Freelancer.com reviews often lack crucial info and look too promotional? Read this to learn what Freelancer jobs attract skilled pros, how to work on the website, and how to make the best use of this resource.
What is Freelancer.com and how does it work?
Unlike vetted platforms where freelancers go through proficiency tests before matching with clients, Freelancer.com utilizes the bidding system to match customers with contractors. We’ll cover it in a more detailed fashion a bit later. Meanwhile, here is what you need to know:
- Freelancer.com is one of the largest bidding platforms, with more than 90 million registered users. For you, that means a huge talent pool where it’s easy to find a contractor with the exact skill set you need.
- It is possible to hire a skilled pro for a lower average hourly/fixed rate than on vetted platforms.
- The worst thing about bidding platforms (Freelancer.com included) is that you have to rely on trial and error when selecting your perfect candidate. A contractor’s portfolio looks spick and span, and their testimonials are full of ecstatic reviews, but it does not mean that you will be satisfied with their work. Perhaps, for your particular job, this freelancer is a poor choice. This is where non-bidding platforms earn their keep: skills are screened before you ever see a profile, so most of the trial and error happens before the match.
- Freelancer.com is good at many things, but customer service and scam protection aren’t among them. Since 2026, first-line support tickets go to an AI agent before a human, so if you fall victim to a scam, getting a real person to review your case can take a while.
Additionally, there is a Freelancer App which you can download here.
Freelancer reviews: Opinions from other customers
Freelancer reviews are polar and tend to differ based on who’s writing.
For example, Freelancer Reddit threads are full of unsatisfied contractors who had a bad experience working for the platform.
On the other hand, customer reviews on Trustpilot are less categorical. Freelancer.com reviewers praise its customer support team, especially the hands-on help during Preferred Freelancer Program enrollment.
The main complaint is the opposite experience: accounts closed without a clear reason and support tickets closed without a reply.
What a credible Freelancer profile looks like
A Freelancer profile is the storefront of any contractor working on the website, and one of your few (unfortunately) tools for telling a reliable pro from a fraud. Whenever there’s a promising bid to your order, make sure to take a glance at the applying freelancer’s page, as it can provide you with some valuable clues on who you are going to work with.
Clear summary of the contractor’s expertise
How many times have you seen people writing, “The rockstar of web development,” “I’ve been coding in my home cellar since childhood,” and “I have a strong passion for all things related to programming?” We’ve seen hundreds, probably. Such resumes tell you nothing about the candidate’s skill. Also, they are annoying.
If you are looking for a front-end dev on the Freelancer site, you want their summary to reflect knowledge of frameworks such as React, Angular, Vue, HTML and CSS, principles of working with WordPress, REST APIs, etc.
Similarly, when hiring a back-end dev, you want to know whether they are familiar with Ruby, Node.js, Python, or PHP, or what databases they have worked with.
Years of experience, clients they worked for, biggest projects — this is optional, but also useful info.
Photo and contact info
The truth is, freelancers could be using a stock photo or an AI-generated headshot, and no one would notice the difference. This is why the badges under the name matter more than the picture. Look for email, phone, payment, and identity (KYC) verification. The blue Verified badge goes further: the freelancer has passed ID checks and a video interview with Freelancer staff. Once you award the project, you can video-call them right from the chat.
Comprehensive and diverse portfolio
Pay attention to the following portfolio diversity. Varied projects in different fields may indicate a wider skill set. On the other hand, if a freelancer has many similar projects in their portfolio, they could be a sign that they have been focusing on one professional area.
Developers often include links to their Stack Overflow and GitHub profiles, as those are better suited for posting and reviewing code samples than Freelancer.
Testimonials from previous customers
Don’t stop at the stars. The average freelancer on the platform is rated 4.83 out of 5, so almost everyone looks great. Read the written reviews, check how recent they are, and look at the freelancer’s Job Completion Rate.
