When can I leave my ATS, and what can I take with me?

The renewal invoice arrived, or the tier changed without warning, and now you want out. Three things decide how that goes: the date and notice period in your agreement, which of your records the vendor lets you export and how, and what it costs to run two systems for the last few weeks. This page answers all three, with each vendor’s own documentation as the source.

In short

Leaving an ATS is three questions in order. When can I leave: the renewal date and notice period are in your order form, most annual agreements renew on their own, and notice must be written and early. What can I take with me: every major ATS exports candidate, job, and application fields as a spreadsheet you run yourself; resumes and attachments vary by vendor, from JazzHR's self-serve bulk download to Recruitee's API-only route, and the retention windows after cancellation are short (Greenhouse 90 days to deletion, Lever 90 days, Workable 45 days to archive). What does the overlap cost: one month of the new system.

Yardstick is monthly with no annual plan: your first three Jobs are free, then $49 a month plus $29 per open role, cancelled at any time from your billing settings. A preview-first importer loads your export, and a coding agent can do the conversion.

The three questions, in the order they come up

The switching conversation is rarely about which system is better. By the time you are reading this, you have decided. What is left is timing, data, and money.

When can I leave?

The answer is in your order form, not on the vendor's pricing page. Most annual ATS contracts renew on their own unless you give written notice a set number of days before the renewal date. Find the date and the notice period first, because every other step is timed from them.

What can I take with me?

Candidates, jobs, applications, notes, scorecards, and resumes. Every major ATS lets you export the spreadsheet part yourself. Resumes and attachments are the part that varies: some vendors give you a self-serve bulk download, some produce one archive on request, and some route it through their API.

What does the overlap cost?

You will run two systems for a few weeks: the old one until the contract ends, the new one from the day you import. The cost is the new system's first month, and the price of that depends on how it bills.

When can I leave: the renewal date and the notice window

Annual ATS agreements are written to renew. The clause usually says the term extends for another year unless one side gives written notice a fixed number of days before the renewal date. Miss that date by a day and the vendor is within its rights to bill the next year, which is the story behind most of the angry reviews about auto-renewal.

The date and the number of days are in the document you signed, and they differ by vendor and sometimes by plan. JazzHR’s own cancellation guide, for instance, says 30 days’ written notice applies on its Pro, Plus, Hero, and Hibernated plans, and that cancelling is a request a Super Administrator submits rather than a switch you flip. For a Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, or Recruitee contract, the same numbers are in your order form or master agreement; open it before you do anything else.

Two habits keep you out of trouble. Put the last day to give notice in your calendar as its own event, a week before the real deadline. And give notice in writing to the address the agreement names, then keep the confirmation. Giving notice early does not end your access early. You keep the system, and your data, until the term ends.

What can I take with me: vendor by vendor

Each entry gives the export you can run yourself, the route to the complete record with resumes, and the deadline that matters. Every fact was read from the vendor’s own help centre or agreement on 2026-08-25, and the source is linked under each card. The steps in full are on the migration page for that vendor.

Greenhouse

Run it yourself: Run an essential candidate report from the Candidates tab and choose Email as XLS. It covers candidate, job, and application fields, not resumes, and is capped at 1,000 candidate applications per report.
Resumes and the complete record: Resumes and attachments come through the Harvest API. Each attachment link expires after seven days. Harvest v1 and v2 are unavailable after August 31, 2026, so build against v3.
The deadline: Greenhouse's master subscription agreement gives you free API export during the contract. After it ends, Greenhouse provides an export file only if you request it within 30 days, at its then-current data-migration rates, and customer data is queued for deletion 90 days after the contract ends.

Sources: Essential candidate report, Master subscription agreement. Full steps: switching from Greenhouse.

Workable

Run it yourself: The Candidate details report exports to CSV and is emailed to you. It is available on all plans with the Recruiting package, including the Free plan. Resumes and other files are not in it.
Resumes and the complete record: A full data export is requested from Workable, not self-serve. It arrives as a .zip with a CSV per data area plus resumes in job folders. The other route is the API, which takes a developer or a coding agent.
The deadline: When you cancel, the account moves to Workable's Free plan: candidate data stays but becomes read-only, and 45 days later candidates are archived. You can unarchive them manually. Export while the account is still active.

