TL;DR: The advertised fee is not the channel’s economics. Upwork’s annual report for the 2025 financial year, filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2026, discloses three things most comparisons miss. First, that effective May 2025 new contracts carry a variable talent service fee ranging from 0 to 15 percent, not the flat 10 percent that guides still repeat, with the flat 10 percent surviving only on contracts formed before that date. Second, that clients pay a separate 5 percent marketplace fee on each transaction, reduced to 3 percent for eligible clients paying by ACH. Third, and most usefully, a blended marketplace take rate of 18.7 percent of marketplace volume, up from 18.0 percent in 2024 and 15.4 percent in 2023. Fiverr’s annual report on Form 20-F reports a marketplace take rate of 27.7 percent on marketplace volume of 1.073 billion dollars, and confirms that its commissions are paid by buyers and sellers both. Against those audited numbers, Stripe’s published United States card rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Joining the two datasets answers a question the filings were not written to answer: the break-even quantity of unbilled acquisition work that makes a direct client worth more than a marketplace one. At a 100 dollar hourly rate that is roughly 6 hours for a 5,000 dollar project against a 10 percent Upwork contract, and roughly 12 hours against Fiverr’s blended rate. The uncomfortable finding sits underneath: Upwork’s marketplace revenue rose about 16.5 percent between 2023 and 2025 while the volume flowing through that marketplace fell by roughly 4 percent. Growth came from taking more per transaction, not from more transactions.
Every few months someone publishes a freelance platform comparison built entirely from the platforms’ own pricing pages. Upwork takes 10 percent, Fiverr takes 20 percent, direct clients take nothing, therefore go direct. It is a tidy conclusion assembled from numbers that are partly obsolete, partly incomplete, and never independently verified.
There is a better source, and it is public. Both of the largest freelance marketplaces are listed companies. Upwork files an annual report on Form 10-K, Fiverr files one on Form 20-F, and both are audited. In those filings the companies must state what they actually charge and what they actually collect, because investors are entitled to know how much of the money passing through the platform stays there.
That number has a name. It is the take rate, and it is the only channel-cost figure in this entire market that has been checked by someone other than the company reporting it.
What the filings actually disclose
Start with the fee schedule, because one part of it has changed and most freelance advice has not caught up.
Upwork’s annual report for the financial year ended 31 December 2025 states that effective May 2025 the company introduced a variable pricing structure for talent service fees on new contracts. Under it, talent are charged a fixed fee for each contract ranging from 0 to 15 percent of their earnings, depending on platform-specific supply and demand. The applicable fee is disclosed when the contract begins and stays fixed for its duration. For contracts formed before May 2025, the filing confirms the older flat talent service fee of 10 percent remains in place.
The same document states that Upwork charges clients a marketplace fee of 5 percent on each transaction, or 3 percent for eligible clients paying by ACH. For its Enterprise offering it charges clients a monthly or annual subscription plus a service fee calculated as a percentage of client spend, in addition to a 10 percent service fee paid by talent.
Fiverr’s filing is less specific about headline percentages. Its auditors describe the company’s revenue as primarily derived from marketplace commissions paid by buyers and sellers, but the 20-F does not state the seller and buyer percentages that circulate widely online. This piece therefore does not repeat them. What the filing does state is the audited outcome, which is more useful anyway.
Here are the reported figures. Everything in this table is quoted from the two annual reports and from Stripe’s published United States pricing page as it stood on 29 August 2026.
