Search behavior around this question reveals a real gap in understanding.
People searching for a job board API are often not sure whether what they actually need is a feed instead. People comparing the two are usually mid-decision, evaluating a vendor, or troubleshooting an integration that is not behaving the way they expected. The terms get used loosely enough in marketing material that the underlying architectural difference, the part that actually matters for how a job board operates, gets lost.
Here is the direct answer: a job board API is pull-based and on-demand. A job feed is push-based and scheduled, or continuous if it is a real-time job feed. They are not competing options. They solve different problems, and most job boards running at any meaningful scale end up using both.
This guide walks through what each one actually does, when each makes sense, and how to decide which integration method fits your platform.
What a Job Board API Actually Does
Direct answer: A job board API is a query interface. Your platform sends a request specifying what it wants, and the provider returns the matching records from their index at that moment. The interaction is synchronous: you ask, you get an answer, the conversation ends until the next request.
This model is built for retrieval on demand. A platform queries for “marketing roles in Berlin posted in the last 7 days” and gets back exactly that, calculated fresh against the provider’s current index.
The job board API model suits a specific set of use cases well. Search-driven features where a job seeker enters a query and expects a response calculated against current conditions. Ad-hoc lookups where a platform only occasionally needs data from a specific segment of the market. Sales intelligence and research tools that query for specific signals rather than maintaining a persistent index of their own.
What an API does not do well: power a platform’s own searchable index. If your product needs a complete, browsable, filterable set of job listings that exists independently of any single query, an API alone leaves you re-querying constantly to approximate something a feed delivers natively.
What a Job Feed Actually Does
Direct answer: A job feed delivers job records to your platform on a schedule, or continuously if configured as a real-time job feed, without requiring your platform to request them. The provider pushes the data; your platform receives and stores it.
This is the right model for a job board that maintains its own index. Listings arrive, get ingested into your database, and stay there until your own platform’s logic decides to remove them, whether through expiry detection, manual review, or another mechanism.
A real-time job feed specifically means new records are delivered as they are processed, not held for a batch window. The distinction between a scheduled feed and a real-time feed matters here: a feed that delivers updates once every 24 hours is still a feed, but it cannot support the kind of freshness that job seekers increasingly expect from a board that claims to show current listings.
The job feed model suits platforms maintaining a persistent, searchable index that needs to stay current without the platform constantly polling for updates. It suits high-volume operations where querying an API for every possible search permutation would be operationally expensive and slow. It suits any job board where freshness, completeness, and control over the index structure matter more than on-demand flexibility.
Job Board API vs Job Feed: Direct Comparison
| Job Board API | Job Feed (including real-time job feed) | |
| Delivery model | Pull. You request data when you need it. | Push. Data arrives as it is processed, on a schedule or continuously. |
| Best for | Ad-hoc queries, research tools, search features that hit external data dynamically | Maintaining your own persistent, searchable job index |
| Freshness | As fresh as the provider’s index at query time | Depends on feed type. Real-time feeds deliver within minutes; scheduled feeds depend on the delivery window |
| Index ownership | The provider’s index. You query it; you don’t own a copy. | Your own index. You ingest and store the data your platform controls. |
| Operational load | Requires managing a polling or query loop, handling rate limits | Requires an ingestion pipeline, but no polling loop to maintain |
| Schema control | Records returned in the provider’s schema, often requiring transformation on your end | Can usually be configured to match your platform’s schema directly |
| Typical use case | Sales intelligence tools, research platforms, occasional lookups | Job boards, aggregators, any platform with its own searchable index |
Which Integration Method for Your Job Board
The decision is not about which technology is better. It is about what your platform actually does with job data.
Choose an API if: Your platform queries job data occasionally or in response to specific user actions, rather than maintaining a full searchable index of its own. A sales intelligence tool that checks for new postings from a specific company when triggered. A research tool that pulls data for analysis on demand. A platform exploring a new market before committing to full index coverage.
