Indeed

What it is

Indeed is the largest job-ad marketplace: you post a role, job seekers search for it, and you pay to push it above the free listings. Indeed’s own figures are 615 million+ job seeker profiles, 3.3 million+ employers and 60+ countries. It has been owned by Recruit Holdings since 2012, and Glassdoor legally merged into Indeed, Inc. on 1 July 2026 — the Glassdoor brand and reviews continue, but under Indeed’s terms and accounts.

On top of the board, Indeed now sells AI products announced in September 2025. Talent Scout is an employer-side agent that reports on job performance, benchmarks salaries, surfaces matched candidates and drafts outreach, inside Indeed and through Workable, isolved and a Workday Chrome extension. Premium Sponsored Jobs is a higher-priced posting tier with skills targeting and AI outreach. Indeed Connect is a sales-led subscription, rolling out from January 2026, that bundles Smart Screening (scores applicants against your criteria and writes summaries into the ATS), Advanced Sourcing, persistent logo branding and preferential terms. Indeed also runs a beta MCP server, but it is job-seeker-side — job search inside Claude — not an employer tool.

Why it shows up in recruiting stacks

Because the free tier stopped being free in practice, and every TA budget already carries an Indeed line. Two changes in the past year moved hiring teams from posting to paying:

• From December 2025, directly posted free jobs are capped at three per employer per month, visible for 30 days instead of 120.
• From 31 March 2026, jobs sent through single-source feeds lose organic visibility if they could come through an ATS integration with Indeed Apply; those jobs show only when sponsored. Job Board Doctor’s March 2026 analysis reported application drops of up to 50% for affected employers.

Recruit’s own numbers show where the money went. Indeed’s US job postings fell 7% in the fiscal year to March 2026 while US revenue rose 8.8% on 17% growth in revenue per job; in August 2026 Recruit raised its current-year guidance to 30% US revenue-per-job growth. Fewer jobs, higher price per job — that is the repricing, and your invoice is where it lands.

Pricing reality

Sponsored Jobs bill per interaction — a click on a daily budget, or a started application on a monthly budget — with a $5/day minimum and a $25 minimum per sponsored job. Pay-per-completed-application was withdrawn in December 2023. Indeed sets a recommended budget per job from title, location and competition and will not let you bid below its minimum. Third-party 2026 guides put clicks at $0.10 to $5 and the effective cost per application at roughly $15 to $50. Plan on the top half of that band for metro, skilled or licensed roles.

Resume search (Smart Sourcing Professional) lists at $520/month or $4,992/year for 100 contacts a month, with a six-month rollover and $5.20 per extra contact — up from the ~$300 many 2025 guides still quote. Premium Sponsored Jobs is priced “above Standard” with no published number. Talent Scout tiers, Smart Screening and Indeed Connect are quoted by sales only.

Best for

A TA lead or owner-operator at an SMB or multi-site employer hiring hourly, frontline, healthcare or trades roles in the US, UK or Canada, with an ATS that has a certified Indeed Apply integration and someone who reconciles spend against hires each month. That reader should sponsor selectively and track cost per hire per role family.

Skip it as the primary channel for senior, specialist or engineering hiring, where LinkedIn Recruiter and AI sourcing reach people Indeed’s searchers are not.

Versus the alternatives

LinkedIn Recruiter is the other market-share leader. Pick it when the hire is a professional who is not job hunting; Indeed wins when the candidate is actively searching.

ZipRecruiter (NYSE: ZIP) is the distant number three: $118.1 million Q2 2026 revenue and 70,000+ paid employers. Pick it for SMB posting on a subscription plan when you want predictable monthly spend rather than a per-click auction.

Appcast and Joveo buy Indeed and thousands of other sites programmatically. Pick one once you run roughly 30+ open roles and Indeed is not producing most of your hires. Talroo sells per-application pricing for frontline roles. The newest channel is AI-assistant job search: since June 2026 ChatGPT’s US job search surfaces Indeed and Appcast listings, so your Indeed feed now reaches that audience too.

If none fit, the leak is after the click — see Fountain, Paradox and the high-volume recruiting stack.

Watch-outs

• The default budget is Indeed’s number, not yours. Guard: set a cost-per-hire ceiling per role family, sponsor for 14 days, and cut any job whose ATS-confirmed hires do not justify its spend.
• Feed setup can silently zero your organic reach. Guard: send jobs through one source only — a certified ATS integration with Indeed Apply — and check in Indeed’s dashboard that no job shows as sponsored-only by accident.
• AI applies inflate the click meter. Indeed paused the fully automatic mode of “Apply for Me” on 4 August 2026 after employers objected to paying for bot applications. Guard: add one knockout question per job and compare started versus completed applications monthly; dispute charges where the gap spikes.
• Connect and Smart Screening are unpriced bundles. Guard: ask for the per-applicant or per-month price in writing, run a 60-day pilot on one role family, and compare cost per hire against your current sponsored baseline before signing annual terms.