Criteria is a well-established assessment platform, particularly in the US, and it's rated 4.7 out of 5 across more than 200 reviews on Capterra, so it's clearly doing a lot right. If you're looking at alternatives, it might be due to rising costs, assessments that are hard to tailor to specific roles, or integrations that don't quite fit your systems.
For UK employers, there's often a question of fit too. Criteria's best-known test, the CCAT, asks 50 questions in 15 minutes, and by Criteria's own figures fewer than 1% of candidates answer them all. To be fair, that speed does give the CCAT some built-in resilience to AI, as there's very little time to consult an AI tool on each question. But it comes at the cost of a rushed, high-pressure experience. That kind of screening is common in the US, but it doesn't always match what candidates expect in UK graduate, professional or mid-market hiring.
Sova
Sova is a UK-based assessment platform designed for high-volume and graduate hiring. Taking the CCAT's blended assessment idea further, it combines ability, personality and situational judgement into a single, mobile-first assessment configured for the role, which makes it easier to tailor to the job than an off-the-shelf battery.
Integrations are a particular strength, with native connections to Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Greenhouse, iCIMS, SmartRecruiters and others, and reviewers on G2 consistently describe the platform as user-friendly and the support team as responsive. Reporting depth is its most common criticism, so it's worth asking to see sample reports, and it's sold as an annual platform licence, so it suits large employers best.
However, where Criteria had some AI-resilience built into the CCAT via the speed mechanism, you do lose that with Sova's assessments, which are more prone to AI-assisted cheating.
Test Partnership
If you like the CCAT's quick, time-pressured format, our Signals series is the closest match, with an important difference. The CCAT is a "how far can you get" test: one overall time limit, far more questions than almost anyone can finish, and a score that depends heavily on raw speed. With Signals, candidates complete every question. Each one has its own short time limit instead, so the pace stays brisk without turning the test into a race to get as far as possible.
That per-question timing also helps make its AI resilience stronger. There's very little time to copy any single question into an AI tool and get an answer back. It's adaptive, mobile-first, and split into numerical reasoning and critical thinking so you can pick and choose which aptitudes you would like to assess.
If you want something much more AI-proof, MindmetriQ, our gamified cognitive assessments, takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than limiting the time candidates have to use AI on traditional style questions, the question format is redesigned so that AI can't assist at all. The reasoning happens through interacting with game-based tasks, rather than reading a question and choosing an answer, so there's nothing to hand over to an AI tool.
Test Partnership is an easy to use resource for testing graduates and junior-mid level candidates. It has been good for replicating tests quickly and integrates very nicely with our ATS system.
Both sit alongside our wider range of ability, personality and situational judgement assessments in one platform. We're UK-based, so support and expert advice from our business psychologists are on hand in your time zone, and we integrate with Workday, Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS, Lever, Workable and more. Pricing is tailored to your annual assessment volume and the features you actually use, and every plan includes unlimited users, so adding colleagues never adds cost.
Conclusion and next steps
If you're looking for a Criteria alternative, the choice comes down to what you're trying to fix.
If you're a large employer that wants role-configured assessments and deep enterprise integrations, Sova is a strong option. If you like the CCAT's quick format but want candidates to complete every question, with stronger AI resilience from per-question timing, Signals is the closest match. And if you want something much more AI-proof, MindmetriQ is designed so that AI can't assist at all, rather than relying on speed to keep it out.
You can explore Signals Numerical Reasoning, demo MindmetriQ or browse our aptitude tests, or see what's included on our pricing page.
Sources: Criteria, Criteria CCAT, Criteria on Capterra, Criteria on G2, Sova, Sova on G2.
Joshua Hancock
Digital Marketing Manager at Test Partnership. Over seven years' experience as a writer, content strategist, SEO and digital marketer.
