---
title: "The best jobs APIs in 2026: 15 options compared"
description: "The right jobs API depends on what you are building. Aggregators such as JobsPipe, Fantastic.jobs and Techmap return normalized postings; TheirStack and Coresignal add company data; JSearch and"
canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/best-jobs-api-2026
date_published: 2026-07-16
date_modified: 2026-09-30
author: Dvir Atias
---

> **Facts:** Free: 1,000 free credits, one time. Paid: from $49/month for 25,000 jobs. 12 months of history on every plan. Jobs from 30+ sources. Try it without a key: `curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search`

# The best jobs APIs in 2026: 15 options compared

The right jobs API depends on what you are building. Aggregators such as JobsPipe, Fantastic.jobs and Techmap return normalized postings; TheirStack and Coresignal add company data; JSearch and SerpApi wrap Google's job results; Bright Data and Apify rent you scrapers; USAJOBS and the public ATS feeds are free but narrow. The table compares 15 options on price, free tier and coverage.

A dated comparison of 15 jobs APIs - JobsPipe, TheirStack, Coresignal, Fantastic.jobs, JSearch, Adzuna, SerpApi, Bright Data, Apify, USAJOBS and more - on entry price, free tier, the kind of data you get and coverage, plus the free ATS and government endpoints and a pick for each use case.

There is no single best **jobs API**; there is a best fit for what you are building. If you need live postings from many boards and career sites in one schema, pick a multi-source aggregator. If you need what a searcher sees on Google, pick a search-results wrapper. If you need one employer’s own board, call that ATS’s free endpoint. If you need one site nobody sells, rent a scraper platform. And if you need US federal jobs, USAJOBS is free.

This page compares 15 options on the numbers that decide a purchase: the entry price, the free tier or trial, what kind of data you actually get, how much of the market it covers, and when we last checked the vendor’s own pricing page. Every price below is read from the vendor’s published page and dated, not remembered. JobsPipe wrote this comparison and sells one of the APIs in it; the [methodology](#methodology-how-this-comparison-was-checked) section says exactly what that means for how to read it.

## The 15 jobs APIs compared at a glance

Prices and free tiers are each vendor’s own published terms, checked in September 2026. The “What the data is” column matters more than it looks: two APIs at the same price can hand you very different things, from a deduplicated posting record to a raw page you still have to parse.

| API | What the data is | Price entry point | Free tier or trial | Coverage | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| JobsPipe · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | $49/month for 25,000 jobs | 1,000 jobs to start | 30+ sources, one schema, deduplicated across sources | September 2026 |
| TheirStack · Pricing ↗ | Postings plus company data | $49/mo for 1,500 credits, up to $5,500/mo for 5M | Free plan: 50 company and 200 API credits a month | 225M job records, 305k new a day | September 2026 |
| Coresignal · Pricing ↗ | Postings plus company data | API plans $49 to $5,000/month | 7-day free trial, 2,000 credits | 482M+ job postings | September 2026 |
| Fantastic.jobs · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | $95/mo for 20,000 jobs, up to $900/mo for 500,000 | 7-day free trial | 200,000+ career sites plus 10M+ board jobs a month | September 2026 |
| JobDataLake · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | $50 for 100,000 credits, up to $400 for 4M | 1,000 free credits | 1.8M+ jobs from 25,000+ companies | September 2026 |
| Techmap · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | $1 per 1,000 job postings | Free Basic plan, 1,000 jobs a month | 451M+ jobs since 2020 | September 2026 |
| JobsPikr · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | No prices in the page text | 7-day free trial | Job data feeds, datasets and a search API | September 2026 |
| Adzuna · Pricing ↗ | Aggregated postings | Higher limits by arrangement, no public price list | 2,500 calls/month by default (250/day) | Adzuna's own listings across its country sites | September 2026 |
| JSearch · Pricing ↗ | Search-results wrapper | $25/mo for 10,000 requests, up to $150/mo for 200,000 | 200 requests/month free | Google for Jobs results | September 2026 |
| SerpApi · Pricing ↗ | Search-results wrapper | $25/mo for 1,000 searches | 250 searches/month free | Google Jobs result pages, one search at a time | September 2026 |
| Bright Data · Pricing ↗ | Scraper platform | Scraper APIs from $0.75 per 1,000 records | Free tier on several APIs | Scrapers and datasets for the sites you choose | September 2026 |
| Apify · Pricing ↗ | Scraper platform | From $19/mo plus usage | $5 a month of free usage | Community scrapers, one per job site | September 2026 |
| PredictLeads · Pricing ↗ | Company signals | Pay as you go, $40/mo minimum | 100 free API calls/month | Job openings as one of several company datasets | September 2026 |
| Lightcast · Pricing ↗ | Labour-market analytics | Quoted per engagement | Skills taxonomy free for public-good use | Labour-market analytics built on postings, plus a skills taxonomy | September 2026 |
| USAJOBS · Pricing ↗ | Government API | Free, API key on request | Up to 10,000 rows per query | US federal civil-service openings only | September 2026 |

