Upwork to Charge Clients 5%

  • All their "new features" are practically useless. Speaking as a client with many years of using UpWork.

    Their fees were quite substantial before, but now it's more ridiculous. Probably gonna use it only for lead acquisition and move away instantly.

  • For a bit of context: Upwork (back then known as oDesk) originally had a flat fee of 10% paid by contractors. Around the time they acquired Elance they changed the fee structure to make it 20% for contracts under $500. Now they are adding additional 5% on top paid by clients.

    Note that a withdrawal to a non-US bank is an additional flat $30.

    To be fair, until now, Upwork was also charging clients 3% for payment processing, and as far as I understood those will be now included in the 5%.

  • I predict this will encourage other market places (eg as Fiverr.com) to continue to go up market.

  • Jeez, I was about to put some new projects through Upwork as Informally use Freelancer but wanted to have alt account to widen potential options, bugger that now.

    Any suggestions/experience on best alternatives?

  • I wonder why people would even use upwork for contracts over $10000.

  • i hire work from upwork - usually small jobs - couple hundred bucks here and there - sometimes more.

    not sure what any of their fees are. i prob should start paying attention more.

    i wonder why they changed the fee structure - if that's what happened.

  • I received a "remind-us?" mail from they ten days ago. I suppose that they lose a percentage of freelancers because of the Putin genocide and may be trying to round numbers. Russian freelancers probably can't work there anymore (Could be wrong)