Maki People Alternatives: 10 AI Interview Tools, and the 2 That Also Find Candidates

By Sparsh Goyal, Founder at The Cognitive. Published 2026-10-03 · Last updated 2026-10-05

• The best Maki People alternative in 2026 is The Cognitive, followed by TestGorilla for sourcing plus skills tests, HireVue for enterprise compliance, and Alex or HeyMilo for multichannel AI interviews.
• The Cognitive finds people across ~900M public profiles and runs a live, two-way AI video interview with them, in a self-serve account at a published price; Maki screens people already in your ATS by voice, sold by quote.
• Pick Sapia.ai or Paradox for frontline chat, Humanly for chat, voice or video at volume, Metaview for an interview notetaker plus sourcing, and Willo for one-way video on a published plan.
• I run The Cognitive. The other 9 are judged from their own websites, read on 3 October 2026.

The best Maki People alternative in 2026 is The Cognitive if you want candidates found and interviewed in one account. Maki screens and assesses the people already in your applicant tracking system (ATS), with a voice interviewer and a big skills library, sold to enterprises by quote. The Cognitive searches ~900M public profiles from a plain-English brief, then runs a live, two-way AI video interview with the people you pick, at a published monthly price.

Finding people is the half Maki leaves out, and it pays. Gem's 2026 recruiting benchmarks, built on 1.2 million hires, found that direct sourcing produced 11% of hires from just 2.6% of applications. Gem's summary: sourced candidates are "nearly eight times more likely to be hired than inbound applicants".

The best Maki People alternatives in 2026

1. The Cognitive: best if you want sourcing and a live AI video interview in one self-serve account.
2. TestGorilla: best if you want sourcing plus a skills-test library, the closest match to Maki's assessments.
3. HireVue: best for large employers that want an enterprise vendor with deep compliance paperwork.
4. Alex: best for AI interviews over video, phone, SMS and WhatsApp.
5. HeyMilo: best for high-volume screening by voice, video, SMS and forms.
6. Sapia.ai: best for mobile chat interviews in frontline hiring, paid per hire.
7. Paradox: best for text-to-apply and scheduling, especially on Workday.
8. Humanly: best for high-volume AI interviews by chat, voice or video.
9. Metaview: best if you want an interview notetaker like Tomo plus a sourcing agent.
10. Willo: best for one-way video interviews on a published plan.

Full disclosure: I run The Cognitive. Putting it first is my judgment, and here's the test behind it: it finds people outside your own database and runs a live, two-way AI video interview with them, in an account you open without a sales call, at a published price. TestGorilla passes that test too, so read both reviews. I rank The Cognitive above it because sourcing is its core product and its interview runs 10 or 20 minutes with resume claim checks. After #2 the order is my judgment of how closely each tool covers what Maki does. I have not used the other 9 on a paid account. What I say about them comes from their own websites, read on 3 October 2026.

What is Maki People, and how does it work?

Maki People, also searched as Maki HR, now lives at makipeople.com. Its homepage says "AI Hiring for Enterprise" and describes 5 stages "orchestrated by Maki, on top of your existing ATS": intake, screening, assessment, interview and a hire recommendation. Five named agents do the work:

• Shiro, the skills screener, "runs skills screening across 300+ skills".
• Mochi, the voice interviewer, runs voice screening in 45+ languages.
• Ken delivers "late-funnel, role-calibrated assessments across 400+ skills".
• Kumi "schedules the interview from your ATS".
• Tomo, the interview co-pilot, sits in your human interviews and produces a transcript, structured notes and scoring.

On the Mochi page, "The candidate joins a web call or phone call and speaks directly with the AI." Mochi probes vague answers, scores against a fixed grid of behavioural anchors, and Maki says no candidate is ever rejected automatically. So Maki's AI interview is voice. Tomo doesn't interview anyone: it joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet calls run by your own people. Maki's own video use is audio and video questions inside assessments.

At the end, Maki rolls everything into "one decision card" with risk flags and a hire recommendation carrying a confidence level. Maki is built for enterprise procurement. It connects to "30+ ATS and HRIS", with native integrations for Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, SmartRecruiters and iCIMS, and says a full rollout is "live in under 2 months". Holistic AI audits it every year under New York City Local Law 144, and Mochi and Shiro were audited in March 2026 with the results published. Hosting is in the EU by default.

My read as a review: Maki is a serious product for large employers that hire on tested skills, with more published fairness work than most. Its headline numbers, such as "45% faster hiring", are vendor claims I can't check. Our Maki People review covers each agent on its own.

Why do teams look for Maki People alternatives?

