Key takeaway: Nine sites let US employers post a job for $0 in September 2026, and each one caps the free tier differently. Indeed allows three free posts per calendar month, live 30 days each. Wellfound and Handshake allow unlimited free posts but meter what you can do with applicants (Handshake Basic: 10 messages a month). Dover is a free ATS that pushes to 100+ boards. Google for Jobs is free reach if your careers page emits JobPosting schema. LinkedIn has a free post option behind a promote-or-not choice. PostJobFree and Hacker News are free and unmetered but niche. Workable is free only for a 15-day trial. Craigslist, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor are not free for job posts. All figures read from the vendors' own pages on 7 September 2026. Free posts only reach people who are searching; for the candidates who are not, you still need outbound sourcing.

"Free job posting sites" is one of the most-searched employer queries, and most articles answering it list 20 or 30 names without checking whether posting is actually free this year. Several of the usual names now charge for every job post, and several that are free meter something else that matters more than the post itself.

This guide covers only sites whose free terms could be read directly on the vendor's own page on 7 September 2026, states the limit on each, and is explicit about which well-known boards do not belong on a free list. Where a page could not be read, the site is left out rather than assumed.

Which job posting sites are genuinely free for employers in 2026?

Site What is free The catch Best for
Indeed Up to 3 job posts per calendar month, 30 days each Some jobs must be sponsored; sponsored posts get better visibility Common roles, local markets, highest US traffic
LinkedIn One "post without promoting" option in the posting flow Free posts sit below promoted ones; LinkedIn does not publish free-post caps on its help page Professional and white-collar roles
Wellfound Unlimited job listings, built-in ATS, forever Top-of-results Job Ads from $200 per ad Startups hiring engineers, product, design
Handshake Basic Unlimited job posts to verified early talent 10 candidate messages per month; Pro is $450/month Internships, new-grad and early-career roles
Dover Free ATS Unlimited users and jobs, 100+ job board integrations, Gmail and Outlook sync Premium ($199/month) adds AI applicant scoring and unlimited LinkedIn and X posts Founding teams that also need a free ATS
Google for Jobs Indexing of any careers-page job with valid JobPosting structured data You need a careers page that emits the schema (most ATSs do) Every employer, as a zero-cost layer
PostJobFree Free posting, distributed to partner search sites Smaller direct audience, minimal employer tooling Hourly and local roles, extra reach
Hacker News "Who is hiring?" A comment in the monthly thread Text-only, no ATS, engineering audience only Startups hiring developers
Workable 15-day free trial that posts to multiple boards Job archived after 15 days unless you subscribe Testing multi-board distribution once

All terms read from the vendors' own pages on 7 September 2026; full URLs are in the Sources list at the end.

What are the limits on each free job posting site?

Indeed

Indeed's help center (Post a job on Indeed) states that employers posting directly on Indeed can post up to three free jobs per calendar month, each staying live for up to 30 days. The post-a-job page says "most jobs are eligible to post for free" and that sponsored postings "provide better visibility and reach more candidates". Indeed's pricing page adds its own performance claim: Standard sponsored jobs get 3X more applications than non-sponsored ones (US data). Indeed is the largest US job site by traffic per Similarweb's jobs-and-employment ranking (Similarweb, similarweb.com/top-websites/jobs-and-career), so three free posts a month is a meaningful allowance for a small employer. The full posting flow and the sponsored tiers are in our guide to posting a job on Indeed; the cost side is in the Indeed pricing breakdown.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn's job-posting flow ends with a choice: "Select either Free or Promoted" and then "Click Post without promoting or Promote job" (LinkedIn Help, repost a job, linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a516752). So a free option exists. What the help page does not state is a duration or applicant cap on free posts, and LinkedIn has changed those terms several times, so treat any specific number you read elsewhere as dated. The workable approach is to post free, watch the applicant count, and promote only if the role stalls. Our step-by-step guide to posting jobs on LinkedIn for free covers optimisation, and the LinkedIn job posting pricing article covers what promotion costs.

