Background screening, engineered for busy HR teams.
Digital access to 3,000+ county courts yields same-day clears on 89% of county criminal searches, greatly reducing the need for courthouse-runners and related delays. U.S.-based, FCRA-certified specialists who pick up on the second ring. Pre-built integrations with Workday, SAP, Oracle, ADP, and 80+ ATS/HRIS platforms.
County Criminal
Denver County, CO
Completed in 41 min
Employment Verification
3 prior employers
Specialist assigned
Federal Criminal
All Districts
Completed in 9 min
Short answer
What is SafestHires?
SafestHires is a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) that runs FCRA-compliant employment background checks for small to mid-size employers in the US and internationally. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, it provides same-day clears in 3,000+ digital courts and supports every account with U.S.-based, FCRA-certified specialists. Pricing is per search — no platform fees, seat licenses, monthly minimums, and there's no term contract required. SafestHires offers a free trial so HR leaders can perform a side-by-side comparison to other vendors.
Our reports
A clean, easy-to-read, audit-ready report.
Every SafestHires report opens with a clear status pill, candidate identity, and time-to-completion at the top. The body spells out exactly which checks ran — identity, criminal (federal & county), employment history, MVR, and drug panel — and the result of each, so your hiring managers can decide in seconds. An immutable audit trail and FCRA confirmation close the file.
- Per-row verification status, not buried PDFs
- Time-to-clear visible at a glance
- FCRA-compliant disclosures included
- Tamper-evident audit trail per case
Easy ordering
A secure and user-friendly experience on every device.
The SafestHires platform is built for the way work actually happens — HR from a laptop at the desk, a candidate finishing consent on their phone at a kitchen table, a manager reviewing on a tablet between meetings. The same clean, intuitive interface follows you across every screen, so HR teams get through orders quickly and candidates breeze through the paperwork.
Our platform is powered by Accio Data.
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HR places the order
One dashboard to invite applicants, monitor progress, and pull reports — right where your team already works.
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Applicants finish and check status from any device
Phone, desktop, laptop or tablet — clear cues, compliant forms, and
live support — done in minutes not days.
Why SafestHires
Built for scale. Engineered for reliability.
We don't pad SLAs to look good on a slide. The promises below are the ones we publish on our weekly performance report — and the ones our customers measure us against.
How we work Industry-leading turnaround
Median report time under 4 hours. 89% of searches return same business day via Insta-Clear and direct court access.
3,000+ digital courts
Direct integrations into the courts that matter — the source of truth, not a screen-scraped database guess.
Award-winning support
U.S.-based, FCRA-certified specialists. Average phone pickup under 12 seconds. No offshore queues, ever.
Compliance, by design
FCRA, GLBA, DPPA, ban-the-box, fair chance — engineered into the platform, not bolted on as a checkbox.
Candidate experience
Mobile-first eConsent, multilingual intake, transparent status. 94%+ candidate completion rate.
Veteran-owned & operated
Founded by U.S. Navy veterans. We bring mission discipline and accountability to every order.
Transparent pricing
Per-check pricing. No platform fees.
See a number before you ever talk to us. No seat licenses, no minimums, no setup fees — just the screens you run, priced with volume discounts.
These are very common packages below but you can also build a custom package on our pricing page.
Essential
Single hires, startups, and teams running 1–10 checks a month.
Professional
Most employers. 10–100 checks a month across mixed roles.
Comprehensive
Healthcare, transportation, finance, legal, and executive hires.
Speed has a source
Same-day clears in 3,000+ digital courts.
The SafestHires platform scans 3,000+ county court systems to reveal same-day clears. The result is faster reports, fewer false positives, and a dispute rate under 0.02%.
- Insta-Clear in 49 states
- County-level depth
- Federal criminal coverage
- Civil & sex-offender registries
- Statewide repository pulls
- Automated court-fee passthrough
Insta-Clear coverage by state
County-level court coverage across all 50 states — 3,024 of 3,142 county and county-equivalent jurisdictions. Hover over a state to reveal its county-level Insta-Clear coverage.
Click on a state to view the background check laws for that state.
One platform. Every screen. Zero noise.
Order any screen, route any package, integrate any ATS, and adjudicate at scale. Built for hiring teams who refuse to choose between speed, accuracy, and compliance.
Criminal history
National, state, county, and federal criminal records with direct court access in 3,000+ jurisdictions.
Work history & education
Direct, documented verifications of employers, schools, and professional licenses — never scraped.