Sources: How do I export candidate data, How do I cancel my subscription. Full steps: switching from Workable.

Lever

Run it yourself: Visual Insights has nine export types (opportunities, postings, feedback and others) in CSV, Excel, or JSON. Set Advanced data options to All results or you get the first 50 rows.
Resumes and the complete record: Lever provides one complimentary data export per account for account termination. It bundles candidates, calibration, events, and feedback as CSVs, notes as JSON, postings as CSV, and every profile file including resumes in its original format. Offers are not included.
The deadline: The export link is valid for 14 days, and the candidates, postings, calibration, and events portions for only seven of them. A Super Admin can still download it after deactivation, but Lever says that 90 days after the shut-off date the data is gone and cannot be recovered.

Sources: Lever data exports, Visual Insights exports. Full steps: switching from Lever.

JazzHR

Run it yourself: Reports, then Candidate Records Data Download, gives you a CSV with over 50 candidate fields. Resumes come from the Candidates page: select everyone, then Bulk Actions with Resume Download set to Yes. The link arrives by email in batches of 1,000 and expires within 48 hours.
Resumes and the complete record: Support provides a complimentary one-time export of records, communications, files, and resumes. Standard lead time is one business day; the link goes to the Account Owner and expires seven days after it is created.
The deadline: Cancelling is a request a Super Administrator submits from Account Information, and 30 days' written notice applies on Pro, Plus, Hero, and Hibernated accounts. Reports and bulk actions are unavailable on the Hibernate plan, so export first, hibernate second.

Sources: How to cancel, Performing bulk actions. Full steps: switching from JazzHR.

Recruitee

Run it yourself: The Candidates tab exports essential fields to CSV from the three-dots menu, and the file downloads immediately. Jobs have no CSV export; published jobs are available as an XML feed.
Resumes and the complete record: There is no bulk self-serve export of attachments, CVs, and notes. That goes through Recruitee's open API, which in Recruitee's words may require advanced technical knowledge or a dedicated developer. The no-code fallbacks are one profile at a time or a marketplace integration.
The deadline: Recruitee has a documented 5% list-price increase, effective January 1, 2026 for every customer whose renewal falls on or after that date, with renewal fees calculated excluding discounts. The renewal is the moment to decide.

Sources: FAQ: data export, 5% price increase upon contract renewal. Full steps: switching from Recruitee.

If your ATS is not listed, the pattern holds: there is a report you can run yourself that leaves out attachments, and a fuller route through support or an API. Ask support two questions in writing before you give notice: what is in the full export, and how long after cancellation is it still available.

A renewal sixty days out

The company is invented; the timeline is the one that works.

A thirty-person company gets its ATS renewal invoice sixty days before the term ends. The ops lead, Nora, opens the order form that afternoon and finds a 30-day notice clause. That gives her thirty days to decide and thirty days of paid access after notice. She puts the notice deadline in the calendar for day 23, a week early, and books the export for the same week.

On day 20 she runs the self-serve candidate report and the bulk resume download, then requests the full archive from support. It arrives the next business day and she downloads it the same morning, because the link expires in a week. On day 23 she sends written notice to the address in the agreement and files the confirmation. On day 25 the team imports 340 candidates, 6 open roles, and their applications into the new system, checks the counts against the export, and opens the next role there. The two roles still interviewing finish in the old system. On day 60 the old contract ends with nothing left in it that is not also somewhere else.

The whole switch cost one month of the new system. Had Nora opened the order form on day 35 instead, the notice window would already have closed and the company would have paid for another year.

The five steps, in order

1. Find the renewal date and the notice period

Open the order form or the signed agreement, not the pricing page. Look for the term, the renewal clause, and the number of days' notice. Put the last day to give notice in the calendar as its own event, a week before the real deadline.

