Harver is genuinely one of the more comprehensive platforms in the pre-employment testing space. The combination of hard skills tests, cognitive assessments, behavioural questionnaires, and gamified behavioural testing through Pymetrics gives it a breadth that very few other publishers can match under one roof. If your requirement is for all of those things simultaneously, Harver is a strong choice and worth serious consideration.
But many organisations are not trying to do all of those things at once. If you want best-in-class cognitive testing, or a deep library of hard skills content, or job simulation-style assessment, there may be more focused publishers worth considering. Here is a breakdown of the main ones.
Test Partnership
Test Partnership is the most natural comparison for anyone who wants cognitive testing, either in a traditional or gamified format. The standard cognitive battery covers numerical, verbal, and inductive reasoning in a format that is clean, well-validated, and straightforward to administer at scale.
Where Test Partnership stands out is in its Mindmetriq suite, which delivers cognitive measurement in a fully gamified format. Unlike interactive assessments that simply dress up standard questions with drag-and-drop interfaces, Mindmetriq requires continuous real-time engagement from the candidate throughout the task. That design choice is not just about candidate experience; it is the reason these assessments are genuinely resistant to AI assistance. Delegating the cognitive work to a language model is not useful when the task demands moment-to-moment interaction that cannot be paused and handed off.
For organisations where cognitive ability is the primary thing you are trying to measure, and particularly if AI-assisted cheating is a concern, Test Partnership is worth a close look.
TestGorilla
TestGorilla is the obvious choice for organisations that need breadth of hard skills content. Their library covers an unusually wide range of role-specific tests, including Excel, accounting, specific programming languages, and marketing tools, and the platform makes it straightforward to mix and match tests into a tailored assessment for a given role.
Where TestGorilla trades off is depth. The psychometric rigour behind individual tests varies across the catalogue, and for roles where you need a particularly robust cognitive or behavioural measure, you may want to supplement their library with a more specialist publisher. But as a starting point for skills-based screening across a wide variety of job types, very few platforms match the sheer breadth of what TestGorilla offers.
Vervoe
Vervoe takes a different approach to assessment altogether. Rather than structured psychometric tests, it focuses on work sample assessments: tasks that simulate the actual work involved in the role. Candidates are asked to do something rather than answer questions about doing it, which tends to produce high face validity and strong candidate engagement.
The trade-off is that work samples are harder to norm and benchmark across cohorts. They give you a good sense of whether someone can complete a specific task, but comparing candidates against each other requires more judgment than a standardised test score does. Vervoe's AI-assisted ranking helps with this, but it is a different kind of signal to a cognitive or personality measure.
Vervoe is a particularly strong fit for roles where the specific output of the job is easy to simulate: writing roles, design tasks, coding exercises. It is less well-suited to roles where the day-to-day work is harder to capture in a short task format.
Criteria
Criteria is a well-established US-based assessment platform that offers a broad suite of cognitive, personality, and skills-based tests. Their cognitive assessment is one of the more widely used and validated short-form cognitive tests available, and the platform is generally well-regarded for ease of use and value at higher volumes.
If you are moving away from Harver and want to preserve both cognitive and behavioural coverage in a more straightforward, less gamified format, Criteria is one of the more natural options. The platform is less visually polished than some newer entrants, but the underlying test quality is solid and the pricing model tends to work well for organisations with consistent, high-volume hiring needs.
Conclusion and next steps
The right Harver alternative depends on which part of Harver's offering you are actually trying to replicate or improve on. For cognitive assessment, and particularly if AI resistance is a concern, Test Partnership's Mindmetriq suite is the most focused option. For a large library of hard skills content, TestGorilla covers the widest ground. For role-specific work samples, Vervoe is the clear choice. And for a more traditional cognitive and personality combination at scale, Criteria is worth considering.
If you would like to see how Test Partnership's assessments work in practice, you can explore our aptitude tests or find out more about why organisations choose Test Partnership.
Sources: Test Partnership on G2, TestGorilla, TestGorilla on G2, Vervoe, Vervoe on G2, Criteria, Criteria on G2.
Joshua Hancock
Digital Marketing Manager at Test Partnership. Over 7 years experience as a writer, content strategist, SEO and digital marketer.
