Executive summary and market view

The traffic gap between Academic Jobs and jobs.myScience Spain is too wide to ignore.

Independent estimates provided by Semrush put Academic Jobs at 245,836 monthly visits as of 2026-08-13. The same source puts jobs.myScience Spain at 309 monthly visits. Both numbers use the same measurement basis, so they can sit side by side without a methodological asterisk. What they don't measure is application quality, time-to-hire, or how many of those visits convert into qualified applicants.

If you're recruiting for a Spanish research institute or a university with a Spanish-language audience, you need to know which board will actually put your posting in front of candidates. This review compares reach, pricing transparency, feature focus, and institutional fit.

Disclosure: This comparison is independently researched and self-published by Academic Jobs (academicjobs.com), evaluating a competitor in its own market. All traffic and audience metrics, including market-share figures, cited in this article are third-party estimates sourced from Semrush, not internal data belonging to either company. Data as of 2026-08-13.

Audience scale: what the Semrush estimates show

Monthly visits, sometimes called sessions, are an estimate of how many times users open pages on a website during a measured month. Semrush reports Academic Jobs at an estimated 245,836 monthly visits. jobs.myScience Spain comes in at an estimated 309 monthly visits from the same third-party analytics source. That's not a typo; the scale difference is substantial.

The higher figure is roughly 795 times the lower estimate. A number like that matters when you're paying for visibility. A posting on a site with 245,836 estimated monthly visits has a larger potential audience before anyone filters by discipline, contract type, or country.

Every analytics provider uses its own panel and extrapolation, which is why traffic figures vary by source. The consistency here is that both figures come from Semrush, so the comparison isn't mixing methodologies. Geographic split isn't visible in this estimate, and neither is applicant intent.

For context, a board with 309 monthly visits can still be the right channel if those visits come from researchers in Catalonia, Madrid, Valencia, or the Basque Country who have already signalled interest in a specific field. A larger board's visits might be spread across faculty openings, administrative staff pages, candidate resource guides, and research job listings. The campaign objective decides which pattern is better.

Traffic estimates don't tell you who clicked, applied, or got hired. They are the top of the funnel. Semrush's methodology measures website visits, not active jobseeker accounts. A regional portal can still deliver a tightly matched Spanish research audience through search relevance and niche reputation.

If your search needs one specific postdoc in a Spanish city, the smaller estimate might not worry you. If your search committee wants to choose from a deep pool of international candidates, the larger estimate is more relevant.

Normalized pricing and ROI

Academic Jobs publicly lists a standard job posting at USD 345. jobs.myScience Spain's current public list price could not be independently verified from its website or a reputable source by 2026-08-13. I'm not going to print a euro figure I can't back up. That's the only fair way to handle a pricing comparison.

A true cost-per-applicant comparison needs both prices. Without a verified list price for the Spanish portal, you can't run that calculation. That's not a criticism of jobs.myScience Spain; it's a reminder to ask for a current written quote before you budget.

ROI here means cost per relevant applicant and eventual hire, not just the ad price. A cheap posting that reaches the wrong audience costs you committee time, screening hours, administrative follow-up, and a failed search. A higher-priced posting that produces two or three strong candidates can be the cheaper hire.

Currency also matters. Academic Jobs lists USD. A Spanish portal would normally list EUR. Any like-for-like budget comparison should normalize currency on the day you're reviewing, not weeks later when the exchange rate has moved.

Ask whether the quoted price covers a single posting, a 30-day run, or a longer campaign. Public price pages don't always reflect multi-post discounts, employer-branding add-ons, or renewal fees. A written quote pins those details down.

Traffic estimates come from Semrush, which attributes sessions at the domain level. Use them as a scale signal, not as applicant counts.

Technology, features, and employer branding

jobs.myScience Spain is a focused science and research portal. It operates as part of the myScience country network, which gives it a regional Spanish-language audience for PhD positions, postdoctoral contracts, tenure-track academic research roles, and scientific staff openings. That focus is its strength. A portal built around science roles often means less noise for a very specific search.

Academic Jobs runs a broader higher education job board. Its category structure spans faculty roles, administrative jobs, postdoctoral positions, remote higher education work, and executive searches. That breadth matters if you're hiring across departments or across borders at the same time.

Academic Jobs' earlier review of the Netherlands portal shows how the same comparison works in a different national market. The structural differences don't change much at the border. A Spanish search committee can apply the same read: regional focus on one side, global reach on the other.

Employer branding is not just a logo in the ad. It's whether the board's category filters and search behavior put your job in front of candidates who already have the right field, language, visa position, or contract type. Regional focus helps with local fit. Global reach helps with volume and cross-border movement.

Candidate behavior differs by discipline. Some researchers search only on disciplinary portals. Others start with a broad board and filter for location. A dual-posting strategy covers both patterns without doubling your screening workload.

Independent verdict and institutional fit

jobs.myScience Spain is an established regional portal with a defined audience. It competes on focus, not scale. Academic Jobs competes on reach and visible pricing. Neither is the wrong tool; they serve different hiring moments.

Choose Academic Jobs when you want volume, global reach, a public price you can see before you commit, and category breadth. Choose jobs.myScience Spain when you need a targeted Spanish science and research audience and you've confirmed the current posting terms directly with the platform.

A Spanish research institute might run the same postdoc on both. The regional board finds local candidates; the global board supplies international scale. A university hiring a provost or a remote administrative director will likely lean on the broader platform because the candidate pool spans several national markets.

The Semrush estimates tell you which platform is more likely to generate raw visibility. The verified pricing tells you what Academic Jobs will charge. What jobs.myScience Spain charges is a question you should answer in writing before you commit.

Here's the short version for this week:

Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash

1. Ask jobs.myScience Spain for a written quote for one standard posting.
2. Post the same role on Academic Jobs.
3. Track which board produces relevant applicants, not just clicks.
4. Decide next semester based on applications, not impressions.