The 4 reasons to shop around all show up on Maki's own site:

• Nobody new comes in. Maki's intake stage is there to "define success before sourcing", but it has no sourcing agent. Its agents start from your ATS stages.
• The AI interview is voice only. Mochi runs on a web or phone call, so you don't see the candidate.
• It's sold by quote. Pricing is "tailored to your organisation and available on request", and a full rollout takes up to 2 months.
• Tests before talk. Maki leads with assessments across 300+ and 400+ skills. Some teams want a conversation first and a test only for finalists.

How do the top Maki People alternatives compare?

Here is how they stack up. I filled in every cell from the vendor's own site on 3 October 2026:

How did we rank these Maki alternatives?

I started with 12 candidates and kept 9, plus The Cognitive. Truffle's site returned a server error, Tezi's wouldn't load, and micro1's homepage now sells a data lab for AI models. For the rest I read each vendor's product and pricing pages on 3 October 2026 and asked 4 questions. Does it run an AI interview or screening step a Maki buyer would recognise? Does it find people outside your own database? Can you start without a sales call, at a price on the website? Is the AI interview a live, two-way video conversation?

The Cognitive and TestGorilla answer yes to all 4. Metaview finds people but screens by voice on a custom plan. Alex, HeyMilo and Humanly run AI video interviews, but you buy through a demo and none searches outside your ATS. I couldn't test interview quality or data accuracy on a live account, so the list says who each tool fits.

How do you choose a Maki People alternative?

Where do your candidates come from?

Gem found that 46% of sourced hires now come from rediscovered candidates, meaning people already in a company's CRM or ATS. If that's you, start with candidate rediscovery: Alex and HeyMilo resurface past applicants. If your pipeline runs dry instead, you need outside search: The Cognitive, TestGorilla and Metaview do that.

Voice, chat or video?

HireVue says 78% of candidates in its own feedback preferred AI screening over a human screen. Pick the channel your candidates use: chat for shift workers on phones (Sapia.ai, Paradox, and the other AI recruiting chatbots), voice for call-heavy roles (Maki, HireVue), video when you want to see the person (The Cognitive, Alex, HeyMilo, Humanly).

Do you want a test, a conversation or both?

Maki's strength is its tested-skills library, the classic pre-employment assessment model. TestGorilla and Willo keep it, with 350+ and 1,500+ assessments, and our TestGorilla alternatives guide lists more test-first tools. The Cognitive leads with the conversation: a fixed rubric for the role, questions that adapt to each answer, and up to 5 resume claims marked verified, refuted or unclear from the interview.

How fast do you need to go live?

Maki quotes a rollout of under 2 months, and HireVue, Sapia.ai, Paradox, Alex, HeyMilo and Humanly all start with a demo. The Cognitive and TestGorilla let you start on your own, and Willo Lite is pay as you go with no contract.

The 10 best Maki People alternatives, reviewed

1. The Cognitive: best if you want sourcing and a live AI video interview in one self-serve account

The Cognitive is AI recruiting software that sources candidates across ~900M public profiles and interviews them live with AI. You describe the role in plain English and it's read into filters you can edit. When we typed "Senior backend engineer with 5+ years of Go who has built payments systems, Remote EU", the filters included "Remote EU", read as Germany plus 7 other countries.

Every person is judged against your must-haves, and anyone who misses one drops below the people who meet them. Each result card opens with a "Why this match" line, 1 or 2 reasons traced to the profile, such as "Go listed in skills". Everyone found stays with the role, so later searches skip people you've seen.

You can reveal verified emails and phone numbers, enriched from 30+ sources. On the Sourcing Pro plan you can run email and SMS sequences from platform mailboxes, and a reply or opt-out on either channel stops both.

Then comes the step Maki runs by voice. Select any number of candidates and invite them in one go to a live, two-way AI video interview of 10 or 20 minutes, in any of 9 languages. The invitation tells candidates the interview is run by AI, and they book their own slot without creating an account. The rubric is fixed for the role and the questions adapt to each answer.

The 5-minute recording above is a live AI interview for a go-to-market role. The AI asks about an outbound email campaign, then follows up on reply rates and on how the candidate qualified leads.

The report gives a 1 to 5 score per criterion, overall written feedback, a weighted score out of 100, a suggested verdict, the transcript and the recording. Up to 5 resume claims the AI chose to probe come back marked VERIFIED, REFUTED or UNCLEAR, with evidence from the interview. Nothing is rejected automatically, and integrity flags are logged, not scored.

The Cognitive connects to 60+ ATSs, including Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, SmartRecruiters and iCIMS, the 4 Maki integrates with natively. It writes the score, summary and report link back to candidates you imported from the ATS; people you source inside The Cognitive aren't written to it automatically. It doesn't run phone, chat or one-way interviews, and unlike Maki it has no published bias audit.

