Complete guide
Australian job boards, compared
Job boards are the default way Australian businesses find staff, and almost nobody chooses one deliberately. Most SMEs use whichever board they used last time, at whatever price was offered, without a clear view of what they are buying.
This page names the actual options, says what each costs, and is honest about where the expensive ones are worth it. We publish this site, and we also run one of the boards listed — that disclosure sits alongside the comparison below, and we have tried to write the table we would want to read.
The short version
- SEEK has the largest candidate audience in Australia by a wide margin. For competitive metro professional roles that reach is often worth the price.
- Indeed lets you post free, but free listings sink within days — the usable product is pay-per-click sponsorship.
- Jora and Workforce Australia cost nothing and are worth using alongside a paid ad, not instead of one.
- LinkedIn reaches passive professionals and is close to useless for trades, retail, hospitality and care roles.
- Flat-price independent boards are cheapest per ad but reach fewer people — the right trade for local roles, the wrong one for a scarce specialist.
- The ad matters more than the board. A strong ad on one board beats a weak ad on four.
How do job boards actually work?
A job board sells visibility: you pay to have an ad listed and surfaced to jobseekers searching or browsing that board, and it provides a mechanism for collecting the applications.
Behind that simple exchange there are three things a board is doing, and it is worth separating them because boards differ enormously on each.
- 1
Attracting jobseekers
Through search engines, brand recognition, email alerts and apps. This is the expensive part and it is what you are mostly paying for.
- 2
Matching your ad to them
Search, filters, category browsing and alerts. The quality of this determines whether your ad reaches relevant people rather than merely many people.
- 3
Handling the applications
An inbox, a shortlisting view, screening questions, sometimes a full applicant tracking system. Useful, but the part you could replace with a spreadsheet if you had to.
How do Australian job boards price their ads?
Australian job boards generally price in one of four ways: per ad, in ad packs or credits, by subscription, or by performance — and which is cheapest depends entirely on how often you hire.
| Model | How it works | Suits | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per ad | Fixed price for one listing for a set period | Businesses hiring occasionally | Cost per hire if the first ad doesn't land |
| Ad packs / credits | Buy several ads up front at a lower unit price | 2–10 hires a year | Expiry dates — credits that lapse are a real cost |
| Subscription | Monthly or annual fee, often with ad limits | Continuous or high-volume hiring | Paying through quiet months; minimum terms |
| Performance / CPC | You pay per click or per application | Hard-to-fill roles with budget flexibility | Costs are uncapped unless you cap them |
For a business hiring between two and ten people a year — which describes most Australian SMEs — credit packs are usually the best fit, provided the credits do not expire. That caveat does a lot of work: an annual expiry turns a pack into a subscription you have to remember to use.
The main Australian job boards, compared
SEEK leads on reach and price, Indeed offers free listings plus pay-per-click, Jora and Workforce Australia are free, LinkedIn suits professional roles only, and the independent boards compete on flat low pricing.
| Board | Indicative cost | Reach | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEEK | Variable, not published per ad; reported from ~$400–$450 +GST, premium tiers higher. Prepaid ad budgets from $3,700 +GST (8–10 ads) | Largest in Australia | Competitive metro professional roles where reach justifies the spend |
| Indeed | Free posting (limited active listings); Sponsored Jobs priced per click with a daily budget | Very large, global platform | Testing a role cheaply; high-volume roles where you'll manage CPC spend |
| Jora | Free to post; paid promotion available | Moderate; strong regional and migrant audience | A free second channel alongside a paid ad |
| Free posting; promoted listings priced per day | Large but skewed professional | White-collar, management and specialist roles; passive candidates | |
| Workforce Australia for Business | Free | Moderate; government service | Entry-level roles; candidates with provider support and possible wage subsidies |
| CareerOne | Reported from ~$185–$250 +GST per post | Smaller generalist | A lower-cost generalist alternative |
| Adzuna | Reported from ~$99–$199 +GST per post | Aggregator-led | Extra distribution rather than a primary channel |
| JobSearch.com.au (ours) | $149 incl. GST single ad (~$135 +GST); $65/ad incl. GST in a 10-pack; credits never expire | Smaller than SEEK; concentrated on local active jobseekers | Local trade, admin, retail, care and hospitality roles; hiring a few times a year |
When is SEEK worth the money?
When the role is competitive, professional and metropolitan, and the cost of the seat staying empty is larger than the gap in ad price — which for many salaried roles it comfortably is.
It would be convenient for us to argue that nobody needs SEEK. That is not true, and anyone who has hired in Australia knows it is not true.
SEEK has the largest active jobseeker audience in the country and the strongest unprompted brand recall — for a great many Australians, looking for a job means opening SEEK. For a $120,000 role in Sydney with four other employers hiring the same skill set, that audience is the difference between a shortlist and a vacancy.
Run the arithmetic rather than the instinct. If your vacancy cost is $2,000 a week, a $495 ad that fills the role two weeks sooner has paid for itself eight times over. Ad price is a rounding error against time-to-fill on a well-paid role.
Don't
Dismissing the big boards on price alone
Instead
Compare against vacancy cost. On a competitive salaried role, reach is usually worth more than the saving.
Don't
Paying for national premium reach on a local casual role
Instead
Most hands-on roles are filled within 30 minutes' travel. You're buying an audience you can't use.
