We checked 1,295 remote jobs: only 1 in 10 was worldwide

Almost every job board has a “Remote” filter. It’s also one of the least precise. To see how often a remote job is really open to anyone, we read the location line of every remote listing on the public job boards of 18 remote-first companies, and sorted each one by who it can hire.

The short answer: only 10% of remote listings were open to any country, and all of those came from three companies. Nearly half were limited to residents of a single country.

Corrected on 23 September 2026. See how we ran the study.

How many remote jobs are open to any country?

Few. Of 1,295 remote listings, 10% were open to any country, 39.9% were limited to a region or a list of countries, and 46.9% to a single country.

On 23 September 2026 we collected 1,295 remote listings from the public Greenhouse and Ashby job boards of 18 companies known for remote work: Canonical, GitLab, Remote.com, Grafana Labs, ClickHouse, Mozilla, Kraken, Supabase, n8n, Sanity, LiveKit, Linear, Oyster, the Wikimedia Foundation, Resend, Zapier, PostHog and Consensys.

If you live outside the US, Canada and Western Europe, the pool shrinks further: most single-country listings in our sample were for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, EU countries and Australia.

Which companies posted worldwide roles?

The 10% is an average, and it hides how uneven the sample was. All 129 worldwide listings came from three companies: Canonical (96), Supabase (31) and Oyster (2). The other 15 companies had none. Measured per company rather than per listing, the typical (median) company in our sample posted zero worldwide roles.

Download the data: CSV · JSON. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit “JobLemon location study” with a link to this page.

Can the same company look worldwide and local?

The numbers describe listings, not hiring policies, and that difference matters.

• Canonical posted 96 listings tagged “Home based - Worldwide” and 182 tagged by region. Most of its remote roles are open to at least a whole continent.
• Supabase had 31 of 57 remote listings open to any country.
• GitLab and Grafana Labs list many roles once per country (“Remote, Canada”, “Remote, Germany”). Both hire in many countries, but each individual listing names one.

So “one country” doesn’t always mean the company won’t hire you. It means that listing won’t, and you need to find the version for your country, if there is one. That is exactly the kind of checking that eats evenings.

What location words do companies actually use?

The most common location lines in the sample, by type:

• Any country: “Home based - Worldwide”, “Remote, Global”, “Any Location”
• Region: “Home based - EMEA”, “Home Based - Americas”, “Remote-AMER”, “North America”, “Europe”, “Remote-UK&I”
• One country: “United States | remote”, “United States (Remote)”, “Remote, United States”, “Remote Canada”, “United Kingdom (Remote)”

Notice there is no standard. “Americas” can include Brazil; “North America” usually doesn’t. “UK&I” means the UK and Ireland only. A board-level “Remote” filter treats all of these the same.

What does this mean for your job search?

1. Expect about one worldwide listing in ten, even at companies known for remote work, and expect most of them to come from a handful of employers. On general job boards, the share is likely lower.
2. Search by region, not just “remote”. Region-tagged roles were about four times as common as worldwide ones. If you live in EMEA, APAC or LATAM, those are your biggest pool.
3. Check the company, not only the listing. If a role is posted for five countries, the company may add yours later, or have a regional version.
4. Treat plain “Remote” as unknown. 3.2% of listings gave no location at all. Ask the recruiter before tailoring an application.

For a step-by-step way to check a single post, see how to check if a remote job accepts your country. To skip the checking, browse remote jobs open to any country, refreshed every 6 hours.

How did we run the study?

• Sources: the public job board APIs of 18 companies on Greenhouse and Ashby, read on 23 September 2026. We also read Elastic’s board, but its location lines name only countries and never say remote, so none of its listings qualified.
• Remote only: we kept listings whose location or workplace type says remote, home based, anywhere, worldwide or global. Office and hybrid listings were excluded.
• Sorting: a listing counts as any country if it says worldwide, global, anywhere or any location; region if it names a region (EMEA, APAC, LATAM, Americas, Europe and similar) or two or more countries; one country if it names a single country, state or city; unclear if it says only “Remote”.
• Correction (23 September 2026): the first version of this page counted listings that named several countries without a region word (“Remote, Canada | Remote, US”) as one country. It reported 1,300 listings: 58.2% one country, 28.7% region, 9.9% any country and 3.2% unclear. We fixed the sorting and re-ran the study the same day. The re-run read the boards a few hours later, after some listings had been added or closed, so the total is 1,295. The number of worldwide listings (129) did not change.
• Limits: 18 companies is a small, remote-friendly sample, so the worldwide share on the wider market is probably lower, not higher. A role posted separately for several countries counts once per posting. We read location lines, not full descriptions, so some “worldwide” roles may still add timezone limits in the text.

We’ll re-run the study as JobLemon adds job sources and update the date and numbers on this page.

Frequently asked questions

What share of remote jobs are open worldwide?

In our sample of 1,295 remote listings at 18 remote-first companies on 23 September 2026, 10% were open to any country. 46.9% were limited to one country and 39.9% to a region or list of countries. All the worldwide listings came from three of the 18 companies.

Why are so many remote jobs limited to one country?

Hiring someone abroad means dealing with that country’s payroll, tax and employment law. Many companies only hire where they have a legal entity or an Employer of Record set up, so each listing names the countries they can pay in.

Does “Remote, United States” mean I can’t apply from abroad?

Usually, yes. That listing is tied to US payroll and work authorisation. Check the company’s other listings for a version open to your country or region.

How often will you update this study?

We plan to re-run it as JobLemon adds job sources, and we’ll show the date of each run on this page.

Sources

• JobLemon analysis of public Greenhouse and Ashby job boards, 23 September 2026 (18 companies, 1,295 remote listings). Data: CSV, JSON