Freelancer.com is one of the oldest players in the freelance marketplace game. It’s been around since 2009, connecting businesses with millions of freelancers across the world. The platform is enormous, offering everything from logo design to web development, SEO audits to data entry.
On the surface, it appears to be a goldmine of global talent. But if you're building your marketing team, volume isn’t the only thing that matters. You need freelancers who can actually drive results—who understand performance marketing, conversion goals, tight feedback loops, and how to work within fast-moving teams.
The question is: Can you find freelancers like that on Freelancer.com?
This Freelancer review unpacks exactly that. I’ll break down what the platform does well, where it struggles, and who it’s best suited for in 2025.
What is Freelancer.com, and how does it work?
Freelancer.com is a global freelance job marketplace that connects businesses with independent professionals offering various services. It’s designed for companies or individuals looking to outsource tasks or short-term projects across multiple verticals, including graphic design, writing, software development, marketing, and customer support, and beyond.
Freelancer.com primarily runs on a bidding model. A company makes a job posting with a description of the details of the project and their budget, and freelancers from around the world submit bids. Each bid typically includes a proposed price, timeline, and a short pitch on why they’re the right fit.
The company can then compare bids and profiles before choosing the best freelancer for the job. Once the freelancer is hired, both parties can communicate directly through the platform to complete the project.
Freelancer.com is especially designed for transactional, short-term work. It’s a flexible way to get things done fast, without the commitment of long-term hiring. With a massive global talent pool and project categories that span just about everything, it’s accessible, but not always plug-and-play. Quality can vary, and vetting is up to you.
There have been speculations about the legitimacy of Freelancer.com. However, Freelancer.com isn’t a scam company. It was registered in 2009, it’s publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange, and has facilitated millions of projects globally.
Key Freelancer.com features
Here are the main features of the Freelancer platform:
1. Global talent marketplace
Freelancer.com is one of the largest freelance marketplaces in the world, boasting over 60 million professionals across 247 countries. You’ll find talent in just about every niche—whether you’re looking for someone to redesign your website, ghostwrite blog posts, develop an app, or analyze financial models. The breadth of servicesis a huge draw for teams that need help across multiple functions.
The platform supports over 2,700 skill categories, covering a wide range of services, including:
- Design: Website design, logo design, mobile app design, graphic design
- Writing: Research writing, article writing, content writing, copywriting, ghostwriting
- Development and programming: Software architecture, JavaScript, Python, C++
- E-commerce and CMS: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, WordPress
- Finance and admin: Bookkeeping, accounting, financial analysis, virtual assistance, data entry
This global talent pool allows companies to tap into specialists they might not find locally, and often at a fraction of the cost for the work performed.
2. Competitive bidding system
One of the core mechanics of Freelancer.com is its bidding model. When you post a project, freelancers from around the world are notified instantly and can start submitting bids, sometimes within seconds. In fact, according to Freelancer’s website, 80% of jobs receive bids within 60 seconds.
Each bid typically includes:
- A proposed price (fixed or hourly)
- Estimated delivery time
- A written proposal tailored to your project
- Links to relevant past work or reviews
This setup gives you the power to compare different freelancers (and their portfolios) side-by-side and make a decision based not just on price, but also on relevant experience, communication style, and understanding of your project goals.
3. Project management tools
Freelancer.com is built to help you manage the full project lifecycle without leaving the platform. Once you hire a freelancer, you get access to a full suite of tools that streamline collaboration and reduce miscommunication.
Key tools include:
- Milestone payments: Break projects into phases and only release payment once each milestone is complete.
- Time tracking: Useful for hourly jobs to track activity and logged hours.
- In-app communication: Chat with freelancers directly via text, voice, or video within the platform.
- File sharing and updates: Share documents, revisions, and deliverables in one place.
- Project dashboard: Monitor progress, deadlines, and updates at a glance.
These built-in tools reduce the need for juggling multiple apps and help keep everything organized, especially for remote-first or async teams.
Read: Best Organic and SEO Content Tools
4. Flexible pricing options
Whether you're a solo founder with a tight budget or a growing startup needing to scale quickly, Freelancer.com offers flexible ways to pay for work. You can set a fixed price for clearly defined tasks or opt for hourly billing if the scope is more fluid, allowing you to manage your money effectively.
There's no minimum commitment, which makes it easy to test projects with new freelancers before going all in.
