How Long Does a Job Posting Stay Up, and How Long Should You Leave One Open?

A free job posting stays up for 30 days on Indeed and 14 active days on LinkedIn before it pauses. Paid postings behave differently: sponsored and promoted jobs run for as long as you keep funding them, and a monthly job slot runs until you take the job out of it. Those are the documented limits, published by the platforms themselves and checked in August 2026.

The more useful question sits underneath. A posting that is technically live is not the same as a posting that is still working, and on most boards visibility decays long before the expiry date arrives. Here is what each platform actually does, how long a role is worth leaving open, and what the calendar does to your bill.

How long a job posting stays up, by platform

These are the published rules rather than estimates. Where a platform does not publish one, the table says so.

The split that matters is not free against paid, it is fixed-window against open-ended. A fixed window costs the same whether you fill the role in a week or never fill it. An open-ended posting keeps billing for every day the search runs, which is fine when roles close fast and expensive when they do not.

How long does a job posting stay up on LinkedIn?

A free LinkedIn job post is active for up to 14 days. After that LinkedIn pauses it, and your only choices are to promote it or close it. If you do neither, it closes automatically at 30 days. You can have one free job active at a time, plus a limited number of free posts inside any 30 day window, and the post has to be attached to a company Page.

The 14 day clock is rarely what ends a free LinkedIn post, though. LinkedIn documents an application limit on free jobs that typically runs 10 to 30 applications depending on the role. Hit it and the post is paused and pulled from search results, and anyone following a direct link sees it as closed. LinkedIn also states that free posts become less visible in search over time by design, so newer listings get a turn. For a role with any breadth of appeal, the applicant cap arrives well before day 14.

One more rule catches people who close a role and change their mind. You cannot repost the same job title from the same company for free within 7 days. LinkedIn is explicit that this exists because reposting was being used to game placement, and a repost inside that window has to be promoted. The full breakdown of what promotion costs is in our guide to LinkedIn job posting cost.

How long does a job posting stay up on Indeed?

Indeed publishes this one cleanly: all free job posts are visible for up to 30 days from the day they are posted, and employers posting directly can put up three free jobs per calendar month. Sponsored Jobs have no stated expiry and, in Indeed's own words, do not need to be reposted. They stay visible while the budget lasts.

Worth knowing if you hire internationally: the 30 day window applies in the US, Canada and most of Western Europe. A second group of countries including India, Mexico and Japan gets up to 120 days on the same free post.

What Indeed does not do is guarantee position. A free post that is technically live can be several pages deep in search results, which is functionally the same as being expired. If applications go quiet on day 6 of 30, the post has not expired, it has sunk.

How long should you leave a job posting open?

Most roles should be filled or restarted inside 30 to 45 days, because the first week does most of the work. Ashby's analysis of 13 million applications found that the first week of a posting draws roughly twice the application volume of any later week. Whatever is going to arrive largely arrives early, and week five is not quietly building a pipeline for you.

Set that against how long hiring actually takes. SHRM put median time to fill at 39 days for a nonexecutive role in 2026, down from 44. Ashby measured technical roles at 75 days median to first fill against 60 for business roles, splitting further into 52 days for junior, 63 for mid and 71 for senior. So a normal search runs a bit past the natural life of one free posting, and a technical search runs to about twice it.

That produces a simple rule. If you are 30 days in with a thin shortlist, the answer is almost never to leave the same posting up for another 30. The volume curve says it will not produce much, and the calendar says you are now paying in unfilled-role costs rather than advertising costs. Rewrite the post, change the channel, or accept that inbound is not going to solve this role and switch to going out and finding people, which is where a personalized outreach sequence to the people who already fit earns its keep. Our numbers on average time to hire a software engineer break the stages down further if you want to see where the days go.

What every extra week costs, by pricing model

Duration is the variable that decides which pricing model is cheaper for you, and it is the one most cost comparisons leave out. Here is the same 39 day search and the same 75 day search priced across the main models.

Read across the rows rather than down the columns. On a fast search the models are close enough that the choice barely matters. On a slow one the spread doubles, and it is the roles that drag which are exactly the roles you are most tempted to leave running. That is the trap: the pricing model you would pick for a 39 day search is not the one you want when the search turns into 75 days.

The cost that dwarfs all of these is the role sitting empty. A $100,000 role that stays open an extra month is a month of whatever that person was hired to produce, against a difference of a few hundred dollars in posting fees. Optimizing the listing fee while the search drags is the wrong end of the problem. Our cost to post a job comparison prices ten channels against each other, and ZipRecruiter pricing covers what a monthly slot really runs.

Why is a job posting still up after weeks?

Candidates ask this constantly and the answer is usually mundane rather than sinister. A posting outliving its usefulness normally means one of five things, and only one of them is a problem.

• The search is genuinely still running. At a 39 day median, a role posted five weeks ago is on schedule, not stalled.
• It is an evergreen or pipeline requisition. Companies hiring the same role continuously, support and sales especially, keep one post live permanently.
• An offer is out but not signed. Most employers leave the post up until a start date is confirmed, because a declined offer restarts everything.
• Nobody closed it. Sponsored and slot-based posts have no expiry date, so a filled role can sit live until someone remembers the dashboard.
• It is a repost of the same role. Which on LinkedIn now requires paying to promote, precisely because reposting was being overused.

For employers, the fourth one is the expensive item on that list. A pay per click posting nobody closed is spending money on a role that is already filled, and unlike a flat fee listing it will not stop on its own.

Frequently asked questions

How long do job postings stay up on average? Around 30 days, because that is the default expiry on most fixed-window products including Indeed free posts, We Work Remotely and this board. Paid open-ended products such as Indeed Sponsored Jobs, LinkedIn promoted posts and monthly slots have no expiry and run until the budget stops or someone closes them.

How long does a job posting stay up on LinkedIn? A free post is active 14 days, then pauses, then closes automatically at 30 days if it is never promoted. It can end sooner: LinkedIn caps free posts at a typical 10 to 30 applications, after which the job is paused and removed from search. Promoted posts have no time limit and run on your budget.

How long does a job posting stay up on Indeed? Free posts are visible up to 30 days in the US, with three free jobs allowed per calendar month. Sponsored Jobs have no published expiry and stay visible while sponsored. In some countries including India, Mexico and Japan, free posts run up to 120 days instead of 30.

Should I repost a job that expired without a hire? Reposting the identical listing rarely works, because the applicant pool that responds to it has already seen it. Change something real first: the title wording, the salary range, or the channel. On LinkedIn an identical repost inside 7 days has to be promoted, so the platform is charging you for the version least likely to succeed.

Does leaving a posting up longer get more applicants? Marginally. The first week draws roughly twice the volume of any later week, and free posts on both LinkedIn and Indeed lose search visibility over time by design. Duration adds applicants at a sharply declining rate while costing full price on any open-ended model.

If you are choosing where to run the next 30 days, our remote job posting rates are flat and published, and how many applicants a job posting gets covers what a healthy response actually looks like.