The Best Résumé Builders to Land a New Job
Landing a new job starts with a slam-dunk CV, but Word or Google Docs will only take you so far. In an era of AI-assisted applicant tracking systems (ATS), where applicants are rejected before a human ever lays eyes on their work experience, the best résumé builders could help you stand out from the crowd.
Yes, they’ll give your résumé a pretty face with unique templates and attention-grabbing fonts, but résumé builders shouldn’t just give you a PDF and send you on your way. A good online résumé builder will give tips and insights into how you can bolster your CV, as well as tools for managing your documents when applying to multiple jobs. I’m (thankfully) not in the job market right now, but it wasn’t long ago that I was searching. I dusted off the résumé I used to land a job here at WIRED as a starting point to see how various online résumé builders thought I could improve.
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Updated February 2026: We've added Rezi, Teal, Kickresume, and LinkedIn.
Is It Worth Paying for a Résumé Builder?
You don't need to pay for a résumé builder. There are loads of free templates online, and for a lot of roles, even a cleanly formatted Google Doc or Word file will get the job done.
However, résumé builders are a helpful tool if you want your résumé to really stand out, particularly for highly competitive and senior roles where highlighting your skills and work experience are paramount. Good résumé builders will have templates designed to pass neatly through ATS. Many will also provide advice on how to improve your résumé. This may even go so far as targeting your résumé to match the specific job you’re applying to.
Many of the best résumé builders will also provide tools that can help you keep track of your applications and find new jobs to apply to. These services can include job boards and automated tracking lists, and they offer calculators, résumé reviews, and practice interviews, among other things.
Should You Use ChatGPT (or any AI) to Write a Résumé?
Generative AI changed the résumé builder market. While they were once focused on turning text into finalized templates, they now use AI to provide writing suggestions, find jobs, and even plan your career. Today, it’s more difficult to find a résumé builder that doesn’t offer AI than one that does.
Because of that, you might be tempted to skip the middleman and have ChatGPT or another AI chatbot generate your résumé. This is somewhat viable, or it can at least result in a résumé that’s more attractive and readable than many you’ll see getting roasted on Reddit. However, current AI résumé builders do more than convert text into a résumé template. Those that use AI have a user interface designed to prompt you for important information and proactively point out flaws. A general-purpose chatbot, like ChatGPT, is unlikely to offer such advice.
Good résumé builders are also tuned to satisfy the applicant tracking systems (ATS) that recruiters use. An ATS can be fussy about formatting, and from what I’ve seen, general-purpose chatbots don’t have highly specific knowledge about how to create an ATS-friendly résumé. A proper résumé builder will provide more detail on how your résumé will (or won’t) satisfy an ATS.
How We Tested
For my testing, I used a real résumé that I've carried and updated through three roles over the past seven years. Rather than starting from scratch, I mainly evaluated what a résumé builder could bring to the table to enhance the CV of a professional who's already deep in their career. Putting together your work history, although nerve-racking, isn't exactly difficult, so if you're going to pay for a résumé builder, it better bring something to the table.
Beyond offering extra value, there were a few key areas I focused on.
Design and formatting: You're here to build a résumé, not to learn graphic design. A good résumé builder should not only make design simple, with a broad list of templates, but also give you easy tools to format your résumé. Splitting the résumé across different pages, cutting words short, and adding strange spacing between words doesn't cut it.
Recommendations and rewriting: It doesn't matter if a résumé builder is using AI or not; it should provide suggestions to punch up your CV. There are enough free résumé templates online, and although they may not look as nice, they get the job done. A résumé builder should give you suggestions to stand out from the crowd, not just a few templates to play with.
Additional tools: Your résumé is only one part of finding a new job. You need a cover letter, interview prep, and plenty of organization to track the status of the roles you're interested in. A good résumé builder doesn't stop at your CV; it gives you the tools to use it right.
Best Résumé Builder for Most People
Resume.io can help you build a great résumé; there’s no doubt about that. More importantly, it provides tools to help throughout your job search. It trades blows with FlowCV (my next pick) point-for-point, and I had a hard time deciding which would rank first. Resume.io wins out with its robust list of features that go far beyond just building a CV.
You can upload a résumé or start from scratch, and regardless of the route you take, you’ll see all the details of your résumé spelled out in sections. You can add or remove sections or swap them around. All of this happens off the résumé itself, so you don’t need to worry about grouping text fields or lining everything up perfectly. Résumé.io also provides AI résumé-writing tools that work in a chatbot interface. For example, you can provide the AI with your LinkedIn profile, which it will read and convert into a starting point for your résumé. The service has a wide range of attractive résumé templates, though that’s true of competitors, as well.
Resume.io comes into its own after your résumé is done. Its main claim to fame is an auto-tailor feature. You enter a job listing, and it will automatically update your CV for that specific role. More than anything, the auto-tailor feature weaves in keywords from the job you’re looking at, highlighting how your experience may tie into certain job responsibilities. You could easily do it on your own, but the fact that Resume.io can do it with a click—and balance the keywords against the rest of your résumé—is valuable enough.
