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Are you one of the 1.57 billion freelancers looking for projects and clients?

Freelance website is where freelancer find projects and clients by using their expertise to earn an income as an self-employed personal rather than being employed by the company.

  • 51% of freelancer says no amount of salary will convince them to switch back to tradition jobs.
  • 91% of freelancers believe the future of freelancing career will be even better.
  • 59% of non-freelancers says they will consider freelancing in the future.
Fiverr-Freelancing

Fiverr

Leading online freelance platform designed for beginner and experienced freelancer to find freelancing job in any field and industry.

FlexJobs - Leading Online Job Search Platform

FlexJobs

Premium job board designed to help serious digital nomads find a flexible remote full-time or part-time job with reputable companies.

Escaping the 9 to 5, as a freelancer you can have the freedom to choose the projects and clients you want to work with. But so so many freelancing sites, which is the best site to start your freelancing career?

In this guide, we ranked and reviewed the best freelancing websites, along with our top choice so that you can pick the best one for you. And if you are wondering what are the highest paying freelancing skills you should learn, check out my other article after this.

Best Freelancing Site To Earn Money (Compared)

Platform

Description

Total Visitors

Service Fees

Start Freelancing

Best For New & Expert Freelancers

61.71 million visitors per month

20% applied to earnings

on website

Best For Professional Freelancers

3.3 million visitors per month

0% applied to earning.
Membership fee only for using platform.

In-depth review

on website

UpWork-Freelancing
UpWork

Best For Hourly Freelancers

43.9 million visitors per month

20% applied to earnings

on website

PeoplePerHour-Freelance
PeoplePerHour

Best For Flexible Freelancers

1.8 million visitors per month

20% applied to earnings

on website

Guru-Freelancing
Guru

Best For Experienced Freelancers

1.1 million visitors per month

Monthly membership fee + 9% applied to earnings

on website

Freelancer-Freelance
Freelancer

Best For Day-To-Day Freelancers

6.8 million visitors per month

10% applied to earnings

on website

Servicescape-Freelance
Servicescape

Best For High Achieving Freelancers

399 thousand visitors per month

50% applied to earnings

on website

Truelancer-Freelancing
Truelancer

Best For On-Demanded Freelancers

622 thousand visitors per month

Monthly membership fee + 10% applied to earnings

on website

Show More Show Less

Best Freelance Websites To Start Freelancing

Every freelancer have different preference on how they are being paid as a freelancer, some like to be paid by hours, monthly basis or by projects. Here are my top picks on the best freelancing site where freelancers can start earning an income.

1. Fiverr

Fiverr-Homepage

Fiverr is the leading freelancing marketplace that connects freelancers with clients and businesses from various fields and industry such as graphic design, digital marketing, writing, programming, business and lifestyle. Fiverr basically let freelancers with all types of expertise to find the right jobs regardless of their experience level, a platform where freelancers and start and grow into a true career.

Fiverr-Freelancing

Best For: Any freelancers looking to start a freelancing career

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Full featured seller dashboard best in the industry
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 61.71 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: $0, no listing fee. Unlimited listing.
  • Service Fees: 20% of earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Beginner-friendly website and app design
  • Simple and hassle-free pricing for your service
  • Offers certificate courses to learn new in-demanded freelancing skills.
  • Opportunity to be awarded as “Fiverr Pro”, an exception talent with the “Pro” badge to increase your client base.
  • Good customer support

CONS as a Freelancer

  • High freelancer competition
  • Wide range of employers
  • 14 days payment clearance

WHY WE LIKE IT

Fiverr offers a wide range of gigs available for freelancers. With Fiverr, regardless if you are an beginner who just started your freelancing career, someone who is just having freelancing as a side hustle, or an experienced freelancer who have build a 5-figure freelancing service, Fiverr can be a great place to find all types of freelancing gigs.

Fiverr is an all-in-one platforms where it handles everything required by a freelancer.

  • Learning new in-demanded high paying freelancing skills with Fiverr Learn.
  • Get leads through lead generation by promoting you to it’s 60+ million visitors per month.
  • Track the progress of your project after getting you a client.
  • Provide a safe and secure platform for all communication.
  • Release of payment processing after you’ve completed your project.
  • Getting reviews and building your profile as a freelancer.