| Figure | Upwork (FY2025) | Fiverr (FY2025) | Direct via Stripe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace volume | GSV 4,028.4 million dollars (total, all platforms) | Marketplace GMV 1,073.0 million dollars | Not applicable |
| Marketplace revenue | 682.9 million dollars | 297.5 million dollars | Not applicable |
| Blended marketplace take rate | 18.7 percent | 27.7 percent | Not applicable |
| Take rate, prior year | 18.0 percent (2024), 15.4 percent (2023) | 27.6 percent (2024) | Not applicable |
| Other revenue | Enterprise 104.9 million dollars | Services 133.4 million dollars, up 50.9 percent | Not applicable |
| Published fee on the worker | 0 to 15 percent per contract from May 2025; flat 10 percent on contracts formed earlier | Not disclosed in the filing | None |
| Published fee on the client | 5 percent per transaction, 3 percent by ACH for eligible clients | Not disclosed in the filing | 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, domestic cards |
| Cross-border and conversion | Foreign exchange charged when clients pay in non-dollar currencies | Not disclosed in the filing | Plus 1.5 percent international cards, plus 1 percent if currency conversion is required |
Two observations before the analysis.
The blended take rates are not the fee any individual pays. They are total platform revenue divided by total platform volume, which folds in advertising products, Connects, memberships, payment services and, in Upwork’s case, interest earned on funds held on behalf of customers. That is exactly why they are the honest number for a channel comparison. They measure what the channel costs the market as a whole, not what the pricing page promises one participant.
And the two rates are not directly comparable as published. Upwork includes its ads and monetisation products inside marketplace revenue, so its 18.7 percent already contains them. Fiverr reports services revenue separately, outside the take rate. Comparing 18.7 to 27.7 is therefore comparing a fuller number to a narrower one.
Putting the two platforms on the same basis
Correcting for that asymmetry is the first thing the filings do not do for you.
Divide each company’s total revenue by the volume flowing through it and you get an all-in monetisation rate, computed the same way for both. All figures below are our calculations from the reported numbers above, and each was recomputed independently against the companies’ own stated percentage changes before publication.
| Derived measure | Upwork | Fiverr | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-in monetisation | 19.6 percent of total GSV | 40.2 percent of marketplace GMV (upper bound) | Total revenue divided by reported volume |
| Implied marketplace volume | About 3,652 million dollars | 1,073.0 million dollars reported | Marketplace revenue divided by reported take rate |
| Implied non-marketplace volume | About 377 million dollars | Not separable | Total GSV minus implied marketplace GSV |
| Implied take on that volume | About 27.9 percent, band 27.2 to 28.6 percent | Not separable | Enterprise revenue divided by implied non-marketplace GSV |
| Marketplace volume change, 2023 to 2025 | About minus 4 percent, band minus 3.5 to minus 4.6 percent | Not disclosed for that span | Implied marketplace GSV, 2023 against 2025 |
| Marketplace revenue change, 2023 to 2025 | Plus 16.5 percent | Not disclosed for that span | 682.9 against 586.1 million dollars |
Derived table, CEOtudent editorial framework. Bands reflect the rounding in the published take rates.
The Fiverr figure carries a caveat that matters. Its 40.2 percent is an upper bound, because some services revenue, notably from AutoDS, is not generated by marketplace transactions and therefore does not belong in a rate whose denominator is marketplace volume. The true all-in figure is somewhere between 27.7 and 40.2 percent, and the filing does not let an outside reader pin it down. What is certain is that the published take rate understates what Fiverr earns per dollar of marketplace activity, and that the gap is widening: services revenue grew 50.9 percent in a year in which marketplace revenue fell.
The Upwork figures produce the finding worth carrying away. Between 2023 and 2025 the volume flowing through the Upwork marketplace fell by roughly 4 percent, while the revenue Upwork earned from that marketplace rose 16.5 percent. The take rate went from 15.4 percent to 18.7 percent, a rise of 3.3 percentage points, or a little over a fifth of the original rate.
Read that as a freelancer rather than an investor. The platform did not grow by bringing you more work. It grew by keeping more of the work you already had.
The question the filings do not answer
None of this settles the practical question, which is not “which platform is cheaper” but “is it worth the effort to stop using one”.
Going direct is not free. It costs unbilled hours: writing proposals nobody answers, appearing where clients look, following up, negotiating, invoicing, chasing payment. The platform fee is the price of not doing that work. So the real comparison is between a percentage and a quantity of your own unpaid time.
