Upwork and Fiverr fees: what you really keep, and how to bill your own clients

If you sell your work on a marketplace, the number on the contract is not the number that reaches you. Fees, conversion and withdrawal costs all stand in between. A freelancer who knows the real figure can price properly. One who does not often discovers, after the third job, that they earn less than they planned.

This post walks through the Upwork fee using Upwork’s own help center, shows a worked example in dollars and naira, and explains how to bill clients who are not on a platform. For Fiverr, we point you to Fiverr’s own page instead of repeating numbers we could not verify.

What the fees are

From Upwork’s Help Center (page read on 26 October 2026):

• The Freelancer Service Fee ranges from 0% to 15% per contract. It pays for things like payment protection, fraud prevention and dispute resolution.
• You see the exact percentage before you commit. It is shown when you submit a proposal or when a client sends you an offer, and later in your contract details and transaction summaries.
• Once a contract begins, the fee is fixed and will not change. Different contracts can have different fees.
• If a client is refunded, Upwork returns the service fee you paid on that amount.
• There are exceptions. Freelancers on an Any Hire contract do not pay the Freelancer Service Fee, and freelancers on a Direct Contract with a client they brought to Upwork pay a reduced fee.

There may also be client-side fees and withdrawal fees when you take money out. We could not verify the current amounts for those from Upwork’s own pages, so we leave them out. Open your own Upwork account to see the fee for each contract and your withdrawal options.

A worked example

Upwork’s own examples use a 10% fee, so we will use it too. Your fee on a real contract could be anywhere from 0% to 15%.

Say a client pays a fixed price of $1,000 for a project.

Fee on the contract	Fee in dollars	You receive
0%	$0	$1,000
10%	$100	$900
15%	$150	$850

If you use ₦1,500 to the dollar just for this example (use the real rate on the day), $900 is ₦1,350,000 and $850 is ₦1,275,000. The difference between the 0% and 15% case is ₦225,000 on one job.

Pricing so you keep what you need. If you want to take home a certain amount, divide it by one minus the fee. Upwork’s help center shows this exact idea: to take home $20 an hour with a 10% fee, charge $22.22 an hour, because $22.22 minus 10% is about $20. For a project, to keep $900 with a 10% fee you would price at $900 divided by 0.9 = $1,000.

Our rate calculator helps you work out the number you need to keep first.

What else reduces what you keep

Beyond the service fee, think about:

• Withdrawal costs. Moving money from the platform to your bank or wallet may cost something. Check the fee for your chosen method in your account.
• Currency conversion. If the platform pays in dollars and your account is in naira, someone converts it and takes a margin. Our post on receiving money as a freelancer covers the routes.
• Tax. Income is still income. Keep records. See Nigeria’s tax law for freelancers if you live in Nigeria.
• Your own time. Writing proposals for jobs you do not win is unpaid work.

Fiverr

Fiverr publishes its fee in its own Help Center, and Fiverr has changed its pricing and programmes over the years. We could not open the right page from our tools, so we are not going to print a number from a third-party blog. Search “Fiverr service fee” on help.fiverr.com, write down the percentage you see, and put it into the table above in place of 10%.

Building direct clients the permitted way

Marketplaces have rules about taking work off the platform. We have not tried to summarise those rules, so read the terms of each platform you use before you change how you work with a client you met there. Do not move a client away from a platform if the terms say you must not.

Here is what is clearly fine:

• Clients who come to you from outside a marketplace. Your network, your portfolio site, your LinkedIn, a referral, a past employer. These are your clients and you bill them directly.
• Clients you bring to Upwork yourself. Upwork’s own help center describes Direct Contracts for this, with a reduced fee.
• Repeat work you are allowed to do off-platform. Only after you have read the terms.

Invoicing your direct clients

When a client pays you directly, you are the one who has to send the invoice, chase it and keep the records. That is the job a2lance is built for: add the client, send a quote or invoice in naira or dollars, and record what has been paid. Your client pays you directly using the payment details you give, and a2lance never holds your money.

To start with, make a one-off PDF in the free invoice generator, then read our invoice template guide.

Quick checklist

• Look up the fee percentage on each contract before you bid.
• Price so that the amount you keep still covers your floor.
• Count withdrawal and conversion costs.
• Read each platform’s terms before changing how you work with a client you met there.
• Keep records of every payment.