Fiverr handles all the heavy lifting that an self-employed need to consider and let you focus on getting completing the projects requested by your clients.

  • You create your gig listing and the clients will search for you.

Why I like Fiverr so much?

The reason is it’s unique features, Fiverr makes it a great freelancing platform perfect for:

  • Beginner freelancer: Great platforms that helps new freelancer to get started through Fiver Learn.
  • Experienced freelancer: Perfect platform for professional freelancer to be successful faster by Fiver Pro.

Fiver Learn. What makes Fiver different from other platforms is that it offers all Freelancer who’ve gone through their courses and passes their quiz, a badge to showcase the freelancer’s professional background, helping you sell your gig to potential clients.

Fiver Pro Badge. Experienced freelance professional that shows to prove their expertise will be awarded the “Pro” badge, letting you get clients faster, be more authoritative, earn more, and build your 5-figure freelancing career.

Here are some quick links for you to find out more about Fiver:

If you are looking to start a career in freelancing, Fiverr will probably the place for you.

2. FlexJobs

FlexJobs - HomePage

FlexJobs is a leading premium job board designed to help people who are seeking for flexible, home-based, freelancing and remote jobs roles. With job options of over 50+ categories and 30,000+ high quality work opportunities. FlexJobs let freelancers apply for the job that will like from employers which are vet for quality posting.

FlexJobs - Leading Online Job Search Platform

Best For: Professional freelancers looking for stable freelancing career

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Limited Features
  • Payment Options: Direct payment by employer
  • Visitors: 3.3 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. Unlimited job application as a paid member.
  • Service Fees: 0%

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Ad-free and scam-free
  • Good reliable customer support
  • Career coaching and resume service
  • Low competition between freelancers
  • 0% service fee
  • High quality employers

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Paid membership subscription
  • Website can feel overwhelming at first

WHY WE LIKE IT

FlexJobs is one of the few freelancing sites where they don’t take a cut from how much you make as a freelancer, but instead you pay a membership fee to find freelancing projects and clients using their platform. FlexJobs let you keep all the money (0% service fee) that you’ll earn from using their platform (Generally, most freelancing sites have a service fee of 20-50%).

  • 1 week membership: $9.95
  • 1 month membership: $24.95
  • 3 months membership: $39.95
  • 12 months (1-Year) membership: $59.95 (Recommended For Freelancers)

Membership fee are very affordable, and with 0% service charge it makes FlexJobs a hidden gem for Freelancers looking to build a serious freelancing career.

As a HQHIRE reader, you’ll get a 30% discount on the membership which make the membership even more affordable.

FlexJobs Special 30% Discount

How to get your discount:

  • Click the “Exclusive Dealbutton below
  • Click “Sign Up” and enter your Name and Email and
  • Enter promo code “save30” into the promo code box
  • Click “Apply” and join FlexJobs
FlexJobs - Leading Online Job Search Platform

Furthermore, FlexJobs vet all companies and clients who are offering jobs for freelancer, giving you a piece of mind that the jobs and projects offers are legit.

If you want to understand more about FlexJobs, you can check out me full review.

3. UpWork

UpWork-Homepage

Upwork is a leading freelancing platform and one of the oldest platform that have been around for over two decades. With a wide variety of freelancing job options including IT development, sales, marketing, admin, customer support, finance and accounting, Upwork have be a great place where freelancer get connected with potential clients.

UpWork-Freelancing

Best For: Best for freelancers looking for hourly paid gigs

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Full featured seller dashboard.
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 43.9 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. But connects required to send proposal.
  • Service Fees: 20% of earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Good payment protection.
  • Suitable for both beginner and expert freelancer.
  • Wide exposure to different clients
  • Projects are paid per hour of work done
  • Good customer support

CONS as a Freelancer

  • High service fees.
  • Connects is required to send any proposal.
  • You need to actively look for clients.

WHY WE LIKE IT

Upwork is one of the first site that offers freelancer a place to find clients. As one of the largest freelance site, there are millions of visitors looking for freelancers, making this a great place to look for potential clients.