Wellfound

Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) publishes the cleanest free tier on this list: "Post unlimited jobs and manage applicants. $0 / forever", including a built-in ATS or sync to your own (Wellfound pricing). Listings appear in Wellfound search, candidate email alerts, and its weekly newsletter. Paid placement is a per-ad add-on from $200. The audience skews to startup-minded engineers, product managers, and designers, so it is the wrong board for a warehouse lead and the right one for a founding engineer. Wellfound also sells an AI sourcing product, Reach, with a free tier of 20 contact reveals a month and paid seats at $135 and $199, which puts it in the same conversation as the AI sourcing tools covered elsewhere on this site.

Handshake

Handshake's Basic plan is free and includes "unlimited job posting to the largest network of verified early talent", with a limit of 10 candidate messages per month (Handshake employer pricing, joinhandshake.com/employers/pricing). Pro is $450 per month for 200 messages and multi-user collaboration; Enterprise is custom. The 10-message cap is the real constraint: posting is free, but proactively reaching students is metered. For a company hiring one intern a term, Basic is enough. For a campus programme, it is not.

Dover

Dover's Free ATS is "100% free" with unlimited users and jobs, 100+ job board integrations, Gmail and Outlook integrations, and candidate tracking (Dover pricing, dover.com/pricing). The job board integrations are the point: you write the job once in Dover and it distributes to the free boards for you. The $199 per month Premium tier adds unlimited basic LinkedIn and X job posts, AI applicant scoring, AI note-taking, and premium support. For a founding team that has no ATS yet, this is the most complete free option on the list. Its limits are the ones any inbound-first tool has: it manages applicants well and does not find people who did not apply.

Google for Jobs

Google does not host job posts. It indexes jobs from sites across the web and shows them in a dedicated search feature, and any employer can be included by adding JobPosting structured data to the job pages on their own careers site (Google Search Central, Job posting structured data). Google's own case study reports that ZipRecruiter's organic conversion rate from Google grew 4.5x after integrating (Google, Job Search, jobs.google.com/about). If you use an ATS, check whether its hosted careers page already emits the schema; most do. This is the one item on the list that costs nothing and has no cap, which is why it should be switched on before you spend a dollar anywhere else.

PostJobFree

PostJobFree does what the name says: free job posting, distributed to partner job search sites, plus a free resume search (PostJobFree, postjobfree.com). The interface is basic and the employer tooling is minimal. It earns its place as extra distribution for hourly, local, and trades roles where every additional aggregator helps.

Hacker News "Who is hiring?"

On the first weekday of each month, Hacker News runs an "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" thread where any company can post a job as a plain-text comment, free (Hacker News, news.ycombinator.com). There is no form, no ATS, and no analytics. The audience is software engineers and technical founders. For a startup hiring developers, it reliably produces a handful of high-intent applicants; for anything else, skip it.

Workable (15-day trial)

Workable's "post a job for free" page is a 15-day free trial, no credit card required, that publishes your job to multiple free boards including Google and Glassdoor within 12 to 24 hours (Workable, workable.com/post-jobs-for-free). After 15 days the job is archived and removed from the boards unless you upgrade. That makes it a useful one-time test of multi-board distribution, not a free channel. It is listed here because it ranks for the free-posting query and employers should know what they are signing up for.

Which job boards only look free?

Several boards that appear in "free job posting" lists charge for every job post as of 7 September 2026:

  • Craigslist charges $10 to $75 per job post in the US, varying by city, even though most other Craigslist categories are free (Craigslist posting fees).
  • Monster sells Monster+ Standard promoted jobs "starting at $8/day" pay-as-you-go and Monster+ Pro at $299 per month; CareerBuilder listings are now included since the two merged (Monster pricing, hiring.monster.com/pricing). No free post tier is listed.
  • ZipRecruiter markets "post jobs for free", but the mechanism is a time-limited free trial of a paid subscription, not a free tier (its own search listing reads "Try ZipRecruiter for Free!"). Check the current trial length on ziprecruiter.com/plans before posting, because it has changed over time.
  • Glassdoor job posting runs through Indeed, its sister company (the post-job page is titled "Post Jobs | Glassdoor & Indeed"), so a Glassdoor listing follows Indeed's free and sponsored terms rather than adding a separate free tier. Glassdoor's own employer products are branding and review tools (Glassdoor for Employers, glassdoor.com/employers). Our Glassdoor alternatives guide covers the substitutes.
  • SimplyHired is also part of Indeed; posting there is posting on Indeed.