Once you have your résumé, you can back out to the Resume.io dashboard and take advantage of cover letter templates, a Kanban board where you’ll see recommended jobs, a salary analyzer, and even practice interview questions. Resume.io is a résumé builder, but even after you’re done putting together your CV, there are tools to help you along with your job search.
You can design a résumé and cover letter for free, but you'll only be able to download them as a text file. You’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan for a PDF, which also unlocks additional features like the job board and recruiter matching, where Resume.io will shoot out your CV to recruiters based on the type of job you’re looking for. You can pay quarterly or monthly, with the former offering a much better rate, but Resume.io also offers a week of access for just $3.
Best Free Résumé Builder
I knew almost immediately after I started using FlowCV that it’d earn a spot on this list. It’s everything you want out of a résumé builder. It has excellent templates, plenty of customization, tools for tracking and modifying existing CVs, and a web application that doesn’t chug or sputter out when you’re working on a design. And, unlike a lot of résumé builders, FlowCV lets you design, download, and print a résumé and cover letter for free.
You can start from scratch or upload an existing résumé (either PDF or raw text), and from there, FlowCV will walk you through each section of your CV. These sections are customizable, and they don’t lock you into a particular template. Some résumés may want a section for languages, while others want you to list awards. You can add or remove sections as needed, and you won’t break the formatting on the template (it happens more often than you think).
Managing everything from sections makes customizing your résumé much easier. Instead of sliding around disparate text boxes and trying to line everything up perfectly, FlowCV will automatically update the layout as you change sections. For instance, I was using a two-column template for my résumé, but there was way too much information in the right column, causing my résumé to sprawl out across two pages. I was able to drag some sections over to the left column to balance the layout, and FlowCV automatically ensured everything was lined up and spaced properly.
It’s this high-level customization that makes FlowCV so great. You can easily make broad changes without getting into specific text boxes or design elements. For example, there’s an option to automatically flip your job title and employer based on what you want to list first.
FlowCV is my favorite résumé builder, but customizing a CV is only scratching the surface of what it can do. There are also templates for cover letters, email signatures, and online résumé websites. My favorite addition is a Kanban board. It's like Trello, but built directly into FlowCV, and it allows you to track jobs and their status as you move through the process.
You get one résumé and one cover letter for free, no strings attached. However, I recommend the Basic plan for most people, which includes three résumés, 20 cover letters, along with the online résumé feature and Kanban board. FlowCV doesn’t focus on AI writing as much as other résumé builders, but if that’s something you’re after, you can unlock AI features with the Pro+ plan, which also includes unlimited résumés and cover letters.
Easiest Résumé Builder
Zety doesn’t have any nonsense, which could work for or against it depending on what you’re after. You don’t get the Kanban board of FlowCV or the automatic optimization of Resume.io. What you do get is a straightforward builder that allows you to quickly throw together a CV and easily change it for different applications.
Like most other builders, you can start from scratch or upload your résumé. Regardless of the route you go, Zety starts with a résumé review before walking you through each section of your résumé. As you move along, Zety provides small tips to optimize your CV. For instance, I had an “experience” section listing my previous employers, and Zety recommended changing the section to “work history.” A résumé review isn’t unique to Zety, but I appreciate that it happens automatically, so you can apply the suggestions while putting your résumé together.
As you move through each step, Zety uses AI recommendations for skills, work history bullet points, and more. The suggestions are surprisingly good, likely because they’re based on a job title you can enter. That allows you to mock up a template and then easily swap out skills or bullet points when applying for specific roles. Make sure to read the AI suggestions first, though. Some of them play fast and loose with their claims. One suggested I highlight my “award-winning reporting,” even though there was nothing on my résumé about awards.
Once you’ve entered all your information, you can swap out templates and colors with a click. Zety doesn’t have a ton of templates, but they’re all useful. You get fewer of the loud designs you see with a tool like Canva. All of the templates in Zety are professional, and when there is a flare, it’s always done with a light touch. Because the templates are so straightforward, it’s easy to swap between them; I cycled through a dozen without changing a single word, and they all looked great.
You can download a text version of your résumé for free, but you’ll need to pay to download a PDF or Word version. I recommend going for the annual plan if you can. There’s a 14-day trial of Zety’s monthly Pro Package for $2, but it renews at $26 per month after that period. The annual plan is 79 percent cheaper.
Best for Improving Your Résumé
All résumé builders will improve your résumé, especially if you don’t have one or haven’t updated it in years. However, Rezi offers specific and detailed advice that’s helpful if you want to give your résumé a total rewrite but don’t know where to begin. Rezi is extremely critical and provides line-by-line suggestions based on best practices. It will say if your job descriptions have too many buzzwords or lean on vague language, and it will prompt you to add metrics to back up your claims, among other things.