Three reading notes. First, the units differ: some vendors bill per job returned, some per request (and a request can return ten jobs or none), some per record scraped, and some per engagement. Second, “free tier” ranges from a standing monthly allowance to a seven-day trial, so check whether the free option renews. Third, the coverage column quotes each vendor’s own claim where it publishes one; we did not audit those numbers, and vendors count differently (active versus historical, raw versus deduplicated).

## What kind of jobs API do you need?

“Jobs API” covers five different products, and most bad purchases come from buying the wrong kind rather than the wrong vendor.

-   **Aggregated postings.** One endpoint that returns postings from many sources, normalized into one record shape. JobsPipe, Fantastic.jobs, JobDataLake, Techmap, JobsPikr and Adzuna sit here. You query by title, place, skill or company and get structured jobs back. The questions to ask are which sources, how fresh, and whether the same job posted in three places comes back once or three times.
-   **Postings plus company data.** TheirStack and Coresignal sell job postings alongside firmographics, technographics or employee records. They fit sales intelligence and investment research, where the job is a signal about a company rather than the product itself.
-   **Search-results wrappers.** JSearch and SerpApi return what Google shows for a jobs query. You get what a searcher sees, ranked by Google, billed per request. They are quick to start and thin on fields.
-   **Scraper platforms.** Bright Data and Apify rent you scrapers, datasets and proxies. You pick the site; you own parsing, deduplication and every fix when the page changes.
-   **Government and analytics.** USAJOBS publishes US federal openings for free; Lightcast sells labour-market analytics built on postings. One is narrow and free, the other broad and quoted.

PredictLeads sits across two of these: it sells job openings as one of several company datasets, next to news events and technologies. The rest of this page takes each vendor in turn: what it is, who it fits, where it stops, and where its documentation lives.

## JobsPipe: normalized postings from 30+ sources

JobsPipe is our product, so read this section with that in mind. It is a jobs API that returns postings from 30+ sources (LinkedIn, Indeed, Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, Workable, Y Combinator, Naukri, Paylocity and more) in one JSON schema, with the same job seen on several sources returned as one record that lists every source. Each record carries a posting date, discovery and last-seen timestamps, an open or closed status, parsed salary ranges where the employer states one, and an ISCO-08 occupation and ISIC industry code.

Pricing is per job returned: 1,000 jobs to start on the free plan, then $49/mo for 25,000 jobs, $348/mo for 300,000, $525/mo for 500,000, which works out per 1,000 jobs to $1.16 on Scale, $1.05 on Business. 12 months of history on every plan. Search is one `POST /v1/jobs/search` with filters such as `job_title_or`, `skills_or`, `job_country_code_or`, `occupation_code_or` and `source_or`; saved searches can push new matches to a webhook, and an MCP server exposes the same search to AI agents.

**Fits:** developers building job boards, recruiting tools and agents who want many sources without running collectors, and teams that need to know whether a posting is still open. **Limits:** history stops at the window above rather than reaching back to 2015 or 2020 as some dataset vendors offer; it does not carry Glassdoor reviews or USAJOBS; and it sells postings, not contact data. Docs: [docs.jobspipe.dev](https://docs.jobspipe.dev/). The product page is the [unified jobs API](https://jobspipe.dev/jobs-api).

##  TheirStack: job postings as sales signals

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the TheirStack pricing page](https://theirstack.com/en/pricing).

TheirStack indexes job postings and turns them into technographics and buying intent: which companies use a tool, which are hiring for it, which just started. It reports 225M job records, 305k new a day. It sells self-serve API plans from $49/month for 1,500 credits to $5,500/month for 5M credits, at one credit per job returned, so $32.67 to $1.10 per 1,000 jobs. There is also a free plan with 50 company credits and 200 API credits a month, and the API allows 4 requests a second on paid plans; the free tier adds caps of 10 a minute, 50 an hour and 400 a day.

