Is Adzuna Legit? How It Works and What to Watch For

Is Adzuna legit? What it is and where its jobs come from

Is Adzuna legit? Yes. Its privacy notice says "Adzuna is the trading name of Adzuna Ltd, a privately-owned UK company," and it runs job search sites in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and other countries.

Adzuna is a search engine for jobs, not an employer and not a recruiter. The Office for National Statistics describes it as "an online job search engine that collates information from thousands of different sources in the UK," and says those sources "range from direct employers' websites to recruitment software providers to traditional job boards." The ONS used Adzuna's data for a weekly indicator of job vacancies until October 2024, and in 2018 the UK government picked Adzuna to run its Find a Job service (more in the FAQ).

The doubts behind "is Adzuna legit" usually come from how a job search engine works: emails people don't remember asking for, ads that are gone or show up twice, and not knowing where an application went.

What happens when you click Apply on Adzuna

Adzuna opens each job on its own page. Because Adzuna collects many of its ads from other sites, Apply can take you to the site that posted the job, such as the employer's careers page or another job board. From there, that site has your application. Adzuna's privacy notice says: "Your relationship with any third-party website is governed purely by your agreement with them."

Some jobs you apply to on Adzuna itself. For those, the notice says "If you apply for a job directly through Adzuna then we may send your Personal Data to the Advertiser," and that advertisers agree to follow Adzuna's terms and data protection law.

Either way, your applications end up spread across Adzuna and every site it sent you to, so when the same job shows up in your results two weeks later, it's hard to remember whether you applied. Click Mark as Applied on the job before you leave for the other site, and HideJobs keeps the record for you (how it works below).

Why Adzuna emails you, and how to stop it

A common complaint in Adzuna reviews is email: too many alerts, trouble unsubscribing, and jobs that don't match what people asked for. Adzuna's privacy notice explains where some of these come from. It says "Adzuna may also be provided with information when you sign up or apply for jobs with third-party websites," and "Adzuna may deliver job email alerts to you under contract from a third party." So signing up on a different job site can lead to alerts sent by Adzuna. For its own alerts, the notice says Adzuna asks for explicit opt-in consent.

To stop them, the notice gives two ways: "If you receive email alerts, you can delete these within your account or from the link within the emails." You can also withdraw consent in your account settings. If only some alerts are off target, delete those in your account instead of unsubscribing from everything.

One reviewer on Trustpilot asks, "Is Zoe at Adzuna a real person or not?" Whatever the sender name says, judge the email by where it came from: open the full sender address, and if it isn't an Adzuna domain or the job site you signed up with, don't click its links. An email that asks you to pay, or for your bank details, before any interview is a warning sign no matter whose name is on it.

Why some Adzuna jobs are gone or listed twice

The ONS page on the job ads Adzuna supplied for its vacancy figures explains both problems. On old ads: an ad counted as live "if the posting is still live on any board," and "Adzuna perform data cleaning to remove adverts that have not been observed as live for 30 days." So a job can be filled and taken down on the employer's site while a copy stays up on another board and still counted as live in that data.

On repeats: before the data reached the ONS, Adzuna removed duplicate entries "where all information relating to a job advert is the same," which happen when several recruiters post the same job at once. The ONS added its own check for near-copies, noting that "most duplications appear to be repostings with little editing." A repost with a small change is not an exact copy, so it counts as a second ad, and one opening can fill several cards in your results.

With the HideJobs browser extension, you clear these out of your Adzuna results as you go. Click Mark as Dismissed on a card you have ruled out, and it is hidden while the Dismissed filter is on.

When one company or agency keeps posting the same job, click the eye icon next to its name: every job from that company is hidden, on Adzuna and on the other job sites HideJobs works on. Matching is by the exact name, so add each spelling a company uses, such as "Acme" and "Acme Corp".

How to check an Adzuna job before you apply

The quality of an Adzuna listing depends on whoever posted it. Before you apply, look for the same job on the employer's own careers page. If it is there, apply there. If the company has no site, no address and no other trace, or the ad only gives a chat app or a personal email address, treat it with care.

Adzuna's own Trust & Safety post says all new sources go through "an onboarding and review process," but also that "we don't moderate job listings before they go live." So a fake ad can show up in your results before Adzuna's checks catch it. The post says "Every job listing includes a way to flag suspicious content" and "Listings found to be fraudulent are removed promptly." If a listing or message feels wrong, its advice is to stop replying: "Don't send further information. Don't send money."

The signs of a fake job are the same on Adzuna as anywhere: pay to start, equipment you buy and get "reimbursed" for later, an offer without a real interview, or a request for bank details before you have a contract. The full list, with where to report one, is in job scams: how to spot one. A listing can also be real but stale, a role a company keeps open without hiring for it: see ghost jobs for how to tell.

When a type of ad keeps wasting your time, filter it out by its words. HideJobs Keywords hides every Adzuna card whose visible text, meaning the title, company, location, pay or description snippet, contains a word you add, such as "commission only" or "self-employed". The match is by part of a word, so "intern" also hides "internal".

Keep track of the jobs you apply to from Adzuna

Install the HideJobs browser extension, open it in your desktop browser's side panel, and switch on Applied under Job Search Filters. It works on Adzuna's country sites, on search results and on each job's own page. Each time you apply, click Mark as Applied under the job's snippet in the results, or next to Apply on the job's page. The job is hidden from your results while Applied is on, so you stop opening it again.

Marking a job also asks "Add to Job Tracker?". Click Add to tracker, and the job goes into the HideJobs job tracker as Applied with its title, company, location, logo and the employer's pay. There you move it through statuses such as Interviewing, Not Selected or Ghosted, add notes and set a follow-up date. If you are logged out, it offers to save the job after you log in.

If a job you applied to on LinkedIn or Indeed is in your HideJobs job tracker and the same job turns up on Adzuna, the card shows "Likely applied to this job on LinkedIn" (or wherever you applied) while you are logged in. A company you already applied to gets "Applied to 3 jobs at this company", and clicking the line shows those jobs. The line is a label, so the job stays on the page for you to open or skip.

For how to set up the rest of your tracker, see how to track job applications.