Lightcast alternative: Arihaan vs Lightcast
Lightcast: Labor market intelligence from job postings, profiles and government data. Arihaan: live job postings from employers' own career sites, in Claude, ChatGPT and your code, free to start. Facts about Lightcast are from its own pages on October 21, 2026.
Side by side
| Arihaan | Lightcast | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes, forever: about 60 US jobs a day, no card | Not stated on its site |
| Entry price | $35 a month | By quote |
| Entry plan buys | About 1,600 US jobs a day, about 48,000 a month | By quote |
| Per 1,000 jobs at entry | About $0.73 | By quote |
| Where the jobs come from | Employers’ career sites and the 30+ hiring platforms they post on (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, SmartRecruiters, Ashby ...); LinkedIn and job board history as an option | Job postings from thousands of online sources |
| Coverage, as each states it | 4,030,111 open jobs from 106,352 companies in 229 countries, live | 3 billion job postings, 165 countries |
| History | Open jobs; last 90 days, or since January 2025 with LinkedIn and job boards | Not stated on its site |
| Freshness | Daily; every 6 hours as an option | Daily (Job Postings API) |
| MCP server | Yes, remote, OAuth or API key; in Claude’s directory and the official MCP Registry | Announced Oct 20, 2026 |
| Delivery | MCP, REST API, daily CSV or Parquet, feeds to BigQuery, S3 or GCS | API, cloud storage, data shares, software |
| Company data | Yes: sector, size, ownership, B2B or B2C, hiring profile | Not stated on its site |
| Contact data | Yes: B2B contacts with work email, phone and LinkedIn (Arihaan People) | No (profiles are anonymized) |
Per 1,000 jobs is our arithmetic from each entry plan: its price over the jobs it includes. Arihaan meters tokens: about 300 for a job in search results, more for a job in full with its description.
Choose Arihaan if
- Self-serve: free to start, $35 a month after
- A live MCP server in Claude’s directory today
- B2B contacts beside the jobs
Choose Lightcast if
- You need labor market analytics software and a skills taxonomy
Sources: Lightcast data. Checked October 21, 2026.
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Use this data in your AI assistant or your code
Ask for it in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any MCP client through the Arihaan MCP server, or call the REST API. Plans start at $35 a month: build your plan, or book a call.