**Fits:** SDR and demand-generation teams that want “companies hiring for X” lists pushed into a CRM. **Limits:** the entry plans are small for a product that serves jobs to end users, and the per-job rate only drops sharply at the top of the ladder. Docs: [theirstack.com/en/docs](https://theirstack.com/en/docs). Side by side: [TheirStack compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/theirstack), and against its closest rival in [TheirStack vs Coresignal](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/coresignal-vs-theirstack).

##  Coresignal: bulk job, company and employee data

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the Coresignal pricing page](https://coresignal.com/pricing/).

Coresignal is a B2B data vendor whose job postings sit next to company and employee records. It advertises 482M+ job postings. Self-serve access starts with a 7-day free trial with 2,000 credits, then API plans from $49/month (Mini, 2,500 credits) to $5,000/month (Elite, 10M credits). A job posting costs one credit, which makes the rate $19.60 to $0.50 per 1,000 jobs. Custom datasets are quoted through sales, starting from $1,000, and priced on agreement duration, processing level and record count.

**Fits:** data teams and investment firms that load large historical files into a warehouse and join them with company data. **Limits:** the cheap per-job rates need large monthly commitments, and a dataset delivery is a batch, not a live feed. Docs: [docs.coresignal.com](https://docs.coresignal.com/). Side by side: [Coresignal compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/coresignal); the three-way view is [Coresignal vs TheirStack vs JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/coresignal-vs-theirstack).

##  Fantastic.jobs: career-site postings for job boards

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the Fantastic.jobs pricing page](https://fantastic.jobs/api).

Fantastic.jobs sells two feeds: postings from company career sites (ATS pages) and postings from a few large boards. Its own claim is 200,000+ career sites plus 10M+ board jobs a month. It offers a 7-day free trial, then self-serve plans from $95/month for 20,000 jobs to $900/month for 500,000 jobs, or $4.75 to $1.80 per 1,000 jobs. High-volume plans for over 1 million jobs a month start at $1,000/month. It is also distributed through RapidAPI and Apify.

**Fits:** job-board builders and ATS integrators who want career-site jobs with a time-window query (“everything new in the last day”). **Limits:** the feeds are split by source family, so a complete picture of one market can mean querying both and deduplicating yourself. Docs: [developer.fantastic.jobs](https://developer.fantastic.jobs). Side by side: [Fantastic.jobs compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/fantastic-jobs).

##  JobDataLake: a credit-pack API over company career pages

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the JobDataLake pricing page](https://jobdatalake.com/).

JobDataLake is a developer-first API over company career pages. It states 1.8M+ jobs from 25,000+ companies, with AI-extracted fields for skills, seniority, salary and remote policy. It starts with 1,000 free credits, then sells credit packs from $50 for 100,000 to $400 for 4,000,000, which never expire. A credit is one request, not one job, and a search can return a page of results for that single credit.

**Fits:** side projects and small job boards that want cheap, simple search over company careers pages. **Limits:** its stated index is smaller than the aggregators above, and it covers company career pages rather than the large job boards. Docs: [jobdatalake.com/docs](https://jobdatalake.com/docs).

##  Techmap: per-country feeds and a per-request API

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the Techmap pricing page](https://jobdatafeeds.com/pricing).

Techmap (jobdatafeeds.com) is a German data vendor that sells job postings three ways: a search API over the last three months, daily per-country data feeds, and historical per-country datasets. It reports 451M+ jobs since 2020. The API is listed at $1 per 1,000 job postings, with a free Basic plan of 100 requests, or 1,000 job postings, a month; each request returns ten postings and is billed on RapidAPI. It also sells daily data feeds at $400 per country a month.

**Fits:** analysts who want whole-country files delivered to S3 and researchers who need history back to 2020. **Limits:** the API only searches three months back, and feeds are priced per country, which adds up across a region. Docs: [jobdatafeeds.com/developers](https://jobdatafeeds.com/developers).

##  JobsPikr: data feeds sold through sales

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the JobsPikr pricing page](https://www.jobspikr.com/jobspikr-data-pricing/).

JobsPikr sells job data as feeds, pre-built datasets and a search API, with deduplication and machine-learning enrichment on the higher plans. Each plan starts with a 7-day free trial. Prices are harder to pin down: the pricing page shows plan prices only as images; the only dollar figures in its text are a budget dropdown running from less than $70 to above $1000 a month, so expect a conversation before a quote.

