Sponsored Jobs UK vs Sponsor List UK: Live Vacancies or a Company Directory?

If you're searching for a UK job that comes with visa sponsorship, you've probably come across both Sponsored Jobs UK and Sponsor List UK (sponsorlist.co.uk). Both draw on the same official government data. Where they differ is what they actually show you once you land on the page, and that difference changes how useful each one is depending on what stage of the search you're at.

I run Sponsored Jobs UK, so treat this as a comparison written by someone with a stake in it. I've tried to be fair about it. Sponsor List UK is a solid free tool built on a similar data foundation, and I say where it does something genuinely useful. The aim here is to help you pick the right tool, not to pretend one site does everything better.

Company Register or Live Vacancies

Both sites are built from the Home Office register of licensed sponsors, and the numbers are close: Sponsor List UK advertises 126,870 verified sponsor companies sourced from GOV.UK, and Sponsored Jobs UK tracks 126,777. Essentially the same universe of licensed employers, refreshed from the same official source. That's where the similarity ends.

Sponsor List UK is a searchable copy of the register itself. You look up a company, a city, or an industry and it tells you whether a licence exists. It also has a feature called SponsorReady that matches your CV against opportunities and returns three focused matches, with a free first shortlist and no card required. It's a directory with a CV-matching layer on top: the core answer it gives you is which companies could sponsor you.

Sponsored Jobs UK starts from the same register but adds a second layer: I run scrapers that pull live vacancies, including from NHS Jobs and jobs.ac.uk, and cross-check every hiring company against that register before a role appears on the site. At the time of writing that's 1,791 live sponsored jobs across 182 companies. The question I'm answering isn't "which companies hold a licence", it's "who is actually hiring a sponsored role today".

Put simply: Sponsor List UK tells you which companies could sponsor. Sponsored Jobs UK tells you which of those companies are hiring right now.

What You're Actually Looking At

Because Sponsor List UK mirrors the full register, its 126,870 companies include every licensed sponsor whether or not they're hiring anything at all. That's genuinely useful if your plan is to research a specific employer, or to build a target list of companies in a sector and approach them cold before they've posted anything.

Sponsored Jobs UK's 182 companies are a smaller number by design, because they're filtered down to employers with a live, verifiable vacancy right now. You can still browse the sponsor directory and narrow by city, industry, or visa route, but every result on the jobs side is tied to an actual open role, not just a licence.

If your next step after finding a company is to go and check whether they're currently hiring, a directory means doing that legwork yourself, company by company. If you want the "currently hiring" filter already applied, that's the gap Sponsored Jobs UK fills.

Searching and Filtering

Sponsor List UK is searchable by company, city, and industry, which is exactly what you want from a register lookup tool. Its SponsorReady feature goes a step further by matching your CV to three focused opportunities and helping you tailor your application to them, which is a useful shortcut if you'd rather not scroll a full list yourself.

Sponsored Jobs UK filters the same way, by location, sector, and visa route, but every filter is applied against live vacancies rather than the static register. Search "hospitality sponsors in Leeds" and you get roles that are open now, not every licensed hospitality employer in Leeds whether or not they're recruiting.

Industry and Visa-Route Coverage

Because Sponsor List UK reflects the whole register, its industry coverage is as wide as the register itself; every sector with licensed sponsors is represented, since it's effectively a copy of the government list.

Sponsored Jobs UK covers whatever sectors currently have live vacancies, which in practice spans care and healthcare, hospitality, construction, IT, and education, plus roles pulled specifically from NHS Jobs and jobs.ac.uk that many general aggregators miss. It also has dedicated pages for the less common sponsored routes, Global Business Mobility, Scale-up, Creative Worker, and the rest, alongside the standard Skilled Worker route.

How Often the Data Updates

Sponsor List UK updates daily from official Home Office data, which keeps its company list current with the register. That's a genuinely strong update cadence for a directory.

Sponsored Jobs UK also re-syncs against the gov.uk register daily, and on top of that refreshes its live vacancy scrapers daily too, so both the "who can sponsor" layer and the "who is hiring" layer move at the same pace. Neither site is stale, the difference is what's being refreshed.

Signup and Price

Sponsor List UK is free, and its SponsorReady CV-match tool offers a free first shortlist with no card required, which is a fair way to try before committing to anything further.

Sponsored Jobs UK is also free and needs no account to browse. You can search the directory, open any company or city page, and click through to live jobs without signing in. There's an optional email digest if you want new roles pushed to you, but nothing is gated behind a login.

When the Other Site Is the Better Pick

If what you actually need is to browse the full register of licensed sponsors, or to check whether one specific employer holds a licence before you invest time in an application, Sponsor List UK's company-search approach is the right tool. It's built for exactly that lookup, and the simple search by company, city, or industry makes it quick to check.

The SponsorReady CV-match feature is also a genuine convenience if you want a starting shortlist without scrolling the full register yourself, and the free first shortlist with no card required is a low-friction way to see what it turns up.

Directory First, or Vacancies First

These two sites answer different questions from the same underlying data, so it's worth using them for what they're each good at rather than treating it as a single winner-takes-all choice. If your question is "which companies near me could sponsor a visa", Sponsor List UK's register search is the direct route to an answer. If your question is "who is actually hiring a sponsored role today", Sponsored Jobs UK's 1,791 live vacancies across 182 companies, cross-checked against that same register, is built specifically to answer it.

One number worth knowing either way: the general Skilled Worker salary threshold is £41,700 a year or the going rate for the role, whichever is higher, and the job normally needs to sit at RQF Level 6 or above. A company appearing on either site's licence data still needs a role that clears that bar, so checking the licence is only step one.

If you want more on how general job boards can mislabel sponsorship altogether, the Indeed vs Sponsored Jobs UK comparison covers that trap. And if you're already on a visa and need to move quickly, the guide to finding a new sponsor walks through the search itself.