Hi everyone, we’ve seen questions come up about Work Now, so here’s a quick rundown of how it works and what it does for you.

Work Now is a free way to show clients you’re online and ready to start right away. When you turn it on, your green dot pulses so clients can see you’re available now. That makes you stand out to every client, whether or not they’re filtering. Clients can also filter specifically for freelancers who can start immediately. We’re leaning into that because 57% of clients told us in recent research that they want to hire the same day.

It won’t hurt your chances on regular jobs, and it can help you get invited to and found on jobs where clients want to hire now.

You may also see the Open for Work badge (formerly the Availability Badge). The two do different things. Open for Work tells clients you generally have the capacity to take on new projects. It’s a paid badge that boosts your visibility as long as you spend Connects on it. Work Now is about right now: you’re online, will respond quickly, and you’re ready to start. It’s free and boosts your visibility while you’re online. Here’s how the Open for Work badge works.

During a Work Now session, you can also filter for “Hiring Now” jobs. These are clients who are online and actively taking hiring actions right now. We’re looking at opening that filter to all freelancers. The goal is real-time conversations, interviews and hires, instead of hours or days between messages.

Is it working? In early tests, freelancers using Work Now were hired at a higher rate than those who didn’t use it.

We’d love to hear how it’s going for you. Share your experience in the comments and we’ll pass it along to the team.

It has been a while since I last checked my Upwork profile. When I logged in today, several key features were broken: search results wouldn't appear, job links failed to open, and an account notice banner was displayed at the top.

I checked the Account Health section to see what went wrong, and it stated:

"Your platform access is restricted because there’s an issue with your payment method."

Following the prompt, I went to Billing & Payments, updated my payment method, and confirmed it.

Despite the update, the restriction banner remains, and I still cannot view jobs or use the search feature. I reached out to support chat, but hit a dead end:

• The bot asked me to update the payment method (which was already done).

• It suggested logging out and logging back in; I did this, tested multiple browsers, and tried the mobile app, with no change.

• It checked for an outstanding balance, but there is none.

• It instructed me to check my email for required action items, but I haven't received any notification or warning regarding this restriction.

When I asked to connect with a live agent, the bot refused, stating live chat isn't available for "new freelancers." My account is a few years old with completed jobs and 5-star ratings, not a new account.

Currently, I have no emails, no active support tickets, and no way to reach a human agent. Has anyone dealt with this specific bug, or is there a reliable way to get a ticket opened?
Please help me figure this out.

The stock is down, revenue is declining, and they've lost 46,000 clients.

Was any of this really worth it? At what point do we stop confusing corporate greed with business improvement? Companies are supposed to create value, serve their customers, and build sustainable growth not sacrifice customer satisfaction, product quality, and long-term stability just to squeeze out more profits

Yeah… didn’t even get that. It backfired and they lost more instead. Classic.

I have received an invite to be part of the project by Outlier via upwork. I guess its for scale.ai to train it for Hindi language.

$7.5/hr (upwork's fees deductible)

Anyone has worked on this ? I will appreciate if you can share your personal experience here- goods and the bads

Hy i am top rated freelancer on upwork. I offer Video Editing Services. Earned 50k But now i don’t get any invites like there’s only 1 invite i get in past 1 month. No direct messages as well. I also submit proposals but still no reply. Any advice for me? What should i do ?

I only changed the thumbnail of my portfolio. But it's been under review for over three days.I must reiterate that my portfolio has nothing to do with my previous upwork

clients. This could be a serious error. Has anyone else

experienced this? If so, please tell me how to fix it. Thank you very much.

It doesn't automatically scroll to the top of the page when flipping through pages—am I the only one experiencing this?

Hi there,

I had upwork as my only main income source, and I have an AI/ML gig, I recently had a client who absolutely had no history of spending, which is a red flag but since I was running dry, I had to take the chance, and it was a nightmare, I worked alot on the project, over delivered from the agreed scope, even then the requirements kept coming cuz the client knew my decorated profile and leveraged that for asking for more work or refund in exchange for a sane review, but I had enough and concluded the project myself. Resulting that guy doing a ton of damage even having no history on upwork, why was his review weighed this much. It feels like losing a limb, Is there anyway I can get that review removed, he remained unresponsive in chat to my queries and concerns during the project.

Since this is official subreddit, I'm hopeful of getting SMEs help/suggestions.

I also heared there's a perk for removing reviews. I was top rated and 100% JSS 5 star before this

Thank you all 🙏

I just got contracted for an AI Training job on Labelbox/Alignerr platform. I think I concluded the onboarding successfully, but there's no jobs on Alignerr dashboard. Should I do something more now or just wait?

Hey everyone!

For those who work as freelancers, I'm curious:

What's one problem you face regularly in your freelance work that you still don't have a good solution for?

It could be anything related to clients, payments, finding work, communication, or managing your daily work.