**Fits:** teams that want a managed feed and are happy to buy through sales. **Limits:** no published price makes it hard to model cost per job before talking to them. Docs: [jobspikr.com/api-documentation](https://www.jobspikr.com/api-documentation/). Our longer look is the [JobsPikr review](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/jobspikr-review).

## Adzuna: a free-to-start aggregator with licence terms

API terms page as captured on September 30, 2026. See [the Adzuna API terms page](https://developer.adzuna.com/docs/terms_of_service).

Adzuna runs job search sites in many countries and exposes its own listings through a public API, which is free to register, with default limits of 25 calls a minute, 250 a day, 1,000 a week and 2,500 a month. The catch is in the terms: commercial, government and academic organisations get a 14-day trial, after which a licence agreement may be required, and higher limits and licences are arranged with Adzuna rather than priced publicly.

**Fits:** researchers, prototypes and low-volume tools, especially in the UK and Europe, and anyone who wants aggregate counts and salary histograms. **Limits:** descriptions come back as excerpts, commercial use needs a licence after the trial, and there is no push delivery. Docs: [developer.adzuna.com](https://developer.adzuna.com/overview). Side by side: [Adzuna compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/adzuna).

##  JSearch: Google for Jobs results through one call

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the JSearch pricing page](https://www.openwebninja.com/api/jsearch).

JSearch, from OpenWeb Ninja and also sold on RapidAPI, returns Google for Jobs results, which means postings from LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and company sites as Google indexed them. It offers a free plan of 200 requests a month, no credit card; beyond that come paid plans from $25/month for 10,000 requests to $150/month for 200,000, also sold through RapidAPI. Usage is metered per request rather than per job returned, from $0.005 a request pay-as-you-go, and the free plan is capped at 1,000 requests an hour, with no overage.

**Fits:** prototypes and demos that need something on the screen tonight. **Limits:** results follow Google’s ranking and coverage, the same job can appear once per board, and there are no webhooks or open-closed status. Docs: [openwebninja.com/api/jsearch/docs](https://www.openwebninja.com/api/jsearch/docs). More detail: [how the JSearch API works and where it stops](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/jsearch-api-direct).

##  SerpApi: the Google Jobs result page as JSON

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the SerpApi pricing page](https://serpapi.com/pricing).

SerpApi is a search-engine results API with a Google Jobs engine. You send a query and a location, and it returns the Google Jobs panel as JSON. It offers a free plan of 250 searches a month, then paid plans from $25/month for 1,000 searches, billed per search rather than per job.

**Fits:** SEO and market teams tracking what job seekers see on Google for a query. **Limits:** it is a results page, not a jobs database: no deduplication, no history and a handful of results per search, so large pulls burn searches quickly. Docs: [serpapi.com/google-jobs-api](https://serpapi.com/google-jobs-api). Background: [what a SERP API is and is not](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/what-is-a-serp-api).

##  Bright Data: scrapers and datasets you run yourself

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the Bright Data pricing page](https://brightdata.com/pricing).

Bright Data sells web-data infrastructure: proxies, an unlocker, ready scrapers and pre-built datasets, jobs among many verticals. It lists scraper APIs from $0.75 per 1,000 records, with a free tier on several APIs. The Web Scraper API, which includes ready-made LinkedIn and Indeed job scrapers, costs $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, with 5,000 free records a month. The $499 monthly plan includes 384,000 records, then $1.30 per 1,000, and pre-built datasets from $250 per 100K records.

**Fits:** teams that already run scraping pipelines and need one or two specific sites at volume. **Limits:** a record is one site’s raw result; normalizing fields, joining the same job across sites and handling layout changes stays with you. Docs: [docs.brightdata.com](https://docs.brightdata.com/). Side by side: [Bright Data compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/bright-data).

##  Apify: marketplace scrapers per job site

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the Apify pricing page](https://apify.com/pricing).

Apify is a platform for running “actors”, scrapers that community developers publish for specific sites. Platform plans are Free with $5 of monthly usage, Starter at $19, Scale at $199 and Business at $999 a month, and each plan's fee is spent on usage. Job actors are priced by their authors on top: the LinkedIn Jobs Scraper by curious\_coder charges $1 per 1,000 results on paid plans and $2 on the free plan, and the Indeed Scraper by misceres charges $5 per 1,000 listings on Starter, falling to $3 on Business.

**Fits:** one-off pulls and experiments, especially when a community actor already covers the site you want. **Limits:** each actor has its own output shape and its own maintainer, so a multi-site product means stitching several actors together and hoping none of them goes stale. Docs: [docs.apify.com/api/v2](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2). The wider cost picture is in [the job scraper comparison](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/best-job-scrapers).

