Upwork and Fiverr alternatives fall into three groups. Freelancer.com, Guru, and PeoplePerHour work much like Upwork: clients post projects and freelancers bid. Contra charges the freelancer no commission and leans on a portfolio. Toptal screens applicants and matches them with clients, so it suits experienced freelancers, not beginners.
This guide is for a freelancer who already knows how Upwork works or how Fiverr works and wants to compare other options. Fees below come from each platform's own fee or help pages, checked on 1 November 2026. Platforms change fees, so the fee page for each one is the final word.
How to compare alternatives to Upwork
The headline commission is only one part of the cost. Four questions give a fairer comparison:
What is left from a $100 job after the freelancer's fee?
What does it cost to apply? Bids, credits, or Connects can be free, limited, or sold.
How does work arrive? Bidding on posts, buyers ordering a listing, or a platform matching the freelancer to a client.
Who does it suit? A new freelancer, a specialist with a portfolio, or a senior professional.
For reference, Upwork's freelancer fee is 0% to 15% per contract, so $85 to $100 stays from $100. How much Upwork costs breaks that down. Fiverr keeps 20%, so $80 stays.
Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com is the closest match to Upwork. Clients post fixed-price or hourly projects, freelancers bid, and the client awards the project. It also runs contests, where several freelancers submit work and only the winner is paid.
Fee: 10% or $5, whichever is greater, on fixed-price projects, and 10% of each hourly payment. A $100 project leaves $90. Contest prizes carry the same 10% or $5 fee.
Cost to apply: bidding is free, but Freelancer.com requires at least $20 in the account balance before placing a bid, and a free account gets 6 bids a month, refilled one every 120 hours. Paid memberships raise that to 50, 100, 300, or 1,500 bids a month. Optional bid upgrades are charged, such as a $0.10 sealed bid, a $1 highlighted bid, or a sponsored bid at 0.3% of the project's maximum budget plus $0.90 ($1.90 to $14.90).
Client fee: 3% or $3, whichever is greater, on fixed-price projects.
Six bids a month is a tight limit, so each bid needs to go to a project that fits closely. What is Freelancer and how it works covers the rest of the platform.
Guru
Guru is another bidding marketplace, smaller than Upwork, with a lower top fee.
Fee: a job fee on every paid invoice of 9% on the free Basic and the Basic+ plans, 7% on Professional, 6% on Business, and 5% on Executive. A $100 invoice leaves $91 on the free plan. The employer can agree to pay up to 5% of that fee, which lowers it further. On Executive, with the employer covering 5%, the freelancer pays nothing.
Cost to apply: sending a quote uses one bid. The free plan includes 10 bids a month, up to 120 a year. Paid plans, from $11.95 a month, include 50 a month.
Client fee: a 2.9% handling fee on each invoice, refunded when the client pays by eCheck or wire.
Guru suits a freelancer who wants a cheaper bidding marketplace and does not mind a smaller job feed.
PeoplePerHour
PeoplePerHour mixes both models. Freelancers send proposals on posted projects and can also list fixed-price offers that buyers order, similar to a Fiverr Gig. Its terms quote fees in pounds, euros, and dollars.
Fee: tiered by total billing with each buyer, before VAT. The fee is 20% until billing with that buyer reaches £250 (or $350), then 7.5% up to £5,000 (or $7,000), and 3.5% above that. A first $100 job with a new buyer leaves $80, the same as Fiverr. Repeat work with one buyer gets much cheaper.
Cost to apply: freelancers need a paid 12-month subscription, PPH Basic or TopAccess, priced at checkout. Basic includes 15 proposal credits a month and TopAccess 25, each proposal uses one credit, and extra credits can be bought.
Client fee: 10% plus £0.60 on card, PayPal, and most other payment methods.
PeoplePerHour suits a freelancer who expects to work with the same clients repeatedly, because that is when the fee drops.
Contra
Contra works differently from the marketplaces above. The freelancer builds a portfolio profile, clients find it or post jobs, and Contra takes no commission from the freelancer's earnings.
Fee: 0% commission. When the freelancer is on Contra's free plan, clients pay a platform fee of $15 on payments under $500 and $29 on payments of $500 or more. Contra Pro, the freelancer's paid plan at $29 a month or $199 a year, removes that fee.
Payout costs: payout processors charge their own fees. Contra's help page lists 2% for PayPal and $3 plus 1% to 2% for Payoneer, with some countries charged a flat fee of up to $15. A $100 payment can therefore arrive as $98 through PayPal, or about $95 to $96 through Payoneer, and less where Payoneer charges a flat fee.
Cost to apply: no bid or credit system is listed.
Contra suits designers, developers, and writers with work they can show. A profile with no samples has little to offer clients there. How to write a freelance case study helps turn past projects into portfolio pieces.
Toptal
Toptal does not take bids. It screens freelancers and matches accepted ones with client projects. Its talent FAQ asks for two to three years or more of experience as a developer, designer, management consultant, product manager, or project manager.
Screening: an English communication interview, skill tests, a live interview with an expert in the field, and a test project that usually takes one to three weeks. Toptal says fewer than 3% of applicants are accepted and that screening takes three to eight weeks.
Pay: members set their own hourly rate and are paid in US dollars. Toptal handles billing with the client.
Client fee: clients pay a $79 monthly subscription for talent matching, and Toptal bills them for the work.
Toptal does not charge applicants a fee. Any third party asking for money to guarantee acceptance is not part of Toptal's process.
The same $100 job across Upwork and Fiverr alternatives
Before payout fees, a $100 job leaves:
Contra: $100, then $98 through PayPal or about $95 to $96 through Payoneer
Upwork: $85 to $100, depending on the contract fee
Guru: $91 on the free plan, rising to $95 or more on higher plans or when the employer shares the fee
Freelancer.com: $90
Fiverr: $80
PeoplePerHour: $80 with a new buyer, then $92.50 and $96.50 as billing with that buyer grows
The fee is not the whole cost. A site with a lower fee but few matching jobs can still pay less over a month than Upwork or Fiverr. The freelance rate calculator works out the hourly rate needed once a platform's fee is included.
Which of the Fiverr alternatives fits
Choose by how the work is sold:
Bidding on posted projects: Freelancer.com for volume, Guru for a lower fee, PeoplePerHour for repeat clients.
Selling a fixed listing, as on Fiverr: PeoplePerHour's offers are the closest of these Fiverr alternatives.
Selling from a portfolio: Contra.
Senior work through matching: Toptal, after several years of experience.
Before committing, check that the platform has recent jobs in the freelancer's own skill and that its payout methods work in their country. In Pakistan, for example, PayPal cannot receive payments, so a platform that pays only through PayPal is not an option there. The best freelancing platform for beginners in Pakistan covers local payout setup, and which freelance platform is best for you compares Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com in more depth.
Start with one alternative, build reviews there, and add a second only after the first produces paid work.
