European Alternatives to Upwork
Looking for a European alternative to Upwork? Upwork is a US marketplace where the fee is charged on both sides of a contract, with its pricing pages describing a freelancer fee of up to 15% per contract and a separate marketplace fee paid by clients.
The European platforms below range from commission-free project boards in Germany to curated expert networks in Spain and France, and each is operated by a company registered in Europe or Israel.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Vendors can pay for more visibility, higher up on the review pages; it never affects which tools are listed. Editorial policy
11 European Alternatives to Upwork
Codeable
Vetted WordPress developers with one estimate and a fixed fee
Kolabtree
Freelance scientists, statisticians and medical writers on demand
freelancermap
IT project board with no commission and a free profile
YunoJuno
Contractor management with a vetted creative and tech talent pool
Outvise
Account-managed matching of senior tech and business consultants
Twine
Creative and tech freelancers matched to a brief within 24 hours
Malt
Pan-European marketplace that invoices work and fee separately
freelance.de
Munich project database with tiered freelancer memberships
Fiverr
Catalogue marketplace for packaged freelance services
Crème de la Crème
Senior IT and data freelancers for French corporates in 48 hours
PeoplePerHour
UK marketplace with Offers, projects and a tiered freelancer fee
Key takeaways
- Upwork is a US marketplace whose pricing pages describe a freelancer fee of up to 15% per contract plus a separate client marketplace fee.
- freelancermap and freelance.de take no commission from freelancers and finance themselves with membership tiers starting at €0.
- Codeable states one fixed service fee of 17.5% on top of an estimate based on USD 80 to 120 per hour, for WordPress work only.
- PeoplePerHour publishes a three-step fee ladder for freelancers (20%, 7.5%, 3.5%) that depends on lifetime billing with each buyer.
- Malt states mission protection of up to €20 million, which is the largest payment-protection figure published by any platform on this page.
Why people leave Upwork
Upwork is a United States marketplace where a client posts a job, freelancers send proposals and the platform sits in the middle of the payment.
Its own pricing and support pages, as quoted in search results, describe a fee on both sides of every contract: up to 15% taken from the freelancer, and a separate marketplace fee paid by the client. Our attempt to read those pages directly was stopped by a bot check, so this page does not go beyond what the excerpts say.
People who look beyond Upwork rarely complain about the idea of an open marketplace. They complain about what it means in practice for their situation: a business buyer wants a contracting party under European law, a freelancer in Germany wants to stop giving up a slice of every invoice, and a company hiring a chemist or a telecom architect finds that a general-purpose pool is the wrong place to look.
The European platforms below answer those three complaints differently. Some drop the commission and charge a membership instead, some put an account manager between you and the shortlist, and some narrow the scope to one kind of work. Each is run by a company registered in the EU, the United Kingdom or Israel, which is the eligibility line this directory uses.
- The fee sits on both sides of the contract The fee structure that Upwork describes on its pricing pages has a freelancer fee of up to 15% per contract and a marketplace fee for the client. For a freelancer that is a cut of every invoice, and for a buyer it is a surcharge that does not show up in the freelancer's quoted rate. The European tools below split this differently: freelancermap and freelance.de charge no placement commission at all, and Codeable states a single fixed 17.5% fee.
- The counterparty is a US marketplace operator Upwork is a US company and the HQ city and the legal entity in your contract were not something we could confirm. If your procurement team wants a supplier with a European registration number, a European governing law or a commercial-register entry it can look up, the alternatives give you that: Codeable ApS in Denmark, freelancermap GmbH and freelance.de GmbH in Germany, OUTVISE, S.L. in Spain, Malt Community SA in France.
- A general pool is a poor fit for specialist briefs A marketplace that lists every kind of work has to leave vetting to the buyer. Kolabtree concentrates on scientists and regulatory writers, Codeable on WordPress developers, Outvise on telecom and consulting roles. Against a general pool, these narrower networks reduce the number of profiles you have to read, at the price of being useless the moment your brief changes subject.
- Open bidding is not what every buyer wants Collecting proposals from many strangers is time you pay for yourself. Codeable returns one estimate, Crème de la Crème promises three profiles within 48 hours, Outvise assigns an account manager, and Fiverr lets you buy a packaged service without writing a brief. If the proposal stack is what you want to avoid, the alternatives are built around skipping it.