##  PredictLeads: job openings as company signals

Pricing page as captured on September 30, 2026. Prices change; see [the PredictLeads pricing page](https://predictleads.com/pricing).

PredictLeads tracks companies and sells what changes about them: news events, technologies, key customers and job openings, with history back to 2015 and webhook delivery on its full-access plan. It gives up to 100 free API calls a month; past that, it offers self-serve pay-as-you-go pricing with a $40 minimum monthly charge, from $0.04 per API credit. Full flat-file access is sold separately.

**Fits:** sales and investment teams that start from a list of companies and want to know when they open roles. **Limits:** it is company-first, so “every data engineer job in Berlin this week” is not the query it is built for. Docs: [docs.predictleads.com](https://docs.predictleads.com/). Side by side: [PredictLeads compared with JobsPipe](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/predictleads).

##  Lightcast: labour-market analytics, quoted per engagement

Product page as captured on September 30, 2026. See [the Lightcast product page](https://lightcast.io/solutions/pricing).

Lightcast (formerly Emsi Burning Glass) sells labour-market analytics built on job postings, plus compensation, skills and workforce data, to employers, colleges and governments. There are no published prices; subscriptions, data delivery and consulting are scoped with sales. The Lightcast Skills taxonomy is free for nonprofit and public-good use, subject to approval, while commercial use and job postings data are quoted.

**Fits:** analysts and policy teams that want curated trends and a skills taxonomy with a consulting relationship behind them. **Limits:** it is an analytics subscription rather than a self-serve feed of individual postings, and every price is a quote. Docs: [docs.lightcast.dev](https://docs.lightcast.dev/). Alternatives: [Lightcast alternatives for job data](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/lightcast-alternatives).

##  USAJOBS: the free federal jobs API

API authentication docs as captured on September 30, 2026. See [the USAJOBS API authentication docs](https://developer.usajobs.gov/guides/authentication).

USAJOBS is the US Office of Personnel Management’s job site, and its Search API is free to use, with an API key issued after an application form. Requests send your email in the User-Agent header and the key in an Authorization-Key header. The Search Jobs API returns at most 10,000 rows per query and 500 per page.

**Fits:** anyone building for federal job seekers or tracking government hiring. **Limits:** federal civil-service roles only, with no private employers, no state or city jobs and no contractors. Docs: [developer.usajobs.gov](https://developer.usajobs.gov/). Walkthrough: [the USAJOBS API explained for developers](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/usajobs-api).

## Which free and DIY job endpoints are worth knowing?

Before paying anyone, know what is free. Several applicant tracking systems publish each employer’s open jobs as public JSON, and a few public employment services run open APIs. These are the ones a builder meets first.

| Endpoint | What one call covers | Access | Docs |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Greenhouse Job Board API | One employer's published jobs per board token | No key for GET requests | Greenhouse Job Board API docs |
| Lever Postings API | One employer's published postings per company handle | No key | Lever Postings API docs |
| Ashby Job Postings API | One employer's published jobs, compensation optional | No key | Ashby Job Postings API docs |
| SmartRecruiters Posting API | One employer's postings, where the employer enabled the public feed | No key for the public feed | SmartRecruiters Posting API docs |
| USAJOBS Search API | US federal civil-service openings | Free key on application | USAJOBS Search API docs |
| France Travail Offres d'emploi API | Offers published with France's public employment service | Free, with a registered application | France Travail Offres d'emploi API docs |
| EURES portal | Vacancies shared by European public employment services | Search portal, no self-serve developer API documented | EURES portal docs |
| Himalayas API | Remote jobs listed on Himalayas | No key | Himalayas API docs |
| Remotive API | Remote jobs listed on Remotive | No key, delayed feed | Remotive API docs |

The ATS endpoints are clean and free, but each call covers one employer, and nothing tells you which employers use which ATS. You own discovery (finding the board tokens), polling, change detection and deduplication against everything else you collect. That is fine for a watch list of fifty companies and painful for a market. Which ATSs are open and which are gated is mapped in our [public vs gated ATS API reference](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/public-vs-gated-ats-apis).

The public services are the other free route. USAJOBS is covered above. France Travail publishes its offers through an API on francetravail.io once you register an application. EURES brings together vacancies from European public employment services in a search portal; we found no self-serve developer API documented there, so the national services are the practical route. Remote-only boards publish free feeds too. Himalayas offers a free public JSON API with no authentication, returning up to 20 jobs per request. Remotive’s feed is public as well, but the free feed delays jobs by 24 hours, and the team advises calling the free feed at most 4 times a day. More free options are compared on the [free jobs API](https://jobspipe.dev/free-jobs-api) page.

