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 9.9% of remote listings were open to any country. More than half were limited to residents of a single country.
The results
On 23 September 2026 we collected 1,300 remote listings from the public Greenhouse and Ashby job boards of 18 companies known for remote work, including Canonical, GitLab, Supabase, Zapier, Linear, Grafana Labs, ClickHouse, Mozilla, Remote.com, Oyster, PostHog and Kraken.
| Who the listing is open to | Listings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| One country only (“Remote, United States”, “Spain (Remote)”) | 757 | 58.2% |
| A region or a list of countries (“Home based - EMEA”, “Remote-AMER”) | 373 | 28.7% |
| Any country (“Home based - Worldwide”, “Remote, Global”) | 129 | 9.9% |
| Unclear (just “Remote”) | 41 | 3.2% |
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.
How the same company can 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 56 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.
The words 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 this means for your search
- Expect about one worldwide listing in ten, even at companies known for remote work. On general job boards, the share is likely lower.
- Search by region, not just “remote”. Region-tagged roles were almost three times as common as worldwide ones. If you live in EMEA, APAC or LATAM, those are your biggest pool.
- 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.
- 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.
How we did it
- Sources: the public job board APIs of 18 companies on Greenhouse and Ashby, read on 23 September 2026.
- 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 several countries; one country if it names a single country, state or city; unclear if it says only “Remote”.
- 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 1,300 remote listings at 18 remote-first companies on 23 September 2026, 9.9% were open to any country. 58.2% were limited to one country and 28.7% to a region or list of countries.
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, 1,300 remote listings)
