--- title: "Indeed API key: why there is none, and what to use instead" description: "There is no self-serve Indeed API key. Publisher sign-ups closed in 2020, the job-search API was marked deprecated in 2023 and switched off in 2024." canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-key date_published: 2026-07-24 date_modified: 2026-09-30 author: Dvir Atias --- # Indeed API key: why there isn't one, and what to use instead There is no self-serve Indeed API key. Publisher sign-ups closed in 2020, the job-search API was marked deprecated in 2023 and switched off in 2024. Tutorials pointing at the Publisher Program or an apisearch endpoint predate that. Approved partners receive OAuth client credentials for employer-side APIs only, none of which return job postings, so reading postings means a jobs API that carries them. The Indeed publisher key stopped being issued when sign-ups closed in 2020, and it was never replaced with a self-serve equivalent. How to recognise the tutorials that predate the shutdown, what credentials Indeed issues today and to whom, and the working path if your goal is reading Indeed job postings. There is no self-serve Indeed API key. Not a paid one, not a rate-limited free one, not one behind a waitlist. The key you are looking for stopped being issued when Indeed closed publisher sign-ups at the end of 2020, and most of the tutorials explaining how to get it were written before that and never updated. This post covers what the old key was, how to recognise a walkthrough that predates the shutdown, what credentials Indeed issues today, and what to use instead if your actual goal is reading Indeed job postings. The dated history of every Indeed API is in the [Indeed API guide](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-guide). ## The short answer Indeed stopped issuing publisher keys when it closed sign-ups at the end of 2020, marked the job-search API deprecated in 2023, and let the endpoint go dark in 2024. It never replaced it with a self-serve equivalent. The APIs Indeed ships today are employer-side and partner-gated: credentials are issued after approval into a partner program, not after a signup form. None of them returns job postings, so even a successful approval would not give you the endpoint most people want the key for. If your goal is to read Indeed job postings programmatically, the working equivalent is a key for a jobs API that carries Indeed postings. Try it without a key ``` curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search ``` Only `/v1/sandbox/*` needs no key. ## What the Indeed publisher key used to be The Publisher API was Indeed’s public XML feed for affiliates. You registered for the Publisher Program, received a numeric publisher ID, and passed it as a query parameter to a search endpoint that returned jobs as XML. It was free, it required no approval, and for about fifteen years it was the default answer to “how do I get jobs data.” Indeed retired it without a replacement for reading jobs. The sign-up page went away, the documentation was labelled deprecated and then moved behind Indeed’s partner documentation, and the endpoint stopped answering. There was no migration path for data consumers, because data consumers were the use case being removed. ## How to spot a tutorial that predates the shutdown A large share of the pages ranking for this query are stale. Three reliable tells: - It sends you to the Indeed Publisher Program page at `indeed.com/publisher` to register for a key. That page has been gone since the end of 2020. - It shows a request against `api.indeed.com/ads/apisearch` or any endpoint taking a `publisher=` parameter. That is the retired Publisher API. - It parses an XML response. Nothing Indeed ships today returns XML to a self-serve caller. If a walkthrough contains any of those, the code in it has not run successfully in years, whatever the publish date on the page says. ## What credentials Indeed issues today Approved partners receive OAuth client credentials rather than a static API key, and those unlock employer-side surfaces only: the Job Sync API for publishing an ATS’s jobs into Indeed, Indeed Apply for delivering applications back into a partner ATS, the Disposition Sync API for reporting candidate outcomes, and the Sponsored Jobs API for campaign management. Approval is sales-led and scoped to a use case Indeed wants to exist. “We want to read job postings” is not one of them. The full surface breakdown is in the [Indeed API guide](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-guide), and what each surface costs is in [Indeed API pricing](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-pricing). ## If you are an ATS or an employer Your path is real and it is the partner program. Apply through Indeed’s partner channel with your integration described in terms of what it publishes into Indeed rather than what it reads out. Expect a commercial conversation and a review cycle measured in weeks or months. Worth setting expectations internally before you start: a signed partnership grants publishing and application-delivery credentials. It does not turn