If you compare paid options after the free tiers run out, the Indeed alternatives guide covers where each paid board is strongest.

How do you get the most out of free job posts?

Three things move results on every free board:

  1. Write the title the way candidates search. Free posts rank on relevance to the search query, not on budget. "Accounts Payable Specialist" outperforms "Finance Rockstar" on every board.
  2. Publish the pay range. Indeed inserts an estimate if you leave it blank; several US states require it; and it is the single largest driver of whether a qualified candidate clicks. If your range is uncompetitive, the AI compensation benchmarks and recruiting benchmarks on this site are a starting point for fixing it.
  3. Repost on the cycle the board allows. Indeed's three-per-month allowance and 30-day duration mean a role that stays open past 30 days needs a fresh post. Put the dates in your calendar rather than waiting to notice the applicants stopped.

Then measure. SHRM's 2026 recruiting benchmarking puts median time-to-fill for nonexecutive roles at 39 days (SHRM). If a free post has not produced a shortlist in three weeks, the problem is usually not the board, it is that the people you need are not applying anywhere.

What can free job posts never do?

Every site on this list reaches people who are actively searching for a job this month. That is a fraction of the qualified population for any role above entry level, and the more senior or specialised the role, the smaller the fraction. Our comparison of outbound vs inbound recruiting covers the numbers.

Free boards also share a second limit: the applicants arrive unranked. A free Indeed post for a common role can produce hundreds of applications, most of them wrong for the job, and screening them is unpaid recruiter time. That cost often exceeds what a sponsored post would have charged.

Outbound sourcing covers both gaps. Noon's AI Sourcer searches for candidates across the web, not one board or database, evaluates each against the role's non-negotiables and weighted criteria, and re-ranks as hiring-manager feedback comes in. The AI Outreach agent then contacts ranked candidates by email, LinkedIn, and SMS with personalised sequences, and the AI Scheduler books the interviews. It runs on one plan with unlimited sourcing, contacts, and seats, so there is no per-post or per-message meter to hit. Noon does not publish a dollar price; pricing is quoted per team.

The practical setup for most small teams: switch on Google for Jobs through your careers page, use the Indeed and LinkedIn free posts for the active market, add Wellfound or Handshake if the role fits their audience, and run outbound sourcing in parallel for the candidates who will never see a post.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I post a job for free with the most reach?

Indeed, by traffic. Its help center allows three free posts per calendar month, each live 30 days (checked 7 September 2026). Pair it with Google for Jobs through your own careers page for free reach that has no cap.

Is LinkedIn job posting free?

There is a free option. LinkedIn's posting flow lets you "post without promoting". Free posts rank below promoted ones and LinkedIn's help page does not publish a fixed duration or applicant cap for them, so check the terms shown in your own posting flow.

Is ZipRecruiter free to post a job?

Not as a tier. ZipRecruiter offers a free trial of a paid plan. When the trial ends, the post comes down unless you subscribe.

Is Craigslist free for job posts?

No. Craigslist charges $10 to $75 per job post in US cities (fee varies by area), although most other categories on the site are free.

Which free job posting sites are best for tech roles?

Wellfound (unlimited free listings), the monthly Hacker News "Who is hiring?" thread, and LinkedIn's free option. For senior engineers, expect free posts to underperform and plan on outbound sourcing as well.

Do free job posts appear on Google?

Jobs on major boards are indexed by Google's job search feature automatically. Jobs on your own careers page appear only if the page emits JobPosting structured data. Most ATS-hosted careers pages do this by default.

Sources