Category
Salary Guides
Availability
HQ
San Francisco, United States
Pricing
Custom
Free tier
Yes
Best for
Capabilities
What is Levels.fyi?
Levels.fyi is a compensation benchmarking platform built on crowdsourced, verified offer and pay data, particularly strong for tech total compensation, where it normalizes pay levels across companies and breaks down base, bonus, and equity in a way that's genuinely useful when negotiating an offer with a candidate who has multiple options on the table. Coverage is deepest at well-known tech employers and thins for non-tech roles or smaller companies where the self-reported data simply isn't there yet. It's a reference tool your team uses directly when setting or validating compensation ranges before extending an offer.
What are Levels.fyi's key features?
Real-time compensation data, not a survey from last year: Salary figures reflect the current market from the day you check, so an offer your team builds today is grounded in current pay - not a benchmark that quietly went stale while the market moved.
Compare role scope, not just job titles: A leveling framework lets your team compare a candidate's actual responsibility against another company's structure - useful when 'Senior Engineer' means something completely different from one employer to the next.
Break down compensation the way candidates actually think about it: Base, bonus, and equity are tracked separately and verified against real offer letters and pay statements - so your team can have a precise conversation about total comp instead of a vague headline number.
Build offer letters that showcase the full package: Dynamic, personalized offer presentations show the complete compensation story - base, equity, bonus - so a candidate weighing two offers sees the complete picture, not just the base salary on page one.
API and data access: Levels.fyi offers an enterprise data API so compensation benchmarks can feed into internal tools and comp workflows instead of being checked by hand.
How do recruiting teams use Levels.fyi?
- An in-house TA team filling a technical role at a major tech employer uses Levels.fyi's granular base, bonus, and equity breakdown by company and level to benchmark an offer with precision a general salary survey can't match.
- A multi-desk agency specializing in tech placements uses Levels.fyi to coach candidates through competing offer comparisons, since understanding how total comp stacks up across employers is often what determines whether a candidate accepts or keeps shopping.
- Teams relying on Levels.fyi for non-tech sectors should know coverage thins out fast outside the top 50 or so tech employers - it's strongest as one input in offer construction rather than a comprehensive benchmarking source across all industries.
Who is Levels.fyi best for?
- Tech recruiting teams negotiating offers where total compensation - base, bonus, equity, vesting schedule - needs to be benchmarked precisely, not estimated from a broad salary range
- Agencies placing candidates at companies with formal leveling systems, where comparing role scope across employers matters more than matching job titles
- A fit specifically for tech, product, and data roles - coverage drops sharply outside that scope, and a different tool is a better fit for non-tech benchmarking
What are Levels.fyi's pros and cons?
Pros
- Verified and validated salary data from real job offers - reduces guesswork when pricing roles
- Covers multiple job families and levels, not just senior or entry roles - useful for full-spectrum recruiting
- Negotiation coaching available as an add-on service - helps close candidates who might otherwise decline
- API and MCP server access for enterprise teams - integrates compensation data directly into recruiting systems
- Location-aware salary ranges - accounts for geography without manual research
Cons
- Heavily skewed toward tech roles and tech companies - limited value for agencies recruiting outside tech
- Requires candidates to report their own salary data - only as current and complete as user submissions
- Negotiation coaching is an additional paid service, not included in base salary database access
- No sourcing, screening, or interview features - database only; does not replace an ATS or recruiting platform
How does Levels.fyi compare to alternatives?
| Feature | Levels.fyi | Glassdoor | PayScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Salary Guides | Salary Guides | Salary Guides |
| AI-first | |||
| API | |||
| MCP | |||
| GDPR | |||
| Best for | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House |
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Frequently asked questions about Levels.fyi
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