Badges and certificates
Not all badges mean the same thing. The blue Verified badge confirms identity, not skill, and freelancers pay $99 for it. Skill exams test specific knowledge. The Preferred Freelancer badge is the strongest signal: it requires passing an exam, 10+ completed projects, a 4.8+ rating, and a top-3% ranking in at least one skill.
Typical Freelancer.com scams to watch out for
Fake testimonials
This is a common scam some beginners can try to fool you with. Positive customer reviews are the best promotion of freelance services, so newbie contractors stage projects to collect fake reviews, trying to attract your attention. Fake testimonials indicate that a person does not want (or know how) to gain a reputation fairly, and is looking for shortcuts.
Chances are that you’ll run into an incompetent contractor even without being deceived by fake testimonials. Most likely, you will spend your time and money on underqualified work that you will have to redo. In the worst-case scenario, they’ll just take your prepayment and vanish.
Stolen and AI-generated portfolios
Like fake testimonials, this scam makes a contractor look more skilled than they are, and AI has made it much easier to pull off. Designers lift work from Behance, Dribbble, or ArtStation, where anyone can view and download it. Developers fork an open-source repo, change a few styles, and call it “built from scratch.” Others skip copying altogether and generate the samples with AI: according to Greenhouse’s 2025 Workforce & Hiring report, 28% of job seekers now use AI to fake work samples.
The good news: this is one of the easier scams to catch. Run a reverse image search on design work. Open the GitHub commit history; one or two commits on a “complex platform” is a red flag. Best of all, ask the freelancer to walk you through one project on a video call. People who built something can explain why they built it that way.
Otherwise, you end up paying senior rates for skills the contractor doesn’t have.
Scammers often copy images of the work done by others, compile them into portfolios, and upload them to their Freelancer.com profiles.
Malicious software
Remote work runs on constant online communication and file exchange, and tech-savvy scammers use that to their advantage. A while after hiring a freelancer, you may receive a message with attached files. The subject often looks like, “Here’s what I’ve done so far; need confirmation” or “Done! Pls review and comment.” Suspecting nothing bad (because the contractor’s portfolio and testimonials looked great), you open the attached files and…
The scammer gains access to your data.
Viruses can be a real pain in the neck. Your personal and project-related data can be stolen, and your passwords can be hijacked — all this because you launched one small file sent to you by a person from the internet. Often use antivirus software to check incoming files, and never open .exe files, especially if they were sent to you by people you don’t know.
Mimicked contact data
An elegant fraud that exploits the tendency of the human mind to miss out on small discrepancies. A scammer creates a messenger account similar to the one used by a top-rated freelancer, but with a small difference. For example, instead of @JohnSmith, they register as @John-Smith. Then they send you the link to the real freelancer’s profile along with the fake contact address. You see the profile, call the scammer, make a prepayment, and they disappear. Smooth. Any request to move the conversation to WhatsApp, Telegram, or email before you award the project is a warning sign in itself, because Freelancer.com’s terms ban it.
Ghosting
Sometimes, freelancers can abandon your project. Or when they realize they lack the skill to successfully complete your order. Or when they receive a prepayment and it dawns on them that they can just take your money and vanish. Ghosting is a common problem on many crowdsourcing marketplaces, Freelancer included. The Job Completion Rate on a profile is the quickest way to spot a repeat ghoster.
How much does Freelancer cost?
On the Freelancer website, you pay the contractors in milestones. First, you must upload the funds to your account using one of the prepayment methods, and then release them to your freelancer upon job (or milestone) completion.
Freelancer payment options
You can deposit funds using a credit card, PayPal, Skrill, Apple Pay (on iOS) or a bank deposit. Depending on your country and currency, other Freelancer payment options include: iDEAL, SOFORT, Bancontact, Dotpay, WeChat Pay, Alipay, UnionPay and Paytm.
The platform also allows contractors to create invoices for external clients. The invoicing option comes with a 5% Freelancer.com fee, requires a paid Plus, Professional, or Premier membership, and caps each invoice at $3,000 (or €2,400).
