Employer guideRead at source, 9 September 2026
Craigslist Job Posting Cost: What It Actually Charges, and What It Actually Costs
Craigslist charges $10 to $75 for a job posting in the United States, and the exact price depends on the metropolitan area — craigslist does not publish a city-by-city table, so the fee appears on the category page when you create the posting. The charge is one-time, the post is live for 30 days, and there is no subscription or automatic renewal. The catch is not the price. It is that a paid post cannot be lifted back to the top of the listings once newer posts push it down — you have to create and pay for a new one — which is why the sticker price and the actual monthly spend are usually different numbers.
The fees, as craigslist publishes them
United States: job postings $10–75; gigs $3–10; services $5; apartments in Boston, Chicago and New York $5; office and commercial $5; for sale by dealer $5; for sale by owner $0–5, with cars and trucks, motorcycles, and RVs and campers each at $5. Canada: job postings $0–75; gigs $3–10; services $5; Vancouver dealer listings $5 for cars and trucks and $3 for furniture.
Why there is no price list
The most common search behind this question is someone looking for a table of cities and prices. It does not exist, and craigslist says why in plain terms: “fees vary depending on geographic location,” and to find yours, “please go to your craigslist site and click on ‘create a posting’. Choose the type and category of your posting. The fee for the posting will be stated on the type or category page.”
In practice this means the price is a function of how valuable that market is, and the range is wide enough to matter: a $10 post and a $75 post are the same product. If you hire across several markets, the only reliable way to budget is to walk the posting flow in each one and write the number down. Payment information is requested at the end of the process and a preview is shown before you pay, so you can price a market without committing to it.
One more mechanical detail worth knowing before you plan: “you can only pay for a posting via our website or mobile app at the time that the posting is created.” There is no invoicing on the standard path. High-volume posters can arrange a paid posting account, which is the route most staffing firms end up on.
The rule that decides your real spend
Craigslist is explicit about how long a post lives and what happens to it: “paid postings are live on the site for 30 days,” and “publishing your posting is a one time charge. craigslist does not have any automated renewal fees, subscription fees, or additional charges.” So far so cheap.
Then comes the sentence that most cost comparisons miss: “it is not possible to move an existing paid posting to the top of the listings. A new posting or repost must be created and purchased to be listed at the top of ‘by date’ search results.” And “all postings move down the listings as new postings are published.”
That is the whole economics of the platform in three sentences. Visibility on craigslist is a function of recency, recency decays continuously, and the only lever you have is buying another post. In a thin category in a small market, one post may stay visible for its full 30 days. In a busy category in a large market — general labour, drivers, warehouse, food service in a major metro — a post can be several screens down within a day or two. The employers who get results from craigslist are almost always posting weekly or more often, and their real cost is the fee multiplied by that cadence, not the fee itself.
Work out what it will actually cost you
Put in the fee your market shows, how many markets you post in, how often you repost, and how long the campaign runs. If you know roughly how many applicants a post brings you, add that too. Nothing is sent or stored — this runs in your browser.
Craigslist spend estimator
The default figures — one market, weekly reposts, three months at $25 — come to $300, which is a rather different proposition from “$25 to post a job.” Run it with your own numbers before you compare craigslist with anything else, because the honest comparison is against your total spend, not against the price of a single post.
What the money buys, and what it does not
A craigslist job post is a text listing that appears to people who are actively browsing or searching that category in that city. That is the entire product. There is no targeting beyond the city and category, no way to reach people who are not looking, no reporting on who saw it, and no way to pay for more prominence.
For some hiring that is a good fit. Local, high-volume, low-credential roles in markets where craigslist still has an active audience — and that audience varies enormously by region — can produce applicants at a genuinely low cost per applicant. The platform's weaknesses are equally clear: you are limited to people already searching, the audience skews towards whoever still uses the site in your area, and screening burden falls entirely on you.
The comparison worth making is not craigslist against a job board with a higher sticker price. It is craigslist against the share of your local labour market that is not currently looking at job listings at all. Most people who would take your job are not searching this week, and no amount of reposting reaches them, because the platform only shows a listing to someone who came looking for it.
