Building a Website Like Upwork: Tips, Costs, and Challenges

Every entrepreneur has that one idea that won’t leave them alone. For many, it’s the thought of creating their own version of Upwork: a platform that solves problems better, faster, or smarter than the giants already out there. If that spark lives in you, don’t brush it aside.

The freelance economy continues to expand, niche talent markets are booming, and new Upwork-like platforms with sharper positioning emerge every year. Maybe yours could be next.

In this guide, we’ll walk through what it actually takes to build a website like Upwork: from smart tips on freelance marketplace development to understanding real marketplace costs, feature requirements, and the challenges that come with launching a competitive service.

And since at Codica we’ve spent years delivering custom marketplace development for clients worldwide, we’ll share insights shaped by real projects, real mistakes, and real wins.

Let’s dive in and explore how your idea can turn into a fully functioning freelance marketplace.

What is a freelance marketplace?

A freelance marketplace is an online platform where companies and independent professionals meet to get work done: fast, flexibly, and without the traditional hiring overhead.

Think of it as a digital ecosystem that connects businesses with people who can design, write, code, edit, consult, or build almost anything you can imagine.

Platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and other niche marketplaces turned this model into a global standard. Upwork in particular shaped the way modern freelance platforms operate: open talent pools, powerful search tools, secure payments, project tracking, essentially, everything needed to make remote collaboration feel structured instead of chaotic.

A freelance marketplace offers three things:

• A place to find talent: thousands of professionals across dozens of industries.
• A streamlined workflow: job posts, proposals, messaging, milestones, and dispute resolution.
• A trust layer: reviews, ratings, identity checks, protected payments.

Businesses post projects or search directly for specialists, and freelancers respond with proposals or pre-defined service packages.

Source: Upwork

Upwork popularized this proposal-driven format, where clients describe their needs and professionals pitch how they’d solve the problem.

Modern platforms refine this model in different ways: some focus on micro-jobs, others on vetted experts, industry niches, or AI-driven matching. But the foundation remains the same: a safe, efficient space where work happens without friction.

For entrepreneurs, this model is appealing because it scales. You’re not selling a product: you’re enabling thousands of people to sell their skills. And as Upwork’s growth shows year after year, demand for online talent isn’t just stable… It’s expanding into new verticals, regions, and specializations.

If you’re thinking about building a freelance marketplace of your own, understanding this core structure is the first step, and the next steps get a lot more exciting.

Inspired to build your own Upwork-like marketplace?

Our experts are ready to help you shape and develop it.

Talk to experts

If there’s one platform that shaped the modern freelance economy, it’s Upwork

The company didn’t just build a website. It created the playbook for how online talent platforms should work. What began as a small remote-work community evolved into the largest freelance marketplace in the world, connecting millions of businesses with skilled professionals across hundreds of categories.

Upwork’s rise mirrors the shift happening in the global workforce. According to the 2025 Upwork Future Workforce Index, 28% of skilled knowledge workers now freelance, and another 36% of full-time employees are considering making the move.

In 2024 alone, U.S. freelancers generated $1.5 trillion in earnings, proving that flexible, independent work isn’t a side trend; it’s a structural change in how people choose to build their careers.

Source: Upwork

Why Upwork dominates the freelance market today

Upwork didn’t succeed just because freelancing became popular. It succeeded because it solved problems that traditional hiring models couldn’t.

Businesses faced growing skills gaps, rising competitive pressure, and rapid AI-driven transformation. At the same time, professionals wanted autonomy, meaningful work, and control over their career paths.

Upwork responded by offering:

• A massive global talent pool across every industry;
• A proposal-based hiring system that helps clients find specialists for unique challenges;
• Secure payments, reviews, and identity checks that build trust;
• Tools for long-term collaboration, milestones, and AI-assisted matching.

Today, Upwork represents what skilled work looks like in 2026: borderless, fast, hybrid, and increasingly AI-enabled.

What Upwork’s success means for new freelance platforms

For entrepreneurs, Upwork’s growth is both inspiring and revealing. The Upwork Research Institute highlights that freelancers are leading innovation in emerging fields: AI, automation, sustainability, and advanced software development, and they’re often more future-ready than traditional full-time employees.

That opens the door wide for new players. Yes, Upwork is the giant. But giants don’t capture every niche.

