True Cost of Background Checks for Small Businesses
- Originally Published: December 31, 2024
- Last Updated: January 2, 2025
For small businesses, the sticker shock of background check pricing can be surprising – especially when that $77 quote is nearly triple what you should be paying. Even more frustrating? There’s no difference in the data provided between the $77 option and the cheaper option.
Table of Contents
Summary
- The prices offered by background check vendors can vary greatly, especially for small businesses that don’t expect to process a high volume of orders.
- The most popular standard criminal check can range from $28 to $77 for the exact same search package.
- You may also encounter standard pass-through fees from some data sources depending on your candidate’s location history, but these should be similar between vendors.
- Additional costs could be added if you choose to purchase add-on services, such as rush fees, additional name searches, or fees for integrating with other software platforms.
Cost control is essential for all businesses, but it can be especially important for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the resources that larger businesses have. In the pre-employment screening industry, small businesses in particular will find a wide range of prices for the same product, making it an ideal place to reduce expenses. In this blog we’ll discuss the typical prices for background checks, factors that can add to the final background check cost, and some tips to save money without sacrificing quality.
Disclaimer: While numbers are accurate at the time of writing, prices can change. Pass-through fees are outside the control of background check vendors. Price shouldn’t be the only decision factor when picking a vendor – be sure to consider other relevant factors like quality of customer service.
Quoted Background Check Prices
When shopping for a background check vendor, you’ll find a wide range of packages and prices. While vendors can combine over 100 different types of searches into custom packages, many small businesses start with one or two standard options and customize as needed. Let’s examine these popular entry-level packages and their typical costs:
Basic Package $16 - $36
This is the most entry level package that many vendors will include as a suggested search package. It includes a SSN Trace, National Sex Offender Registry search, and a Nationwide Criminal Database search. The Nationwide Criminal Database search has some comprehensiveness concerns as geographical coverage can vary and the nationwide database is only periodically refreshed (not a “live” set of data). At Perfect Fit, we charge $16 for this package, though we don’t recommend it to any employers due to these quality concerns.
Standard Recommended Package $28 - $77
This is the most popular entry point for criminal background checks. In addition to the Basic Package above, this package directly searches the live county records for all counties that the candidate has lived in within the last 7 years. At Perfect Fit, we charge $28 or $36 for this package, depending on the state that your company is based in (and our costs of data acquisition there). Other big-box vendors you might find on page one of Google have retail prices of $55 and $77 for this exact same package.
Why Such A Large Range In Price?
You would think that in a mature industry like background checks, where all vendors are pulling the same data from the same courthouses, prices would be much more competitive. As it turns out, the largest vendors don’t care to offer competitive retail prices to everyone – they reserve their competitive prices for customers that will be running a high volume of orders. To complicate matters, even if you do expect to run a high volume of orders, you’ll need to negotiate with a sales rep, so if you don’t do your own research, you will still be left wondering if your final negotiated price is fair or not. Depending on the vendor, “high order volume” might mean 50 per year or it might mean 300 per year.
In addition to volume-based pricing, these larger legacy vendors often have notable overhead expenses with large offices in prime locations. At Perfect Fit our employees are remote and work from home, allowing us to run an efficient operation and pass those savings to our customers.
Some big-box vendors are also publicly traded, which creates a pressure to constantly grow profits. As a privately owned small business, Perfit Fit is able to prioritize other values above profits, like affordability and service.
Potential Additional Fees / Costs
The background check price quoted by a vendor can sometimes be the final cost, but it’s not uncommon for there to be other additional fees or optional costs. Other potential fees that can increase your final cost:
Pass-Through Search Fees
Some searches access data sources that charge an additional fee to access their data. Common searches that can incur fees include: county criminal, statewide criminal, driver histories, education verification, and employment verification. We go into more detail about these fees in this blog post: Understanding and Anticipating Background Check Fees.
Searching Additional Names
In most cases, a background check will look back seven years, and nearly all searches are performed based on legal name. If your candidate has changed their legal name, you would need to run a search on the old name as well to get a comprehensive view. Sometimes you will only need to add specific searches, but it could double your final price if you re-run all of the searches in the package on the previous name.
Rush Fees
Some background check vendors (Perfect Fit included) offer a rush option for a fee.
Integration Costs
If you need your background check vendor to integrate with your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software or your Human Resources Information System (HRIS) software, there can often be fees associated with setting up those integrations. Generally this only becomes important for larger enterprises performing a high volume of background checks.
Time & Resource Costs
While the dollar cost is typically the biggest consideration in this conversation, it’s worth mentioning the cost in time and resources.
Manual vs Streamlined Ordering Process
While many vendors now have streamlined ordering processes, some still require you to input all of the candidate information yourself and to manually collect signatures on the required authorization forms. This can be time consuming and error prone.
Our most popular ordering system at Perfect Fit is the invitation method – you supply the legal name and email of your candidate, and we’ll take it from there. We’ll send a link to the candidate for them to view and electronically sign the authorization form, and they’ll provide their own information that we need to process the order. We send you email updates along the way as we process the order.
You can even place orders without signing into our platform by sharing your unique order link with candidates. Check out this blog post to learn more about all background check ordering methods.
Training Requirements
For folks new to background checks, there are some important things to know before placing your first order. Some companies may only provide written guides, especially if you’re a small business without a dedicated service rep. At Perfect Fit we onboard each customer with either a live video call training, or we’ll record and send a short tutorial video (something highly appreciated and reviewed by our customers).
Saving Money on Background Checks
Because many vendors quote different prices based on the volume of expected orders, it’s paramount for small businesses to take the time to shop around for the right vendor. With the exact same standard package costing $28 with Perfect Fit, or $55 or $77 with the big-box vendors you might find on page one of Google, the savings can add up fast.
At Perfect Fit, we focus on serving the small and medium-sized business community with flat pricing that doesn’t change with order volume. If you expect to run fewer than 300 orders per year, we recommend you avoid the large vendors and look for local and/or small business vendors that may offer a more personal experience and more competitive pricing.
Read More
We launched our Background Check Price Transparency Survey because we recognized that most vendors in the industry charge widely different prices to each customer and fail to publicly publish their pricing.
In order to address the secretive nature of pricing, we collected user submissions and aggregated the results into a report that gives folks more insights than were previously available.
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About the Author
Travis Reiter
Owner-Operator, Perfect Fit Background Checks
Travis has co-owned Perfect Fit Background Checks with his wife Rachael since 2021. With a passion for helping small businesses, Travis specializes in providing affordable background check services with unrivaled service. When he’s not helping customers, Travis is actively volunteering around Austin, Texas, exploring new destinations, or enjoying board games with friends.
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