Two names from old tutorials no longer help. The **Indeed Publisher API** was marked deprecated in 2023 and stopped answering in 2024, and **LinkedIn**’s job data sits behind partner-gated Talent Solutions. A guide that points you at either as a public jobs API is out of date; the [Indeed API guide](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-guide) dates each step of the Indeed retirement.

## Which jobs API is best for your use case?

Matching the kind of product to the job saves more money than any discount. This is how we would start for each common need.

| If you need | Start with | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A job board or job search product with many sources | JobsPipe or Fantastic.jobs | Normalized postings from boards and career sites in one call, priced per job |
| Sales lists of companies hiring for a tool or role | TheirStack or PredictLeads | Built around companies and technologies rather than individual postings |
| Bulk history in a warehouse, joined with company records | Coresignal or Techmap | Dataset deliveries and long history, bought as files |
| A prototype on screen tonight | JSearch | A free monthly allowance and Google-ranked results with one key |
| What job seekers see on Google for a query | SerpApi | Returns the Google Jobs panel itself |
| One specific site nobody sells | Bright Data or Apify | Scrapers you point at the site, with parsing left to you |
| A known list of employers on Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby | The ATS's public endpoint | Free, keyless and exact for one employer at a time |
| US federal jobs | USAJOBS | Free with a key and authoritative for federal roles |
| Labour-market reports with a consulting team | Lightcast | Curated analytics and a skills taxonomy, sold by quote |
| Low-volume UK or European search, or aggregate counts | Adzuna | Free to register, with histogram and count endpoints |
| An AI agent that answers hiring questions | JobsPipe | Structured filters, open or closed status and an MCP server |

The rule under the table: if the job posting is your product, buy postings; if the company is your product, buy company signals; if the page is your product, buy search results; and if one site is your product, rent a scraper.

## Why do the pricing units matter so much?

Headline prices look similar and behave very differently. Per job returned (JobsPipe, TheirStack, Coresignal, Fantastic.jobs) is the easiest to model: 1,000 jobs cost the rate per 1,000, whatever the query. Per request (JSearch, SerpApi, JobDataLake, Techmap’s API) depends on page size and on how many requests come back empty; a pagination loop over a thin query spends requests for nothing. Per scraped record (Bright Data, Apify actors) adds your own failure rate, because blocked or broken runs are still usage. Per engagement (Lightcast, JobsPikr, most dataset deals) has no unit at all until someone sends a quote.

For a like-for-like test, pick one query you care about, such as software engineers in Germany posted in the last week, and run it against each shortlisted API. Count three things: the jobs you got, the jobs you would have to deduplicate, and the fields you would still have to parse (salary, location, seniority). The cheapest API on the table is often not the cheapest per usable job.

## How do you try a jobs API before paying?

Most vendors above have a free tier, a trial or a free endpoint, so there is little reason to buy blind. For JobsPipe, the sandbox needs no account at all. It returns fixed sample jobs in the same `{ metadata, data }` shape as the live endpoint, which is enough to wire a client before you sign up:

Try it without a key

```
curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search
```

Only `/v1/sandbox/*` needs no key.

For live data, create a free key and send the same shape of request to the search endpoint. This asks for data engineers in Germany posted in the last seven days:

```
curl https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer jp_live_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "job_title_or": ["data engineer"],
    "job_country_code_or": ["DE"],
    "posted_at_max_age_days": 7,
    "limit": 25
  }'
```

Each result carries `job_title`, `company`, `location`, `date_posted`, `discovered_at`, `last_seen_at`, `status` and `sources`, so you can see every board a job appeared on and whether it is still open. The response metadata includes `credits_charged` and a `next_cursor` for the next page. Run the same query through two or three of the vendors above and compare the rows side by side; that hour tells you more than any comparison page, this one included.

## What do pricing tables leave out?

Deduplication. The same role appears on LinkedIn, on the company’s Greenhouse board and on an aggregator: three copies. Without cross-source matching that is three rows in your index, three calls to a downstream model and three alerts for one job. Ask each vendor whether a job seen on several sources comes back once, and if so, whether the record keeps every source URL.

