Frequently Asked Questions

The best one for you is the one that shows you a score and is honest about the price. SimpleCVBuilder gives you an ATS score with fixes, an AI bullet generator and a Career Advisor for career changers, no watermark on any plan, and Pro at £9.99, €11.99 or $12.99 a month with no trial trap. Run the free ATS checker on your current CV and judge the result yourself.

SimpleCVBuilder is an online CV and resume builder with AI writing tools. You edit your CV directly on the page, in one of 12 designs, and download it as a PDF with no watermark. The free plan includes 1 CV. Pro (£9.99, €11.99 or $12.99 a month, or £59, €69 or $79 a year) adds unlimited CVs, all 12 designs, Word and plain text downloads, cover letters and much higher AI limits.

To build and save a CV, yes. You can sign up with Google, LinkedIn, an email address and password, or a magic link sent to your inbox. You do not need an account for the ATS checker: upload a CV and get a score without signing up.

Yes. The free plan costs nothing and has no time limit. It includes 1 CV, 3 of the 12 designs, one free PDF download per CV with no watermark, 3 CV imports a month, and a daily allowance of the AI tools, such as 5 ATS checks and 5 uses of the AI assistant. You do not need a card to sign up.

There is no watermark on any plan, and billing is predictable: the trial emails you before it ends, and you can cancel Pro any time from Billing. The AI tools are built for people the usual builders overlook, such as career changers, freelancers and international students, and they work from what is already in your CV rather than inventing experience.

Yes. The site works on phones and tablets, and you can open, check and download your CV there. Editing is easiest on a laptop or desktop, where you can see a whole page at once. One exception: LinkedIn's phone app has no Save to PDF option, so do a LinkedIn import from a computer.

The free plan is free. Pro costs £9.99, €11.99 or $12.99 a month or £59, €69 or $79 a year. The 30-Day Job Search Pass is a one-off £12.99, €14.99 or $14.99 for 30 days of Pro features, and on the free plan a single extra PDF download costs £2.99, €3.49 or $3.99. Prices are in pounds, euros or US dollars depending on where you are, and no VAT is added. There is no watermark on any plan.

Prices show in the currency for where you are: pounds in the UK, euros in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and US dollars everywhere else. The amount within a currency is the same for everyone; there is no regional pricing. Once your account has paid in one currency, later purchases use that currency too, because Stripe, our payment processor, ties each customer to one currency. If you start a checkout in another, we tell you and show your account's prices instead.

Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards, through Stripe's secure checkout. We never see or store your card number.

Yes. In your dashboard, open Billing and choose Manage Subscription, which takes you to Stripe's billing page, where you can cancel. You keep Pro until the end of the period you have paid for, and you are not charged again.

Monthly Pro is not refunded for part of a month: cancel, and you keep Pro until the month ends. Annual Pro is refunded in full if you ask within 14 days of paying. For billing questions, email [email protected].

The trial gives you everything in Pro for 7 days. You enter a card at the start, and we email you about 3 days before it ends with the date and the price. If you do nothing, it becomes Pro monthly at £9.99, €11.99 or $12.99 a month; cancel before then and you pay nothing. Each account can use the trial once.

A one-off payment of £12.99, €14.99 or $14.99 that unlocks every Pro feature for 30 days. It does not renew, so there is nothing to cancel, and you can buy it again if your search runs on. It is for accounts without a Pro subscription.

Your CVs stay in your account; nothing is deleted. The free plan's limits apply again: you cannot start a new CV while you already have one, PDF downloads follow the free rule of one per CV, Word and plain text downloads stop, and a CV in a Pro design asks you to switch to a free design or upgrade before you download it. The AI tools go back to their free daily allowances.

Not at the moment. The annual plan is the cheapest way to pay for Pro, the 30-Day Pass suits a short job search with nothing to cancel, and the free plan stays free with no watermark. You can also earn weeks of Pro through the referral programme.

Every signed-in account has a personal link to share. When a friend signs up with it and downloads their own first CV within 30 days, you both get 7 days of Pro; signing up alone does not count. You can be rewarded for up to 10 friends. If you already pay for Pro, your days are saved and start when your subscription ends. The full rules are on the referral terms page.

The editor has an AI assistant for rewriting a line, a bullet generator, a generic content detector, an ATS check and the AI Resume Optimizer. You can also tailor a CV to a job advert and prepare for an interview. On the free plan each has an allowance, for example 5 ATS checks, 3 bullet generations and 3 tailoring runs a day, and one optimiser run per CV with 3 suggestions open. Pro adds cover letters, "Surprise Me" rewrites and much higher limits.

It reviews your whole CV in one run for ATS readiness, generic language and bullet strength. You get a score out of 100, a projected score, and a list of suggestions with the most serious first, which you accept, edit or reject in the editor. On Pro, "Surprise Me" offers alternative rewrites. Free users get 1 run per CV and can apply 3 suggestions; Pro users get unlimited runs and all suggestions.

Yes. The optimiser runs inside the editor, so you can run it, apply suggestions and then download. On the free plan, if some suggestions are still locked when you export, we mention it once so you do not miss them.