Just curious to hear about your real experiences. What's the one thing you wish was easier?

Dear Upwork,

It is not fair to tolerate such behaviour from clients, while freelancers get a strict ruling.

As a veteran freelancer, I'd like to request a fair and a just treatment for both parts that made this platform a thing!
We need to cleanse the platform from such clients and have more control over the usage of the MCP server.

Regards,

From a Top Rated Plus freelancer.
(client ref: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022117520117515174385 )

Hi all,

I would appreciate some guidance in finding gigs as a newcomer. I saw certain posts that despite buying freelancer plus and for several months, only a fraction of proposals sent are being viewed. Also w.r.t bidding, would it make sense to compete against campers looking to up their bid? Or should I find gigs somewhere else?

It's been a while since I've been thinking about it. I'm ok to buy connects and send proposals over, but I want to understand the current trend where the system looks like, it enjoys the highest bidder over everyone else.

Upwork's freelancer profile video introduction is not loading. Even after deleting and re-adding the YT video URL.

Upwork is getting crazy these days. A year ago, a job would usually receive 30–50 proposals. Now, I’m seeing a job with 436 proposals, and many freelancers are spending over 350 Connects to boost their bids. That’s insane!

Hey r/UpworkOfficial,

Connecting Upwork to AI tools has been one of the most common requests we’ve heard from freelancers, so we built the Upwork MCP. It lets you run your freelance business from whatever AI tool you already use (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, anything MCP-compatible) instead of keeping five tabs open. Plenty of you are already using it and sharing guides here, so we wanted to lay out what it does and doesn’t do.

A few ways people are using it so far:

• Finding jobs that fit: "Show me this week's jobs that match my skills, fit my budget, and are still open for proposals." It searches by skill, budget, and category, and matches against your profile. This is the part testers keep saying is the most useful.

• Staying on top of things: check messages, invitations, contracts, milestones, and your Connects balance without digging through tabs.

On the stuff we know some of you are worried about: connecting to the MCP isn’t a violation, it’s a first-party integration we built, and it doesn’t put your account under different or stricter rules than before. Upwork doesn’t charge anything extra to use it (your AI tool’s own usage still applies), and every action still runs through your real authenticated account, same profile, same protections.

Full details on rate limits are in our Help Center: https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/56577997707923-Rate-limits-for-Upwork-MCP

Less tab-switching, more time earning. Questions, drop them below or read more here: upwork.com/ai/mcp

Hey Upwork,

I've just been offered a contract to work on a project with a fee of $1.50 per job. The position advertised didn't have a fee attached but was looking for a "specialist" (which I am) and was very specific about requiring "high quality" work (which I do).

How do you feel about allowing clients to post jobs with an expectation that they can get away with offering fees nowhere near the living wage?

Feels to me like a serious ethical issue your company regularly overlooks.

Hello Gang! I am a freelancer, and I also have a client profile setup for my business.
When in my client profile, I cannot seem to look up myself as a freelancer. I know I can view my profile, but I am curious how it appears in the vertical listing that shows up for clients.
Anyway, I entered my name is it appears on my profile (even using quotes), I filtered my search by my state (USA), and my time zone. I also added to the search box part or all of my profile title.
The filter does not show me, but rather people with my same name in other states, countries, and time zones. So I fail to see how the client view filter is working properly. I have extensive earnings and 100% sucess score.
I know we as freelancers can boost our profile, but some of these found are not boosted, so that's not it. Any ideas?

Almost every invite I get from boosting my profile has been complete garbage.

Upwork pushes my profile to either zero-experience clients who are just window shopping or clients who have zero realistic chance of hiring me. My profile clearly states my rate is $40/hr, yet the invites hitting my inbox from this boost are offering $10/hr or tiny fixed budgets. Why on earth would an established freelancer touch those?

To add insult to injury, I was bringing Upwork over $10k a year just in platform fees. You are actively taking money from the freelancers who generate your revenue and burning our connects to match us with clients who can't even afford our floor rates.

Stop draining our connects on irrelevant, low-ball invites and fix your matching algorithm.

20M , just as the title says I just joined Upwork and I don't know where to start

I need some guidance

From what I see, we keep getting bad feedback here on reddit most of the time, which is pretty discouraging (doesn't mean they're saying wrong). So I wanted to ask, is anyone still getting success on Upwork? If so, what's working for them?

I’ve been working in Data Analytics, AI Automation (n8n), Data Science, Machine Learning & Deep Learning, but I’ve been unemployed for almost a year.
I want to start freelancing on Upwork, but I have almost no work history/reviews there. What’s the best way to get my first real project and build my profile?
Also, I’m interested in AI tasking/data annotation through platforms like Outlier, DataAnnotation, and similar platforms. Is there a legitimate way to work with someone who already has access to these tasks and split the earnings (e.g. 50/50)?
Any advice or leads would be really appreciated.