What you have to replace, not just match
Switching away from Upwork means replacing three things, not one. The first is discovery, the place where you find people. The second is the contract and payment layer: who invoices, who holds the money while work is in progress, and who you call when a deliverable is disputed. The third is the history you built, such as saved freelancers, past contracts and reviews, which stays with the platform.
The European tools do not all cover the same layers. freelancermap and freelance.de are project boards: they find the match and leave the contract, the invoice and any dispute to the two parties. Malt, Twine, Kolabtree and PeoplePerHour take on payment as well. YunoJuno and Crème de la Crème add compliance and payroll-style services for companies that run many engagements at once. Choose the tool that covers the layers you actually used on Upwork.
Check the currency too. Codeable, Kolabtree and Twine quote in US dollars and PeoplePerHour in pounds sterling, so a euro-based company takes on a conversion step it may not have had before. freelancermap, freelance.de and Malt state euro prices on the pages we checked.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Codeable | Klampenborg, Denmark | Estimate based on a USD 80 to 120 hourly rate plus a fixed 17.5% service fee (pricing page checked 29 October 2026) | EU (Denmark) |
| #2 | Kolabtree | London, United Kingdom | Free to post a project; fee structure not shown on the pages checked, see website | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #3 | freelancermap | Nuremberg, Germany | Freelancers: Basis EUR 0 with 10 applications a month, Premium EUR 13.99 a month. Companies: Basis EUR 0, Business EUR 59, Enterprise EUR 89 a month (checked 29 October 2026) | EU (Germany) |
| #4 | YunoJuno | London, United Kingdom | Custom pricing; the Freelancer Management System uses a percentage fee on contractor payments, quote on request | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #5 | Outvise | Barcelona, Spain | Free request with no commitment; commission set in each assignment notification form, not published | EU (Spain) |
| #6 | Twine | London, United Kingdom | Standard: USD 0 a month, service fee from 5% on a sliding scale. Business: USD 139.99 per project, managed service (checked 29 October 2026) | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #7 | Malt | Paris, France | Client service fee as a percentage of the freelancer invoice depending on plan and country; see Malt help centre | EU (France) |
| #8 | freelance.de | Munich, Germany | Freelancers: Basic EUR 0, Starter EUR 8, Expert EUR 19, Expert+ EUR 33 a month (checked 29 October 2026) | EU (Germany) |
| #9 | Fiverr | Tel Aviv, Israel | Service fees not shown on server-rendered pages checked; see website | Israel (outside the EU/EEA) |
| #10 | Crème de la Crème | Paris, France | Pricing on request | EU (France) |
| #11 | PeoplePerHour | United Kingdom, United Kingdom | Freelancer fee 20% under GBP 250 lifetime billing per buyer, 7.5% up to GBP 5,000, 3.5% above; buyer fee GBP 0.60 plus 10% by card (terms, checked 29 October 2026) | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
How each alternative compares to Upwork
Best for: Site owners and agencies who want a vetted WordPress or WooCommerce developer without reading proposals
Codeable answers the Upwork proposal stack with a single number. You describe the WordPress job, interested developers apply, and the platform returns one estimate based on a USD 80 to 120 hourly rate. A fixed 17.5% service fee is added, which is easier to plan around than a fee that varies by contract.
The contracting party is Codeable ApS in Klampenborg, Denmark, and the terms include a 28-day period for fixing bugs after a project is marked complete. Against a general marketplace you lose range: anything that is not WordPress or WooCommerce has to go elsewhere.
What Codeable does better than Upwork
- One estimate instead of a pile of bids
- Developers are vetted before taking projects
- A bug-fixing period written into the terms
- Danish contracting entity
Where Codeable is a step down from Upwork
- WordPress only
- US dollar pricing
- No room to negotiate the estimate
Standout against Upwork. It is the only platform on this page that quotes one price for a whole project instead of letting you collect bids.
Best for: Biotech, medtech and food companies buying a defined piece of scientific or regulatory work
Kolabtree is where the Upwork comparison is least about price and most about who is in the pool. Its profiles are biologists, statisticians and medical writers, and the service list includes EU MDR consulting and clinical evaluation reports. A brief can be shown to selected freelancers only, which a general marketplace does not offer by design.
The operator is Cactus Communications Limited in London. The commission was not stated on the pages we checked and rates are shown in US dollars, so budget by asking for a quote. A buyer who needs a logo or a landing page will find nothing here.
