Upwork just stole $10k from me

As a client, what are my alternatives to Upwork?

Fiver?

Nitpick, but I think you mean Fiverr rather than Fiver.

There's also:

- PeoplePerHour.co.uk (UK based, not sure of international presence)

- Freelancer.com

- Toptal (but I think they have some sort of approval process that may be a bit arduous)

- Guru.com

- Codeable.io

- Outsourcely.com

- Truelancer.com

- Konker

- Servicescape

- Solidgig (but stronger for design and marketing/SEO roles, I think - considered dropping into the category below)

- Hubstaff Talent

- FlexJobs (but more oriented toward IT and accounting than software development; again, considered dropping into the more specalised category below)

Additional specialist companies I'm aware of that target roles other than developers:

- 99Designs (for, you guessed it, designers and UX) - https://99designs.co.uk/

- Savio (market researchers) - https://savio.pro/

- F-LEX (legal) - https://flex.legal/

Hope you manage to pick up more work soon, but also that you manage to get yours and your clients money back from Upwork.

To mention, none of these are like Upwork. I've tried them all, and they don't really have competition that makes it as easy as Upwork to find and hire someone.

Freelancer.com is the nearest. The rest are doing very diff models. TopTal doesn't even belong on a comparison list.

For the uninitiated, mind explaining why TopTal (and the rest) don't look at all the same?

You go through an addmission process that's pretty much similar to an employement process (several interviews, technical interviews, tests etc).

After you get in, most of the jobs you get are strongly limited to your particular skill (so you won't be able to see what coding jobs are available if you're a designer).

Then, the customer aquisition process is slightly different, as you don't talk straight to the client while you're „bidding”, but with a recruiter, who deals with selecting the right candidate for a job.

Finally, for most of the jobs you don't even have to _apply_, as recruiters constantly send you messages for potential jobs.

Now, upwork & freelancer are mostly a race to the bottom; I personally got banned from upwork for having the audacity to apply to jobs and not winning any (because I didn't wanted to work for peanuts).

Why applying when you already knew what they would be paying ?