Roleframe vs Zety · 2026

Roleframe vs Zety
the file is free and the words stay yours

Roleframe gives you the finished PDF free, at the exact step Zety charges: the editor opens with no account and the download is watermark-free selectable text, where Zety's free Basic package downloads in TXT format only. One master resume branches into a tailored version per posting. Remi, the career copilot in the editor, rewrites against the posting as a diff you approve word by word, and a job tracker, contact tracker and free capture extension sit around it. Pick Zety if you want phrasing written for you from a job title, at $1.95 for 14 days then $25.95 every 4 weeks.

Open the free editor See the full table

Free
to download the resume you built, with no watermark
No trial
between the finished resume and the file, and no card or account either
Branches
tailored versions that inherit fixes to the master, each filed against its role in the tracker
Per section
how the ATS read comes back to you, with a Fix with AI button on every finding

Feature by feature

Side-by-side breakdown

Every row is checked against published plans and product pages, with the source and the date recorded. Where a claim is qualified it is marked rather than rounded up.

Feature	Roleframe	Zety
Pricing & access
Formatted PDF of your resume, free tier	Yes: Free with no account, no watermark, and real selectable text.	No: The free Basic package downloads in TXT format only.
Cost of the first paid step	Yes: None. The finished document is free on every plan.	No: $1.95 buys a 14-day trial before any formatted download.
What the trial turns into	Yes: There is no trial, so nothing converts.	No: Zety's page says it auto-renews at $25.95 billed every 4 weeks.
Billing cycles in a year	Yes: Weekly, monthly and quarterly intervals, with the amounts on /pricing.	No: Four-week billing lands 13 times in 365 days, or $337.35 at the rate published.
One-time payment that never renews	Yes: Lifetime is a single payment with no renewal, on a daily AI allowance rather than unlimited.	No: The Annual plan is $71.40 up front and auto-renews yearly.
Refund after you have downloaded a file	Yes: Refunds run 2 days on weekly, 7 on monthly, and 14 on quarterly and one-time purchases.	Partial or qualified: Full refund inside 7 days, and after that Zety's FAQ says you may receive one if you have not downloaded files. Its cover letter page advertises 14 days instead.
Cover letter builder on the free tier	Yes: Free to write and free to download as a watermark-free PDF. Writing one takes a free account, which carries one cover letter; browsing the templates needs none.	Partial or qualified: Free to write in, and a formatted download needs a paid plan.
Editor & templates
Start from a blank page and drag the layout together	Yes: Drag sections onto an empty page and set spacing, per-section layouts and page breaks yourself. Every design control is on the free plan.	No: A form wizard with fixed steps; the layout belongs to the template you picked.
Editor model	Yes: A block editor with drag and drop and the live document in front of you.	Partial or qualified: A guided four-step form, which suits plenty of people better.
Section layout library and custom sections	Yes: 40 section layouts across the section types, plus custom sections with presets.	Partial or qualified: Sections reorder and the design adjusts, and per-section layout variants are not documented.
Design control below the template	Yes: Fonts, spacing, colors, per-section layouts and page breaks you place yourself.	Yes: Zety's builder names colors, fonts, spacing and section order as adjustable.
Tailoring & ATS
Tailor against a pasted job description	Yes: Paste the posting text and the tailoring runs against that listing.	Partial or qualified: Resume Check asks you to upload a resume and select a job title.
What the ATS check returns	Yes: Each section separately, with the reason it loses points, and a Fix with AI button on every finding that hands it to Remi.	Partial or qualified: One aggregate score plus tips, against a bar Zety sets at 80 or higher.
Where tailored versions live	Yes: One master per role, with a branch for each application.	Partial or qualified: No inheritance between saved resumes is documented.
Interview prep drawn from your own experience	Yes: The tailoring report ends in prep built from the experience on the page and that posting, and Remi runs a practice interview from the resume as it stands, one question at a time, scored at the end.	Partial or qualified: The Resume Check output Zety publishes is an ATS score with tips.
An ATS check without paying	Yes: A free account includes one full resume analysis.	Partial or qualified: Resume Check is a Pro and Annual feature, though a free standalone review report sits at zety.com/resume-check.
Export & sharing
Application tracker	Yes: Saved through offer, with the exact version you sent attached, on a free account.	Partial or qualified: No tracker appears in Zety's published feature list.
Contact tracker for recruiters and hiring managers	Yes: People sit beside the jobs on a free account: one person links to every role you have with them, with your own tags, editable in place.	Partial or qualified: Zety's published job-side features are Instant Job Matches and Bold.Pro, and its feature list shows no tracker of any kind.
Browser extension for capturing a posting	Yes: A free Chrome extension files the posting you are reading into the tracker in one click, full description and recruiter contacts included.	Partial or qualified: Zety's own Chrome extension is no longer available in the Chrome Web Store.