Freelancer prices
Registering, posting jobs, and receiving bids on Freelancer.com is free. When looking for a contractor, you can post either a contest or a project.
The contest allows you to simultaneously receive and review multiple submissions from freelancers. You just need to set up a prize fund before running a contest. The size of your contest budget is up to you. This is a nice way to get a glimpse of the skills of numerous freelancers at once.
The project implies that you post a job description, and contractors start bidding for it. You then choose the pro you feel like working with and hire them for the job. Freelancers work for fixed prices or hourly rates. So, there are no fixed prices on Freelancer.com (except for the membership plans for freelancers, which influence the monthly number of bids, advanced profile customization, and so on).
Freelancer fees
Depending on the type of project you are running, Freelancer.com will charge you different sums. Typical Freelancer project fees look like this:
Fixed price projects will cost you a fee of $3 or 3% of the sum you’re paying, whichever is greater.
Hourly projects cost an additional 3% of the sum you pay to a freelancer.
Contests have no fees on them, but you must deposit the prize money to your account before running one. Depositing funds isn’t free either: card, PayPal, and Skrill deposits cost $0.30 + 2.3%, international wires cost $15, and local bank deposits are free.
How to work on Freelancer?
Freelancer bidding
So, we’ve already mentioned that Freelancer.com relies on bidding when matching clients with contractors. But how exactly does bidding work? How to hire a freelancer on this website?
Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Register on Freelancer.com as an employer
- Provide a job description and budget details in your order and post it
- As the contractors registered on Freelancer.com see your order, they’ll start bidding. A bid usually includes:
- The price a contractor is willing to work for
- Delivery deadline
- Proposal description (the explanation of why you should hire this particular freelancer)
- Project’s approximate milestones.
- You review the profiles of all the applicants to see whose skills and expertise match your requirements.
- Pick the bid you like and award the project to that freelancer.
- Once you select one or several freelancers to work with, you can directly communicate with them on-site.
Freelancer time tracker
We were surprised to discover that Freelancer reviews rarely mention one of the best Freelancer features: its specially designed time tracker. The desktop application makes billing more accurate. It allows you to monitor your hired contractor’s work hours, review their work remotely, and quickly exchange comments on the project.
Safety measures
NDA projects
If you want to keep your project details private, you can add the NDA upgrade ($22.99) when posting a project. Any freelancer bidding for it will first have to accept the non-disclosure agreement. Freelancer.com does provide default NDAs, but to be on the safe side, you’d get some legal advice. Keep in mind that the NDA Project description will still be visible to all contractors.
Personal communication
Whenever possible, try to contact the freelancer you’re planning to hire in person. A quick video call through Freelancer’s built-in chat can solve a bunch of problems at once. You’ll:
- make sure you’re dealing with a real person
- weed out scammers, as they prefer anonymity
- be able to make up your mind about the candidate. Often, simply browsing one’s portfolio and testimonials is not enough to figure out what a person is like at work. A live interview can help you notice small details in a candidate’s behavior and temper that can make working with them either a pleasure or an ordeal.
Onsite payments
Freelancer.com provides all means necessary to transfer money for the completed order to a contractor. If they ask you to process a payment using third-party services not used by the platform, better treat it as a warning sign.
What to pay attention to
In our Freelancer review, we’ve tried to cover some typical red flags that you should watch out for when hiring a particular contractor.
Requests for full upfront payments
Professionals often ask for prepayment. For a freelancer, it is a necessary part of the job and a guarantee that a client is willing to pay. For you, it is an investment in the quality of the work your hired contractor is doing.
It is okay when a freelancer asks you about a 50% prepayment (although typically they prefer getting paid in milestones). But if a person you found online says something like, “Hey, would you mind paying me in full before I work on your order?” it is a big red flag for you.
Complaints about “high fees” followed by off-site payment requests
Yes, Freelancer.com charges contractors fees on every order they work on. Professionals agree to this when they register on the platform. So, if someone asks you to process the payment elsewhere, this is at least cheating. Or worse, it could be a scam or phishing attempt. Don’t get fooled by it.
