Certn

What it is

Certn is a background screening platform from Victoria, British Columbia, built for employers who hire in more than one country but are too small for an enterprise screening contract. It runs criminal record checks, identity verification, employment, education and credential verification, credit reports, motor vehicle records, reference checks and social media screens, with coverage the company puts at 200+ countries and territories. It says more than 20,000 teams use it.

It reached its current shape by buying. Certn acquired Credence, a UK screening provider, in 2022 and later folded it into the Certn brand. It bought InterCheck in 2022 and Trustmatic, an identity verification company, in 2023; Trustmatic now powers ID checks for every client against more than 13,500 identity documents. In February 2025 BDC Capital put US$30M into the company. The current platform is called CertnCentric.

The question it answers: which screening vendor covers Canada, the UK and Australia at mid-market volume, with published prices and no enterprise minimum? That is the gap between Checkr, which is built around US hiring, and First Advantage or HireRight, which sell annual contracts to large employers.

What changed in 2026

Two announcements matter for buyers.

On April 22, 2026 Certn was re-certified as an identity service provider under the UK’s Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF), at the new Gamma level that every certified provider had to reach by the end of March. The certification covers GPG45 High confidence profiles, which are what Enhanced and Standard DBS checks require. Certn now runs its own identity verification for Enhanced DBS inside CertnCentric, on the web or through the MyCertn app with NFC document scanning, instead of passing candidates to a third party. For UK employers in care, education and healthcare, that removes one vendor from the most failure-prone step in the check.

On April 27, 2026 Certn announced an embedded integration with PageUp, an enterprise ATS. Recruiters order checks, follow status and open reports from inside PageUp. It sits alongside existing integrations with Greenhouse, Lever, Workday and BambooHR, plus a REST API for custom work.

Pricing

Certn publishes a rate card, which most screeners do not. US prices, in USD, checked today:

• US Core Criminal: $13.99. US Complete Criminal: $49.99. US Complete+ Criminal: $79.99.
• County criminal searches: $9.99 each, on top of the package.
• OneID identity verification: $3.50. Credit report: $9.50. Motor vehicle records: $25.99.
• Reference checks: $3.50 digital, $28.99 by phone. Social media check: $42.99.
• Canadian criminal record check, ordered from the US site: $17.99 basic, $21.50 enhanced.
• Employment, education and credential verification: price varies by scope.

The Canadian site lists prices in CAD: $24.99 for a basic Canadian criminal record check, $29.99 enhanced, $4.99 for OneID, $29.99 per employment or education verification. Third-party pass-through access fees apply on top of all of these.

A realistic US package — Core Criminal, two county searches, OneID and one employment verification — lands around $65-80 per candidate by our estimate once court fees are added, since verification prices are quoted per scope. For comparison, Checkr’s Basic package is $29.99 and its Essential, which already includes identity verification and unlimited county searches, is $59.99. HireRight’s self-serve brand, BackgroundChecks.com, starts at $24.99. Certn’s entry price is lower; its blended cost is close to the market once counties and verifications are added.

Best for

Talent acquisition leads and HR operations managers at companies with roughly 50-2,000 employees who hire across Canada, the UK, Australia and the US, run Greenhouse, Lever, BambooHR or PageUp, and want to pay per check instead of signing an annual minimum. It fits especially well for Canadian employers, which is the market Certn started in, and for UK employers who need Enhanced DBS with certified digital identity verification.

It is the wrong pick for a US-only, high-volume hourly employer that needs automated adjudication and deep US county coverage, and for a 10,000-person multinational that needs one global contract inside SAP SuccessFactors.

Versus the alternatives

Checkr is the US default. Pick Checkr when most hires are in the US, volume is high, and automated adjudication and US county turnaround matter more than coverage outside North America.

First Advantage leads the market by volume after buying Sterling in October 2024. Pick it when you need one global contract inside Workday or SuccessFactors at 1,000+ hires a year and can accept quote-only pricing.

HireRight is the other enterprise incumbent. Pick it for regulated hiring that needs Latin America depth or UK FCA-regulated references, or use BackgroundChecks.com, its pay-as-you-go brand, for low-volume US hiring.

If none of these fit, the problem is often the screening policy, not the vendor. Running every check on every role is slow and expensive with any provider.

Watch-outs

• The candidate experience is uneven. On Trustpilot, where candidates rather than buyers leave most reviews, Certn scores 2.0 out of 5 from 37 reviews, with complaints about login bugs, repeated document requests and slow helpdesk replies. Buyer ratings are much higher: 4.6 out of 5 from 81 reviews on Capterra. Guard: run a pilot on 20-30 real candidates, track completion rate and time to completion, and put a candidate-support response time in the contract before rolling it out. Watch the candidate experience drop-off by region.
• Pass-through fees make the rate card a floor. County searches add $9.99 each and court access fees are on top, so a $13.99 criminal check is rarely the real cost. Guard: fix the package per role before signing, and compute the blended cost per candidate from the first two months of invoices, not from the price page.
• Coverage claims are not equal across countries. A Capterra reviewer reported in February 2026 that a criminal check did not work for a Quebec resident; international verifications run on local registry timelines. Guard: list every country and province you hire in, and get written turnaround commitments for each one before you sign.
• Identity checks catch fraud and lose candidates. OneID and Enhanced DBS verification help against the proxy candidates described in AI interview fraud, but every verification step costs completion. Guard: require identity verification for remote and high-risk roles first, and measure drop-off before applying it to every hire.
• Integration depth varies by ATS. Certn has setup guides for Greenhouse and Lever, but Capterra reviewers report sync problems with other ATSs such as Taleo. Guard: test status sync and report links in a sandbox with your own ATS before go-live, and confirm which Certn platform your account and integration run on.