There is a huge opportunity for platforms that offer:

• Specialized industry focus,
• Curated talent pools,
• Regional or language-specific communities,
• AI-powered workflows,
• Unique monetization models.

Upwork proved the model works at scale. New marketplaces succeed by focusing on what the giants can’t personalize.

Have a marketplace idea in mind?

Let’s turn it into a scalable product that users will love.

Contact Codica

How does Upwork function?

To understand how Upwork works, you first need to see it as a two-sided digital marketplace. Clients arrive with a project or a problem; freelancers arrive with skills. Upwork provides the infrastructure, search, communication, payments, contracts, and trust, so both sides can collaborate smoothly.

This streamlined approach is exactly why so many entrepreneurs want to build a platform like Upwork: the model scales, and the workflow is intuitive.

Client workflow: how businesses hire freelancers on Upwork

The freelance hiring process on Upwork follows a familiar structure:

1. Clients post a job with a project description, budget, and requirements.
2. Freelancers submit proposals, tailored to the task.
3. Clients review profiles, portfolios, ratings, and Job Success Scores.
4. Both sides agree on milestones, deadlines, and pricing.
5. Work begins under a fixed-price or hourly contract.

This proposal-based marketplace model is central to Upwork’s functionality. It’s highly flexible and ideal for complex or long-term projects: a key reason Upwork dominates the freelance market.

Freelancer workflow: finding work and building a reputation

From the freelancer's perspective, Upwork serves as a full freelance work management system:

• They browse curated job listings that match their skills.
• They submit customized proposals to potential clients.
• They manage work through milestones, the Upwork Time Tracker, or fixed-price contracts.
• They build reputation through ratings, reviews, and completed contracts.

A strong reputation unlocks higher-paying jobs: a crucial mechanic for any entrepreneur planning to develop a freelance marketplace platform.

Upwork’s trust and safety system

A huge part of how Upwork functions lies behind the scenes. The platform provides:

• Escrow payments for fixed-price projects;
• Time-tracking tools for hourly work;
• Dispute resolution;
• Identity verification;
• AI-driven fraud detection;
• Skill badges and certifications.

Any team looking into freelance marketplace development should pay close attention to these trust mechanisms; they’re the backbone of every successful marketplace.

AI as a core part of Upwork’s platform

AI is becoming a major pillar of Upwork’s business model. The platform uses AI to:

• Recommend the best freelancers for each job,
• Help users write stronger proposals and job posts,
• Filter spam and detect suspicious behavior,
• Surface top-tier talent faster,
• Support new AI-enabled service categories.

The 2025 Upwork Workforce Index shows freelancers are adopting AI tools faster than full-time employees. This directly influences Upwork features and future marketplace expectations.

Why this marketplace model works so well

The Upwork business model is powerful because it benefits all sides:

• Clients gain fast access to global talent.
• Freelancers gain visibility and steady opportunities.
• The platform earns through service fees, premium plans, and enterprise solutions.

For anyone planning to build a website like Upwork, this section of the model, scalable monetization and repeat usage, is especially important.

Main features for a marketplace like Upwork

Before you start investing time and money into building a website like Upwork, it’s crucial to understand what truly makes a freelance marketplace work.

Not every feature deserves your attention, and not every trend will matter in 2026. The platforms that succeed are the ones built around three strategic pillars:

• Trust and safety mechanisms that users can rely on.
• AI-powered matching, workflow automation, and smart recommendations.
• Flexible collaboration models that support both simple and complex projects.

From our experience at Codica, where we’ve built and scaled multiple online marketplaces for clients worldwide, these three pillars consistently determine whether a platform gains traction or stalls early.

When they’re strong, everything else: monetization, growth, and user retention, becomes dramatically easier.

With that in mind, here are the core features your marketplace must include if you want it to compete with Upwork or carve out a strong niche of your own.

Trust and safety: the core of any Upwork-like marketplace

If you want to build a website like Upwork, your first priority should be trust. Not UI. Not branding. Trust. A freelance marketplace fails the moment users feel unsafe.

Your platform must include:

• Escrow payments that guarantee freelancers get paid, and clients get results.
• Identity and KYC verification to prevent fake accounts.
• Transparent reviews and work history that can’t be manipulated.
• Clear dispute resolution mechanisms with predictable outcomes.

