Recruiting platforms charge anywhere from $99 to several thousand dollars a year. Here's what a profile actually has to do for a college coach, which parts of the price buy nothing, and what a fair number looks like.
A recruiting profile has one job: let a college coach find your athlete, trust the numbers, and watch the film — in about a minute. That job does not vary with price. A coach opens a public profile link the same way whether the family paid $25 or $2,500.
At the top, full recruiting services don't publish prices — families report totals from hundreds to several thousand dollars, and most of that pays for human consultants and a sales relationship, not a better profile page. In the middle, single-sport profile platforms run $99–$299 per athlete per year; much of that price is the brand and the network, and the stats are still mostly self-reported. At the bottom, "free" profiles usually paywall the parts that matter — contact tools, film, visibility.
A public page with no login wall. Stats a coach can trust — verified by your team coach or an event, not just typed in. Film on the same page as the numbers. And working contact info with parent controls if your athlete is a minor. That's the whole checklist; everything else is decoration.
We built Lightning for Players & Parents around that checklist: starting at $25/yr for the verified-stat, multi-sport profile with film, and $50/yr for Pro, which adds the AI College Matchmaker, unlimited film, and tracking that shows which coaches viewed the profile and opened your emails. The full cost breakdown — and what the expensive platforms charge for the same jobs — is in our affordable recruiting profile guide, with side-by-sides against FieldLevel and SportsRecruits.
Whatever platform you choose, price the job, not the brand: verified numbers, real film, one clean link. If a platform can't say plainly what its price buys, that's the answer.
— Christian Bentley, Founder, First Step Athletics