Yes. Velai is a free job search. It lists jobs from employers' own career pages, tells you how well each one fits your résumé and why, and helps you tailor your résumé for the jobs you pick. It never asks you to pay to apply, and it never sends your résumé to an employer.
You shouldn't have to take our word for that. So this page says what Velai is, who runs it and how it pays for itself, then gives you seven checks you can run yourself in a few minutes.
What Velai is
- Job search. Every listing comes from an employer's own careers site, read by our job data partner, Subspace. We don't invent listings, there are no sponsored listings, and employers don't pay to be included.
- Fit. Add your résumé and each job is marked Strong, Good or Stretch, with the reasons. A job you can't take, like one open only to U.S. citizens when you live in Canada, is marked Outside and moved to the end of the list.
- Tailoring. Pick a job and Velai rewords your résumé's own lines toward it, showing every change and why.
- Tracking. Save jobs, follow companies, keep track of where you applied, and get new matches by email.
Velai is in beta. It works, but it is still changing, and it still gets things wrong. There's more on that at the end.
Who runs it
Velai is made by its founder and a small team. The job data comes from Subspace, which reads employers' career pages and keeps track of when each posting appears, changes and closes.
The founder writes on this blog under the pen name Arun, with a drawn picture rather than a photo, to keep their own name off the site without making up a fake employee. A person on the team reads every message sent through the contact page or to hello@thesubspace.io, and we answer from that address.
How Velai pays for itself
Everything Velai does today is free, AI included, with no card and no trial clock. Search is ordinary search with no AI behind it, so a search costs us very little to run. That is what lets Velai stay free.
What we may charge for later is already on the pricing page:
- Pro, at $12 a month once it opens, for more tailoring and faster alerts. Nothing you use today moves behind it.
- Founding seats: $49 once for Pro for life, limited to 100. A seat is refundable on request, for any reason, until Pro opens.
- A Data API that sells facts about postings and companies, like whether a listing is still live and how long roles stay open. It never includes your résumé, your applications, your account or anything that identifies you.
There are no ads, and nothing about you is sold.
What Velai will never do
- Ask you to pay to see a job or to apply for one.
- Send your résumé to an employer, or apply on your behalf. You always apply on the employer's own site.
- Add experience you don't have. Tailoring rewords lines already on your résumé. It can't add a number that isn't there, and a rewrite that borrows words from the posting starts switched off until you turn it on.
- Make you sign up to search.
- Show you ads or sell your data.
Where AI is used, and where it isn't
Velai uses AI for two things: reading your résumé when the quick read in your browser misses something, and rewording lines when you tailor your résumé for a job. Your name and contact details don't go to it. For reading they're taken out first, and for tailoring only the lines that match the job are sent.
That AI runs on Tinfoil's sealed server. Your browser first checks the server's hardware proof of the code it runs, then encrypts the request so only that server can read it. Our servers pass it on without being able to read it.
Search, the fit labels and the job emails use no AI. Strong, Good and Stretch are worked out in your browser by fixed rules.
Your résumé file is read in your browser and never uploaded. If you aren't signed in, what Velai reads from it stays in that browser. If you are, it's encrypted with AES-256 before it's saved. The privacy policy has the details.
Seven ways to check it yourself
- Search without an account. Open Velai's job search and search for anything. There's no sign-up and no card.
- See where a job comes from. Open any job and press Apply on employer site. It opens the employer's own posting, so you can see the role on the company's own site.
- Check the dates. A job shows when the employer posted it and, where we have it, when our crawler first found it. A relisted job can carry a new date without being a new role, which is why we show both.
- See that your résumé stays in your browser. Without signing in, add your résumé, then open Velai in a private window. Your résumé isn't there, because Velai keeps it only in the browser you added it in.
- Read why a job fits. With your résumé added, each job says Strong, Good or Stretch and gives the reasons. If a reason is wrong, tell us.
- Look at every change before you use it. Tailor your résumé for a job and you'll see each change with its reason, and you can undo any of them. Rewrites that bring in the posting's words start switched off.
- Delete everything. In account settings, the Account tab has Delete account. It removes your résumé, its saved versions, your tracked applications and your sign-in. It's a button, not a support ticket.
How to tell a job scam from a job search tool
Job scams usually start with a fake job ad or a message from a "recruiter". The warning signs: they ask you to pay for training, equipment or an application fee; they want your Social Insurance or Social Security number or bank details before any interview; or they offer you a job after a chat over text. Velai never does any of these. We don't make job offers, and the only payments we take are the optional ones on the pricing page. The FTC has a good guide to job scams.
Because Velai lists jobs only from employers' own career sites, a fake ad posted to a job board doesn't show up here. It's still worth checking that Apply on employer site takes you to the company you expect.
What we still get wrong
Velai is in beta, and it isn't always right. When we ran our same-résumé test, we listed what went wrong on our side, like jobs labelled remote that weren't.
If you find something wrong, whether it's a closed job, a fit that makes no sense, or a claim on this page that doesn't hold up, tell us. We read every message.