Who is Lightcast optimal for?
Lightcast (formerly EMSI Burning Glass) is a Labour Market Intelligence platform with 18 billion+ data points across 165 countries. Beyond job postings, their platform includes skills taxonomies, salary benchmarks, career pathway data, and 25+ years of LMI archives - accessed via Analyst portal, Open Skills API, and Jobs Postings API. Lightcast is available on AWS Data Exchange and is widely used by governments, universities, and large workforce teams.
Use it if:
- You need a full LMI suite: skills taxonomy, salary benchmarks, career pathways, and job postings in one platform.
- Your budget supports enterprise contracts and a formal procurement process is standard in your organisation.
- You're a government body, university, or workforce development organisation requiring the Open Skills taxonomy.
- Academic licensing through WRDS is available and sufficient for your research.
- 165-country coverage meets your international scope requirements.
When teams outgrow Lightcast
When the need is specifically job posting data - not the full LMI platform - Lightcast's price, complexity, and access model become difficult to justify. Many teams want raw job data for analytics or backfill without paying for skills and salary modules they won't use.
Typical challenges are:
- Enterprise-only pricing - inaccessible for startups, scale-ups, and most mid-market analytics teams.
- No self-serve access - a multi-week sales and procurement cycle before a single API call can be made.
- You pay for the full LMI bundle (skills, salary, education) even when only job postings are needed.
- 165 countries vs Techmap's 250 countries and territories.
Techmap vs Lightcast: Feature Comparison
| Feature | Techmap | Lightcast |
|---|---|---|
| Countries covered | 250 countries & territories (→ Explore) | 165 countries |
| New job postings/month | 8.2M new / 14.7M active (→ Explore) | Not publicly disclosed |
| Historical data | 405M+ from January 2020 | 25+ years (LMI, not just postings) |
| Data formats | JSON, CSV, XML, RSS/ATOM, Parquet | JSON API, CSV exports |
| Delivery options | API, AWS S3, AWS Data Exchange | API, AWS Data Exchange, portal |
| Self-serve / free tier | Yes (RapidAPI free tier) | No - enterprise procurement only |
| Focus area | Job postings data | Full LMI platform (skills, salary, careers) |
| Onboarding time | Same day (self-serve) | Weeks–months (procurement) |
| GDPR compliant | Yes (EU-based storage) | Yes |
Reasons to Choose Techmap's Job Data
If your core requirement is job posting data - for a job board backfill, a sales intelligence platform, or a labour market analytics product - Techmap delivers structured, global job data with a free tier and transparent pricing. No LMI suite required.
Why teams choose Techmap:
- 250 countries and territories: APAC, LATAM, and Africa included from day one.
- Transparent, affordable pricing: Less than $1 per 1000 jobs via API.
- Start in minutes: Free tier on RapidAPI - no sales call, no procurement, no waiting.
- Purpose-built for job data: Every feature optimised for job posting delivery.
- AWS Data Exchange listed: Enterprise-grade distribution for AWS-native data teams.
- Historical archive ready now: 405M+ postings from January 2020 - immediately downloadable as Parquet or CSV.
- Volume and Startup discounts: Volume discounts and Startup pricing are available.
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