Compared against published plansStart free

Why people switch

The features that do the work.

Roleframe puts a real editor, a branch per posting, Remi and a free tracker behind a download that costs nothing, and these six blocks are where that separates from a phrase library behind a paid download screen.

01Editor

A canvas under the template

Zety's builder runs as four steps: pick a template, add ready-made content, personalize the design, download. Design control inside that template is real, and section order moves. Roleframe puts a block editor under the same ATS-safe envelope, so spacing, per-section layouts, custom sections and page breaks are yours on every plan.

40 section layouts across the section types, so one Experience block can be laid out several ways.
Custom sections with use-case presets, page breaks you place yourself, and fonts, spacing and colors on every plan.
The PDF renders from the document you edited, so what you arranged is what downloads.

The Content panel in the Roleframe editor, showing draggable resume sections such as Header, Experience and Skills

02Branches

One master, a version per posting

Saving a separate resume per job works until the fourth one, then a typo fix or a better bullet has to be repeated across every copy. Roleframe keeps one master per role and treats each application as a branch off it. Zety documents no inheritance between saved resumes.

Editing a branch never touches the master or its siblings.
Improving the master flows into the versions you already tailored.
The free tracker holds the exact branch you sent to each company, with the people you spoke to beside it.

The Branches panel, showing a base resume with tailored versions branching from it, each with its own score

03Scoring

Scored by section, not by document

Zety's Resume Check returns an aggregate ATS score with tips, against a bar Zety sets at 80 or higher. A number tells you where you stand. Roleframe reports each section separately, with the reason it loses points, the weak wording behind it and the figures that are missing.

Deterministic checks sit alongside the AI review: headings, dates, titles and layout parse risk.
Every finding carries a Fix with AI button that hands it to Remi. Apply the fix and that finding is marked resolved, with the live score moving by exactly what it cost.
Importing a resume runs the analysis without being asked.

The Roleframe ATS panel, scoring a resume section by section

04Keywords

See the terms the posting wants

Two listings can carry the same title and ask for different things. One Operations Coordinator posting leads with warehouse system administration and cycle counts, the next with vendor scheduling and a carrier scorecard. Zety scores against the title you select. Roleframe reads the posting text and names the terms your resume never uses, then Remi, the career copilot in the editor sidebar, can close any gap you point it at with wording from your real experience rather than a sentence written for everyone with that title.

Keyword coverage arrives with the specific gaps named, and Remi closes any of them on request without inventing experience you do not have.
A prioritized action plan says which fix is worth doing first, and Remi rewrites the bullet with that report and the posting in context, as a word-by-word diff that lands only when you approve it.
Interview prep closes the report, and Remi runs a practice interview written from the resume as it stands, one question at a time, with feedback on each answer and a score at the end.

Keyword coverage against a pasted job description, with the terms the resume is missing

Meet Remi, your career copilot

An AI assistant that has read your resume and your report, and still asks before it changes a word.