This flexibility is ideal for:
- One-off tasks (e.g., writing a blog post or designing a landing page)
- Trial runs with new contractors
- Overflow work during peak seasons
- Scaling projects up or down based on budget or timeline
You stay in control of your spend, and you’re never locked into a long-term agreement unless you choose to be.
Freelancer.com pricing
Posting a job on Freelancer.com is free, but the platform charges a service fee once a project is awarded. For fixed-price projects, clients pay either 3% of the total project cost or $3 USD (whichever is higher) at the time of awarding the project. If you increase the payment later, the same 3% fee applies to the additional amount.
For hourly projects, the 3% fee is applied to each payment made through Milestone Payments. These fees are deducted automatically and are refundable if the milestone is canceled before payment is released.
Freelancer.com also offers optional upgrades to help your project stand out and attract more attention from freelancers, including:
- Post a project (Free): Create and publish a job listing at no cost.
- Featured ($9.99): Highlight your project to attract more visibility and higher-quality bids.
- Urgent ($9.99): Mark your project as urgent to encourage faster responses from freelancers.
- Private ($21.99): Hide your project from search engines and users who aren’t logged in.
- Full-time ($229.99): Post a listing specifically for full-time or commission-based roles.
- Recruiter ($11.99): Get help from a platform agent who will refine your project and recommend a freelancer based on your needs.
- NDA ($21.99): Require freelancers to sign a non-disclosure agreement before starting work.
- IP agreement ($21.99): Require freelancers to sign an intellectual property agreement to secure ownership of deliverables.
- Sealed ($9.99): Prevent freelancers from seeing each other’s bids to avoid price anchoring.
- Priority ($5.00): Bypass the standard admin review and have your project listed immediately.
- Extend ($9.99): Extend your project’s bidding period by an additional 7 days.
These add-ons are useful if you want to increase visibility or protect sensitive project details, but they do add up if you're trying to keep costs low.
Read: How B2B Lead and Demand Gen Work Together
Freelancer.com challenges
While Freelancer.com offers scale, flexibility, and affordability, it’s not without its drawbacks—especially for marketing and growth teams that care about results, not just deliverables.
1. Inconsistent quality of freelancers
There’s no standardized skill threshold on Freelancer.com. Anyone can create a profile and start bidding, which means the talent pool includes both highly experienced professionals and individuals new to freelancing.
As a result, quality can vary wildly. Even top-rated freelancers may not be suited for strategic or high-stakes work without a deeper vetting process on your end.
2. Low-relevance bids
It’s common to get dozens of bids within minutes of posting a project, but many of those will be from freelancers who clearly didn’t read the brief or don’t have the right expertise.
For example, if you post a job looking for help with CRO strategy, you may still get bids from logo designers or general marketers with no CRO experience. Sorting through these bids can become time-consuming and frustrating if you don’t have clear filters in place.
3. Requires detailed briefs and strong project management
Success on Freelancer.com depends heavily on you, the client. If your project brief is vague or incomplete, don’t expect freelancers to ask the right clarifying questions. You’ll need to provide detailed requirements, clear deliverables, examples, deadlines, and sometimes even onboarding documentation. You’ll also need to follow up consistently, manage timelines, and review work thoroughly.
4. No vetting or strategic guidance
Unlike curated platforms like MarketerHire or Toptal, Freelancer.com doesn’t vet freelancers (or verify their skills) before they’re allowed to bid. There’s no matching algorithm or strategy consultant to help you define what kind of freelancer you actually need.
So, you’re solely responsible for assessing experience levels, validating claims, and determining whether someone can truly deliver the outcome you’re aiming for.
5. Potential for scams
Because Freelancer.com is an open marketplace with minimal upfront vetting, there’s a real possibility of getting scammed. For example, you could encounter freelancers who misrepresent their skills, submit plagiarized work, or vanish mid-project.
While the platform offers tools like milestone payments and dispute resolution to reduce risk, it still requires vigilance on the client’s part. Businesses need to vet freelancers carefully, review portfolios, and use secure payment practices to avoid getting burned, especially on high-value or urgent projects.
6. Not ideal for long-term relationships or growth ownership
Freelancer.com is optimized for transactional, project-based work. That’s what makes it great for one-off deliverables, but it also means it’s not always the best fit for businesses looking to build long-term, embedded working relationships.