What Kolabtree does better than Upwork
- Specialist profiles in life sciences
- Briefs can be hidden from non-selected freelancers
- Default NDA and confidentiality clauses
- Milestones and timesheets for staged payment
Where Kolabtree is a step down from Upwork
- Narrow subject range
- Commission not published
- US dollar rates
Standout against Upwork. The brief itself can be restricted to chosen freelancers, a safeguard for unpublished research work.
Best for: IT and engineering freelancers in the DACH market and the companies that hire them directly
freelancermap removes the thing freelancers resent most about Upwork: the cut. The imprint names freelancermap GmbH in Nuremberg, the commission is 0%, and Premium costs €13.99 a month for freelancers. Companies post for free, with Business at €59 and Enterprise at €89 a month adding postings and contact requests.
The price of that model is protection. There is no escrow, milestone billing or dispute service, so a client who does not pay is the freelancer's own matter. The free tier caps applications at ten a month, and the site leans German and IT. Upwork is stronger when you want the platform to hold the money.
What freelancermap does better than Upwork
- No placement commission
- Free project posting for companies
- A low flat monthly price for freelancers
- German GmbH with a published imprint
Where freelancermap is a step down from Upwork
- No escrow or payment protection
- Ten applications a month on the free tier
- Thin supply outside IT and consulting
Standout against Upwork. A freelancer keeps the whole invoice, because the platform charges a subscription and nothing on the work.
Best for: Agencies and in-house teams that engage contractors repeatedly and need compliance and payments handled
YunoJuno, started in London in 2012, is an operations tool before it is a marketplace. Its product pages list sourcing, onboarding, worker classification, multi-currency payments in 165+ countries, timesheets and reporting, and contractors are never charged to use it. The comparison with Upwork Enterprise is the relevant one.
The cost is a percentage fee on contractor payments, quoted on request, and several modules such as the API are add-ons. For a single one-off hire it is more system than you need, and you cannot check the price before talking to sales.
What YunoJuno does better than Upwork
- Worker classification and right-to-work checks in one place
- Payments across 165+ countries
- Contractors pay nothing to use it
- Reporting across all engagements
Where YunoJuno is a step down from Upwork
- No published price
- Heavy for a single hire
- Many modules are paid add-ons
Standout against Upwork. Compliance checks for contractor classification are part of the product, not something you assemble around it.
Best for: Telecom operators and consulting firms staffing senior IT, data and transformation roles
Outvise replaces browsing with a brief. You choose a role such as 5G expert, data engineer or SAP consultant, state the duration, and an account manager follows up. The first request is free and carries no commitment, according to the home page, which puts a person where Upwork has a search box.
The terms are with OUTVISE, S.L. in Barcelona. The commission is written into a notification form for each assignment and is not published, so ask for it on the first call. It is slower than self-service and not suited to a small gig.
What Outvise does better than Upwork
- Human shortlist from an account manager
- Role catalogue built around IT and telecom
- Free first request without commitment
- Spanish company with published terms
Where Outvise is a step down from Upwork
- Commission not published
- Slower than a self-service board
- Not for low-budget tasks
Standout against Upwork. Every assignment gets its own commission figure in a notification form, so nothing is fixed by a public rate card.
Best for: Brands and startups hiring video, design, audio or web freelancers for short briefs
Twine is the closest in spirit to Upwork: you post a project for free and vetted freelancers respond with their rates, with matching promised within 24 hours. The service fee starts from 5% on a sliding scale, falling as lifetime payments to the same freelancer on a project rise, which rewards repeat hires.
Clowdy Limited, trading as Twine, is registered in England and Wales. Billing is in US dollars, and the Business plan at USD 139.99 per project recurs monthly until cancelled. Depth in science or enterprise consulting is thinner than at Kolabtree or Outvise.
What Twine does better than Upwork
- Free job posting
- Fee from 5% that shrinks with repeat work
- Payment direct or through a vault
- A managed Business tier with invoiced billing
Where Twine is a step down from Upwork
- US dollar billing
- Business plan renews until cancelled
- Less depth in specialist niches
Standout against Upwork. The service fee falls with each repeat payment to the same freelancer, so loyal pairings get cheaper.
