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Where freelancers find work online, and what the platforms keep
Some freelance marketplaces take a cut of every payment, some charge the client instead, and a few take nothing from the freelancer at all.
A freelance marketplace brings clients and freelancers together and usually handles the contract and the payment. In return it keeps a share of the money, and that share varies widely: from nothing at all to 15% of every payment, with fees on bids, payouts and client payments on top in some cases.
The nine marketplaces below fall into three groups: the general marketplaces open to most kinds of work, the platforms for designers and other creatives, and the specialist networks for one trade. Fees are in percent or US dollars. Getting in matters too: some take anyone who signs up, and others accept only a small share of applicants.
General marketplaces
Freelancer is a marketplace where freelancers find projects and enter contests, with work in more than 4,000 categories, including proofreading, article writing, graphic design, website design and data entry. Signing up, creating a profile, choosing skills, uploading a portfolio and receiving project notifications are free. When you win work, the fee is 10% or $5.00, whichever is greater, on fixed-price projects, and 10% on hourly projects. Entering a contest is free; a fee applies when you are awarded a prize. There are limits for free members: six bids a month at first, and a minimum balance of $20.00 before placing any bid on a Standard account. Freelancers in its Preferred Freelancer Program pay a 15% fee on Recruiter projects.
Workana connects freelancers and clients for projects in IT and programming, design and multimedia, writing and translation, sales and marketing, and admin support. Creating a profile and sending proposals are free, though the profile has to be approved by Workana first. Workana takes a commission when a freelancer is hired on a project, which can drop to 5% with a long-term client. Freelancers can also buy a benefit plan; the explorer plan costs 1 USD a day and adds 52 extra connections a week.
goLance takes the opposite approach. It has more than 1,000,000 freelancers, and they pay 0% in service fees and keep 100% of what they bill. Instead, the platform charges the client a flat 7.95% fee. There are no connects, no pay-to-apply systems and no tiered membership plans. It has built-in time tracking, milestone payments and several withdrawal options, including crypto, with hourly, milestone-based and fixed-price contracts.
Designers and other creatives
Design work has several marketplaces of its own, with very different fee models. DesignCrowd is a custom design marketplace for logo design, web design, business card design, graphic design and more. Registering as a designer is free, and DesignCrowd keeps a 15% commission on design charges. It lists 1,342,858 freelance designers and 537,050 completed projects.
Designhill charges designers 0% commission, and it is free to join, with no subscription and no fee to list services. Designers can enter design contests, sell design services on their own terms and work on one-to-one projects, setting any price from $5 with their own deliverables and timelines. Clients find them through their portfolio. To sell a service, though, a designer's portfolio must be approved by the Designhill team, and only 5% of designers are given pro status.
Dribbble lets freelancers and agencies offering design and development services create a public profile, show examples of client work and offer services. They receive inquiries from clients, talk with them over text and video, send proposals, accept payments and deliver the work through the platform. Its Platform Fee is graduated: 10% on the first $500 of a payout, 7% on the next $500 and 4% on anything above that. Pro Standard (annual) and Pro Plus subscribers pay no fees on payouts, while non-subscribers can only be contacted directly by a client.
Contra is a network for creative freelancers that is commission-free for all creatives. Clients post jobs for free and creatives apply directly, and creatives can sign contracts, send invoices and get paid. The free plan includes standard payouts but limited job opportunities, and it lists client payment fees of $15 or $29 per payment over $500. Faster payouts carry a 2% fee, and an optional Pro plan costs $29 a month or $199 a year.
Specialist networks
Codeable matches clients with WordPress developers for one-off projects and long-term partnerships, from fixing critical issues within hours to building a new site or store or embedding developers in a team for months. It has more than 500 vetted WordPress developers. Clients submit a project and are matched with an expert, and Codeable adds a 17.5% service fee on top of the expert's estimate. The fee is included in the total price and is not refundable.
Reedsy connects publishing professionals, such as editors, designers, marketers, ghostwriters, web designers and translators, with authors who hire help for manuscripts and books. Professionals create a free profile to show their skills, portfolio and previous work, receive requests from clients, respond with quotes and work together through an online toolkit with automated contracts and invoices, scheduled payments, messaging, calls and file sharing. Clients can request quotes from only five professionals at a time. Reedsy charges professionals a 10% service fee, and getting in is hard: only around 1% of freelancer applications are accepted, and a profile appears on the marketplace only once the application is accepted.
How the fees compare
Three fee models run through these platforms. The first is a commission taken from the freelancer: 15% on DesignCrowd, 10% on Reedsy, 10% or at least $5.00 on Freelancer's fixed-price projects, Workana's commission when hired, and Dribbble's graduated fee for non-subscribers.
The second puts the fee on the client. goLance charges the client 7.95% and the freelancer nothing, Codeable adds 17.5% to the expert's estimate, and Contra charges clients a payment fee on its free plan. The third model, a subscription, replaces the commission: Dribbble's Pro Standard (annual) and Pro Plus subscribers pay no payout fees, and Contra's Pro plan is optional.
For a freelancer comparing them, the headline percentage is only the start. Bid limits, minimum balances, payout fees and approval rules all change what a platform costs and how easy it is to win work there.
