Plainline: the plainest ATS resume template
Bold sans heads, no rules, generous leading. The least for a parser to misread.
Plainline is a single-column resume with nothing on the page except type: no rules under the headings and no coloured blocks. You get a bold sans-serif name, small uppercase section labels and body text with the most generous line spacing of any PaperKit resume template. It suits people in product, software, consulting and business development who apply mostly through company career portals and whose PDF is often read on a laptop before anyone prints it.
- Audience
- Product · Tech · Consulting
- Colour schemes
- Ink, Indigo, Navy
- Photo slot
- No
- Paper
- A4 and US Letter
With so little design, the page rests on what you write. A recruiter scanning Plainline sees role, company and dates first and then your bullets, and white space separates the sections where another layout would draw a line. If you cannot decide on a template and your application will meet software before it meets a person, start here. Plainline is free, and the PDF downloads without an account or a watermark.
Pick Plainline if…
- You are applying through large-company career portals and want as little as possible for a parser to trip over.
- Your bullets run long, and the extra space between lines keeps a dense page readable.
- You want a layout that looks deliberate without a single graphic element on it.
- Hiring managers will probably open your PDF on a phone or a laptop first.
Why there is so little to misread
- The PDF holds text and white space and nothing else. With no rules, borders or fills, an applicant tracking system has no graphic to mistake for content.
- Section labels are real uppercase words, letter-spaced for emphasis, so software reads the heading you typed.
- Each role shares its first line with the organisation, and the dates sit at the right end of that same line, so a role and its dates stay together.
- Body text is set at a line height of 1.7. That keeps long, metric-heavy bullets legible, and it is also why Plainline runs longer than tighter layouts with identical content.
How much fits on one page
Because every line gets room, Plainline fills a page faster than most of the ATS-first set. Expect about four roles with three or four bullets each before page two begins. Under five years of experience usually fits on one sheet with space left for skills and education. Past ten years, cut the oldest roles down to a line each, or set the margins to Narrow in the editor before you look for a denser template.
When to use something else
Plainline gives a reader your words and nothing else to look at. That is a weakness when a person sees the page first, for example when a friend refers you and forwards the PDF straight to the hiring manager. Ledger has the same parsing safety and adds serif headings over hairline rules, which looks more finished in the hand. And if your history will not fit Plainline's open spacing, Split is the template built for density.
Plainline works well for these roles
Product, engineering and growth roles, where bullets carry numbers and need room to be read.
Questions about Plainline
- Does Plainline look unfinished without any lines?
- Not once it has your content in it. The spacing does the job of the missing rules: a wide gap before each section, uppercase labels and a 1.7 line height. If you want a visible line under each heading, Ledger is the nearest layout that has one.
- Will Plainline get through Naukri and company career portals?
- Its layout gives a portal very little to get wrong: one column, real text, no tables and no images. What remains is content, and the editor's ATS checklist beside the preview covers that. It looks for full contact details, a summary of 25 to 70 words, numbers in at least three bullets, and Skills and Education sections.
- Do I need an account to download Plainline?
- No. You can fill it in, try each colour scheme and save the PDF without signing up, and the file carries no watermark. Your draft stays in your own browser between visits.