How much do Upwork and Fiverr actually take in 2026?
Upwork posts a 0% to 15% freelancer fee and collects 19.6%. Fiverr pays sellers 80% and collects 28%. Where the gap goes, with sources and dates.
The Editors · 8 min read · Updated
Each platform publishes two numbers for what it costs, and only one of them lands on your invoice. Upwork posts a freelancer service fee between 0% and 15%, set per contract. In the second quarter of 2026 it collected 19.6% of everything that moved through its marketplace (Upwork 10-Q, August 10, 2026). Fiverr pays sellers 80% of the order price. For the twelve months to June 30, 2026 it collected 28.0% (Fiverr 6-K, July 29, 2026).
Both of those collection rates went up over the year. Both went up while the work going through the platforms went down. That is the shape of the thing: the posted rate is a headline, the take rate is the bill, and the second one is the one moving.
What Upwork charges
Upwork's own quarterly filing states the fee schedule, which makes it the cleanest source there is. Figures below are from the 10-Q filed August 10, 2026, except where marked.
| Charge | Amount | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer service fee, contracts from May 2025 | 0% to 15%, fixed per contract at inception | Freelancer |
| Freelancer service fee, contracts before May 2025 | 10% flat | Freelancer |
| Client marketplace fee | 5% per transaction, 3% by ACH for eligible clients | Client |
| Contract initiation fee | $0.99 to $14.99, one time per contract (Upwork Help, read September 5, 2026) | Client |
| Connects, to bid on a job | $0.15 each, minimum 10 (Upwork Help, read September 5, 2026) | Freelancer |
| Freelancer Plus | $19.99 a month, 100 Connects included (Upwork Help, read September 5, 2026) | Freelancer |
| Direct to U.S. Bank withdrawal | $2.99 from September 1, 2026 if your tax address is outside the US, free inside it (Upwork Help, read September 5, 2026) | Freelancer |
Two things in that table are easy to miss. The variable service fee is set once, at the start of the contract, and stays there for the life of it, so a bad draw on a long client relationship compounds for as long as the relationship lasts. And the withdrawal fee is four days old at the time of writing: it applies to any withdrawal executing on or after September 1, 2026, including ones scheduled before that date.
What Fiverr charges
Fiverr does not put its rate card in its SEC filings. Its filings describe the categories, "transaction commissions based on the transaction value and foreign transaction fees", and leave the percentages to the help center. These are the posted numbers, read September 5, 2026.
| Charge | Amount | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| Seller commission | 20%, so the seller keeps 80% of the order price including extras and tips (Fiverr Help) | Seller |
| Buyer service fee | 5.5% of the purchase price, on every payment | Buyer |
| Small order fee | $3.50 added to orders under $200 (Fiverr Help) | Buyer |
| Currency conversion | Charged when a buyer pays in a local currency, rate not published | Buyer |
| Clearing period | 14 days before earnings can be withdrawn | Seller |
The small order fee is the one worth checking against your own order history. At $200 it adds 1.75% to the buyer's bill. At $50 it adds 7%. Fiverr's business is moving away from those orders on purpose, which is the context for everything below.
What they actually collect
Take rate is each company's own metric: marketplace revenue divided by the volume flowing through the marketplace. Upwork's rose 109 basis points year over year, and the 10-Q attributes that to "the growing contributions from ads and monetization products". Fiverr's rose 40 basis points.
The comparison across the two columns is loose and worth saying so. Upwork reports a quarter, Fiverr reports a trailing twelve months. Each defines its own denominator. What is comparable is the direction, and the direction is the same on both.
Volume, meanwhile, went the other way. Upwork's gross services volume was $966.4 million in the quarter, down 4%, on 763,000 active clients, also down 4%. Fiverr's annual active buyers fell to 2.7 million, down 21.9%, while annual spend per buyer rose to $368. We wrote up what that decline looks like from the platforms' side in what the 2026 filings show about Upwork and Fiverr.
Why the two numbers differ
Run the arithmetic on a $2,000 fixed-price job and the gap explains itself.
On Upwork, at a 10% contract fee, the freelancer nets $1,800. The client pays $2,100 after the 5% marketplace fee, plus up to $14.99 to open the contract. Upwork books roughly $300 to $315 on $2,000 of work, near 15%. Its filed take rate is 19.6%.
On Fiverr, the seller keeps $1,600. The buyer pays $2,110 after the 5.5% service fee. Fiverr books $510 on a $2,000 order, 25.5%. Its filed take rate is 28.0%.
Both gaps run in the same direction, and the missing pieces are named in the filings. Upwork's marketplace revenue includes Connects, ads, talent memberships, currency exchange, and interest earned on customer money it holds. That last one is worth sitting with: part of what a marketplace takes is not a fee at all, it is float on your unwithdrawn balance. Fiverr's includes foreign transaction fees, subscriptions like Seller Plus, and the flat small order fee, which lands hardest on the cheap orders that still make up much of its volume.
So the posted rate tells you what comes off the top of one invoice. The take rate tells you what the platform earns per dollar of work anyone does there. Neither is "your fee". Your fee sits between them, and where it sits depends on how many Connects you burn, whether you pay for a membership, which currency you get paid in, and how long your money sits on the platform.
What this means for pricing
If you quote against the posted rate, you are under-pricing by whatever your side charges come to. The honest way to price is to take a quarter of your own history, add up everything the platform charged you including memberships and Connects and withdrawal costs, and divide by what you billed. That personal rate is the one to mark up against.
The second read is directional. Both companies are telling investors the same story: fewer, larger jobs, monetized harder. Upwork credits its take rate expansion to ads and monetization products. Fiverr is repositioning toward projects over $1,000, a cohort growing 13% year over year on a trailing basis while everything else shrinks. Ads and monetization products do not require a change to the headline fee, which means the number on the pricing page can hold still for years while the effective cost climbs. If you are betting on fee relief as these platforms compete for a shrinking supply of buyers, nothing in either filing supports that yet.
What would change the read: a take rate that falls for two consecutive quarters on either platform, or a posted rate cut that is not offset by a new side charge. The September withdrawal fee is a small piece of evidence pointing the other way.
Who this page is for
Freelancers deciding what to charge on either platform, and clients budgeting a project and wondering why the invoice is above the quote. If you are trying to work out what the same work pays across both, we keep a separate page on what Upwork and Fiverr actually report about freelance pay, and one on why Fiverr lost a fifth of its buyers.
What changed
- September 5, 2026. First published, built on Upwork's 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 10, 2026), Fiverr's second quarter results (filed July 29, 2026), and the posted rate cards on both help centers as read on September 5, 2026. Includes Upwork's $2.99 Direct to U.S. Bank withdrawal fee, effective September 1, 2026.
Sources
- Upwork Inc., quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2026, Form 10-Q (August 10, 2026)
- Fiverr International Ltd., second quarter 2026 results, 6-K exhibit 99.1 (July 29, 2026)
- Fiverr International Ltd., annual report for 2025, Form 20-F (March 12, 2026)
- Upwork Help, What is the Client Marketplace Fee?
- Upwork Help, What is the Contract Initiation Fee on Upwork?
- Upwork Help, Understanding and using Connects
- Upwork Help, Direct to U.S. Bank: timing and fees explained
- Upwork, pricing for clients
- Fiverr Help Center, Your earnings page
- Fiverr Help Center, Managing payments and billing
This is not financial advice.
