Where free usually stops, and where it stops here
Free is a word with a lot of asterisks attached. Here are the usual shapes of the asterisk, and what free means on this site.
— check the export before you spend an hour writing.
Almost every résumé tool says free somewhere on its front page. The word is doing different work in each case, and the difference usually appears after you have spent an hour writing. Here are the common shapes, and then what it means here.
Pattern one: free to write, paid to export
The whole builder works, the preview looks excellent, and the download asks for a card. This is the most common arrangement, and it is the most expensive to discover late, because the sunk cost is an evening of writing.
Pattern two: the watermark
The export works and carries a mark. That is a document you cannot send, which makes the export decorative. Watermarks and paywalls takes that one apart on its own.
Pattern three: the withheld result
A checker that shows you a score and holds the findings behind a sign-up. The number is the part with no value, since a number you cannot act on changes nothing, and the findings are the part being sold back to you.
Pattern four: the design tier
Six free designs and thirty behind a plan, with the good ones clearly on the other side. It is a legitimate business and it is worth knowing before you choose a layout you cannot have.
Pattern five: the subscription with a trial
Free for seven days and a monthly charge afterwards, often renewing on a schedule that outlives the job search. This one is about the cancellation rather than the product.
What free means on this site
All four tools. Every one of the 37 résumé designs, 12 letter designs and 20 portfolio designs. PDF and DOCX export, with no watermark. Publishing a portfolio, including its address. No account, with one exception: claiming a portfolio address verifies an email, because an address has to belong to somebody.
The report is not a teaser
The ATS checker shows everything it found, including the multiplication that produced the score. There is no second screen. The reasoning behind that is in why the checker prints its own arithmetic.
The honest asterisk, since there is one
Rate limits exist on the endpoints: the check, the letter draft, the import and the PDF render each allow a number of calls per five minutes from one address. They are there so one client cannot saturate the service, and a person writing a résumé will not meet them. Why that is a different thing from a usage meter is set out in rate limits are not usage meters.
The thirty-second test
Open any tool, type a name and one role, and try to export. That is the whole test, and it answers the pricing question before you have invested anything. A product that lets the export through with no mark on it is free in the sense people mean. A product that asks for a card, or hands back a marked file, or holds the findings behind a sign-up, has told you its terms without your having to find them in a footer. Doing this on the day matters, because terms change quietly and a page written three months ago is not evidence about today.
What this page does not claim
That any named competitor charges for anything. Pricing changes, often quietly, and a page that named products today would be wrong by the spring. The patterns above are worth recognising wherever you meet them, and the way to check any tool is the same in every case: export a document before you write one, and see what comes out.
There is a fair question underneath all of this, which is how a product with no charge stays up. Two answers, both honest. Conxfolio calls no language model anywhere, so the expensive line in most similar products is absent here; the readers, the scorer and the letter engine are ordinary deterministic code, as how the résumé reader works without a model describes. And your work is kept in your browser rather than in a database we have to run, which is the subject of why there is no account. A cheap product can afford to be free; that is the entire mechanism.
One question this page will not answer is whether any named competitor is worth paying for. Some are, plenty of people use them happily, and their pricing is theirs to publish. What is worth insisting on is disclosure before effort: a product should tell you what the export costs before you write the document, and the thirty-second test above gets you that answer whether or not the product volunteered it.
Check the whole report before you write anything
The full score, the arithmetic, every finding and every priced fix. No account, no plan, nothing held back for later.
Open the ATS checkerWatermarks and paywallsQuestions
- What does free cover here
- All four tools, every design, PDF and DOCX export, no watermark, and publishing a portfolio including its address. There is no account except the email verification that claims a portfolio address.
- Where is the catch
- There are rate limits on the endpoints, which are saturation guards rather than usage meters, and a person working on a résumé will not meet them. That is the whole of it.
- Are the results hidden until I sign up
- No. The report renders in full: the score, the arithmetic, every finding and every priced fix.
- Do you sell my data
- There is almost no data to sell. Your work is kept in your browser, and the only email address the product asks for is the one that claims a portfolio address.
- How do you check whether another tool is free
- By opening it and exporting a document. A tool's pricing can change on any day, so this page describes patterns rather than naming products.
Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.