Closed jobs are the second gap. Postings stay online long after the role is filled, and a feed that only adds jobs slowly fills with dead ones. Ask whether the API marks a posting closed, when it last saw the job live, and whether you can filter on that. Our [job posting API guide](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/job-posting-api) goes through the fields that answer both questions, and the [ATS API integration guide](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/ats-api-integration) covers what it takes to do the matching yourself.

Licence terms are the third. Some APIs allow display on your own site but not resale; some require attribution; some change terms after a trial. Read them before the architecture depends on them.

## Methodology: how this comparison was checked

JobsPipe wrote this page, and JobsPipe sells a jobs API that appears in the table. Three rules keep that from tilting the comparison. First, every competitor price, free tier and coverage claim on this page is read from a registry of facts, each with the vendor’s own URL, the exact wording found on that page and the date it was checked; the page renders from that registry rather than from text typed into the article. Second, every row links the page its numbers came from, so you can check any figure in one click. Third, our own row is held to the same shape, and the JobsPipe section names where we stop. Those pages were fetched on 2026-09-29 and 2026-09-30, and the “Checked” column shows the month for each row. Where a vendor publishes no price, the row says so instead of guessing.

What we did not do: we did not run paid accounts on every vendor, audit their coverage claims, or measure their freshness ourselves, so coverage figures are the vendors’ own. Our own row uses our published plans and names our limits in the JobsPipe section. Vendors change prices; if you spot a figure that has moved, the linked pricing page is the source of truth, and we update this page when the registry is rechecked. Each vendor’s pricing and documentation pages are listed under Sources below.

## Sources

-   [TheirStack pricing](https://theirstack.com/en/pricing)
-   [TheirStack API rate limits](https://theirstack.com/en/docs/api-reference/rate-limit)
-   [TheirStack documentation](https://theirstack.com/en/docs)
-   [Coresignal pricing](https://coresignal.com/pricing/)
-   [Coresignal documentation](https://docs.coresignal.com/)
-   [Fantastic.jobs API plans](https://fantastic.jobs/api)
-   [Fantastic.jobs home page (volume plans and coverage claim)](https://fantastic.jobs/)
-   [Fantastic.jobs developer documentation](https://developer.fantastic.jobs)
-   [JobDataLake pricing and coverage](https://jobdatalake.com/)
-   [JobDataLake API documentation](https://jobdatalake.com/docs)
-   [Techmap job posting data pricing](https://jobdatafeeds.com/pricing)
-   [Techmap developer resources](https://jobdatafeeds.com/developers)
-   [JobsPikr data pricing](https://www.jobspikr.com/jobspikr-data-pricing/)
-   [JobsPikr API documentation](https://www.jobspikr.com/api-documentation/)
-   [Adzuna API terms of service](https://developer.adzuna.com/docs/terms_of_service)
-   [Adzuna API overview](https://developer.adzuna.com/overview)
-   [JSearch API page and plans (OpenWeb Ninja)](https://www.openwebninja.com/api/jsearch)
-   [JSearch API documentation](https://www.openwebninja.com/api/jsearch/docs)
-   [SerpApi pricing](https://serpapi.com/pricing)
-   [SerpApi Google Jobs API](https://serpapi.com/google-jobs-api)
-   [Bright Data pricing](https://brightdata.com/pricing)
-   [Bright Data Web Scraper API pricing](https://brightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper)
-   [Bright Data documentation](https://docs.brightdata.com/)
-   [Apify pricing](https://apify.com/pricing)
-   [Apify LinkedIn Jobs Scraper actor](https://apify.com/curious_coder/linkedin-jobs-scraper)
-   [Apify Indeed Scraper actor](https://apify.com/misceres/indeed-scraper)
-   [Apify API documentation](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2)
-   [PredictLeads pricing](https://predictleads.com/pricing)
-   [PredictLeads documentation](https://docs.predictleads.com/)
-   [Lightcast pricing](https://lightcast.io/solutions/pricing)
-   [Lightcast Open Skills](https://lightcast.io/open-skills)
-   [Lightcast API documentation](https://docs.lightcast.dev/)
-   [USAJOBS developer site](https://developer.usajobs.gov/)
-   [USAJOBS API authentication](https://developer.usajobs.gov/guides/authentication)
-   [USAJOBS API rate limiting](https://developer.usajobs.gov/guides/rate-limiting)
-   [USAJOBS Search API reference](https://developer.usajobs.gov/api-reference/get-api-search)
-   [Greenhouse Job Board API documentation](https://developers.greenhouse.io/job-board.html)
-   [Lever Postings API](https://github.com/lever/postings-api)
-   [Ashby Job Postings API](https://developers.ashbyhq.com/docs/public-job-posting-api)
-   [SmartRecruiters Posting API](https://developers.smartrecruiters.com/docs/posting-api)
-   [France Travail Offres d'emploi API](https://francetravail.io/data/api/offres-emploi)
-   [EURES portal](https://eures.europa.eu/index_en)
-   [Himalayas jobs API](https://himalayas.app/api)
-   [Remotive remote jobs API](https://remotive.com/api/remote-jobs)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is the best jobs API in 2026?