Best for: European companies hiring freelancers across several countries who want the platform to handle billing
Malt is the broadest of the European options for general hiring. Clients pick Starter, Advanced or Enterprise, pay a percentage of the freelancer invoice that varies by plan and country, and receive separate invoices for the work and for Malt's fee. Malt states mission protection of up to €20 million.
Malt Community SA is registered in Paris. Malt's own pages sit behind a bot check, so this entry rests on help-centre excerpts, and two help articles disagree on the freelancer-side fee. Read the quote page before agreeing to anything.
What Malt does better than Upwork
- Separate invoices for work and platform fee
- Country sites in several languages
- Payment advance for freelancers
- French entity in the Paris register
Where Malt is a step down from Upwork
- Fee depends on plan and country
- Freelancer-side fee wording is inconsistent
- Pages could not be fetched directly
Standout against Upwork. The platform bills the work and its own fee on two documents, which keeps the accounting clean for the client.
Best for: German-speaking IT, engineering and administration freelancers who apply to several projects a week
freelance.de is a project database rather than a payment platform. Its homepage states 3,600+ open projects and 352,400+ freelancers. Freelancers pay by application volume: Basic is free with two applications a day, Starter €8, Expert €19 and Expert+ €33 a month.
The imprint gives freelance.de GmbH in Munich and register number HRB 163159. There is no escrow or invoicing layer, the site is in German, and staffing agencies are a core customer group, so many listings come through an intermediary. Anyone who does not read German should test the sign-up flow first.
What freelance.de does better than Upwork
- No placement fees for freelancers
- Entry tiers from €8 a month
- Search agents that watch for new projects
- Register entry in Munich
Where freelance.de is a step down from Upwork
- German-language site
- Two applications a day on the free tier
- Many listings via agencies
Standout against Upwork. Up to ten search agents watch the database for matching projects, so the application effort goes into replies.
Best for: Buyers who would rather compare fixed-scope services than write a job post
Fiverr inverts the Upwork flow. Sellers publish a package with a price, and the buyer picks one, across about 700 categories according to its homepage. A buyer with a repeatable task, such as a logo or a voice-over, skips the brief and the proposals.
The imprint names Fiverr International Ltd. in Tel Aviv, with Fiverr Limited in Nicosia for payments. Its fee levels and full terms were not readable without scripts, so cost cannot be quoted here. Seller quality varies and a long, changing project suits the package model poorly.
What Fiverr does better than Upwork
- Visible prices on packages
- No proposal round for simple tasks
- Managed sourcing option
- Country sites in seven languages
Where Fiverr is a step down from Upwork
- Fee rates not verifiable here
- Awkward for open-ended projects
- Seller quality varies
Standout against Upwork. The only platform on this page where the buyer starts from a priced package and no brief is needed.
Best for: French corporates and consultancies staffing IT, data and cybersecurity missions
Crème de la Crème is a curated staffing flow. A client fills in a brief and receives three profiles within 48 hours, then follows the mission in real time with automated payments. Its umbrella-payroll option, called portage, lets consulting firms put their own people through the same system.
CRÈME DE LA CRÈME, SAS is entered in the Paris commercial register. The site and terms are in French, pricing is on request, and a freelancer cannot simply sign up, because membership is selective. For a buyer outside France it offers little over Upwork.
What Crème de la Crème does better than Upwork
- Fast shortlist of three profiles
- Mission tracking and automated payment
- Umbrella payroll for consultants
- Published French registration
Where Crème de la Crème is a step down from Upwork
- French-language only
- No public pricing
- Not an open directory
Standout against Upwork. It combines a curated shortlist and an umbrella payroll option in one French-registered service.
Best for: UK-based small businesses and freelancers in writing, design, marketing and web work
PeoplePerHour is the most open about fees. The terms give freelancers a ladder: 20% on the first GBP 250 billed to a buyer, 7.5% up to GBP 5,000 and 3.5% above that. Buyers pay GBP 0.60 plus 10% on card payments. Services run as fixed-price Offers or custom projects.
The operator is People Per Hour Limited, incorporated in the UK under company number 06369697, operating since 2007. The 20% entry rate is steep for new relationships, card fees add to the buyer's bill, and a monthly administration fee can apply to idle balances. Supply is UK-first.