Drug & occ-health testing
5-, 10-, and 12-panel screens through 12,000+ collection sites, including after-hours and on-site.
MVR & DOT screening
Full FMCSA Clearinghouse, MVRs, Part 40 random pools, and driver qualification file management.
I-9 & E-Verify
Electronic I-9, integrated E-Verify, and remote-hire identity authentication built into the platform.
Continuous monitoring
Post-hire criminal monitoring, healthcare sanctions, and license-expiration tracking with adjudication.
ATS integrations
50+ pre-built connectors including Bullhorn, iCIMS, Workday, JobDiva, and Avionté — order, status, and results sync without leaving your ATS.
Automated adverse action
Automated pre-adverse and adverse action letters with a full FCRA-defensible audit trail.
Field reports
What hiring leaders say after switching.
"We cut median turnaround from nine days to under one, and our recruiters can finally make verbal offers in the same conversation as the final interview."
"The first time I called SafestHires a real person answered on the second ring and knew my account by name. That has not stopped being true in three years."
"Our compliance audit took two hours instead of two weeks. Every record had a verifier, a channel, and a timestamp. That is what defensible looks like."
Award-winning support
Accessible. Compliance certified. U.S Based.
Every SafestHires customer gets a dedicated U.S.-based specialist who knows your account, your role library, and your hiring cadence. No scripts. No offshore queues. Every client gets red carpet treatment - and the team that serves you is FCRA-certified.
Screening guides
The answers HR teams look up most.
Written and maintained by our compliance team — adverse action, fair-chance rules, turnaround times, and what a report can legally return.
Adverse action: meaning, notices, and timeline
What adverse action means under the FCRA, the two required notices, and how long to wait between them.
Read the guideWhat shows up on a background check
Every record type an employment screen can return, what it cannot return, and the lookback limits that apply.
Read the guideHow long does a background check take?
Realistic turnaround by search type, the court and verification delays that drive it, and how to shorten it.
Read the guideBan-the-box laws by jurisdiction
State, county, and city fair-chance rules — when you may ask, when you may run, and what notice is required.
Read the guideNegligent hiring: liability and how to reduce it
How negligent hiring claims are proven, what courts look for, and the screening practices that limit exposure.
Read the guideFCRA compliance checklist for employers
Disclosure, authorization, adverse action, and recordkeeping steps in the order an auditor will ask for them.
Read the guideFrom the desk
Field-tested writing for program owners.
What Is Adverse Action in Background Checks?
Adverse action is the legally mandated process employers must follow when making a negative employment decision based on a background check — a multi-step, time-sensitive workflow under the FCRA.
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Across the United States, YMCA associations rely on thousands of volunteers serving millions of children annually. Here's how the 11th Membership Standard reshapes screening — and how SafestHires helps associations comply.
Read article Industry ComparisonSafestHires vs. Checkr vs. HireRight: A Balanced Comparison for HR Leaders in 2026
An objective, research-informed comparison of three leading background screening providers — covering compliance, turnaround time, data sources, technology, and support models.
Read articleReady to make your next safest hire?
Send us your current vendor invoice and one week of role volume. We'll come back with an apples-to-apples quote inside one business day.
Frequently asked questions
What buyers ask before they switch to us.
How much does a background check cost with SafestHires?
Pricing is per search with no platform fees, seat licenses, or minimums. County criminal searches are priced by jurisdiction, and employment, education, and license verifications start at $4 each. You can build an exact quote with our live pricing calculator.
How long does a SafestHires background check take?
The trailing 12-month median time to complete across all packages is 11 hours and 37 minutes. Direct connections to numerous data sources and digital access to 3,000+ county courts yields same-day clears on 89% of searches, greatly reducing the need for courthouse-runners and related delays.
Is SafestHires FCRA compliant?
Yes. SafestHires operates as a Consumer Reporting Agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. §1681) and automates the §§604, 611, 613, and 615 workflow, including pre-adverse and final adverse action notices with the correct state and local disclosures attached.
What integrations does SafestHires support?
SafestHires has pre-built integrations with Workday, SAP, Oracle, ADP, and 80+ other ATS and HRIS platforms, plus an XML API for custom order entry and result receipt.
Who owns SafestHires?
SafestHires was co-founded by three Navy veterans — Andy Andersen, Jake Taylor, and Mark Lingo — who together bring decades of background screening experience and personally review the guidance published on this site.
More answers in the full FAQ hub.