That comparison can be made exactly, and this appears to be where the public analysis stops.
The channel cost of going direct is payment processing. Stripe’s published United States rate is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for domestic cards, rising by 1.5 percent for international cards and a further 1 percent where currency conversion is required. So a domestic 5,000 dollar payment costs 145.30 dollars to collect, and the same payment from an overseas client in another currency costs 270.30 dollars, or 5.4 percent.
The channel cost of a marketplace is its wedge: everything removed from the transaction between what the client pays and what you receive. On an Upwork contract at a 10 percent talent fee with a client paying by card, that wedge is 15 percent of contract value. At a 15 percent talent fee it is 20 percent. At 0 percent it is just the client’s 5 percent.
Set the two against each other and solve for time. The break-even is the point where the money the marketplace removes equals the money you would forgo by spending unbilled hours to win the same work directly.
| Project value | Upwork, 10 percent talent fee | Upwork, 15 percent talent fee | Upwork, 0 percent talent fee | Fiverr, blended 27.7 percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 dollars | 0.60 hours | 0.85 hours | 0.10 hours | 1.24 hours |
| 1,000 dollars | 1.21 hours | 1.71 hours | 0.21 hours | 2.48 hours |
| 5,000 dollars | 6.05 hours | 8.55 hours | 1.05 hours | 12.40 hours |
| 25,000 dollars | 30.25 hours | 42.75 hours | 5.25 hours | 62.00 hours |
Break-even unbilled acquisition hours at a 100 dollar hourly rate, CEOtudent editorial framework. Marketplace wedge minus Stripe domestic card cost, divided by hourly rate. Halve the hours at a 200 dollar rate, double them at 50 dollars.
The Fiverr column applies the audited blended take rate to a single transaction, which is an approximation: it is what the channel costs the market per dollar of volume, not a quoted fee for one gig. It is included because it is the only Fiverr number that has been audited.
What the table actually tells you
Three things, and only one of them is the obvious one.
The obvious one is that going direct pays at size and does not pay at the bottom. Below about 1,000 dollars, the entire marketplace wedge is worth one or two hours of your time. If a platform hands you a 500 dollar project, the fee bought you something you could not have replaced with 36 minutes of prospecting. Complaining about the commission on small work is complaining about the only thing making small work viable.
The second is that the numbers reverse fast. At 25,000 dollars against a 15 percent contract, the wedge is worth nearly 43 unbilled hours, which is more than a working week. No serious freelancer spends a week acquiring a single project. Somewhere between those rows, the platform stops being a distribution channel you rent and starts being a tax on work you could have won yourself.
The third is the one people miss. Upwork’s May 2025 variable fee changed the shape of this decision, because the fee is now disclosed at contract inception and fixed for the contract’s life. That converts a fixed cost into a term you can read before agreeing. A contract landing at the bottom of the range makes the platform nearly free, with a break-even of one hour on a 5,000 dollar project. A contract at the top of the range makes it expensive enough that eight and a half hours of prospecting would have been the better investment. Same platform, same project, an eight-fold difference in what the channel is worth, and it is visible before you accept.
If you are on Upwork after May 2025 and you do not know which rate your contracts carry, you do not know what your distribution costs. That is the single most actionable consequence of the filing.
For the wider structure this decision sits inside, the related work here goes further: the pricing side is covered in freelance pricing models compared and digital product pricing in the AI era, the question of which revenue lines belong together in the one person business revenue stack and the expertise monetisation matrix, and what the evidence says about the earnings claims made for AI-assisted work in AI side hustle economics.
The honest limits of this analysis
Four.
The break-even table values your unbilled time at your billable rate. That is the standard opportunity-cost assumption and it is generous to the direct channel in one way and harsh in another. It is generous because acquisition work sometimes produces a client who returns for years, and the table prices only the first project. It is harsh because most freelancers are not fully booked, so an unbilled hour is often not displacing a billable one at all. If you have idle capacity, direct work wins far earlier than the table suggests.
