Best Job Sites in the UK: Where to Search and What Overlaps

The best job sites in the UK, and what each is good for

The best job sites in the UK (some lists call them job portals or job search engines) fall into three groups. Search engines collect jobs from many places. Job boards carry ads that employers and agencies post on them directly. Specialist sites cover one sector. A good search uses one of each.

Indeed is a good place to start because it collects jobs from many places. In its own words, "Indeed uses aggregation technology to collect jobs from all over the Internet," and another Indeed page says its technology "continuously scans career sites and job boards across the web." Some jobs are posted on Indeed itself, and the rest come from career sites and other boards. Since July 2026 Indeed also runs Glassdoor.

Adzuna works the same way. The Office for National Statistics, which used Adzuna's data to track UK vacancies, describes it as "an online job search engine that collates information from thousands of different sources in the UK," from employers' own websites to traditional job boards. It is London based; our page on how Adzuna works has the details.

Totaljobs is a job board run by The Stepstone Group UK. Recruiters post ads there and search its CV database by keyword.

Reed is run by Reed Online Limited and says it was "the first recruitment website offered by a recruitment agency in the UK," launched in 1995. Direct employers and recruitment agencies both post there.

LinkedIn is most useful for being found by recruiters. With Open to Work set to recruiters only, your status shows to "People using LinkedIn Recruiter only." For how it compares with Indeed as a place to search, see LinkedIn vs Indeed.

Why you see the same job on four different sites

Search a few UK job sites in one evening and the same ads keep coming back. Most of the repeats have one of three causes.

• Search engines copy from boards. Indeed and Adzuna collect ads from career sites and job boards, so a job posted on another board or on a company's careers page can also appear on both of them. Searching both of them and every board they collect from means reading many of the same ads again.
• Sites that look different share an owner. CWJobs lists Totaljobs, Caterer.com, CatererGlobal, CityJobs, Milkround, RetailChoice and others as job boards of the same company, The Stepstone Group UK. They are separate sites for different sectors, so a sister site earns a place in your search only when it matches your field.
• Agencies post one role many times. In its notes on Adzuna's data, the ONS explains that exact copies of an ad turn up "because of multiple recruiters advertising at the same time," and that "most duplications appear to be repostings with little editing." Three agencies can be filling the same job, each with its own ad.

Each general site you add brings more of these copies, and copies are where people apply twice to the same role. Mark each job as applied in the HideJobs browser extension and add it to your job tracker, and when a job with a similar title from the same employer turns up on another site, its card says "Likely applied to this job on Totaljobs" (or wherever you applied). For agency copies, ask the agency which employer it is.

Recruitment agency ads: how to spot one and when to apply

Agency ads are normal on UK job boards, and many are real jobs. The usual problems: the same role from several agencies, a vague "our client" with no employer name, and your CV sent to companies you didn't choose.

Signs that an ad comes from an agency:

• The company name is a recruitment firm, or the ad says "our client" without naming the employer.
• The same title, pay and town appear under two or three different company names.
• The salary is a wide band and the location is a whole region.
• On Reed, the "Posted by" filter puts it under Agency.

An agency ad is worth answering when the role fits and you would not find it any other way. UK rules give you some control. An agency "cannot give information about you to any third parties" without your permission, GOV.UK says, and the Conduct Regulations say an agency needs your "prior consent" before it shares your details. Before an agency sends your CV anywhere, ask which employer it is going to. If you already applied there yourself, say so: two applications to one job, one direct and one through an agency, can confuse the employer. If an agency asks you to pay, see job scams for what to do next.

When an agency keeps filling your results with roles you don't want, hide it. In the HideJobs browser extension, click the eye icon right after the company name on a Totaljobs card, and that agency's ads disappear from your results on Totaljobs and on the other job sites HideJobs supports where it posts under the same name. On Totaljobs, you can also put "our client" in the Deep Scanner: it reads the full ad for each job on the results page and flags the ones that use the phrase, so you can hide them or show only them.

Which UK job sites to use for your kind of job

Add one specialist site to your general search for the jobs that general boards cover badly or not at all.

• NHS. NHS Jobs is "the official online recruitment service for the NHS in England and Wales." Apply there, not through a copy of the ad on another site. In Scotland, you can search NHS jobs from NHS Scotland Careers.
• Government. Civil service jobs go on Civil Service Jobs. The Department of Health and Social Care, for example, says: "All Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) jobs are advertised on the Civil Service Jobs website."
• Tech. CWJobs lists roles "from management to infrastructure, testing to cyber security." It is a Stepstone Group UK site, like Totaljobs.
• Charities and non-profits. CharityJob calls itself "the UK's first and foremost specialist job board for the non-profit, NGO, social enterprise, CIC and voluntary sectors."
• Hospitality and retail. Caterer.com and RetailChoice are on The Stepstone Group UK's list of job boards, alongside Totaljobs.
• Schools. Teaching Vacancies is "a free job-listing service from the Department for Education," and "All state funded schools and trusts in England can use Teaching Vacancies."
• Apprenticeships. GOV.UK's Find an apprenticeship says: "Use this service to search and apply for apprenticeships in England." Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own service, linked from the same page.
• Jobcentre support. GOV.UK's Find a job now leads to Work Hub, the Department for Work and Pensions service for jobs in England, Scotland and Wales. For Northern Ireland, GOV.UK says "There is a different service to search for jobs in Northern Ireland": JobApplyNI.

For most office jobs, a sensible set is Indeed, LinkedIn and Totaljobs or Reed. For tech, add CWJobs. For the NHS or the civil service, start with the official site and use the general ones for the private sector.

Searching three sites without doing everything three times

On three sites you meet the same agencies on each, ads you already ruled out come back, and you have to remember where you already applied. The HideJobs browser extension keeps your hidden companies, your keywords and your applications in one place across all of them. In a desktop browser it works on Totaljobs, Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Adzuna search pages in the UK, and it uses the same company and keyword lists on every one.

• Applied on one site, flagged on the others. Click Mark as Applied on a Totaljobs card (or next to Apply and Save on the job's own page) and add the job to your HideJobs job tracker when asked. On LinkedIn, jobs you apply to through LinkedIn are added for you. While you're logged in, the same employer's job with a similar title on another site gets the "Likely applied" line. Other roles at that company show a line such as "Applied to 3 jobs at this company." Click the line to see those jobs and open them in your job tracker.
• Agencies and employers you ruled out. Click the eye icon next to the company name on a card. The company joins one Hidden Companies list used on every supported site, and its jobs stay hidden wherever it posts under that same name.
• Words you never want. Keywords hides cards whose text contains a word on your list, such as a job title, a town, or "temporary". It reads the text on each card and matches parts of words, so "intern" also hides "internal".
• Must-haves in the full ad. On Totaljobs, the Deep Scanner reads the full description of each job on the results page, puts a flag on the cards that mention your words (for example "hybrid" or a skill), and lets you hide the flagged or the unflagged ones. The list stays as it is while it reads.
• Jobs you passed on. Mark as Dismissed hides them, so the same ad doesn't make you decide again next week.

For LinkedIn's own options, see how to exclude a company from LinkedIn job search. On Indeed, the HideJobs Sponsored filter hides the jobs Indeed marks as sponsored; Indeed sponsored jobs explains what you lose when you hide them.