Is DeUnemployment really free?

Yes. Searching is free, no account is required, and job seekers are never charged. We run on public job data, our own crawlers and a roughly $5/month server, paid for by us.

Two things we will say out loud: we keep a very small cache, so a cold search can take several seconds, and we do not vet the postings — we are a search engine over a public crawl, not a recruiter who guarantees the employer.

No. We do not sell data about you, we do not rent contact or resume lists, and there are no accounts required to search. You can read the whole policy at /privacy.

Why is search sometimes slow?

Because we cache very little. A larger cache would cost more or serve you staler listings. We picked fresh and occasionally slow over stale and fast.

DeUnemployment

What's the catch?

On 16 September 2026, someone on Reddit asked us the best question anyone has asked about this site. We did not have an answer written down anywhere — not because we were hiding one, but because it had never occurred to us that we needed a page for it.

So this page is his fault. Everything below exists because he asked.

Reddit comment from u/magaruis: I really want to like this. My biggest question is; what's the catch. It's free and you claim you aren't selling the data. There has to be a catch. And nowhere does it mention any possible catch. Or talk about the philosophy about it being free and catchless. — u/magaruis · Reddit · 16 September 2026

There is a catch. Two of them, actually.

1. Search is slow, and that is a deliberate trade. We keep a very small cache, so a cold search can take several seconds. A bigger cache means either a bigger bill or serving you listings that have already moved. We chose fresh and occasionally slow over stale and fast.
2. Nobody vets the postings for you. We are a search engine over a public crawl, not a recruiter. We cannot promise you the employer, the salary or the company behind every ad, and every job board in this market carries scams. What we do is measure: listing age, duplicates, dead links, which platform a posting came from. You can see all of that on the data pages.

That is the whole list. If you find a third one, tell us and we will add it to this page.

Why it is free

The short version is a reply I wrote on Reddit, lightly edited:

I am not of the Western mindset that everything has to be a chance to earn money. I grew up in Eastern Europe, through a few wars.

The whole thing runs on open job data and crawlers I wrote myself, on a $5 a month server. The only thing I spend is my time — and this is how I like to spend it. I have the skills to make it happen, it costs me almost nothing, and it can help someone. That is a no-brainer for me.

— the person who built this

There is no venture round behind it, no growth team, and nobody to repay. What there is: one index, rebuilt every day, and a search box that does not ask you to sign in.

What we will never do

Sell data about you.
Charge a job seeker to search or to apply.
Rent out contact lists or résumé data.
Hide advertising inside search results without labelling it.
Require an account to search.
Take a cut of anyone's salary.

The full policy is at privacy. It is short and it is written to be read.

What is still missing

Beyond the two catches above: coverage is uneven, because we can only index what platforms publish openly. Salary figures are model estimates, not offers. The index is not the whole market. And this is a small project — one person, a nightly rebuild, and no support desk. When something is broken, it can stay broken for a day.

If that list is what you wanted to know before trusting a site, then the page did its job. Questions, corrections, or a catch we missed: [email protected].

This page exists because u/magaruis asked “what's the catch?” on Reddit on 16 September 2026, and pointed out “nowhere does it mention any possible catch.” He was right. Most sites never answer it. Thanks for asking.