What it is
Glassdoor is the employee-review site: anonymous company reviews, salary reports and interview write-ups that job seekers read before they apply. Employers cannot delete reviews. They can claim a free profile, respond, and pay for a better-presented one. Recruit Holdings bought Glassdoor in 2018, and on 1 July 2026 it legally merged into Indeed, Inc. The brand, the site and the anonymous reviews continue, but now under Indeed’s terms of use and privacy policy. New users have signed in with an Indeed account since November 2025, and existing users had until 20 April 2026 to link one.
What an employer can buy today:
- Free Employer Profile — request and respond to reviews, add photos, video and company content, and monitor ratings.
- Enhanced Profile — advanced insights, comparisons against other companies, customization and targeting, premium branded content and adaptive advertising. The upgrade can also remove paid ads from comparable employers that otherwise show on your profile. It is sold through the Employer Branding Hub, which bundles it with Indeed’s Premium Company Page in one dashboard.
- Employer Branding Ads, Spotlight Pages and Review Intelligence, which reads sentiment across Glassdoor and Indeed reviews, filters by job function and country, and benchmarks you against industry peers.
There is no separate Glassdoor job-posting product any more. Posting “on Glassdoor” routes you to Indeed, organic Indeed jobs appear on Glassdoor at no cost, and sponsoring a job on Indeed raises its visibility on both sites.
Is the paid profile still worth it?
Only for a specific kind of employer. Your reviews are public whether you pay or not. The money buys presentation, removal of competitors’ ads from your page, and analytics. It does not buy a better rating.
Indeed’s own numbers for Hub customers versus employers without it are 23% more started applications, 35% more job clicks and 28% more brand impressions (worldwide, April 2023 to March 2025), plus a 49% lower cost per apply start in older US data. These are vendor figures comparing employers who chose to buy against those who did not, and the buyers are usually bigger, better-known brands. Treat them as a ceiling, not a forecast.
Our rule: pay when three things are true. You hire roughly 50+ people a year into roles where candidates research employers first (corporate, professional, technical). Your rating is at or above your direct hiring competitors, so presentation helps rather than draws attention. And someone owns review responses every month. If any of the three is missing, keep the free profile and put the budget into fixing whatever the reviews complain about.
Pricing reality
Glassdoor publishes no employer list price beyond the free profile. The Employer Branding Hub is quote-only. Vendr’s purchase data (a sample of 39 deals) puts employer-branding subscriptions at $15,000 to $50,000 a year, with mid-market buyers typically paying $20,000 to $40,000. Because the Hub bundles the Indeed Premium Company Page, the quote usually lands inside your wider Indeed relationship. Negotiate it alongside sponsored-job spend and any Indeed Connect proposal rather than as a separate line.
Best for
A talent-acquisition or employer-brand lead at a mid-size or enterprise US employer that hires corporate or professional roles at volume, already spends with Indeed, and has a Glassdoor rating that competes with its peers. That reader should buy the Hub on a one-year term with a measured baseline (see the watch-outs).
Skip the paid tier if you hire fewer than about 20 people a year, or if you mostly hire hourly and frontline roles. Those candidates apply on Indeed and rarely read deep profiles, so sponsored jobs and a fast apply flow return more per dollar.
Versus the alternatives
LinkedIn is the other market-share leader for employer brand. Company Pages and paid Career Pages reach professionals in the feed, including people who are not job hunting. Pick LinkedIn when your hiring problem is passive professionals. Glassdoor wins when candidates are actively comparing employers and reading reviews.
Indeed Company Pages come from the same seller and now sit in the same Hub. Ask whether the Enhanced Profile can be bought alone if you only care about one site.
kununu is the employer-review site that matters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with reviews tied to a company email address. Pick it for DACH hiring. Blind is where verified tech employees talk candidly. Monitor it if you hire engineers. We found no independent review site with published growth figures that challenge Glassdoor. The newer entrants are niche, such as RepVue, which rated 11,000+ sales organizations per its 2022 funding announcement.
If you want to own the story rather than rent it, build your career site and content with Radancy or Phenom, tighten job-ad language with Textio, and read employer branding for the full program.
Watch-outs
- Paying does not change what employees write. Guard: use Review Intelligence or a monthly export of the free ratings to tag the top three complaint themes, assign each to an owner in HR or the business, and respond to new reviews within a week without arguing facts.
- The vendor lift figures are not causal. Guard: record 90 days of baseline application starts, job clicks and cost per hire for the same role families before the Hub goes live, compare at month six, and negotiate an exit or downgrade clause at renewal.
- The bundle hides the price of each part. Guard: ask for line-item prices for the Enhanced Profile and the Indeed Premium Company Page, and align the renewal date with your Indeed contract so you negotiate once.
- Reviewer anonymity is a live trust issue. In March 2024, Ars Technica reported that Glassdoor added a user’s real name and city to their profile after its Fishbowl integration. Guard: adopt a written rule that no one tries to identify reviewers, keep identifying details out of public responses, and route retaliation concerns to legal.
- Admin access now runs through Indeed accounts. Guard: audit who holds employer admin rights, move them onto company-owned email addresses, and remove departed staff the same day.