These features aren’t “nice to have.” They’re the foundation of every successful freelance marketplace development strategy.

Source: Upwork

AI-powered talent matching and job recommendations

In 2026, manual browsing isn’t enough. The strongest Upwork-like marketplace features rely on AI to match the right freelancer to the right project automatically.

Your platform should offer:

• AI-driven ranking of freelancers based on skills, reliability, speed, and success metrics.
• Smart job recommendations for freelancers based on performance and niche expertise.
• Automated job post enhancement, helping clients articulate requirements clearly.

Upwork’s 2025 Workforce Index shows that freelancers who leverage AI tools outperform traditional full-time talent across many areas. Your platform should highlight this expertise, not hide it.

Source: Upwork

Multiple work models: proposals, packages, hybrid workflows

Clients have different needs, so your marketplace must support flexible collaboration models:

• Proposal-based hiring for complex projects (Upwork’s core model).
• Predefined service packages for fast, predictable tasks.
• Hybrid models combining both, for example, a package plus customizable add-ons.

This flexibility dramatically increases conversion rates and helps attract both beginners and highly specialized experts.

Integrated tools for communication and project management

Removing friction is what keeps people on your platform instead of WhatsApp or email. Essential components include:

• Real-time messaging;
• Attachment and file sharing;
• Video/audio calling;
• Milestone management;
• Delivery & revision flows;
• Push/email notifications.

If users can complete the entire workflow inside your platform, they will. And they’ll return.

Advanced freelancer profiles built for credibility

Freelancers in 2026 operate like micro-enterprises. Your marketplace should allow them to demonstrate expertise, not just list skills.

Useful profile elements include:

• Detailed portfolios with verified project samples;
• Niche expertise tags (AI, automation, sustainability, fintech, etc.);
• Certifications and tech stacks;
• Availability and response-speed indicators;
• Industry-based rate suggestions.

Better profiles lead to faster hiring decisions and fewer disputes.

Source: Upwork

Flexible payment and pricing options

Payment infrastructure is a critical feature for any Upwork-style platform. Include:

• Hourly and fixed-price models;
• Milestone-based billing;
• Automated invoicing;
• Global payout options (cards, PayPal, bank transfer, digital wallets).

If users encounter payment friction, they don’t blame the bank; they blame your product.

AI-native collaboration tools

Freelancers are adopting AI at a record pace. Your marketplace should reflect this reality:

• Proposal and job post generators;
• Automated skill tagging;
• AI-driven project scoping;
• Integrations with tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Claude, Runway, Figma AI, etc.

These features attract AI-enabled freelancers, the fastest-growing talent segment on the market.

Clear analytics dashboards for both sides

Data helps users make better decisions. Your platform should offer:

For freelancers:

• Income insights, active contracts, performance metrics.

For clients:

• Budget tracking, contractor performance, and project status.

This reduces support load and increases retention: two critical problems in early-stage marketplaces.

A powerful admin panel that keeps operations scalable

This is the “invisible” part of marketplace development, yet one of the most important. Your admin system needs to support:

• User moderation and identity checks;
• Dispute management;
• Payment tracking and payout approvals;
• Fraud detection and suspicious activity monitoring;
• Dynamic fee settings;
• Category and content management.

If your internal tools are weak, the marketplace will break long before it grows.

Your marketplace idea deserves a strong technical foundation.

Let’s build it together.

Contact us

7 steps to build a marketplace like Upwork

Building a freelance marketplace may look straightforward from the outside, profiles, jobs, payments, messaging, but once you dive in, you realize it’s a far more complex product ecosystem.

A platform like Upwork is powered by smart workflows, strict trust systems, scalable architecture, and dozens of moving parts that must work flawlessly together.

Based on Codica’s experience delivering custom marketplaces, AI-powered platforms, and end-to-end product discovery for startups and established teams, here’s a clear, practical roadmap from idea to launch.

These seven steps outline what actually matters when you’re building a marketplace designed to grow, compete, and scale.

Step 1: Define your niche and value proposition

Before writing code, you need absolute clarity on who your marketplace serves and why it deserves to exist. Competing directly with Upwork is rarely the winning move.

Instead, zero in on a specialized niche, whether it's AI developers, legal consultants, localized talent, or micro-job freelancers. A sharp niche shortens your time to traction.

