Backdoor
If you used Sonara in 2023 and went looking for it later, you may have found it gone, then back again. Here's the short version.
Sonara is still running, but not as the company it was. The original startup shut down on 1 February 2024, and BOLD, the company that owns Monster and CareerBuilder, bought the brand later in 2024 and relaunched it as a paid auto-apply service.
What Sonara was
Sonara was a fully hands-off job application service. You uploaded a resume and set the roles, pay and location you wanted. Every day it scanned job listings, matched you to posted roles and sent applications for you in the background. You didn't fill in a single form.
The shutdown
The original Sonara closed on 1 February 2024 after it failed to raise more funding. When it did, users were locked out of their application queues and history. If you'd been relying on it to track where you'd applied, that record went with it.
This is worth remembering with any tool that applies for you. The applications live in its system, not your inbox, so if the company goes, so does your record of what was sent where.
The relaunch under BOLD
BOLD is a large career services company. Its own about page and timeline list acquiring Sonara.ai in 2024, and list Sonara among its brands next to Monster, CareerBuilder, FlexJobs and LiveCareer.
The relaunched Sonara works the way the original did: it submits applications to posted roles for you. It's live in October 2026, and the company has replied to Trustpilot reviews as recently as that month.
A short timeline
- 1 February 2024: The original Sonara shuts down after failing to raise funding. Users lose access to their queues and history.
- 2024: BOLD acquires Sonara.ai and relaunches the brand.
- January 2026: A Jobright review reports its trial and subscription prices.
- June 2026: FastApply reports the same pricing.
- October 2026: The service is live, with 3.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 100 reviews.
What it costs today
We couldn't read Sonara's prices ourselves: sonara.ai blocks automated visits, and it didn't load for us on 17 October 2026. These are the prices two reviews reported from its pricing page, in January and June 2026. Check them at checkout.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | $2.95 once | 14 days or 10 applications |
| Rolling subscription | $23.95 every 4 weeks | Ongoing applications |
| Annual | $71.40 a year | Ongoing applications |
There's no free plan. The trial renews into the four-weekly plan unless you cancel. Four-weekly billing means about 13 charges a year, which comes to roughly $311 at that price, so if you plan to stay a while, the annual plan is far cheaper.
Both reviews come from companies that sell job search tools of their own, which is one more reason to check before you pay.
What reviewers say in 2026
Sonara gets credit for what it does well. It's fully hands off: applications go out without you touching a form. The trial is cheap. And it's now owned by a large, established company rather than a startup looking for its next round.
The complaints in 2026 are about results and billing. From Trustpilot:
- An October 2026 reviewer says the $3 trial turned into a monthly charge with no advance notice. The company later refunded them.
- Reviewers in mid-2026 say suggested jobs don't match their qualifications, and there's no way to exclude keywords.
- A July 2026 subscriber reported 50 applications and no responses, and called it very expensive.
18 of its 100 Trustpilot reviews are one star, as of 17 October 2026. Sonara publishes no reply or interview rate, so there's no way to compare its results with anything else.
On LinkedIn, we found no claim from Sonara about whether it uses your account, and sources disagree on where it submits. If that matters to you, read what LinkedIn allows and what enforcement is on record.
What to use now
It depends on what you want.
If you want more applications to posted roles
Sonara has plenty of competitors that do the same job, each with its own trade-offs:
- LazyApply sends the most volume, up to 1,500 applications a day on its top plan, through a Chrome extension. Run on LinkedIn, it's the kind of tool LinkedIn's rules prohibit.
- JobCopilot applies on official company career pages, up to 50 a day.
- AIApply is strongest as a writing toolkit, with auto-apply sold as a separate plan.
- LoopCV has a free plan and covers jobs in Europe as well as the US.
- Massive applies from its own servers, up to 200 a month, and filters for companies that sponsor US visas.
The catch is the same for all of them, Sonara included. Each application joins a pile of hundreds, read by an applicant tracking system first. Massive's own FAQ says most people get 1 to 2 interviews for every 100 applications.
If you want a startup job and a reply from the founder
Then the posted role is the wrong door. At a small startup, the founder decides who gets hired and reads their own email, often before a job post exists.
Backdoor writes to that person for you. You text it your LinkedIn link or resume on WhatsApp or iMessage. Every morning it picks startups that fit you from funding, launch and hiring news, finds the founder's email, and drafts a short note about why you fit that company. Nothing goes out until you reply SEND. It sends from your own Gmail, so replies land in your inbox, and it follows up three times in the same thread.
Between May and October 2026, Backdoor sent 11,300+ first emails to founders for 481 people. 9 in 10 of the people who heard back got their first founder reply within two weeks. Of the 28 people who kept it running for three weeks or more, 17 heard back. Replies are undercounted, so the share who heard back is a floor. See the full numbers.
The two approaches don't overlap. You can keep an auto-apply tool for posted roles at big companies and use Backdoor for startups. If Sonara's the tool, watch the trial renewal.
For a side-by-side of the two, see Sonara vs Backdoor.