The blended take rates are not personal fees. Upwork’s 18.7 percent and Fiverr’s 27.7 percent describe the whole marketplace, including participants who buy ads and memberships that you may not. Your own rate could be materially lower. The table’s Upwork columns use the disclosed fee schedule rather than the blended rate for exactly this reason; the Fiverr column has no disclosed schedule to use.
Payment processing is not the only cost of going direct. Contracts, chasing late invoices, dispute risk and the absence of escrow are all real and none of them appear in a 2.9 percent line. Upwork’s filing describes payment protection as part of what the marketplace supplies, and that protection has a value that a Stripe fee does not include.
And volume is not the same thing as your income. Upwork’s GSV includes purchases of Connects and other value-added services alongside client spend, so a decline in GSV is not purely a decline in work available. The direction is still clear, and it is confirmed by a second reported figure: active clients fell from 851 thousand in 2023 to 785 thousand in 2025.
That last pair of numbers is the honest summary of the whole piece. Fewer clients, less volume, more revenue per transaction. Whatever you conclude about which channel to use, build your income on the assumption that the take rate goes up.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Upwork freelancer fee still 10 percent?
Only on contracts formed before May 2025. The company’s annual report states that from May 2025 new contracts carry a fixed per-contract fee ranging from 0 to 15 percent of earnings, set according to platform-specific supply and demand, disclosed at contract inception and fixed for the contract’s duration. Guides still quoting a flat 10 percent for new work are describing the previous structure.
Why does this article not give Fiverr’s seller and buyer percentages?
Because they do not appear in Fiverr’s annual report on Form 20-F, which is the only source used here that has been audited. The filing confirms that commissions are paid by buyers and sellers both, and reports the blended outcome of 27.7 percent, but it does not state the split. Numbers that cannot be verified against a primary source are not published here.
Which platform is cheaper?
On the audited blended rate, Upwork at 18.7 percent against Fiverr at 27.7 percent. That comparison flatters Upwork, because its rate already includes advertising and membership revenue while Fiverr reports those separately. On a like-for-like all-in basis the gap narrows: 19.6 percent for Upwork against something between 27.7 and 40.2 percent for Fiverr.
How do I use the break-even table with a different hourly rate?
The hours scale inversely. At 200 dollars an hour, halve every figure. At 50 dollars, double them. The underlying calculation is the marketplace wedge in dollars, minus the 2.9 percent plus 30 cents you would pay to collect the money yourself, divided by your rate.
Does the 5 percent client fee affect me if I am the freelancer?
Indirectly but genuinely. It is not deducted from your earnings, so it does not reduce your take-home on a given contract. It does consume client budget that could otherwise have been your fee. A client paying 5,250 dollars on the platform for a 5,000 dollar contract could pay you 5,250 dollars directly, of which you would keep about 5,097 after card processing. That is the number the break-even table is built on.
What is the single most important number here?
Upwork’s take rate moving from 15.4 percent in 2023 to 18.7 percent in 2025 while marketplace volume fell. It tells you that the platform’s growth strategy is monetisation rather than expansion, and that assuming today’s fee will be tomorrow’s fee is not supported by three years of its own reported data.
Sources
- Upwork, Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, February 2026, sections on Marketplace revenue, Marketplace take rate and Gross Services Volume
- Upwork, Inc., Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, Components of Our Results of Operations, on talent service fees and client marketplace fees
- Fiverr International Ltd., Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, March 2026, on marketplace GMV, marketplace revenue, marketplace take rate and services revenue
- Fiverr International Ltd., Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, report of the independent registered public accounting firm, on marketplace commission revenue paid by buyers and sellers
- Stripe, published United States pricing schedule for cards and wallets, accessed 29 August 2026
- United States Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR full-text filing archive, as the source of both annual reports
This content was compiled with the support of AI following in-depth research, then written and prepared for publication by the CEOtudent editorial team.
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