, and a human-oversight process if you use AI scoring in the EU.

FAQs