# Free job posting APIs in 2026: what is actually free

Canonical: https://headcountlabs.com/guides/free-job-postings-api/

GUIDE
# Free job posting APIs in 2026: what is actually free Free job APIs compared on what "free" means for each one: a monthly allowance, a trial, a sample file, or an open feed with conditions. Get an API key ↗ All guides ↗ Updated October 19, 2026 . By the Headcount Labs data team. We sell one of the products compared here. Facts about other providers come from their own pages, read on the date above. Few job posting APIs are free for real work. Most "free" offers are a trial, a one-time credit or a sample file. The ones that stay free every month either cap you at a few hundred jobs, cover one niche (US federal jobs, remote jobs, one company's board), or limit commercial use. Headcount Labs gives 100,000 job records free every UTC month and charges $0.01 per 1,000 after that. We sell it, so read the table and the "where others are better" section with that in mind.
## The four things "free" means
 Before you compare numbers, sort each offer into one of four kinds. They behave very differently once your project is past the first afternoon.
- A monthly allowance. You get a fixed amount every month, forever, without paying. When you pass it, you either stop until next month or start paying. This is the only kind you can build a small product on.
- A trial. Full access for 7 or 14 days, or a set of credits that you get once. Good for testing data quality. Not good for anything that has to keep running.
- A sample file. A download of some records so you can check the fields. No API calls, no fresh data.
- An open feed with conditions. No key, no account, but the feed covers one site or one niche, and the terms ask for attribution, delay the jobs, or forbid some uses.
 Then check three limits on each one. The limit that bites first is rarely the headline number. It is usually the page size, the calls per minute, or the terms for commercial use.
## Free job APIs compared
 Every row comes from the provider's own page, read on October 19, 2026. Links to each page are in the sources list at the end.
 API What free means Limit that bites first Key needed Coverage
 Headcount Labs Monthly allowance: 100,000 records every UTC month Then $0.01 per 1,000 records. Without prepaid usage or pay as you go, calls stop until the 1st Yes, free. The keyless MCP endpoint needs none 7M+ open postings from employers' career sites and job-board platforms
 Hirebase Monthly allowance: 500 jobs a month Hard limit. Usage pauses at the cap until the reset Yes States 230k+ career pages
 TheirStack Monthly allowance: 200 API credits and 50 company credits One API credit per job. Only for users who have never paid Yes States 255M jobs across 195 countries since 2021
 PredictLeads Monthly allowance: 100 API calls 100 calls a month Yes Company signals, including job openings
 SerpApi Monthly allowance: 250 searches 250 searches a month, 50 an hour Yes Google search results, including the Google Jobs listings
 Apify Monthly allowance: $5 of prepaid usage The free plan is blocked until the next cycle when the $5 runs out Yes Community scrapers, each with its own price
 Techmap Free tier: 1,000 jobs Then $1 per 1,000 job postings Yes (RapidAPI or AWS) States 12M active jobs a month in 250 countries
 Adzuna Default access limits 25 hits a minute, 250 a day, 2,500 a month. Commercial, government and academic use other than publishing Adzuna ads is a 14-day trial Yes (app_id and app_key) Adzuna's own job ads
 The Muse Open API 500 requests an hour without a key, 3,600 with one. 20 jobs a page Optional The Muse listings (414,950 results reported on Oct 19)
 USAJOBS Free government API Up to 500 results a page Yes US federal government jobs only
 Reed Free developer API Up to 100 results per call Yes Jobs on reed.co.uk (UK)
 Arbeitnow Open feed 300 jobs a page, updated hourly. Asks for a link back No Jobs from ATS boards, mostly Germany, plus a UK feed
 Remotive Open feed Jobs delayed 24 hours, at most 4 calls a day advised, no reposting to Google Jobs or LinkedIn. 12 jobs in the feed when we called it No Remote jobs on Remotive
 Remote OK Open feed Must link back with a followed link and name Remote OK. 99 jobs in the feed when we called it No Remote jobs on Remote OK
 JobsPipe Trial: 1,000 credits once, they never expire One credit per job. Then plans from $19.60 a month Yes. A no-key sandbox endpoint is offered States 11.5 million active postings from 30+ sources
 Fantastic.jobs Trial: free for 14 days 500 jobs and 100 API requests in the trial Yes States 3M+ career site jobs and 11M+ job board jobs a month
 Coresignal Trial: 7 days Paid plans from $49 a month; one credit per job posting record Yes States 482M+ job postings in its dataset
 Bright Data Sample: a free sample download from each dataset Datasets need a minimum monthly commitment Account LinkedIn, Indeed and other job listings datasets
 Counts in the last column are each provider's own figure, not ours, except the Headcount Labs count (7M+ open postings from site-stats.json) and the feed sizes we measured by calling the open feeds on October 19, 2026.
## Open feeds: free, with strings attached
 Four of the APIs above need no key at all. They are the quickest way to get some real job JSON on your screen.
 Arbeitnow returns 300 jobs a page and says its jobs are updated every hour. The jobs come from applicant tracking systems such as Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, Join.com, Teamtailor, Recruitee and Comeet. The response itself carries the terms: it is "a free public API for jobs, please do not abuse", and the owner asks for a link back. Most jobs are in Germany. A UK version runs at arbeitnow.co.uk.
 Remotive and Remote OK are remote-job boards that publish their own listings. Both ask you to credit them and link back. Remotive also delays jobs by 24 hours, advises at most four calls a day, and asks you not to send its jobs to other sites such as Google Jobs or LinkedIn. When we called it on October 19 the feed held 12 jobs. Remote OK returned 99.
 The Muse has a public jobs endpoint. Without a key you get 500 requests an hour. With a free key you get 3,600. Its first page reported 414,950 results, 20 per page.
 There is a fifth kind of open feed that many people miss. Applicant tracking systems such as Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby publish each employer's open jobs as public JSON, with no key. One call returns one employer's board. That is ideal when you care about a list of known companies, and useless when you want "all nurse jobs in Texas". Our guide to which ATSs have public job APIs covers them one by one.
## Monthly allowances on commercial APIs
 A monthly allowance is what you need for a side project, a research script, or an AI agent that runs a few searches a day. Here is how they compare in jobs per month.
- Headcount Labs: 100,000 records a month. A record is one job a successful response returns. Counts return a number and cost nothing.
- Hirebase: 500 jobs, 50 companies and 3 salary benchmarks a month. Usage pauses at the cap.
- TheirStack: 200 API credits a month, and a job costs one API credit. The free plan is only for users who have never paid.
- PredictLeads: 100 API calls a month.
- SerpApi: 250 searches a month. Each search returns one page of Google results, so this is a search budget, not a job budget.
- Apify: $5 of prepaid usage a month, spent on whatever scraper you run.
- Techmap: 1,000 jobs free, then $1 per 1,000.
 Adzuna is a special case. Its default limits (2,500 calls a month) are generous for a free API. But its terms say use by a commercial, government or academic organisation, other than publishing Adzuna's ads, is allowed only as a 14-day trial. Read them before you build a report on it.
## Trials and samples
 JobsPipe gives 1,000 credits once, and they never expire. Fantastic.jobs is free for 14 days, with 500 jobs and 100 API requests. Coresignal has a 7-day free trial. Bright Data lets you download a free sample from each dataset page. These are good for checking fields and quality before y