Pick it if you want new candidates found and interviewed on video before you spend your own time. AI Sourcing starts at $49/month and AI Interview at $99/month, on monthly plans you can cancel anytime. More on our AI sourcing and AI interviewer pages.

Find and interview your next hire in The Cognitive Write the brief in plain English, see why each person matches, and invite the ones you pick to a live AI video interview. Start free

2. TestGorilla: best if you want sourcing plus a skills-test library

TestGorilla calls itself "the proof-first AI recruiting platform". Its Gorilla Sourcing product searches 900M profiles from a plain-language brief, including 3M+ people who have already taken a TestGorilla test. With 350+ skills tests, it's the nearest thing here to Maki's assessments plus a way to find people.

Its AI interviews use an AI interviewer that "asks dynamic follow-up questions in the moment", on video, and candidates take them on their own time. Each one runs 3 to 9 structured questions. Sourcing and assessments are sold as separate plans, and custom AI interviews sit on the Plus assessments plan. Prices for both are on the pricing page.

Pick it if tested skills are your main signal and you also want to search for new people.

3. HireVue: best for large employers that want deep compliance paperwork

HireVue's AI Interviewer holds what HireVue calls a "natural two-way conversation" with probing follow-ups, and its site describes the format as "dynamic, voice-based interviews". HireVue also sells one-way and live video interviewing, assessments and scheduling.

Its compliance list is long: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, "Accommodation requests & AI opt out paths", and a claim to be "the only virtual interviewing and assessment provider FedRAMP Certified". The AI Interviewer names 4 languages "and More", against Maki's 45+. It has no public price and doesn't source. Our HireVue alternatives guide covers it in depth.

Pick it if you want another enterprise vendor like Maki, with US federal-grade paperwork.

4. Alex: best for AI interviews over video, phone, SMS and WhatsApp

Alex, from Apriora, runs "two-way screening interviews via video, phone, SMS, or WhatsApp" in 26+ languages. During the interview it checks a government ID against a live selfie. It rediscovers past applicants in your ATS, but doesn't search outside profiles.

That's a wider channel mix than Mochi's web and phone calls. The trade-off is buying through a demo: alex.com/pricing sends you to a booking form.

Pick it if your candidates are spread across phone, text and video and you want one AI interviewer for all of them.

5. HeyMilo: best for high-volume screening by voice, video, SMS and forms

HeyMilo says it will "Screen and interview every applicant with structured AI voice, video, SMS, and forms", in 20+ languages. Reports carry configurable fit scores with written reasons and sync to your ATS.

Like Alex, HeyMilo resurfaces candidates from your ATS and inbound pipeline but doesn't search outside it. Its pricing link leads to a demo booking.

Pick it if you screen thousands of applicants and want text and form knockouts before an AI interview.

6. Sapia.ai: best for mobile chat interviews in frontline hiring

Sapia.ai runs a structured text-chat interview and gives personalised feedback to every candidate. It says its interviews are "Loved by 10m+ candidates".

The pricing guide says Sapia.ai "works on a per-hire basis", so you pay only for the people you hire, at a rate quoted for your volume. It's designed for companies hiring more than 500 people a year, and it doesn't source.

Pick it if you hire hundreds of shift workers a year and want a chat they can finish on a phone.

7. Paradox: best for text-to-apply and scheduling, especially on Workday

Paradox's assistant, Olivia, will "Capture and screen candidates with a simple text conversation", started from a QR code or a text-to-apply keyword. Qualified people get booked into an interview automatically, and its video features cover recorded answers and team-hosted interviews.

Workday completed its acquisition of Paradox on 1 October 2025, which matters if Workday is your ATS. Paradox screens against job requirements by text; it doesn't run an AI video interview or publish a price.

Pick it if speed to a booked interview matters more than depth, and you run frontline roles at scale.

8. Humanly: best for high-volume AI interviews by chat, voice or video

Humanly calls its product "The AI Interviewer built for high-volume hiring", with structured interviews "across chat, voice, and video". It says the interviewer is informed by over 4 million interviews, and it embeds in your ATS to advance qualified candidates.

I found no price on its site, and the AI interviews page ends with "Schedule Your Demo". That page describes no outside sourcing.

Pick it if you want one vendor to cover chat, voice and video interviews for hourly roles. Our hourly hiring software list covers more tools built for shift work.

9. Metaview: best if you want an interview notetaker like Tomo plus a sourcing agent

Metaview sells an AI notetaker for human interviews, the job Maki gives Tomo. It also sells a "Truly autonomous AI sourcing agent" that runs a web search from your intake call, with published per-user tiers and a free start of "First 100 profiles sourced free".