The number that actually matters
Cost per post is the wrong metric and cost per applicant is only slightly better. The one to track is cost per hire, because a channel that produces twenty applicants at $2 each and no hires is more expensive than one that produces three applicants and fills the role. If you are running craigslist alongside anything else, tag the source at the application step so you can tell the difference at the end of the quarter.
How to spend less on it
Price every market before you plan the budget
Walk the create-a-posting flow in each city you hire in and record the fee. A four-market campaign can range from $40 to $300 a round depending entirely on which four cities they are.
Match the repost cadence to the category's velocity
Search your own category in your own market and see how far a post from three days ago has sunk. If it is still on the first screen, weekly reposting is wasted money. If it is on page four, weekly is not often enough.
Write for the list view, not the post
Almost all of the decision happens on the title line, because that is all most browsers see. Pay and location in the title do more than anything in the body.
Do not pay for a second post to fix a bad first one
If a post produced nothing, reposting the same text at full price produces nothing again. The fee is one-time and non-refundable, so treat each purchase as a decision rather than a habit.
Track the source
One extra field on your application form — where did you see this — turns craigslist from a guess into a measured channel, and pays for itself the first time it tells you to stop.
Once you know what the channel actually costs, the next question is what to do about the applicants you are not reaching. Our guides to recruiting platform alternatives and to the job description generator cover the next two steps.
What this page cannot do
It cannot tell you the fee in your city, because craigslist does not publish one and the range spans $10 to $75. It cannot tell you whether craigslist works where you are, because that depends on local usage patterns that vary far more than the pricing does. And it cannot tell you whether a post will be seen, since visibility depends on how many other people post in your category after you.
Craigslist also notes that fees are subject to change. The figures here were read at source on 9 September 2026; if you are reading this much later, the create-a-posting flow remains the only authoritative answer for your own market.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to post a job on Craigslist?
In the United States, job postings cost $10 to $75, and the fee varies by geographic area. In Canada the range is $0 to $75. Craigslist does not publish a city-by-city price list; the fee for your market is shown on the type or category page when you click "create a posting" on your local craigslist site. Fees are subject to change.
Is the Craigslist job posting fee a subscription?
No. Craigslist states that publishing a posting is a one-time charge and that it does not have automated renewal fees, subscription fees or additional charges. You pay once, at the time the posting is created, through the craigslist website or mobile app.
How long does a paid Craigslist job post stay up?
Paid postings are live on the site for 30 days. Free postings, which apply to other categories, run for between 7 and 45 days. All postings move down the listings as newer postings are published, so a post's visibility falls well before it expires.
Can I move my Craigslist post back to the top?
No. Craigslist states that it is not possible to move an existing paid posting to the top of the listings, and that a new posting or repost must be created and purchased to appear at the top of "by date" search results. This is the single biggest driver of what craigslist actually costs an employer, because it converts a one-time fee into a recurring one for any role that stays open.
Why is Craigslist more expensive in some cities?
Craigslist says only that fees vary depending on geographic location, without publishing the reasoning or the table. In practice larger and busier markets sit at the higher end of the $10 to $75 range. The only way to know your price is to start the posting flow on your local site, where the fee is stated on the category page before payment is requested.
Are Craigslist gig postings cheaper than job postings?
Yes. Gigs cost $3 to $10 in the US and in Canada, against $10 to $75 for job postings. Gigs are intended for short-term, one-off or freelance work rather than ongoing employment, so the categories are not interchangeable, and using the cheaper category for a permanent role risks the post being removed.
Is Craigslist worth it for hiring?
It depends on whether your local audience still uses it and on how you count the cost. For local, high-volume roles in markets where craigslist remains active, the cost per applicant can be low. The structural limitation is that it only reaches people who are actively browsing that category in that city, so it cannot reach the much larger group who would take the job but are not searching. Track cost per hire rather than cost per post before deciding.
The posting fee is the smallest number in this decision.
What matters is what a hire costs you in total. We write and run the recruitment ads that put your open roles in front of people already scrolling Facebook and Instagram, and report what each applicant costs with the management fee inside.
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