Unlike most other freelancing sites, Upwork offers a tier based fee structure where the percentage of service fees reduces according to your increase in earnings.

  • $0 to $500 in earning from a client: 20% service fees on earnings
  • $50.01 to $10,000 in earning from a client: 10% service fees on earnings
  • $10,000.01 and above in earning from a client: 5% service fees on earnings

20% service fee is quite average for most freelancing sites, but with Upwork, if you are offering services freelancing service that is of high value, Upwork become probably one of the best place to to sell your service.

If you are looking to sell a high value service in the future, Upwork might be a good place to start.


4. PeoplePerHour

PeoplePerHour is an UK based freelancer platform that connects business to people interested in doing freelancing work. With PeoplePerHour, freelancer get to showcase the projects they’ve completed or have participated while working on the platform.

PeoplePerHour-Freelance

Best For: Best for flexible freelancers

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Full featured seller dashboard.
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 1.8 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable
  • Service Fees: 20% of earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Collaboration with different freelancers to get job done.
  • Automatic invoicing after hours completion.
  • Beginner-friendly website

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Relative high service fees.
  • Average customer service.
  • Clients are mainly from UK and the US

5. Guru

Guru is a growing freelancer platform where it helps beginner freelancers to create a professional looking profile, offering freelancers to work in programming, writing, design, administration, sales, marketing, engineering, business, education and legal.

Guru-Freelancing

Best For: Best for experienced freelancers

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Full featured seller dashboard.
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 1.1 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. But bids required for getting jobs.
  • Service Fees: Monthly membership fee + 9% applied to earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Good high level customer support
  • Lower fees in comparison.
  • User-friendly website.
  • Wide range of gigs to be offered.

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Average service fees.
  • Bids required to bid for employers.
  • Tier based service fees: Basic, Basic+, Professional, Business and Executive membership

6. Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com is one of the largest freelancing marketplace that provides freelancers massive amount of opportunities to sell their services to client. As a freelancer, you can explore their job boards and bid for work.

Freelancer-Freelance

Best For: Best for day-to-day freelancers

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Full seller dashboard.
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 6.8 million visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. But bids is required.
  • Service Fees: 10% of winning bids/earnings or USD$5 whichever greater

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Payment protection.
  • Suitable for both new and experienced freelancer.
  • Affordable service fee.
  • Wide exposure to different clients
  • Customer support

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Bids is required to get clients.
  • Actively look for clients.

7. Servicescape

Servicescape is freelance site that market freelancers as contract employees business can hire to get things done. It works with startups and SMBs to connect with talented freelancers offering jobs such as editors, translators, graphic designers, writers and programmers.

Servicescape-Freelance

Best For: Best for high achieving freelancers

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Seller dashboard
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 399 thousand visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. But connects is required to send proposal.
  • Service Fees: 50% of earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Good payment protection.
  • Market as the top 3% of freelancers to be hired by clients.
  • Suitable for expert freelancer looking for stable work.
  • Exposure to high quality clients
  • Good customer support

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Highest service fees.
  • Requires an availability of at least 50% of the time within 30days to make a good profile.
  • Connects is required to send any proposal.
  • You need to actively look for clients.

8. Truelancer

Truelancer is a growing platform for startups and clients to find the right freelancers to build a remote team for the job. Suitable for freelancers who are looking for online job to work from home or remotely, it offers opportunity to work as developers, designers, writers, SEO experts, sales and marketing.

Truelancer-Freelancing

Best For: Best for on-demand work freelancers

  • Freelancer’s Dashboard: Good seller dashboard.
  • Payment Options: Credit Cards and PayPal
  • Visitors: 622 thousand visitors per month
  • Listing Fee: Not applicable. But proposal required to bid for employers.
  • Service Fees: Monthly membership fee + 10% applied to earnings

PROS as a Freelancer

  • Payment protection.
  • Suitable freelancer looking to start a business
  • Platform for beginner and expert freelancer.
  • Good range of clients
  • Customer support

CONS as a Freelancer

  • Average service fees.
  • Proposal required to bid for employers.
  • Tier based membership fees: Basic, Pro, Plus membership
  • You need to actively look for clients.

Question…

Did I miss out on your favorite freelance site?

Let us know in the comments below!

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