See what an ATS actually reads in your resume

Stop guessing and read it back. An applicant tracking system does not see your layout — it sees whatever text it can extract from the file. ATSPrep re-opens the PDF you just exported, pulls the raw text out the same way a parser does, and shows you the result side by side with what you wrote. If a line is missing, mangled, or out of order, you will see it immediately.

ATSPrep's X-Ray shows the text and reading order recovered from your PDF instead of hiding the result behind a compatibility score. The file is read locally in your browser, and you can inspect missing fields, welded lines, broken headings, and out-of-order dates without creating an account.

Yes. ATSPrep lets you import a PDF or DOCX, inspect the parser output, edit the resume, match it to a job description, and export PDF or DOCX without an account. Your resume file and saved draft stay on your device.

Yes. ATSPrep does not charge for importing, building, job matching, Proof scoring, ATS X-Ray checks, templates, or PDF and DOCX exports. There are no credits, watermarks, trial limits, or payment step at download.

Yes. Building, importing, job matching, Proof scoring, using role templates, and exporting your resume are all free with no required account or card. The optional email checklist and Job Hunt Pass waitlist never block the Studio.

Yes. Paste a job description into the Keywords workspace and ATSPrep shows coverage, missing terms, and exact evidence highlights inside the resume itself, which sits beside the report. It also separates literal keyword matches from optional semantic comparisons, so you can see why a requirement did or did not match.

Modern systems like Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters all parse PDFs. The failure is rarely the format itself — it is how the PDF was built. Text stored in columns, tables, headers, footers or images can extract out of order or vanish entirely. A PDF that was generated as clean, linear text is safe; a PDF exported from a design tool often is not.

Usually because the parser could not recover the fields it needed. If your job titles, dates or contact details land in a region the extractor drops, the record it creates is incomplete, and an incomplete record ranks badly or fails screening rules. Checking the extracted text is the fastest way to find out whether this happened to you.

No. Your resume file is never uploaded. Imports, edits, Proof scoring, X-Ray checks, and PDF generation run in the browser. If you press Semantic match, ATSPrep sends selected resume content lines and job-posting requirement lines to the matching service; your name, email, phone, address, and links are excluded, and nothing is stored.

PDF, DOCX, TXT and Markdown. You can also paste plain text straight in. ATSPrep reads the file, extracts the content, and maps it into editable fields so you can fix problems rather than just being scored on them.

A score is an opinion. Most checkers show you a number and a checklist without ever proving the parser could read your file. ATSPrep shows the actual recovered text and a fidelity measurement comparing it to your input, so every claim comes with the evidence behind it.

One column, standard section headings, real text instead of graphics, dates in a consistent format, and no critical information inside headers, footers or tables. ATSPrep exports in this shape by default and then verifies the result rather than asking you to trust it.