Travel Nurse Job Board: Which is the best?

Looking for the best travel nurse job board to research the travel nurse job market?

I've been job hunting as a travel nurse for 3 years, and I built one of the boards on this list, so read the table with that in mind. What I can tell you is what actually separates them - and it isn't listing count.

You need a travel nurse job board that:

• Compares your pay package against other offers
• Puts your Best job options front & center
• Protects you from getting bombarded with job spam

Travel Nurse Job Boards, Compared

Ranked by # of agencies listed.

Why those 3 columns are the ones that matter

Listing count is the number every board advertises, and it's the least useful one. A board with 10,000 contracts you can't evaluate is worse than a board with 500 you can.

Here's what each column is really asking.

Does it compare your pay?

A weekly rate on its own tells you nothing. $2,400 is excellent in one market and low in another, and you can't tell which from the listing.

What you need is that rate measured against what your specialty in your locations has actually been paying. Without that, you're guessing - and the recruiter on the other end of the call isn't.

Does it put the best jobs on top?

"Best" should mean the highest-paying, most recent contracts for your search, sitting where you'll actually see them.

But most boards put "featured jobs" up top instead - the slots agencies pay for. That placement is bought to benefit the agency, not you.

And it does more than clutter the top of the page. It pushes the highest-paying contracts down, so the jobs actually worth your time get harder to find.

That's the pattern across most of this space: these boards are built to make agencies money, not to make your job search easier.

Does it block job spam?

This is the one nurses learn the hard way.

Some sites in this space aren't job boards at all - they're lead sellers. Here's how that business actually works:

• A nurse hands over a name, phone number, and email to see jobs or apply.
• The site sells that contact info to agencies as a paid "lead" - often the same nurse to several agencies at once.
• Every nurse who signs up becomes inventory the site gets paid for.

That's why one search can turn into a week of phone calls. The last row of the table is honest about doing exactly that.

The tell is simple: if a site won't show a nurse what a contract pays until they hand over their contact info, the nurse isn't the customer - they're the product.

You should test multiple job boards to see which works best for you.

But don't hand over your real contact info to do it. Set up a private email address and a burner phone number first, then vet the site with those.

You'll see whatever's behind the login - and when the spam starts, and it will, it lands somewhere you can walk away from instead of on your personal phone and inbox.

How StellarNurse handles those 3 things

When I started travel nursing in 2016, I didn't like any of the job boards out there - none of them did the 3 things above. So I decided a better one was a project I needed to take on, and I built it.

I built it around 2 goals - show nurses as much pay and job data as possible, and hand agencies as little about you as possible. That's what these features are for.

On comparing your pay:

• Every rate is measured against the past 6 months of pay for the search you actually ran, not a national average.
• Each listing tells you where it lands - 99th percentile, above average, average, below average - and how far above average, in dollars per week. Checking L&D nationwide as I write this, the top contract on the board sits at the 97th percentile and $841/week above the L&D average - that's the gap you'd never see on a board that just lists jobs. 👍
• All pay is adjusted to a standard 36-hour week first, so a 48-hour contract can't look like a raise when it's the same hourly rate for 12 more hours of your life.
• Every listing shows which other agencies are offering that same contract, and what each one pays. Same job, same unit, different cut - and 1 button messages several of them at once.

On putting the best jobs on top:

• Results come in 2 groups. Best jobs pay in the 75th percentile or higher for your search and were posted in the past 48 hours. Other jobs are everything else, still visible, just lower.
• Nobody can buy their way into the top group. We don't take payment for placement.
• Contracts are verified while you search. 3 dots means we're checking that job with the source right now, ✅ a green checkmark means it was updated in the past few minutes, ✅ ✅ and a double checkmark means the pay changed - so re-read it before you act.

On blocking job spam:

• You can read every listing, pay included, without an account.
• When you do reach out, the message goes from a free @SNurseMail.com private address, so the agency never gets your personal email. 🔐
• Your phone number does go to an agency you message - which is why I tell every nurse to set up a burner number first. 📵
• Your information is never sold, and agencies you didn't message never receive it.

On how we make money:

Every site earns somehow - most by selling nurses to agencies as leads. We don't.

• StellarNurse only gets paid when a nurse actually signs a contract.
• Our cut is a referral fee - the same referral bonus agencies already pay a nurse for referring another nurse.
• It comes out of the agency's marketing budget, not your pay package. Your rate is your rate; our fee never touches it.
• No signed contract, no fee - so the only way we get paid is by getting a nurse into a better job. Our incentive and yours point the same way. ⬅️

The full walkthrough of how all of it works is on the help page.

So which travel nurse job board is best?

It depends on what you're doing that day, and using 2 or 3 of them is normal.

• To see the whole market and compare rates on the same contract: StellarNurse. Find open travel nursing contracts.
• To read agency reviews before you commit: Vivian has the deepest pile of them.
• To have agencies compete for you, or find you with job proposals: tallewise runs live hiring events where agencies come to you - and you stay anonymous until you're ready to connect.
• To catch a listing that hasn't been aggregated anywhere yet: Google Jobs, accepting that you'll wade through duplicates and filled posts.
• To find housing alongside a contract: Wanderly.

What I'd avoid is any site that wants your phone number before it will tell you what a job pays.

That isn't a job board with an extra step - your number is the product, and an agency is paying the site for it.

YOU are the product. Stop selling yourself & your info.

The bottom line

The best travel nurse job board is the one that tells you what a contract is worth before you talk to anybody, and doesn't charge you your privacy for the privilege. Judge every site on this list by those 3 columns and you'll sort them out fast.

When you're ready to see rates for your specialty, find travel nursing jobs here. If you want to know what a good rate looks like before you start, the travel nurse salary breakdown has the numbers, and how to negotiate travel nurse pay covers what to do once an offer lands.

Thanks for reading! You now know what to look for in a job board, which is more than most of them want you to know. If you're weighing 2 boards, or an offer came back and you want a second opinion on the number, message me anytime. I answer every one myself.

Frequently asked questions