Don't
Buying a large prepaid ad budget to get the unit price down
Instead
Only if you'll genuinely use it. A $3,700 budget at four hires a year is worse value than paying per ad.
How does Indeed's free posting really work?
You can post without paying, but free listings lose visibility within a few days as sponsored ads push them down — so the free tier is best understood as a trial, not a channel.
Indeed allows a limited number of free active postings, and for a role with plenty of available candidates that can genuinely be enough. For anything competitive, the listing is buried by the end of the week.
The real product is Sponsored Jobs, priced per click against a daily budget you set. That model has two consequences worth knowing before you start:
- Your spend tracks clicks, not hires. A vague ad with an appealing title can burn budget on people who click and leave. Precision in the ad directly reduces cost here, more than on any flat-price board.
- You have to watch it. Per-click pricing rewards attention. If nobody reviews the campaign for a fortnight, it will keep spending.
Which Australian job board suits which role?
Match the board to the role: licensed and clinical work goes to a niche board, local hands-on roles to a low-cost board with local reach, competitive professional roles to SEEK, and white-collar specialists to LinkedIn.
| Role type | Start with | Worth adding |
|---|---|---|
| Trade / licensed | A flat-price local board; industry association | Jora (free); TAFE or GTO for apprentices |
| Admin / bookkeeping | A flat-price local board | SEEK if the role is senior or competitive |
| Retail / hospitality | A flat-price local board; in-store signage or QR code | Indeed free listing; paid social for volume casual |
| Care / clinical | A niche sector board | SEEK for registered roles; Workforce Australia for support roles |
| Professional / office | SEEK | LinkedIn; your own careers page |
| Management / specialist | LinkedIn + SEEK | Direct approach; your network |
| Entry level / trainee | Workforce Australia (free) | Jora; a flat-price local board |
| Visa-sponsored (482 / 494) | A board that supplies advertising evidence | Keep documentation from day one |
Four questions resolve most cases: is the role licensed or specialised, is the candidate pool local, how often will you hire, and what do you need beyond the listing. Detail on each is in where to advertise a job in Australia.
Should you post a job ad to more than one board?
Usually not at the start. Post one well-written ad to the best-matched paid board, add the free channels, give it a week, and only buy a second paid listing if the flow is genuinely thin.
Posting the same ad in five paid places feels like diligence. In practice it multiplies your cost, splits your applications across five inboxes, and tells you nothing about which channel worked. It also does nothing about the most common cause of a failed ad, which is the ad.
The free channels are a different matter — Jora, Workforce Australia and your own careers page cost nothing but your time, and there is no good reason to skip them.
Don't
Buying five paid listings on day one
Instead
One paid board plus the free ones. Review after seven days. Widen only on evidence.
Don't
Judging a board by one ad
Instead
A poorly-titled ad with no salary fails everywhere. Fix the ad before you blame the channel.
Don't
Buying premium placement for a vague ad
Instead
Premium placement multiplies your ad's effect — including when that effect is negative.
Should you advertise jobs on your own careers page?
Your own page is the cheapest channel you own, it lets candidates research you before applying, and it is where aggregators and search engines can find your roles directly.
Even a single page listing current vacancies does three useful things: it gives you somewhere to send people from social posts and in-store signage, it lets candidates check you out (which increases applications from named ads), and it gives search engines a page to index for "[your business] jobs".
Several boards will provide a hosted branded page if you would rather not build one — including a QR-code option for capturing walk-in interest, which is genuinely useful for retail and hospitality.
Common questions
How much does it cost to advertise a job in Australia?
Anywhere from nothing to several thousand dollars. Workforce Australia and Jora are free, Indeed offers limited free listings plus pay-per-click sponsorship, independent boards sit around $100–$250 per ad, and SEEK is variably priced with third-party reports starting around $400–$450 plus GST and rising for premium placement. Advertising is usually a small share of total hiring cost; the owner's time and the empty seat cost far more.
Is SEEK or Indeed better for Australian employers?
They solve different problems. SEEK has the larger and more job-focused Australian audience and charges a fixed price per ad, which suits competitive salaried roles. Indeed lets you start free and then pay per click, which suits testing a role or managing spend on high-volume hiring, but free listings lose visibility within days and the sponsored model needs monitoring.
What is the cheapest way to advertise a job in Australia?
Free channels: Workforce Australia for Business, Jora, your own careers page, and your network. Among paid boards, flat-price independents are generally cheapest per ad — JobSearch.com.au, which we run, is $149 including GST and $65 an ad in a 10-pack. Cheapest per ad is not the same as cheapest per hire, though: if a low-cost ad leaves the role open an extra three weeks, it cost you more.
What's the difference between a job board and an aggregator?
A job board hosts ads that employers post and pay for directly. An aggregator such as Adzuna crawls and indexes ads from across other boards and company sites, then charges for sponsored placement within those results. Your ad can appear on an aggregator without you having posted there.
Do I need a recruitment agency instead?
Agencies typically charge a percentage of first-year salary, commonly in the mid-teens to around 20%, so on a $70,000 role that is roughly $10,000 to $14,000 against a few hundred dollars to advertise directly. Agencies earn that on genuinely hard-to-fill, senior or confidential roles. For most SME vacancies a well-written ad on the right board fills the job for a fraction of the cost.
How long should a job ad stay live?
Most boards list for 30 days, but the useful window is far shorter — the majority of strong applications arrive in the first three to seven days. Treat day seven as your review point rather than day 30.
Go deeper on this
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