2. Give notice in writing, early

Send it to the address the agreement names, in the form it names, and keep the confirmation. If the vendor's process is a request rather than a switch, start it before you need it. Notice given early does not end your access early; you keep the system until the term ends.

3. Export everything while the account is still active

Run the self-serve export first, then request the full archive if the vendor has one, and download it the day it lands. Every window above is shorter than people expect, and several close when the account is downgraded.

4. Import into the new system and check the preview

Load candidates, jobs, and applications, and confirm the counts match your export before anyone starts working in it. Resumes and notes are where imports go quiet, so spot-check ten candidates end to end.

5. Run both for the last few weeks

Open new roles in the new system and let the old one wind down with the roles already in flight, or move the live roles too and close the old system early. Either way, the old contract ends on its date and the overlap is one month at most.

Switching to Yardstick covers step four in detail, with the import preview. If you are comparing what the next system will cost before you commit, the ATS pricing comparison lays the models side by side.

What the overlap month costs, and what leaving Yardstick looks like

The overlap is the new system’s first month, because the old one is already paid for. With Yardstick that month is free if you bring three open roles or fewer, because your first three Jobs are free; after that the price is $49 a month plus $29 per open role, billed monthly. There is no annual plan, so there is no renewal date to put in a calendar. Roles you close stop billing the next month. The current figures are always on the pricing page.

Leaving works the way you would want it to work at the vendor you are leaving now. You cancel a paid subscription at any time from your account billing settings. Cancelling does not delete your account or the data in it; the account continues and your hiring history stays with you. The public API is on every account, so your own agent can read your candidates, jobs, and applications out whenever you want them.

Arriving is a preview-first import: you hand your export to a coding agent, it converts the files and runs a dry run, you read the row-by-row preview, and nothing is written until you approve it. The first thing you set up in the new workspace is a role, and Yardstick designs the interview guide and scorecard for it with AI, so the switch ends with your next hire running on a better interview than the last one did.

Frequently asked questions

Can I cancel my ATS contract before it renews?

Usually yes, if you give notice within the window the agreement sets. Most annual ATS agreements renew on their own unless you tell the vendor in writing a set number of days before the renewal date. The number of days and the address for notice are in your order form or master agreement. JazzHR, for example, requires 30 days' written notice on its Pro, Plus, Hero, and Hibernated plans. Give notice early and in writing; it does not shorten the access you have already paid for.

What data can I take with me when I leave an ATS?

Candidate, job, and application fields come out of every major ATS as a spreadsheet you run yourself. Resumes, attachments, notes, and scorecards are where the vendors differ: JazzHR has a self-serve bulk resume download and a support-provided archive, Lever produces one complimentary termination export that includes profile files, Workable produces a requested .zip with resumes, Greenhouse serves attachments through the Harvest API, and Recruitee routes attachments through its open API. The vendor-by-vendor section on this page has the steps and the source for each.

What happens to my data after I cancel?

It depends on the vendor, and the windows are short. Greenhouse's agreement queues customer data for deletion 90 days after the contract ends and provides a post-contract export only on request within 30 days, at its then-current rates. Lever says data is gone 90 days after the shut-off date. Workable keeps the account on its Free plan read-only and archives candidates after 45 days. The safe order is export first, then cancel.

How long does switching ATS take for a small team?

The export is the long part, and it is measured in days, not months: the self-serve reports are immediate, and the full archives arrive within about a business day where the vendor produces one. A team with a few hundred candidates can import the same day it has the files. Plan the switch around the notice date, not around the migration.

How does leaving Yardstick work?

Yardstick is monthly. There is no annual plan, so there is no renewal date to watch. You cancel a paid subscription at any time from your account billing settings, roles you close stop billing the next month, and cancelling does not delete your account or the data in it. The public API is on every account, so your own agent can read your candidates, jobs, and applications out whenever you want them.

Export first. Then decide where it goes.

Bring your export to Yardstick, read the import preview, and open your next role on a monthly plan with no renewal date. Your first three Jobs are free.

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