Its screening product is a voice conversation candidates take whenever suits them, recorded, transcribed and scored against your rubric. Screening isn't on the self-serve tiers; it sits in the Agentic Recruiting Platform, which is custom priced.

Pick it if your interviewers want notes taken and you'd like sourcing from the same vendor. Our Metaview alternatives guide compares it with other notetakers.

10. Willo: best for one-way video interviews on a published plan

Willo pairs skill assessments with one-way interviews that candidates complete on their own time, in 18+ languages. It lists 1,500+ assessments and says 5,000+ hiring teams use it.

The pricing page shows an annual Enterprise contract with a starting price, or Willo Lite, pay as you go per live role with no contract. It doesn't search for new candidates.

Pick it if you want recorded video answers and a price you can see before you talk to anyone. More in our best AI interview platforms list.

Which Maki alternative sources candidates and runs AI interviews?

The Cognitive and TestGorilla both find people outside your database and interview them with AI on video, in self-serve accounts with published prices. The Cognitive is a sourcing tool first; TestGorilla is an assessment platform first. Metaview also sources, but screens by voice on a custom plan. For tools that act on their own across more steps, see our best AI recruiter agents list.

How does Maki People compare with HireVue, Sapia.ai and Paradox?

Maki publishes its own comparison pages against Eightfold, Phenom, Paradox, HireVue, SHL, Sapia.ai, HiredScore, Alex, Metaview, Orbio and TestGorilla. That's a fair map of the competitors it meets in enterprise deals. Here are 3 of them, head to head.

Maki vs HireVue

Both sell to large employers, both run a voice-based AI interview, and both pair it with assessments. HireVue adds one-way and live video interviewing and lists SOC 2 and FedRAMP. Maki adds 45+ interview languages, EU hosting by default and a published Holistic AI bias audit. Neither sources candidates or publishes a price. Our HireVue review covers its interview formats in detail.

Maki vs Sapia.ai

Sapia.ai interviews by text chat and charges per hire. Maki interviews by voice and charges by usage for each agent on top of its enterprise platform. Sapia.ai aims at frontline volume above 500 hires a year, while Maki adds deep assessments for specialist roles too.

Maki vs Paradox

Paradox is built to move people fast: text-to-apply, screening questions by text and automatic scheduling, now owned by Workday. Maki is built to measure: voice interviews, skills tests and a scored hire recommendation. There's more in our Paradox review.

How much does Maki People cost?

Maki doesn't publish a price. Its pricing page describes "an enterprise-grade platform with flexible usage-based pricing for AI agents", where you "Pay only for what you use, candidate interactions, not licenses". Each agent runs on credits, and the route in is "Get a personalized quote".

TestGorilla, Willo and Metaview's sourcing tiers publish prices. Sapia.ai charges per hire, and the rest sell through a demo or quote.

The Cognitive's AI Sourcing starts at $49/month and AI Interview at $99/month. A search costs 1 credit per candidate it returns, 5 to reveal an email and 10 to reveal a phone number, and a reveal is charged only when a value comes back. More in our AI recruiting software pricing guide.

Who is The Cognitive built for?

The Cognitive is built for in-house recruiters, founders and agency recruiters who need more candidates than their inbound brings, and want each one interviewed on video before a hiring manager's time goes in.

• Keep your ATS. The Cognitive connects to 60+ ATSs and writes the interview score, summary and report link back to candidates you imported from yours.
• Keep Maki for late-stage tests. Interview in The Cognitive, then send finalists to Ken's deep assessment from your ATS.
• Pair it with a chat tool for shift work. If your candidates won't do video, Sapia.ai or Paradox fits that first touch better.

How do you test a Maki alternative before you switch?

Pick 1 open role and run it in the new tool for 2 weeks next to your Maki process. Count the qualified people each one surfaced, how many finished the AI interview, and how many your hiring manager wanted to meet. The Cognitive has a free trial with 100 sourcing credits, so you can run the test on a real role.

Run your next role through The Cognitive Find new candidates from a plain-English brief and interview the ones you pick, live, on video, with AI. Start free

Sources

• Maki People, read 3 October 2026: homepage, product overview, Mochi, pricing, Maki vs HireVue, Maki vs Sapia and Maki vs Paradox.
• Gem, Key takeaways from the 2026 Recruiting Benchmarks Report, read 3 October 2026.
• Workday, Workday Completes Acquisition of Paradox, 1 October 2025.
• Vendor pages read 3 October 2026: TestGorilla homepage, sourcing, AI interviews and pricing; HireVue homepage, AI Interviewer and pricing; Alex homepage and platform; HeyMilo; Sapia.ai homepage and pricing; Paradox screening and video; Humanly AI interviews; Metaview homepage, sourcing, screening and pricing; Willo homepage and pricing.

All posts · thecognitive.io