Choose a job feed if: Your platform is a job board or aggregator that needs to maintain its own complete, browsable, filterable index of listings. You want job seekers to be able to search and filter against a stable dataset that your platform controls, rather than recalculating results against an external provider on every query. You need freshness that an API polling loop cannot deliver efficiently at your volume.
Choose both if: Most job boards operating at scale end up here. A job feed, ideally a real-time job feed, powers the core searchable index that job seekers interact with daily. An API handles supplementary use cases on top of that index: an internal tool that needs to query for specific segments without touching the main ingestion pipeline, a partner integration that needs read access to a subset of your data, or a research function that runs ad-hoc analysis against current listings.
This is not an either-or decision in practice for most serious job boards. It is a question of which integration method handles which job.
Why the Confusion Persists
Part of the reason this question keeps coming up is that providers often describe both delivery models using similar language. “Real-time access to job data” can describe either an API that returns current results on query, or a feed that pushes new records as they are processed. The word “real-time” is doing different work in each case, and most marketing copy does not clarify which.
The practical test that cuts through the confusion: does your platform need to ask for data, or does it need data to arrive without asking? If the answer is the former, you need an API. If the answer is the latter, you need a feed. If both descriptions apply to different parts of your product, you need both.
What This Looks Like With Propellum
Propellum delivers both integration methods, configured to the architecture each client actually needs.
For job boards and aggregators maintaining their own index, our real-time job feed infrastructure delivers enriched, normalized job records continuously, as they are crawled and processed, in the schema your platform expects. New postings arrive within minutes of detection. Expiry signals are pushed as closed roles are identified. There is no polling loop to manage and no rate limit to negotiate.
For platforms that need on-demand, query-based access, our job board API provides the same underlying enriched data, accessible on request for use cases that don’t require a persistent local index.
The right architecture depends on what your platform is actually built to do. Most job boards we work with use the feed to power their core index and the API for the supplementary use cases layered on top of it.
See Propellum’s Real-Time Job Feeds in detail and find the integration method that fits your platform. Explore Real-Time Job Feeds →
Frequently Asked Questions
A job API is a pull-based query interface. Your platform requests data when it needs it, and the provider returns matching records calculated at that moment. A job feed is push-based. The provider delivers records to your platform on a schedule, or continuously in the case of a real-time job feed, without your platform needing to request them. The core difference is who initiates the data transfer and when.
It depends on what your platform does with job data. If you are maintaining your own searchable index that job seekers browse and filter, a job feed is almost always the right architecture, since it keeps your index current without a constant polling burden. If your platform queries job data only occasionally or in response to specific triggers, without maintaining a full persistent index, an API is usually sufficient. Many job boards use a feed for their core index and an API for supplementary use cases.
Yes, and most job boards operating at scale do exactly this. A real-time job feed typically powers the main searchable index, since it delivers the freshness and completeness that a browsable product requires. An API is then used for secondary needs: internal tools, partner integrations, or research functions that need on-demand access to specific data segments without affecting the primary ingestion pipeline.
For populating and maintaining a complete index, a real-time job feed is faster and more efficient, since records are pushed as they are processed rather than requiring your platform to repeatedly query for what’s new. For a single, specific, on-demand lookup, an API can return a result in the time it takes to process one query, which is often faster than waiting for a scheduled feed delivery window, though a real-time feed closes most of that gap since it has no fixed window.
A real-time job feed is a push-based delivery mechanism where new job records are delivered to your platform as soon as they complete processing, typically within minutes of being detected at the source, rather than being held for a scheduled batch window. It is distinct from a standard scheduled feed, which delivers updates at fixed intervals such as every 12 or 24 hours.
This usually happens when a platform does not maintain its own persistent index and instead retrieves job data dynamically at query time, such as a search tool that surfaces results from an external data source without storing them locally. It can also happen at very low volume, where the operational simplicity of an API outweighs the benefits of feed-based ingestion. As volume and the need for a stable, fast, filterable index grow, most platforms find a feed becomes necessary.
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