Remi lives in the editor sidebar with your analysis already loaded: the score, every open finding, the keywords the posting asks for that you are missing, and the job itself. Ask what to fix first and it answers like a recruiter who switched sides, plainly, with a number instead of an adjective, and ends with the one thing worth doing next. Then it does it, one approved change at a time.

It reads the resume itself
No pasting into a chat box. Remi opens any section of the document you are about to send, by name.
It starts from your report
The score, every open finding and the reason behind each point come with it, so it knows what to fix first.
It knows the gaps by name
The keywords the posting asks for that your resume never uses, so a rewrite closes a specific one instead of guessing.
Fix with AI on every finding
One button hands a finding to Remi. Apply the fix and it is marked resolved, and your score moves by exactly what it cost.
Every edit is a diff you approve
Word by word, what goes and what arrives, before anything touches the page. Approval is enforced in the tool, not by convention.
Practice interviews on demand
Questions written from your resume as it stands today, one at a time, with feedback on each answer and a score at the end.

The Remi panel in the editor sidebar proposing a rewritten Experience section as a word-by-word diff, with a Locate button, suggested next steps and the Ask Remi composer beneath it

Type or dictate. Nothing on the page changes until you press Apply edit

05Privacy

Your history, and your approval on every edit

Roleframe runs in the EU under the GDPR, does not sell user data, and does not use your resume content to train general-purpose AI models. AI runs only when you ask it to. On the writing side, Zety hands you prewritten sentences to insert, where Remi proposes edits drawn from your own history, shown as a word-by-word diff, and nothing lands until you accept it.

You can export and delete your data, and GDPR requests go to an EU company.
Every change Remi proposes is a diff you accept or discard, one at a time, and the approval step is enforced in the tool itself.
AI features fire on an explicit action, never quietly in the background.

06Export

Free at the download button

Zety's free Basic package downloads in TXT format only, which keeps your sentences and drops the template you spent twenty minutes choosing. Roleframe's PDF has real selectable text, no watermark and no Roleframe branding, on every plan including the anonymous one.

The editor opens at roleframe.ai/resume-builder with no account and no card.
Zety's free blank templates do download as PDF, and that is an empty file rather than the resume you filled in.
PDF downloads are unlimited and watermark-free on the free tier and the paid one alike.

The tracker

Every application, and the resume that went with it.

Saved, applied, interviewing, offer. The board comes with a free account, and so does the contact list and the extension that fills it.

The Roleframe job tracker: a pipeline bar with per-stage counts above rows grouped by status, showing the Job Position, Company, Max. Salary, Location, Status, Date Saved, Deadline, Date Applied, Follow up and Excitement columns

The version you actually sent, attached
Each role holds the tailored branch that went to it, so a callback three weeks later does not start with guessing which resume they read.
The people, beside the jobs
A contact tracker rather than a notes field: a recruiter links to every role you have with them, carries your own tags, and edits in place.
One click from the posting
The free Chrome extension files the job you are reading straight into the board, with the full description and the recruiter contacts kept alongside it.

The honest verdict

Which one is right for you.

Roleframe is the pick when the document and the search you run around it are the work, and Zety when writing the first sentence is the thing stopping you.

RRoleframeBest overall

Choose Roleframe if

You want the finished PDF today: the editor opens with no account, every template and every design control are on that path, and the download is watermark-free selectable text with no trial in front of it.
Saving a separate resume per posting has stopped scaling, and you want fixes to the master to reach the versions you already tailored, each filed in the tracker beside the recruiter you spoke to.
You want the ATS read to name the sentence losing points, then Remi, with your resume, that report and that posting already read, to rewrite it as a word-by-word diff you approve, with a Fix with AI button on every finding that marks it resolved once applied.
You have a work history and want the resume written from it, with the keyword gaps named, a ranked plan, interview prep drawn from that same material and that same posting, and a practice interview Remi writes from the resume as it stands, one question at a time, scored at the end.

