Glossary

Upwork glossary for agencies

Plain definitions of the terms an Upwork agency runs on: Connects, boosts, badges, contracts, fees, Business Manager, Agency Plus, the API and MCP, view and reply rates, keyword rank. Each cites the Upwork page it rests on.

Updated 3 November 2026

170 terms, each citing the Upwork page it rests on. Market terms such as gross services volume and take rate are defined on Upwork Insights, so no definition exists twice.

Proposals and bidding

Active proposals: Active proposals are the submitted proposals still open on a freelancer's or agency's Proposals and offers page, listed on its Active tab, where they can be opened and edited.
Archived proposals: Archived proposals are proposals taken out of a job's active list without being declined: a client can archive one to set it aside, and Upwork archives one itself when the freelancer declines the client's offer.
Best Matches: Best Matches is the default view of a freelancer's Upwork job feed, listing open jobs that Upwork's matching system ranks as a fit for the freelancer's profile, skills and work history.
Bid amount: The bid amount is the price a freelancer or agency proposes in an Upwork proposal: an hourly rate on an hourly job, or a total for the project or for each milestone on a fixed-price job.
Bid position: Bid position is a boosted proposal's current rank among the bids in a job's boost auction, which Upwork shows live and which decides whether the proposal sits in one of the four promoted slots at that moment.
Boost auction: The boost auction is the pay-what-you-bid contest, lasting up to seven days or until the client's first hire, for the four promoted slots at the top of a job's proposal list, in which only the bidders still in the top four at the close or whose proposal the client interacted with are charged.
Boosted proposal: A boosted proposal is one a freelancer has bid extra Connects on so that, while the bid is among the top four in the job's auction, Upwork places it in the promoted slots at the top of the client's proposal list with a "Boosted" icon.
Connects: Connects are the virtual tokens freelancers and agencies spend on Upwork to submit proposals and to buy its ad products, such as boosted proposals and the Availability Badge.
Connects refund: A Connects refund returns spent Connects to your balance for reuse, and Upwork issues one only when a client cancels a job before hiring, when Upwork removes a post for a Terms of Service violation, or when a boost bid loses its auction without the client having interacted with the proposal.
Contract-to-hire: Contract-to-hire is a label a client can put on an Upwork job post to signal that the freelance contract may later become a full-time role, with no obligation to convert and a fee if the client does.
Cover letter: A cover letter is the written part of an Upwork proposal in which the freelancer or agency explains to the client how they would do the job, and its opening lines are what the client sees before deciding to open the proposal.
Declined proposal: A declined proposal is one the client has rejected from their job's proposal list, which tells the freelancer the client is not interested, removes it from the client's list and returns none of its Connects.
Experience level: Experience level is the level of expertise a client asks for when posting an Upwork job, chosen from Entry-level, Intermediate or Expert and shown on the job post as a guide to the talent the client expects.
Featured job: A featured job is an Upwork job post whose client has paid to promote it, which adds a Featured Job badge and places the post more prominently in freelancers' search results and job feeds.
Hiring Now: Hiring Now is the marker on a job post whose client has turned on the hire-now setting of Upwork Now and is actively hiring, shown in the job feed and search where freelancers can filter to it; Upwork's help pages name the feature, Upwork Now, and not the badge.
Interviewing: Interviewing is the Activity on this job figure that shows how many freelancers or agencies the client is currently in conversation with about the job, before anyone is hired.
Invitation: An invitation is a client's direct request that a freelancer or agency submit a proposal to a job, delivered as a message, which costs no Connects to accept or decline.
Invite-only job: An invite-only job is a private Upwork job post that does not appear in searches, so only the freelancers and agencies the client invites can see it and submit a proposal.
Invites sent: Invites sent is the Activity on this job figure that counts how many freelancers and agencies the client has personally invited to submit a proposal to the job.
Job feed: The job feed is the personalised list of open job posts a freelancer sees on Upwork's Find Work page, made of jobs Upwork recommends from the freelancer's profile and history plus the searches the freelancer has saved.
Job post: A job post is a client's listing on Upwork's talent marketplace describing a piece of work, with its title, skills, scope, budget, experience level and description, to which freelancers and agencies respond with proposals.
Last viewed by client: Last viewed by client is the Activity on this job line that shows how long ago the client last looked at the job's proposals, which Upwork describes as the last time the client checked for new proposals.
Project length: Project length is the client's estimate, set when posting an Upwork job, of how big and how long the work is, shown on the job post as an estimated duration.
Proposal: A proposal is a freelancer's or agency's application to an Upwork job post, made of terms, a cover letter, answers to any screening questions and optional work samples, and submitted with Connects.
Proposal attachments: Proposal attachments are the files and profile items a freelancer or agency adds to an Upwork proposal to show relevant work, such as documents, images or linked portfolio projects, next to the cover letter.
Proposals range: The proposals range is the band, not an exact number, that an Upwork job post shows under Activity on this job for how many proposals the client is currently considering.
Saved jobs: Saved jobs are individual job posts a freelancer has bookmarked on Upwork with the heart button or the Save job link, kept under Find Work so they can be reviewed and applied to later.
Screening questions: Screening questions are the questions a client attaches to an Upwork job post, which every freelancer or agency must answer in the proposal form after the cover letter.
Shortlisted proposal: A shortlisted proposal is one the client has added to the shortlist on their job post, which Upwork describes as the list of freelancers the client is seriously considering.
Unanswered invites: Unanswered invites is the Activity on this job figure that counts the client's invitations to apply that the invited freelancers or agencies have neither accepted nor declined.
Withdrawn proposal: A withdrawn proposal is one the freelancer or agency has taken back after submitting it, which removes it from the client's list and does not return the Connects spent on it.