This is where Codica’s product discovery services make a real difference. We help founders validate the market, shape positioning, and define a strong value proposition before development begins, saving months of guesswork and reducing the risk of building the wrong product.

Step 2: Shape the business model and revenue streams

The business model defines how users interact with your platform. Commission fees, subscriptions, boosted visibility, transaction fees, and even AI-powered paid add-ons can all work, but not all at once. Choose the simplest model for your MVP and evolve from there.

During discovery, Codica guides clients through revenue modeling based on competitor analysis, user expectations, and feasibility. The goal is to find a model that creates value without friction, so your marketplace can grow sustainably.

Step 3: Design the core user journeys

Freelancers and clients behave differently, so your marketplace must support two optimized, intuitive journeys. From onboarding to hiring to payments, each step needs to be clear, fast, and frustration-free. Poor UX is one of the biggest reasons freelance marketplaces fail early.

Our UI/UX design services help founders build flows that minimize friction and maximize conversion. We prototype interfaces, run usability tests, and ensure that freelancers and clients can complete essential actions: posting jobs, submitting proposals, messaging, payments, with minimal effort.

Step 4: Build the essential MVP features

Your MVP should validate the core offering, not replicate Upwork’s complexity. The essentials include: onboarding, profiles, job posting, proposals, messaging, payments, reviews, and an admin dashboard. These features form the operational backbone of any marketplace.

Codica’s approach combines lean development with strong engineering practices. Our quality assurance services ensure that even the first version is stable, secure, and scalable. You're not just launching quickly, you're launching with confidence.

Step 5: Integrate AI where it creates real value

AI isn’t optional in 2026. Users now expect platforms to help them act faster and think less. That means AI-generated job posts, proposal assistance for freelancers, automated skill tagging, fraud detection, and smart matching powered by machine learning.

Our AI services allow founders to embed intelligent automation directly into the marketplace. Whether it’s an AI-driven recommender system or a conversational assistant that helps clients describe their needs, these tools dramatically improve engagement and conversion.

Step 6: Build a secure, scalable architecture

A freelance marketplace handles sensitive data, global payments, and a high volume of interactions, so stability and security cannot be an afterthought. Proper cloud infrastructure, KYC/AML compliance, encryption, MFA, and scalable architecture must be built into the platform from day one.

Codica combines strong engineering practices with automated and manual QA to ensure the platform remains fast and reliable as traffic grows. This foundation allows you to expand features later without breaking what’s already working.

Step 7: Launch and measure

A marketplace isn’t “finished” at launch; it starts learning. Post-launch analytics reveal how users behave, where they drop off, and what they value. These insights guide the next iterations: improved onboarding, AI upgrades, new monetization models, mobile apps, or advanced collaboration tools.

Codica supports founders through continuous optimization, UX enhancements, new AI capabilities, feature releases, and ongoing quality assurance. Growth comes from iterative improvements guided by real data.

Codica’s experience building recruiting and marketplace platforms

Building a freelance marketplace like Upwork requires deep expertise in complex workflows, matching algorithms, automation, payments, and scalable architecture.

At Codica, we've delivered multiple recruitment and marketplace platforms that rely on similar logic. Here’s a quick overview of a few of our projects.

AI-powered job creation & matching platform (RecruitAgent.ai)

A global SaaS platform that automates job post creation, vacancy distribution, and labor-market insights using AI and third-party integrations.

Key capabilities we built:

• AI assistant for generating job descriptions, translations, and tone adjustments;
• Automated multi-platform job posting (Brockmeyer, Raven51 APIs);
• Real-time labor market insights via the Intelligence Group API;
• Complex pricing rules, dynamic media recommendations;
• Scalable cloud architecture and seamless API orchestration.

Together, these capabilities created a system where recruiters move from idea to published job post in minutes, not hours. The combination of AI assistance, structured workflows, and automated distribution reflects how modern marketplaces reduce manual work and guide users through complex tasks without friction.

Intelligent job matching platform (Wowner)

A fast-to-market PWA for matching people to relevant jobs using their skills, location, preferences, and labor-market data.

Key capabilities we built:

• User profiles with skills, proficiency levels, preferences;
• Matching algorithms based on CV data and job market opportunities;
• Smart filtering (location radius, shift preferences, wage expectations);
• Integration with local job databases and education suggestions;
• Fast, mobile-first PWA ready in weeks.

