Upwork Fees Are Basically Vibes Now

The history of Upwork fee changes has been adjusted many times for inflation and alignment of the stars.

My memory serves me right, as far back as the sliding fee structure in 2016.

That was the year when connections were no longer free. You had to pay $0.15 to play on Upwork.

Newbie freelancers were given a one-time allotment of 20 connects for free. The rising talent and the top-rated freelancers on Upwork were given a one-time allotment of 30 (60) connects as soon as they got their status badges. The bundle price for connects used to be like this:

• 10 for $1.50
• 20 for $3
• 40 for $6
• 60 for $9
• 80 for $12

“Before May 3, 2016, UpWork charged a flat rate of 10% on payments made to freelancers.” Then, in 2023, Upwork went back to a 10% flat fee.

In the meantime, new freelancers lost their welcome bunch of free connects.

The bundle price stayed the same, more or less.

Upwork Plus used to be $14.99, I think.

Upwork 2025

The month of May is reserved for surprising and special announcements on Upwork.

What’s that supposed to mean? Well, the client demand will determine where freelancers stand. It can be 0%, but it can also be 15%. Reddit has spoken about it:

The mother of all Upwork questions that’s on every freelancer’s mind right now:

Let’s see. “There are about 18 million freelancers on Upwork according to the last publicly available data.” There were “814,000 active clients on Upwork” in 2022. Here are the most interesting numbers according to Famewall dot io:

• “Upwork has made $4.1 billion in gross services volume in 2023.”
• “In 2023, Upwork had made $283.6 million in revenue from Employers all over the world.”
• “Upwork made $566,623 million in 2022 according to the latest filings.”

How much does Upwork make from freelancers?

“The total dollar value transacted through Upwork’s platform is called Gross Services Volume (GSV). GSV includes both client spend and additional fees charged for value-added services. Client spend—the total amount that clients spend on both Upwork’s marketplace offerings and its managed services offering—is the primary component of Upwork’s GSV. GSV also includes additional fees charged by Upwork for other services, such as freelancer withdrawals and foreign currency exchange.”

I went through the Upwork (UPWK) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript, and my head hurts. Numbers aren’t my forte. This makes the most sense to me:

What about the clients’ service fees? I stumbled upon this article written by a client who hired 200+ freelancers on Upwork until 2022. What can I say? The next time I write about Upwork fee changes, I’d have to switch to an ebook format.