Clients and job posts

Any Hire: Any Hire is Upwork's self-service platform for hiring, onboarding and paying talent a client found outside Upwork, with optional worker classification and an Employer of Record for people engaged as employees.
Average hourly rate paid: Average hourly rate paid is the figure Upwork shows for what a client has paid per hour on its past hourly contracts, printed in the About the client section of a job post and shown to freelancers the client messages.
Basic plan: The Basic plan is Upwork's free client plan, giving access to the marketplace, AI-powered features, collaboration tools and standard reporting, with a Client Marketplace Fee of up to 7.99% on the payments the client makes to freelancers.
Business Plus: Business Plus is Upwork's paid client plan, adding Expert-Vetted talent, shortlisting, premium support, advanced reporting and monthly invoicing to the free Basic plan, with a 10% fee on all payments the client makes to freelancers.
Client: A client on Upwork is the person or company that posts jobs, invites and hires freelancers or agencies, funds the contracts and pays for the work, and whose hiring record a freelancer reads in the About the client section of each job post.
Client location: Client location is the country, and where known the city and time zone, that Upwork shows for a client on job posts and to freelancers the client messages, which says where the client is, not where the freelancer must be.
Client rating: Client rating is the star score freelancers give a client at the end of contracts, shown on the client's job posts with the number of reviews behind it, and since March 31, 2026 left as a single overall rating out of 5.
Client reviews: Client reviews are the written feedback and star ratings freelancers have left a client at the end of past contracts, listed in the client's recent history on a job post, where they show how earlier freelancers describe working with that client.
Client spend: Client spend is the total a client has paid through Upwork, shown as total spent on the client's job posts and to freelancers the client messages, and used by Upwork itself to decide how many freelancers that client may direct message.
Enterprise client: An Enterprise client is a company on a paid Upwork Enterprise subscription, marked with an Enterprise logo on its job posts and search tiles, that may interview and exchange contact details privately before a contract and whose contracts typically carry a 10% freelancer service fee.
Hire rate: Hire rate on a job post is the share of a client's past posts that ended in a hire, shown by Upwork in the About the client section; on a freelancer's side it is the share of submitted proposals that became a contract, which Upsight computes from the proposals it tracks.
Jobs posted: Jobs posted is the number of jobs a client has posted on Upwork, shown in the About the client section of a job post and used as the base of the client's hire rate.
Member since: Member since is the date a client joined Upwork, printed in the About the client section of a job post and shown to freelancers the client messages as how long the client has been active on Upwork.
Open jobs: Open jobs is the number of a client's job posts that are still open on Upwork, shown beside jobs posted in the About the client section, counting posts the client has not yet closed or removed.
Payment verified: Payment verified means Upwork has confirmed the client's billing method, and the job post says so in the first line of its About the client section.
Repeat client: A repeat client is a client who hires the same freelancer or agency again or keeps paying over a long contract, which Upwork counts toward the Job Success Score as a long-term client relationship.
Upwork Payroll: Upwork Payroll is the service through which a client engages talent from Upwork as an employee of a third-party Employer of Record, which handles the employment agreement, pay, payroll taxes, workers' compensation and legally mandated benefits.