This approach resulted in a matching flow that feels personal, fast, and intuitive, even for users on mobile devices. The ability to connect profiles, preferences, and real labor-market data creates a hiring experience that closely mirrors the logic behind talent marketplaces where accuracy and relevance matter most.

The main challenges of the freelance marketplace platforms

Building a platform similar to Upwork looks straightforward at first glance, but once you get into real freelance marketplace development, the hidden complexities start to surface.

Trust, payments, user quality, workflows, and long-term engagement all create challenges that aren’t always obvious during the planning phase. Many founders underestimate these factors, which leads to stalled growth or costly redesigns later.

Below are the challenges that consistently appear across marketplace projects, along with insights shaped by working on platforms with similar structures and demands.

1. Building trust between strangers

Freelance marketplaces rely heavily on trust. Two people who have never interacted must feel comfortable exchanging money, time, and expertise. Weak verification, unclear payment rules, or inconsistent dispute handling quickly undermine the entire platform.

From our experience working on marketplace architecture, trust isn’t something you “add later”. It has to be engineered into the system from the very beginning through predictable policies, secure payment flows, and transparent user histories.

2. Solving the supply–demand imbalance

The classic “chicken-and-egg” problem hits every new marketplace: clients want a strong talent pool, and freelancers want active clients. Most platforms stall here.

Teams often overcome this by narrowing their initial niche, refining onboarding flows, and offering early incentives. In practice, a well-defined niche with clearly modeled user journeys tends to reach balance faster: something we’ve seen repeatedly during product discovery work for marketplace startups.

3. Handling complex multi-step workflows

Marketplaces like Upwork aren’t simple catalog sites. They combine job posts, proposals, messaging, milestones, revisions, reviews, and sometimes disputes. Each step can become a friction point if not designed carefully.

In marketplace projects we’ve delivered, early UX prototyping usually reveals blind spots founders didn’t expect. Clean workflows reduce support load, improve retention, and prevent painful redesigns later in development.

4. Managing secure and compliant payments

Cross-border payments introduce technical and legal challenges: KYC/AML processes, regional limitations, escrow logic, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance. Users rarely see this complexity, but they immediately notice if something goes wrong.

Reliable payment infrastructure, combined with automated validation and clear payout rules, helps avoid many issues. Strong QA practices are essential here, especially when dealing with multi-step financial flows.

5. Preventing fraud, spam, and low-quality activity

Freelance platforms naturally attract spam proposals, duplicate accounts, and low-effort submissions. Manual moderation doesn’t scale.

Teams often combine automated filters, behavioral analysis, and human review for edge cases. On projects involving AI components, conversational models, and classification tools have proven useful for detecting suspicious or low-quality activity early.

6. Maintaining platform performance at scale

As a marketplace grows, search, matching algorithms, messaging, and notifications all become heavier on the system. Performance issues can appear even at moderate traffic levels.

Scalable architecture, proper caching, and continuous optimization help maintain speed. We've seen platforms struggle when these considerations come too late, so planning scalability early is a significant advantage.

7. Keeping both sides consistently engaged

A marketplace thrives only when both freelancers and clients stay active. Without relevant matches, reminders, or structured workflows, engagement drops quickly.

Dashboards with personalized insights, recommendation systems, and AI-assisted guidance help users stay active and productive, especially when combined with thoughtful UX and continuous iteration based on real usage data.

How much does it cost to build a website like Upwork?

Estimating the cost of building a website like Upwork isn’t straightforward because a freelance marketplace combines complex workflows, secure payments, and scalable architecture.

The final budget depends on your feature set, integrations, AI capabilities, and the overall depth of marketplace logic you want to support. Still, there are clear cost patterns across projects, which makes it possible to outline a realistic freelance marketplace development cost range.

Turn your idea into the next high-growth freelance platform

The next successful freelance platform won’t appear by accident. It will be built by a founder who understands the model, sees a gap in the market, and executes with precision.

With the right roadmap and a strong technical partner, your idea can absolutely grow into a real, thriving marketplace.

Codica has helped startups and established companies bring ambitious marketplace concepts to life, and your project could be the next one in that story.

Explore our portfolio and contact us whenever you're ready to take the first step.