Is LinkedIn API free?

Parts of the LinkedIn API are free: Sign In with LinkedIn and the basic profile it returns cost nothing for an approved app, and LinkedIn does not sell API access per call. Jobs, recruiter and talent data are not free in any practical sense, because they sit behind partner agreements that require a business relationship rather than a payment.

Free here means no price list, not open access. A developer can register an app, request the sign-in product and, once approved, authenticate members and read the name, photo and email they consent to share. Anything beyond that, such as posting on behalf of a company page, managing ads or syncing jobs, requires applying to a partner program with a described use case, and approval is not automatic. Even approved partners are not charged a per-request fee; the cost is the review process, the contractual limits and the narrow scope of what each program returns.

For job postings the question of price never arises, because no LinkedIn program returns them to an outside application. The Talent Solutions APIs let an applicant tracking system send jobs to LinkedIn and receive applicants for its own customers. Reading LinkedIn's job index, the thing most people asking this question want, is not a paid tier that is missing from the price list. It is simply not offered. That leaves the public, logged-out job listings as the only source, and every LinkedIn jobs data product reads them.

JobsPipe reads those public listings and returns them through the jobs search endpoint with source_or set to linkedin, in the same record shape as the other collected boards. The free tier returns 1,000 jobs a month with no card, and the keyless sandbox endpoint answers a search without any signup, so the first call costs nothing and takes a minute. Paid plans are priced by jobs returned rather than by board, so LinkedIn rows cost the same as Greenhouse or Indeed rows.

The full treatment is on Job board and ATS APIs.