Contracts and payments

Available balance: The available balance is the part of a freelancer's or agency's Upwork earnings that has cleared the security period and can be withdrawn now, shown under Available balance on the Transactions page.
Bonus payment: A bonus payment is extra money a client sends a freelancer through an existing Upwork contract, outside the billed hours or milestones, for reasons such as excellent work, extra scope or reimbursed expenses.
Client Marketplace Fee: The Client Marketplace Fee is the percentage Upwork charges clients on the payments they make to freelancers, which Upwork states as up to 7.99%, reduced to 3% for qualifying U.S. clients paying by bank account.
Direct Contract: A Direct Contract is an Upwork contract a freelancer creates for a client they met outside Upwork and brings onto the platform, at a 5% freelancer service fee, or no freelancer fee for active Freelancer Plus members.
Dispute: A dispute on Upwork is a formal case opened when a client and freelancer disagree about money on a contract, such as an unreleased milestone payment, a refund request on a deposit, or a client challenging logged hours.
End contract: Ending a contract on Upwork closes it to further work for both sides and starts the 14-day period in which client and freelancer can leave each other feedback.
Escrow: Escrow is where a client's deposit for a fixed-price milestone is held on Upwork until the work is approved, released automatically or refunded; Upwork's newer help pages call the same balance project funds.
Fixed-price contract: A fixed-price contract is an Upwork contract paid by deliverable rather than by time: the client funds each milestone up front, the freelancer submits the work, and payment is released on approval or automatically after the review period.
Fixed-Price Protection: Fixed-Price Protection, in full Fixed-Price Payment Protection, is Upwork's process for making sure a freelancer is paid for work that matches a funded milestone, backed by the client's deposit and a dispute process if payment is withheld.
Freelancer Service Fee: The Freelancer Service Fee is the percentage Upwork deducts from a freelancer's or agency's earnings on each contract, which Upwork says ranges from 0% to 15% per contract and stays fixed once the contract begins.
Hourly contract: An hourly contract is an Upwork contract where the client pays an agreed hourly rate for the time the freelancer logs each week, billed automatically every week and usually capped by a weekly hour limit.
Hourly Protection: Hourly Protection, in full Hourly Payment Protection, is Upwork's commitment that a freelancer is paid for qualifying hours on an hourly contract even if the client disputes them, provided the time was tracked with the Time Tracker and meets Upwork's criteria.
Manual time: Manual time is time a freelancer adds by hand to the work diary of an Upwork hourly contract, for work the Time Tracker cannot capture, and it is allowed only when the client has enabled it and is not covered by Hourly Protection.
Mediation: Mediation on Upwork is the free dispute assistance Upwork provides when a client and freelancer cannot agree on payment, the step before a fixed-price dispute can go to paid, binding arbitration.
Milestone: A milestone is a funded part of an Upwork fixed-price contract, with its own deliverable and payment, that the freelancer submits for the client's approval before moving on to the next one.
Offer: An offer is the set of contract terms a client sends a freelancer or agency on Upwork, such as an hourly rate or fixed-price milestones, which becomes a binding contract once accepted.
Paused contract: A paused contract is an Upwork contract temporarily stopped by the client or by Upwork, during which the freelancer should not work, because work done while a contract is paused is not covered by payment protection.
Pending earnings: Pending earnings are payments a client has already been charged for that Upwork holds during its security period before they can be withdrawn, shown as Pending funds on the freelancer's transactions and financial overview pages.
Private feedback: Private feedback was the confidential end-of-contract rating Upwork asked clients for, which counted toward the freelancer's Job Success Score; Upwork no longer requests it and has replaced it with an optional private note that does not affect the score.
Public feedback: Public feedback is the star rating and review that a client and freelancer leave each other when an Upwork contract ends, shown in the other party's work history and counted in the freelancer's Job Success Score.
Refund: A refund on Upwork is money a freelancer or agency returns to a client out of earnings on a contract, issued on the freelancer's own initiative or in answer to a client's request, within limits Upwork sets.
Upwork Time Tracker: The Upwork Time Tracker is the time-logging feature of the Upwork Desktop App that records hours on hourly contracts with screenshots and activity counts, and the main way logged time qualifies for Hourly Protection.
Weekly limit: A weekly limit is the maximum number of hours a freelancer can bill on an Upwork hourly contract in one billing week, set by the client in the contract terms.
Withdrawal methods: Withdrawal methods are the payout options a freelancer or agency sets up on Upwork to move available earnings to a bank account, payout service or wallet, each with its own Upwork fee and timing.
Work diary: The work diary is the record of an Upwork hourly contract's logged time, built from the Time Tracker's screenshots and activity counts plus the freelancer's memos, which the client reviews and the weekly invoice is based on.