into a jobs search endpoint later. ## If you want to read Indeed postings Skip the key hunt. Indeed job postings are public web pages, and the practical options are scraping them yourself, buying from a scraping marketplace, or using a jobs API that carries them. What each route costs and what breaks is compared in the [Indeed scraper vs API section](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-guide#should-you-scrape-indeed-yourself-or-use-an-api) of the guide. A JobsPipe key is self-serve and takes about thirty seconds. Indeed is one of 30+ sources behind the same schema: ``` curl https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer jp_live_your_key_here" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "source_or": ["indeed"], "job_title_or": ["data engineer"], "job_country_code_or": ["US"], "posted_at_max_age_days": 7 }' ``` The response carries `job_title`, `company`, `location`, `min_annual_salary_usd` and `max_annual_salary_usd` when a range is stated, an `id` that stays stable for the same posting over time, and a `url` pointing back at the original listing. Every field and filter for Indeed rows is on the [Indeed API source page](https://jobspipe.dev/sources/indeed). ## Sources - [Indeed Job Sync API documentation](https://docs.indeed.com/job-sync-api) - [Indeed Apply documentation](https://docs.indeed.com/indeed-apply) - [Indeed partner API authentication (OAuth)](https://docs.indeed.com/authentication) - [Indeed terms of service](https://www.indeed.com/legal) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do I get an Indeed API key? You cannot get one self-serve. The Indeed Publisher Program, which issued keys on registration, stopped taking sign-ups at the end of 2020, and the job-search endpoint those keys unlocked stopped answering in 2024. Today Indeed issues OAuth client credentials only to companies approved into its partner programme. Any tutorial that sends you to register as an Indeed publisher for a key predates the change. ### Does Indeed have an API key for developers? No. There is no developer key, free or paid, that grants access to Indeed job postings. Approved partners receive OAuth client credentials scoped to partner APIs: publishing jobs into Indeed, delivering applications back to an ATS, reporting candidate outcomes and managing sponsored campaigns. None of those returns job search results. ### Does Indeed have a public or open API? Not for reading jobs. Indeed's public job-search API was marked deprecated in 2023 and switched off in 2024. What remains is a partner programme with a private application process. It is not open in the sense of self-serve registration, and it exposes no jobs-search endpoint. ### What happened to the Indeed Publisher API key? Indeed closed publisher sign-ups at the end of 2020, marked the job-search API deprecated in 2023, and the endpoint stopped answering in 2024, so old keys no longer return anything. The key was a numeric publisher ID passed as a query parameter to an XML search endpoint. There was no migration path for data consumers. ### Does Indeed have an API for employers? Yes, and that is the only side Indeed serves programmatically. Employers and their ATS vendors can use the Job Sync API to publish jobs into Indeed, Indeed Apply to receive applications, the Disposition Sync API to report outcomes, and the Sponsored Jobs API to manage campaigns. All require partner approval, and all move data toward Indeed rather than out of it. ### How do I read Indeed job postings without an API key? Use a jobs API that carries Indeed postings, or scrape the listings yourself and accept the proxy spend, parser maintenance and terms-of-service exposure that come with it. Indeed job postings are public web pages, so the data is reachable; what does not exist is a first-party endpoint that hands it to you. A JobsPipe key is self-serve and covers Indeed as one of 30+ sources under one schema. Related ## Keep reading - [Guide · Jul 13, 2026Indeed API: what Indeed offered, what it retired, and how to read Indeed jobs now](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-guide) - [Reference · Jul 24, 2026What happened to the Indeed Publisher API](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-publisher-api) - [Reference · Jul 24, 2026The four Indeed partner APIs, explained](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-partner-apis) - [Reference · Jul 24, 2026Indeed API pricing: what it costs, and what's actually free](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-api-pricing) - [Guide · Aug 25, 2026Recruitee API: the careers-site endpoint that needs no key at all](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/recruitee-api-jobs) ## Further reading - [Reed API: the UK jobs API you can actually get a key for](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/reed-api) - [Does Indeed have an API?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/does-indeed-have-an-api) - [Indeed scraper in Python: how it works and where it breaks](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/indeed-scraper) --- 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