It depends on what you are building. For a job board or job search product that needs many sources in one schema, use an aggregator such as JobsPipe or Fantastic.jobs. For sales lists of companies that are hiring, TheirStack or PredictLeads. For bulk history in a warehouse, Coresignal or Techmap. For a quick prototype, JSearch. For one site nobody sells, a scraper platform such as Bright Data or Apify. There is no single winner across all of those.

### Is there a free jobs API?

Yes, several. Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby publish each employer's open jobs as free, keyless JSON, one employer per call. USAJOBS is free to use, with an API key issued after an application form. Adzuna is free to register, with default limits of 25 calls a minute, 250 a day, 1,000 a week and 2,500 a month, though commercial use needs a licence after a trial. JSearch has a free plan of 200 requests a month, no credit card, and JobsPipe's free plan includes 1,000 free credits, one time.

### How much does a jobs API cost?

Published self-serve plans include SerpApi at $25/mo for 1,000 searches; TheirStack at $49/mo for 1,500 credits, up to $5,500/mo for 5M; and Fantastic.jobs at $95/mo for 20,000 jobs, up to $900/mo for 500,000. JobsPipe's paid plans start at $49/month for 25,000 jobs. Lightcast and JobsPikr quote per engagement. Compare the unit, not just the headline: per job returned, per request and per scraped record behave very differently at volume.

### What is the difference between a jobs API and a job scraper?

A jobs API returns structured JSON you query directly. A scraper extracts data from web pages that you then parse, deduplicate and maintain as sites change. Aggregator APIs hand you normalized postings; scraper platforms such as Bright Data and Apify hand you one site's raw results and leave the rest to you.

### Is there an official Indeed or LinkedIn jobs API?

Not a public one. The Indeed Publisher API was marked deprecated in 2023 and switched off in 2024, and LinkedIn's job data sits behind partner-gated Talent Solutions. Postings from both reach developers through aggregators, search-results wrappers or scrapers instead.

### Which jobs API works for AI agents?

Any API with structured filters works, but agents do better with fields they can reason about: open or closed status, the date a job was last seen, parsed salary ranges and normalized locations. JobsPipe exposes its search through an MCP server as well as REST, and its sandbox at /v1/sandbox/jobs/search needs no key.

### How were the prices in this comparison checked?

Every competitor price, free tier and coverage claim is read from the vendor's own pricing or documentation page, stored with the exact wording and the date it was checked, and rendered into the page from that record. The pages were checked on 2026-09-29 and 2026-09-30. JobsPipe wrote the comparison and sells one of the APIs in it.

Related

## Keep reading

-   [Guide · Aug 7, 2026Jobs API in Python: pip install to live postings in 5 minutes](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/python-jobs-api)
-   [Guide · Jul 28, 2026Salary data APIs in 2026: the real options, honestly compared](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/salary-data-api)
-   [Comparison · Aug 6, 2026JobDataLake vs JobsPipe: two MCP-era jobs APIs compared](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/jobdatalake-alternative)
-   [Comparison · Jul 25, 2026Free job APIs in 2026: what's actually free, what's free-tier, and what's a trap](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/free-job-api)
-   [Guide · Sep 9, 2026What Are the Best AI Agents?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/what-are-the-best-ai-agents)


## Further reading

- [Techmap (jobdatafeeds) vs JobsPipe: bulk feeds or a live API?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/techmap-alternative)
- [JobsPipe vs JSearch](https://jobspipe.dev/alternatives/jsearch)
- [TheirStack alternatives: 5 job data APIs compared (2026)](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/theirstack-alternatives)
- [TheirStack pricing: the full rate card, how credits burn, and the cheaper piece](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/theirstack-pricing)
- [Fantastic.jobs vs JobsPipe: ATS job feeds compared](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/fantastic-jobs-alternative)

---
Try it with no key: `curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search`. AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, MCP server, pricing. Free key (1,000 jobs to start): https://jobspipe.dev/signup