Open the free editor

ZZetyBest for first-timers

Choose Zety if

Choose Zety if a blank field is what stops you: type a job title and it suggests, in its own words, not just keywords to use but entire phrases.
Choose Zety if you want reading material beside the builder: over 500 resume examples and over 1,400 career advice guides, by Zety's own count.
Choose Zety if you want postings brought to you and a recruiter-facing profile: Instant Job Matches and Bold.Pro sit on the Pro and Annual plans, and Roleframe offers neither.

Where it stops

The free Basic package downloads in TXT format only, so the template you chose does not come down with your words.
A formatted download starts at a $1.95 fourteen-day trial that auto-renews at $25.95 every 4 weeks, which lands 13 times in a year.
Resume Check asks you to select a job title, so two postings filed under that title are scored against the same target.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Is Roleframe actually free, or free until I hit download?

Yes, free right at the download. The resume editor opens with no account, every template and design control is included, and the PDF has real selectable text and no watermark. No trial, no card. A free account saves your work and adds the job tracker, the contact tracker and the Chrome extension that files a posting in one click. It allows one master resume, one tailored version, one cover letter and a few full runs of Remi, the career copilot. The paid plan adds unlimited everyday AI, priced on /pricing.

What does Zety cost in practice?

As of 2026-09-02, Zety's pricing page lists a 14-day Pro trial at $1.95 that, in its own wording, auto-renews at $25.95 billed every 4 weeks. Four weeks is 28 days, so the charge lands 13 times in a 365-day year, or $337.35. Across a three-month search it posts on days 15, 43 and 71, which is $79.80. The Annual plan is $71.40 up front and renews yearly. Zety prices by geography, so only the USD figures are printed here.

Can I move my Zety resume into Roleframe?

Yes, if you can get it out as a PDF. Roleframe imports a resume PDF and returns it as editable blocks, with roles, dates and bullets in the right places, then runs the analysis on it automatically. Zety's free Basic package downloads in TXT format only, so a free export gives you the words to paste rather than a file to import. A free Roleframe account includes one import.

Will a Roleframe resume pass an ATS?

Yes. An applicant tracking system (ATS) reads the file, and the file is exactly the document you built: the PDF is a render of that same document, exported as real selectable text rather than a picture of a page. Every template keeps standard section headings and a clean reading order, on the free plan too, where Zety's free Basic download is TXT only. Roleframe scores each section for parse risk, structure, headings and keyword alignment against the posting you paste, so problems get fixed before you send.

Is Zety ever the better choice?

Often, for a specific reader. If you have never written a resume bullet, Zety's library returns role-specific sentences from a job title, and Roleframe has no equivalent. Zety also carries a career-content library Roleframe cannot match, plus a job-match feed and a recruiter-facing profile Roleframe lacks. A full year of exports at $71.40 up front can be a fair year. With a history to write from, Roleframe is the default: the PDF is free at the download, and Remi drafts from what you did, as a diff you approve.

Roleframe has no phrase library. What writes the bullet, then?

Remi, the career copilot in the editor sidebar. It reads any section of your resume, the analysis report and the linked posting, then rewrites a section or a single bullet, shown as a word-by-word diff before anything touches the page. Nothing lands until you approve it. Every finding in the report carries a Fix with AI button that hands it to Remi, and applying the fix marks that finding resolved and moves the live score by exactly what it cost. A free account includes a few full runs.

Do I lose anything by starting free?

Not on the document. Every template and design control is the same on the free tier as on the paid one, PDF downloads are unlimited and watermark-free on both, and the job tracker, contact tracker and Chrome extension come with a free account. What free caps is volume: one master resume, one tailored version, one cover letter and a few full AI runs, with Remi proposing every edit as a diff you approve. The paid plan adds unlimited everyday AI, which the one-time Lifetime swaps for a daily allowance.

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Roleframe vs Zetythe file is free and the words stay yours