Case Study: Adzuna scales to millions of users and global expansion with MySQL

Adzuna Relies on MySQL to Support Explosive Growth

Adzuna, launched in the UK in 2011, is a fast-growing search engine for classified ads—specializing in jobs, properties and cars—indexing tens of millions of listings and providing salary trends, maps and social integrations. The startup needed a highly scalable, reliable and low‑cost database solution that could handle unpredictable traffic spikes (from 10,000 to 1,000,000 users in a day) and be customized to support rapid expansion without downtime.

Adzuna chose MySQL for its performance, scalability, GIS support and Perl integration, pairing Apache Solr as a NoSQL front end and normalizing minute-by-minute feeds into a >100 GB MySQL backend hosted in the cloud. This architecture turns massive unstructured feeds into searchable records, powering continuous crawling and partner integrations, supporting 2 million monthly unique visitors, multi‑country expansion, and plans to scale into dozens more markets.

Adzuna

Andrew Hunter

Co-Founder