A job application tracker is one row per application with the facts you will need later: who, what role, when you applied, which resume you sent, where it stands and what you do next. A free spreadsheet does this well up to a few hundred rows. Free apps such as Teal, Huntr and Simplify do it with less typing, because a browser extension saves the job for you. This post gives you the columns that matter, a template you can paste straight into Google Sheets, the free trackers compared side by side, and what changes when you are sending applications by the hundred rather than by the dozen.
A disclosure before the comparison: ApplyEze, which publishes this blog, sells an auto-apply product. It is not a tracker and does not appear in the tracker table, and we cover where it fits at the end.
Why track applications at all
Three reasons, in order of how often they bite.
You will forget what you sent. A recruiter calls about a role you applied to three weeks ago, and you cannot remember which version of your resume went with it, or even what the job was. If you tailor your resume per posting (our guide to tailoring a resume explains why you should), there are as many versions as applications. The tracker is the only place that ties each one to its job.
Waiting is long, and memory is short. In Huntr's 2025 annual job search report, which is built from 1.78 million job entries its users logged, the median wait to a first interview was 23 days. For the slowest tenth of job seekers it ran past four months. Median time to a first offer rose from 57 days in the first quarter of 2025 to 83 days in the fourth. Applications stay live far longer than anyone can keep in their head.
You cannot improve what you cannot count. The only way to know whether your LinkedIn applications or your tailored resumes are working is to have a column that says which applications were which. Huntr could report that tailored resumes converted at 5.8% against 3.73% for untailored ones only because its users recorded the difference. Your own tracker can answer the same question for you.
The columns that matter
Most templates online stop at company, role, date and status. That is enough to list applications, but not enough to act on them. These are the columns worth keeping, and why.
| Column | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Employer name | Spot repeat applications to one employer |
| Role | Title exactly as posted | Recruiters refer to the posted title |
| Posting link | The URL you applied from | Check later whether the role is still open |
| Job ID | The requisition number, if shown | Large employers post the same title many times |
| Source | Where you found it: LinkedIn, Indeed, company site, referral | Lets you compare response rates by source |
| Date applied | A real date, not text | Drives every calculation below |
| Resume version | File name of what you sent | The answer when a recruiter calls |
| Cover letter | Yes or no, and the file name | Same reason |
| Applied as | The email or portal account you used | Portals such as Workday tie each application to an account |
| Status | One value from a fixed list | Makes counting possible |
| Last contact | Date of the last message either way | Shows what has gone quiet |
| Next action | What you do next, and the date | Turns the sheet into a to-do list |
| Contact | Recruiter or referrer name, if any | Follow-ups need a person |
| Posting text | The description, pasted or saved | Postings disappear when roles close, and you will want it before an interview |
| Notes | Anything else | Salary range posted, location, odd questions on the form |
Keep the status list short and fixed. Free text ("heard back??", "maybe") cannot be counted. A list that works:
- Saved (not applied yet)
- Applied
- Screen (a recruiter call is booked or done)
- Interviewing
- Offer
- Rejected
- Withdrawn
- Closed (the posting came down with no word)
"Closed" is worth its own value. A role that vanished from the board without a rejection is different information from a rejection, and lumping the two together makes your numbers look worse than they are.
A free spreadsheet template
Copy the block below, paste it into cell A1 of a new Google Sheet, and use Data, then Split text to columns if it lands in one column. The two example rows are invented.
Company,Role,Posting link,Job ID,Source,Date applied,Resume version,Cover letter,Applied as,Status,Last contact,Next action,Next action date,Contact,Days since applied,Notes
Harbor Lane Logistics,Operations Analyst,https://example.com/jobs/1234,R-1234,Company site,2026-10-06,resume-harborlane-v1.pdf,Yes,me@example.com,Applied,,Follow up with recruiter,2026-10-20,,,Hybrid; range posted
Northfield Health,Data Analyst,https://example.com/jobs/5678,,LinkedIn,2026-10-09,resume-northfield-v1.pdf,No,me@example.com,Screen,2026-10-14,Prepare for screen,2026-10-21,A. Recruiter,,Asked about SQL level
Then add three things that make it work as a tool rather than a list.
A dropdown for Status. Select the Status column and choose Insert, then Dropdown (or Data, then Data validation, then Add rule), and type the eight values above. Google's help page on creating an in-cell dropdown list walks through it. Now every status is one of eight words, and you can count them.
A days-since-applied formula. In the "Days since applied" column, row 2, put:
=IF(F2="","",TODAY()-F2)
and fill it down. Column F is the date applied. Google documents that TODAY returns the current date and updates each time the sheet recalculates, so the number counts up on its own. Make sure the date column holds real dates, not text, or the subtraction fails.
A count by status. Somewhere off to the side:
=COUNTIF(J:J,"Applied")
Repeat it for each status value. Column J is Status. That one block is your funnel: how many applied, how many reached a screen, how many reached an interview.
Sort by "Next action date" each morning and the top of the sheet is your day.