Identity verification requests
There are hundreds of stories about unscrupulous customers who delay payments for completed orders or never pay a contractor they hired. Hiding behind such stories, some contractors can ask you to “provide your credentials” or to “verify your ID and payment information” to “make sure you won’t fool them.”
Well, their mistrust is their problem, not yours. Freelancer.com is a place where customers and contractors meet for mutual benefit. There is always some risk involved (and that’s why we like non-bidding platforms with more vetting). But this is what milestone payments are for; this is why you can review freelancers’ portfolios and testimonials in the first place.
Flat refusal of a live interview
A person desperately hiding behind online anonymity probably has something to hide. Maybe they are a scammer afraid of disclosure, maybe not. But when you are the party with an important to-do project and a tight budget, you cannot afford to take unnecessary risks.
Empty profiles that lack credible data
Photos, phone numbers, emails, Skype addresses — freelancers add these credentials to their profiles to signal to you that they are real and can be trusted. If you can’t see any, it’s probably better to skip this particular contractor.
What successful Freelancer job postings look like
Write a concise but clear job title
Titles like “Need help with website ASAP!!!!!1” or “Need a coder” tell freelancers nothing about the nature of the job. Having to review dozens of Freelancer jobs on a daily basis, contractors usually scan titles in the first place. If yours doesn’t look promising, why would they want to apply to it?
“Need a front-end dev for WordPress setup” looks a bit better, doesn’t it?
Use categories
Freelancer.com has a huge variety of all kinds of filters and categories that job postings fall under. When posting a job, make sure you specify the related category and skill sets, so that contractors can preliminarily assess whether their expertise matches your requirements.
Provide a detailed description
You don’t have to disclose all the project data, but rather provide candidates with the overall context: what you’re working on, what you want them to do, and when, what are the project-related problems you’ve been facing. Also, if you have any references, use the “Upload files” section to give applicants a better picture.
Specify your budget and project type
Hopefully, you’ve planned your project expenses in advance, because this is probably the most crucial info for any contractor on Freelancer.com.
To get it all even more transparent, we’ve compiled a comprehensive table of pros and cons.
Freelancer pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| One of the largest crowdsourcing platforms in the world, Freelancer houses independent contractors of all possible professions. Whatever you need, from data entry to full-stack development, you’ll find someone for it here. | Freelancer is a bidding platform. Your job posting will probably gather dozens of applicants, and you’ll have to manually review their profiles to choose the one most suitable for the job. This is frustrating and time-consuming. |
| Lots of payment methods, not just PayPal. | Although Freelancer does have security measures, scammers still operate on the platform. |
| Low fees for customers. Freelancers often complain about how the platform rips them off, but you probably won’t feel it. | Support is inconsistent: helpful for routine issues, but users report account closures and disputes left without a clear answer. |
| Affordable prices. Many contractors on Freelancer work for reasonable hourly/fixed rates. In theory, you could hire Einstein for pennies here. | Since Freelancer.com added an AI proposal writer in 2023, polished bids no longer show who can do the job: a Dartmouth–Princeton study estimates that top freelancers now get hired 19% less often and the weakest 14% more often. Freelancer calls it “AI-enhanced bid spam,” yet vetting is still optional. |
| The time tracker and NDA projects. These are two great options many other crowdsourcing platforms lack, since they allow you to keep your data and money safe. | If a contractor ghosts you or decides to abandon the project, you cannot prevent that. |
Freelancer alternatives
To make our review even more visual and scientific, we’ve decided to sum up the brief information on Freelancer’s benefits and the benefits of its key competitors in a concise table. It can show you what sites like Freelancer you can use for job search.
For those wishing to delve into a full-fledged comparison of the largest freelance marketplaces, we’ve written a comprehensive guide about Freelancer alternatives.
Looking for more alternatives? Check Toptal, Upwork, or Andela alternatives.