Because of how it's structured, I found that Rezi encouraged me to go through my résumé in detail. I also like how Rezi breaks down a résumé into many sections, each with its own suggestions for improvement. It provides a checklist that can make the process of improving a résumé less overwhelming.
You’ll find that Rezi has fewer templates than many résumé builders, which could be good or bad depending on your goals. All Rezi templates are ATS-optimized, prioritize easy reading, and don’t include anything that might break formatting. This is usually a good idea, but if you prefer a visually stunning résumé (perhaps because your real intent is to post it on your website or to submit it in person), consider other options.
There’s no shortage of AI in Rezi. In addition to using AI for some advice, you can use AI to rewrite portions of your résumé or change the résumé’s content to target a specific job title and description. That can help you make sure your résumé has the precise language that fits the job. This is not unique to Rezi (it’s also a feature of our top pick, Résumé.io), but I think it dovetails with the precise criticisms that Rezi offers about each part of your résumé.
The biggest downside to Rezi is the price. The free version limits the advice you are given, and since that’s what I like about Rezi, it defeats the point. To unlock all features, you’ll need to pay $29 each month or $149 a year. That’s a lot, and the yearly plan is hard to justify, because the value of Rezi’s résumé improvement is front-loaded (once you get it sharpened up, you won’t need to do it again for at least several months). However, a month of Rezi is certainly worth the price.
Other Résumé Builders We’ve Tested
Adobe Express: Adobe Express is powerful, with a ton of customization options and easily the boldest, most unique résumé designs I’ve seen. Shame it doesn’t work. The résumé builder crashed for me five times when trying to design my CV in Chrome—on one of the most high-end PCs money can buy, mind you—and I eventually gave up and moved to Firefox. I was able to get my résumé built on Mozilla's browser, but I still had to slog through the most clunky interface of any of the résumé builders I tested. Adobe Express isn’t just for building résumés. It’s a complete online design tool, not dissimilar from Canva, but that level of power in your browser (combined with an onslaught of pop-ups asking you to pay) slows everything down considerably. Adobe Express is a good alternative to Canva, and in many ways, it’s even better. But that doesn’t matter much if the web app struggles to stay afloat.
Canva: Online design suite Canva has a résumé builder, and while you can throw together a CV, it’s just not built for job searching in quite the same way as the rest of our picks. Canva is ultimately a design tool, and its résumé builder fits into that mold. You’ll have to individually drag all the elements of your CV around to line them up properly, and play a game of whack-a-mole between free and paid assets available through the web interface. There are some striking résumé designs, but I don’t know how well they’d translate when actually applying for jobs. If you already have a Canva subscription, you can accomplish a lot if you’re diligent with formatting everything correctly. For everyone else, a proper résumé builder is not only simpler, but it’ll also spit out a better result once you’re done.
Indeed Resume Builder: Indeed has a résumé builder that came highly recommended as I started researching, but I’m not sure why. It’s serviceable and easy to use, with step-by-step instructions for filling out your work history, education, and skills. But it’s less of a résumé builder and more of a tool to build your Indeed profile. That’s a perfectly fine purpose, but you can’t take your résumé outside the Indeed ecosystem. You don’t design a résumé on Indeed. Instead, if you haven’t already uploaded a résumé and added it to your account, you can add all of the information you’d normally have on a résumé to your profile. Then, you can use that to easily apply to jobs on Indeed. It works, and Indeed is certainly a massive platform for finding a job. For most folks, however, I’d recommend building a résumé with another tool and uploading it to Indeed instead.
Teal: This résumé builder is paired with job-search and tracking tools, which include a job board and an AI job-search function. It also provides features that might be handy when it comes time to consider offers, such as an offer analysis tool and compensation tracker. A Chrome extension is available, too, to make it easier to tag jobs. However, I felt that the core résumé building tools were unremarkable and that Teal is generally focused on managing your job search overall. While you can get started for free, you’ll really want a subscription, which is priced at $179 yearly or $29 per month. Teal offers a weekly price at $13, which might be handy if you just want to pop in, build your résumé, check the job board, and then move on.
Kickresume: In addition to résumés, Kickresume provides tools for cover letters (which many competitors offer) plus resignation letters and websites (which are less common). That can make it a good one-stop shop. Kickresume also has a Career Map tool, which helps you visualize the types of jobs you might be suited for based on your résumé and preferences. This could become a top pick in time, but at this moment, I feel that, much like Teal, the core résumé builder has no particular edge on the competition. Most features require a subscription, which is priced at $24 a month or $96 a year.
LinkedIn: Unsurprisingly, the career-focused social network has the option to export your LinkedIn profile as a PDF, which can be used as a résumé. However, it’s an extremely barebones tool that converts your existing profile to a basic PDF with no options to alter the content before export. So, while this is technically a way to build a résumé, I would never recommend it.
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