What PeoplePerHour does better than Upwork
- A fee table published in the terms
- Rate falls to 3.5% on large relationships
- Offers with fixed prices
- Freelancers are hand-reviewed
Where PeoplePerHour is a step down from Upwork
- 20% on the first GBP 250 per buyer
- Card fee for buyers
- Idle balance charge
- UK-centred supply
Standout against Upwork. The fee table in its terms spells out every percentage, which most competitors on this page leave unpublished.
What actually breaks when you switch
The practical problem when leaving is that the platform owns the relationship record. Reviews, work history and saved freelancers do not travel, and a freelancer who has a strong profile on Upwork starts at zero on freelancermap, Malt or Twine. Expect your first projects on a new platform to take longer to staff, and ask your best existing freelancers to register in advance.
Contracts and tax change too. Some platforms take the contracting role (Malt invoices on the client's behalf, Codeable and Kolabtree have their own terms), others leave the contract to you. If your accountant is used to one platform invoice a month, a move to a project board means a separate invoice from every freelancer. Test one small project before moving a whole programme, and cancel any recurring plan (Twine Business, for example) once the work ends.
Will I pay less in fees than on Upwork?
It depends on which side you are on and how often you work with the same person. For a freelancer, the commission-free boards freelancermap and freelance.de are cheaper by construction: €13.99 a month for freelancermap Premium, and from €8 to €33 a month for freelance.de. PeoplePerHour is the opposite case, since the freelancer fee is 20% on the first GBP 250 billed to a new buyer.
For a buyer, the comparison is harder because Upwork's client marketplace fee could not be read from the source pages. Collect a written quote on the European side (Codeable's 17.5%, Twine's fee from 5%, Malt's plan-dependent percentage) and set it next to your last Upwork invoice rather than relying on a headline rate.
Can I take my past contracts and freelancers with me?
Not in any automated way that we could verify. Upwork's export options were behind the bot check, and none of the European tools on this page describes an Upwork import. Treat the move as a contact exercise: ask your best freelancers whether they have a profile on the new platform or would register one, and keep your own copy of invoices, scopes of work and deliverables.
Freelancers who are the reason you stay on Upwork are the easiest to move. Several of the alternatives (freelancermap, freelance.de) let a client approach them directly without a commission, so the working relationship can continue under a new set of rules. Platforms that hold payment, such as Malt or Kolabtree, will want the contract renewed on their terms.
Which one to pick
If the work is a defined type, choose the narrow network: Codeable for WordPress, Kolabtree for life-science and regulatory work, Outvise or Crème de la Crème for senior consulting missions. If you hire freelancers directly and want to avoid commissions, choose freelancermap or freelance.de and accept that payment protection is yours to manage.
If you want a general marketplace where the platform handles payment, look at Malt first, then Twine and PeoplePerHour, and check their fee tables against your last Upwork invoice. If you run a contractor programme with compliance duties, YunoJuno is the one built for it. For mixed work across many subjects, a single general marketplace is the most convenient shape, and the Upwork category range was not something we could check.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on the work. Codeable is the choice for WordPress projects, Kolabtree for scientific and regulatory briefs, freelancermap and freelance.de for IT freelancers in the German-speaking market, and Malt for general European hiring with billing handled by the platform. Outvise and Crème de la Crème fit senior consulting missions, and YunoJuno suits companies managing many contractors.
Yes, two. freelancermap in Nuremberg and freelance.de in Munich charge freelancers no placement commission and earn from membership tiers, from €0 up to €33 a month on freelance.de. The trade-off is that neither holds funds or issues contracts, so payment protection and dispute handling are your own responsibility.
Malt invoices the freelancer work and its own fee separately and states mission protection of up to €20 million. Kolabtree describes a deposit and milestone payments. Twine offers a vault payment and PeoplePerHour takes payment through the platform. YunoJuno pays contractors in 165+ countries and Crème de la Crème automates payments inside its missions.
Not all of them. Codeable (Denmark), freelancermap and freelance.de (Germany), Outvise (Spain), Malt and Crème de la Crème (France) are in the EU. Kolabtree, YunoJuno, Twine and PeoplePerHour are UK companies, outside the EEA but under an adequacy decision, and Fiverr International is an Israeli company with a Cypriot payments entity.
YunoJuno is the closest match. Its product covers sourcing, onboarding, worker classification, multi-currency payments and reporting, and contractors pay nothing to use it. Pricing is a quote on request, so ask for the percentage fee before comparing it with a marketplace.
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