Tracker apps compared
A spreadsheet's weakness is typing. If you save jobs from several boards, an app with a browser extension captures the company, title and link in one click. Here is what the free plans of the most common trackers include, as of October 2026.
| Tracker | Free plan, tracking | Free plan, other | Paid plan | Chrome Web Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Sheets template | No limit | Your own formulas and columns | None | n/a |
| Teal | Unlimited job tracking | Top 5 keywords per job, limited AI credits | Teal+ $13 a week, $29 per 30 days, or $79 per 90 days | 4.7 from 3.2K ratings, last updated 26 June 2025 |
| Huntr | Up to 100 jobs | Unlimited autofills, 2 tailored resumes, map view | Pro $40 a month, $90 every 3 months, or $160 every 6 months | 4.6 from 1.3K ratings |
| Simplify | Tracker free, no cap stated | Autofill and job matches also free | Simplify+ $19.99 for one week, $39.99 for one month | 4.8 from 3.8K ratings |
| Careerflow | Tracker free but "limited", numbers not published | Limited autofill and resume builder | Premium from $8.99 a week or $23.99 a month | 4.3 from 288 ratings |
Chrome Web Store ratings were read on 17 October 2026 from the listings for Teal, Huntr, Simplify and Careerflow.
How to choose between them:
- Teal is the pick if you want an unlimited free tracker and nothing else. Watch the billing: the weekly plan left running costs about $56 per 30 days ($13 x 30 / 7), almost double the monthly plan. Our Teal review covers the rest.
- Huntr has the cleanest board view and free autofill, but the free plan stops at 100 tracked jobs. Someone sending 16 applications a week, which is Huntr's own reported median, reaches 100 in about six weeks.
- Simplify suits people who apply mostly through company application forms, because the free tracker sits next to free autofill in the same extension. Simplify publishes no tracking cap on its free plan.
- Careerflow keeps its free tracker, but its free limits are not published, so you will find them when you hit them.
None of these apps submits applications for you on the free plan, and none replaces the weekly review below. They make capture cheaper; the thinking is still yours.
Tracking at high volume
The template and the apps above are built for a few applications a day. The volumes in Huntr's report are higher than that for a lot of people: a median of about 16 applications a week, 40 at the 75th percentile, and nearly 85 at the 90th. At 85 a week you add more than 300 rows a month, and a row-by-row habit breaks. Four changes keep it working.
Capture automatically, not by hand. Use an extension's one-click save, or let your inbox do it. Most application systems send a confirmation email. A Gmail filter on phrases such as "thank you for applying" or "application received" can apply a label to every confirmation, which gives you a second, automatic record to check the tracker against.
Stop tracking status per row. At volume, most rows never change from Applied. Track the exceptions instead: anything that moved to Screen, Interviewing or Offer gets full attention, and the rest are counted, not tended.
Count by week, not by row. Add a "Week applied" column (the Monday of the week) and count each status by week. The question you care about is "of the 80 applications I sent the week of 5 October, how many reached a screen", not the fate of any single one.
Check for duplicates before you apply. The same role often appears on several boards under different links. Before adding a row, search the sheet for the company and job ID. Applying twice to one requisition does not double your chances, and it can look careless to the recruiter who sees both.
What to review every week
Set aside a fixed slot once a week and answer five questions from the sheet.
- What is due? Sort by next action date. Anything past due gets done or rescheduled. Our post on how to follow up on a job application covers when and how.
- What moved? Every row that changed status this week. These are the only applications that need real work.
- Which sources respond? Divide screens by applications for each source. Huntr's report gives a public benchmark: of 598,627 applications its users tracked in 2025, the share that moved to an interview stage was 11.3% for Google Jobs, 4.5% for Indeed, 3.1% for LinkedIn, 2.8% for ZipRecruiter and 0.35% for Dice. That is self-reported data from one tracker's users, so treat it as a reference point, not a target. Your own numbers matter more.
- Are tailored versions doing better? If you tailor some applications and not others, compare the two groups. With a few dozen applications the difference may be noise, so wait until each group has enough rows to mean something.
- What can I close? Rows older than a couple of months with no reply can move to Closed if the posting is gone. Remember the median of 23 days to a first interview before you close anything younger than a month.
Then look at the totals and ask the planning question: at this week's rate, is the number of applications going out enough to produce the number of interviews you need? The wider plan around that number is in our job search strategy guide.
When volume is the bottleneck
If the tracker shows that you are not sending enough applications, the fix is not a better spreadsheet. That is the part ApplyEze works on. It finds postings that match your target roles, writes a resume for each posting, plus a cover letter when the form asks, and completes the application on 12 platforms, including Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters, in a browser on your own machine that you can watch. It has duplicate detection and a posting lock built to prevent applying twice. New accounts get 50 free credits, once per email address, with no card, and a credit is used only when an application is confirmed as submitted. Listed plans are Starter at $19 a month for 700 and Pro at $99 a month for 3,000. For a handful of applications a week, a free tracker and your own hands can still be all you need.