canonical: https://jentic.com/apis/payscale.com

# PayScale APIs

PayScale provides market compensation and salary data through two APIs that Jentic maintains as agent-ready OpenAPI specifications. The Jobalyzer API matches free-text job descriptions to standardized titles and generates compensation reports that quantify the pay impact of skills, certifications, education, and experience, while the PayScale API offers token-authenticated access to underlying salary and compensation data resources for HR and recruiting workflows.

## For AI agents

An agent can match a job description to a standardized title, generate a compensation report, and quantify how specific skills, certifications, education, or experience change pay through Jobalyzer, then pull the underlying salary data resources through the PayScale API to feed HR and recruiting decisions.

## Scope

Use for: Compensation benchmarking, salary report generation, and pay impact analysis of skills, certifications, education, and experience for HR and recruiting decisions

Not supported:
- payroll processing
- job posting
- employee record management
- applicant tracking

## APIs

| API | Category | Endpoints | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Jobalyzer | hr-recruiting | 9 | Generate PayScale compensation reports and analyze the salary impact of specific skills, certifications, education levels, and experience for matched job titles. |
| PayScale API | hr-recruiting | 3 | Access PayScale compensation and salary data resources through authenticated API calls for integration into HR and recruiting workflows. |

## Which API to use

| Need | API | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Generate a custom compensation report with pay impact of skills, certifications, education, and experience | jobalyzer-api | Jobalyzer matches job titles and produces reports with median pay, percentile ranges, and per-competency pay impact |
| Read salary and compensation data resources programmatically for bulk integration | payscale | The PayScale API provides token-authenticated list-and-retrieve access to compensation data resources without the report-building flow |

## Cross-API use cases

### Data-backed offer benchmarking

Generate a job-specific compensation report in Jobalyzer, then pull the underlying market salary resources from the PayScale API to validate and enrich the benchmark before setting an offer band.

Example prompt: Match a role via Jobalyzer job title match, generate a compensation report, then list compensation resources via the PayScale API to cross-check the market rate

### Skill-adjusted pay analysis for a role

Use Jobalyzer to measure how specific skills and certifications shift pay for a matched job title, and reference the PayScale API compensation resources to ground the analysis in current market data.

Example prompt: Query Jobalyzer skills and certification impact for a role, then retrieve a matching compensation resource from the PayScale API to confirm the baseline pay range

## Why Jentic

- **Setup:** Wiring both PayScale APIs by hand means learning Jobalyzer's Bearer auth and multi-step report flow plus the PayScale API's token exchange and API key header. Through Jentic you install Jentic One once, add each API from the Jentic directory, store each credential once, and your agent calls them.
- **Permission scoping:** Your own Jentic One rules decide which operations across the two APIs an agent may use, so you can allow read-only compensation lookups and skills or education impact reads while leaving report creation out unless you add it.
- **Credential handling:** The Jobalyzer Bearer token and the PayScale API key are each stored encrypted by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time, including the PayScale token exchange, so they never enter the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
- **Discovery method:** Agents search the Jentic directory by intent such as 'get salary data for a job title' or 'access PayScale compensation data', and Jentic returns the matching operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint across either API without working through the reference docs.

## Related vendors

- **BambooHR** — HRIS for employee records that can apply PayScale compensation benchmarks to individual profiles
- **Gusto** — Payroll platform that executes the pay decisions informed by PayScale benchmarking data
- **Greenhouse** — Recruiting and applicant tracking system that pairs with PayScale salary data during offer stages

## FAQ

### What can an AI agent do across PayScale's APIs?

An agent can match a job description to a standardized title, generate a compensation report, and measure how skills, certifications, education, and experience change pay through Jobalyzer, then read the underlying salary and compensation data resources through the PayScale API to feed hiring, budgeting, and pay equity workflows.

### How do the Jobalyzer API and the PayScale API differ?

Jobalyzer is a specialized service that generates custom compensation reports with job title matching, skills and certification impact, and education premium analysis. The PayScale API provides simpler token-authenticated list-and-retrieve access to compensation data resources. Use Jobalyzer for targeted job-specific reports and the PayScale API for bulk data access.

### Do the two APIs share one credential?

No. Jobalyzer uses a Bearer token in the Authorization header, and the PayScale API uses an API key that is exchanged for an access token through its auth endpoint. Each API is configured with its own credential.

### Are these official PayScale API specifications?

PayScale does not publish OpenAPI specifications for these services. Jentic generates and maintains both specs so that agents and developers can call them through structured tooling. Each spec is validated against the live API and kept up to date.

### Can an agent get location-adjusted compensation data?

Yes. Jobalyzer lets an agent search valid location identifiers and include them when generating a report, so the resulting pay figures reflect geographic adjustment. The PayScale API supplies the compensation data resources that back those market benchmarks.

### What is PayScale not suited for?

These APIs cover compensation data and pay analysis only. They do not process payroll, post jobs, track applicants, or manage employee records. Pair them with an HRIS or payroll platform when you need to apply the benchmarks to specific people.