Many freelancers on the platform are juggling multiple short-term projects at once, and aren’t necessarily looking for ongoing roles or strategic ownership. So, if you’re looking for someone who can grow with your team or own a specific channel (such as paid social or lifecycle email), you may find the setup limiting.
💡Pro tip:
If you’re really busy and unable to look through bids and hire freelancers yourself, you could pay extra to have Freelancer’s team of recruiters help you look through the proposals you receive and find you the ideal freelancer. The team could also help you manage your job, if necessary.
Read: Upwork vs. Freelancer—Which Is the Better Option for Hiring Marketers?
Freelancer.com reviews and ratings
Freelancer.com currently has a 3.7/5 star rating on G2. On the positive side, reviewers praised the platform’s variety of jobs, global reach, and the fact that users (both clients and freelancers) are allowed to set their budgets for projects.
However, they did note the high platform fees (which can add up if the project is large) and some communication issues with freelancers working from a different country than the client.
There were also negative reviews where people complained about the inadequate proposals they got from freelancers on the platform and how many freelancers pretended to be experts but had little to no relevant experience. Others also complained about their negative experience with Freelancer’s support team.
Read: How to Manage a Remote Virtual Marketing Team (Ultimate Guide 2025)
Freelancer.com alternative: Hire talent with MarketerHire
Freelancer.com works well for quick tasks and one-off projects. However, if you're hiring a marketing professional to grow your business—someone who brings strategy, performance, and channel ownership—the open marketplace model begins to reveal its limitations.
You don’t want to sift through generic bids. You want someone who’s done this before and can deliver fast.
That’s where MarketerHire comes in.
1. Pre-vetted marketing experts
Unlike open marketplaces, MarketerHire is built specifically for marketing teams who want results, not resumes.
We don’t let just anyone into our network. Every marketer goes through a rigorous multi-step vetting process that includes in-depth application reviews, live interviews conducted by marketing experts, and role-specific test projects.
We only accept the top 1% of applicants, so when you get matched with a MarketerHire professional, you’re getting someone with a proven track record, not someone learning on the job.
Our roles include:
- Growth, product, and brand marketers
- Content, SEO experts, and email marketers
- Social media manager and paid social experts
- Paid search and programmatic marketers
- Marketing analysts, Amazon experts, and agency account managers
- Creative strategists and graphic designers
- Fractional CMOs
You can explore the full list here.
Read: Fractional Hiring—Exploring the Latest Trend in Marketing Recruitment
2. Fast matching
When you tell us your goals, channel focus, and budget, we use a mix of proprietary AI and human expertise to match you with the ideal marketer, usually within 48 hours. You don’t have to conduct multiple interviews or review countless resumes, both of which are the hallmarks of the traditional hiring process.
You only have to speak to the person we match you with and proceed with a trial.
3. Two-week free trial (+ free rematch)
Not sure it’s the right fit? No problem. Every MarketerHire engagement starts with a no-risk, two-week free trial. You only continue if you’re happy. If not, we’ll rematch you with a different marketer, completely free of charge.
But the best part is, most clients don’t need a second shot: 82% of our customers hire the first marketer we match them with.
4. Support that stays with you
MarketerHire provides ongoing support even after the match is made. Our team checks in regularly to ensure the working relationship is meeting expectations and delivering results. If any issues arise, we’re available to help resolve them quickly.
Whether you need to scale your marketing operations, shift direction, or bring on an additional role, we’re here to support you. This consistent layer of support helps you maintain momentum without the disruption of constantly sourcing and onboarding new freelancers.
Read: 6 Reasons Not to Hire a Marketing Generalist in 2025
Scaling your marketing: Quick fix or strategic growth?
Freelancer.com excels at handling quick tasks and creative deliverables, making it a go-to for small-scale or one-off jobs. But if you’re looking to drive measurable marketing performance and build lasting growth, the platform’s transactional nature often falls short.
For growth-focused teams, you need marketers who not only check off boxes but also understand the underlying strategy and metrics of performance.
If you’re over sifting through countless bids and want a proven expert who gets results right out of the gate, MarketerHire might be the answer. With pre-vetted marketing professionals, rapid matching in just 48 hours, a risk-free two-week trial, and ongoing support, you can focus on scaling your company rather than managing freelancers.
Need a marketer who’s done this before—without wading through 100 bids? Check out our roles and reach out to our team today.