Click into your summary or a bullet on the page and the assistant opens beside it, with no side panel. It has four options: Improve rewrites the line for clarity and impact, Recruiter view gives two or three short notes from a recruiter's point of view, Inspire me offers three alternative drafts, and Custom takes your own instruction, such as "make it shorter" or "use UK spelling". You see exactly what will change before you replace anything. Free accounts get 5 uses a day across all four; Pro has no daily limit.

The bullet generator writes new bullets: you describe what you did in a job and it drafts achievement-style lines, using only the figures you give it. The assistant works on lines you already have, rewriting them, giving recruiter notes or offering alternatives in place. Most people use the generator while drafting and the assistant to polish.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is software employers use to collect, sort and search applications. It reads the text of your CV into fields, and recruiters search it by keyword. Our ATS check looks at keywords, formatting, section headings and structure, so you can fix anything that makes your CV harder for these systems to read.

Every design produces real, selectable text, not a picture. The ten one-column designs are the safest choice for online forms. The two sidebar designs read well to people, but some systems read the sidebar out of order, so for upload forms use a one-column design or the "Word, single column (ATS)" download on Pro, the trial or the Pass. You can test any CV with the free ATS checker.

Yes, on every plan. Upload a PDF or Word (.docx) file of up to 5 MB, or import from LinkedIn: we guide you through saving your profile with LinkedIn's own Save to PDF option and dropping the file in. We read the text, fill in your sections and suggest a design, and the uploaded file is deleted once your CV is filled in. The free plan includes 3 imports a month while you have no CV yet; Pro, the trial and the Pass have no limit. Older .doc files are not supported.

Twelve. Three are on the free plan: Modern Professional, International Student and Education & Teaching. Pro, the 7-day trial and the 30-day Pass include all twelve, among them two designs with a coloured sidebar, two LaTeX-style designs, and designs for career changers, freelancers, healthcare, finance and sales. You can switch design at any time without retyping.

Every plan downloads PDF, and no export has a watermark. Free accounts get one free PDF per CV and can then buy a single extra download. Pro, the trial and the Pass add unlimited PDFs plus Word (.docx) and plain text (.txt). A PDF takes less than 3 seconds to make.

No. The free PDF has no watermark, logo or "made with" line, and it is built exactly like a paid one. The same is true of every download on every plan.

Two sides of A4 is the usual length for a UK CV. School leavers and new graduates can often fit everything on one page. People with long careers sometimes run to a third, but the first page does most of the work, so cut older roles before adding pages. The editor shows real page breaks as you type, so you always know where you are.

No. Two pages is normal, and the PDF breaks pages exactly where the editor shows them, without repeating a section heading on the new page. If only a few lines spill over, tighten the spacing or text size in the design panel, or trim an older role, rather than squeezing everything until it is hard to read.

For UK jobs, usually not. Employers do not expect one, and leaving it off keeps the reader on your experience. If an employer or a country's custom calls for a photo, the two sidebar designs have an optional round photo slot; the other ten designs have none.

Yes. Paste a job advert on the Tailor page and you get a match score before and after, the keywords you are missing, and a rewrite of your summary, bullets and skills that only rephrases what is already in your CV. Skills that appear only in the advert are shown as suggestions for you to confirm, never added for you. Free accounts get 3 runs a day and one tailored PDF; Pro, the trial and the Pass get 30 runs a day and unlimited tailored PDFs.

Yes. Pick one of your saved CVs, paste the job description, and we draft a tailored letter in under a minute. You can edit, add, delete and reorder paragraphs, then download it as a PDF with no watermark. It is a Pro feature, also included in the 7-day trial and the 30-Day Job Search Pass.

No. The cover letter is built from the CV you pick, so it only refers to roles, skills and achievements already on it. If the job description asks for something your CV doesn't cover, the letter won't make it up; it focuses on the overlap.

Your data is stored on Supabase with encryption in transit (TLS) and passwords hashed with bcrypt. Row-level security keeps each account's data separate. Your CV content is never used for advertising or sold to third parties.

Yes. You can see, correct, export and delete your data at any time, from your account settings or by emailing [email protected]. Our privacy policy sets out what we keep and for how long.

No. We never sell your personal data or CV content, and we never use your CV to target advertising.

On the free plan you may see Google ads in the dashboard and the editor, marked "Advertisement". They are never placed inside your CV or your PDF, and your CV text is never sent to Google. Pro, trial and Pass accounts see no ads, and the ad script is not loaded for them.

Yes. You can delete your account from your account settings at any time. Your CVs, profile, tracked jobs and usage history are permanently deleted within 30 days. Billing records are kept for 7 years for tax and legal reasons, and if you joined with a referral link we keep a coded version of your email address so it cannot be referred twice.

SimpleCVBuilder works on all modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge. We recommend the latest version of your browser.

Your CV saves automatically about two seconds after you stop typing. If it is not saving, check your internet connection and that you are still signed in, then refresh the page. If that does not fix it, email [email protected].

No. SimpleCVBuilder needs an internet connection, because each change is saved to your account as you type. If your connection drops, keep the page open until you are back online so your last changes can save.

Thank you. Email [email protected] with what happened, the steps to repeat it and a screenshot if you can. We aim to reply within 48 hours.