Profiles, badges and search

Availability: Availability on an Upwork profile is the hours-per-week setting a freelancer chooses in the profile sidebar to tell clients how much time they can give, and it is separate from the paid Availability Badge.
Availability badge: The Availability Badge is a paid "Available now" marker that Upwork shows on a freelancer's profile, in search results and in client recommendations, charged in Connects each week at a price Upwork sets.
Catalog order: A catalog order is a client's purchase of a Project Catalog project, which creates a contract whose delivery clock starts only when the client has submitted the requirements the freelancer asked for.
Catalog project: A catalog project is one fixed-scope service a freelancer or agency publishes in Upwork's Project Catalog, with its own title, category, search tags, price tiers, gallery, requirements and description, reviewed by Upwork before clients can buy it.
Catalog tiers: Catalog tiers are the up to three priced versions of one Project Catalog project, named Starter, Standard and Advanced, each with its own price, delivery time and revisions, that a client chooses between before checkout.
Consultations: Consultations on Upwork are paid one-on-one meetings that freelancers with a talent badge list among their services, priced per 30 minutes and booked by clients against the freelancer's available hours.
Expert-Vetted: Expert-Vetted is Upwork's invitation-only badge for the top 1% of talent in selected categories, awarded after a screening by Upwork's Talent Managers that includes a 30-minute interview, and shown only to Enterprise and Business Plus clients.
Freelancer Plus: Freelancer Plus is Upwork's paid individual membership that adds 100 Connects a month in place of the free plan's 10, proposal and client insights that show competitor bids, full use of Uma, instant job alerts and a 0% service fee on Direct Contracts.
Freelancer profile: A freelancer profile is the page Upwork keeps for each independent freelancer, holding the title, overview, hourly rate, skills, portfolio, work history and badges that clients see in search results and beside every proposal.
Hourly rate: The hourly rate on an Upwork profile is the asking price per hour a freelancer shows clients, a figure clients can filter search results by, which does not bind the freelancer's proposals or change existing contracts.
Hours worked: Hours worked is the total of hours a freelancer has logged on Upwork, shown on the profile beside total earnings, which Upwork describes as an estimate based on logged contract activity.
Identity verification: Identity verification on Upwork is the check of a freelancer's identity that earns a blue check mark badge next to their name, bought for 35 Connects, completed within seven days and valid for three years.
Job Success Score (JSS): The Job Success Score (JSS) is the percentage Upwork computes daily from a freelancer's or agency's contract outcomes over 6-, 12- and 24-month windows, showing the best of the three on the profile.
Jobs completed: Jobs completed is the count of jobs a freelancer has done through Upwork, shown on the profile and on search result tiles, which Upwork names as an input to its talent search but does not define on a help page of its own.
My Stats: My Stats, which Upwork's help center also calls Stats and trends, is a freelancer's private dashboard of earnings, Job Success Score, profile views, invitations, boosted impressions and clicks, proposal outcomes, Connects and badge progress.
Portfolio: A portfolio on Upwork is the section of a freelancer profile that holds published work samples, each a titled project with a role, a description, up to five skill tags and attached images, video, audio, documents or links.
Profile boost: A profile boost, which Upwork calls a Boosted Profile, is a pay-per-click ad in which a freelancer bids Connects to appear in promoted spots when clients search for talent in a chosen category and specialty, paying only when a client interacts.
Profile completeness: Profile completeness is the percentage Upwork shows on the Find Work page for how much of a freelancer profile is filled in, where four required items make up the first 50% and optional sections make up the rest.
Profile visibility: Profile visibility is the Upwork setting that decides who can see a freelancer profile: Public for anyone including search engines, Only Upwork users for logged-in members, or Private for logged-in people who have a direct link.
Project Catalog: Project Catalog is Upwork's marketplace of fixed-scope projects that freelancers list with up to three price tiers and clients buy directly, without posting a job or reviewing proposals.
Rising Talent: Rising Talent is the Upwork badge for promising freelancers and agencies that do not yet have a Job Success Score, awarded by invitation or on an average rating of 4.8 or above with at least $250 earned in the past 12 months, plus profile and activity conditions.
Skills: Skills on Upwork are the standardised tags, up to 20 per profile, that a freelancer picks from Upwork's list and puts in order to tell clients, and Upwork's matching, what work they do.
Specialized profile: A specialized profile was an extra version of an Upwork freelancer profile, with its own title, overview and skills for one line of work, which Upwork retired on May 28, 2026 in favour of one profile that reorders itself for each client.
Talent badges: Talent badges are the four marks Upwork awards for track record, Rising Talent, Top Rated, Top Rated Plus and Expert-Vetted, shown on a profile and its Project Catalog projects, with clients seeing only the highest one a freelancer holds.
Talent search: Talent search is the Upwork search clients use to find freelancers and agencies by keyword, narrowed with filters such as talent badges, hourly rate, location and freelancer or agency, and ordered by an algorithm Upwork describes but does not publish.
Top Rated: Top Rated is the Upwork badge for the top 10% of freelancers and agencies, earned with a Job Success Score of 90% or higher for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks plus earnings, profile and activity conditions that Upwork re-checks every two weeks.
Top Rated Plus: Top Rated Plus is the Upwork badge for the top 3% of talent: Top Rated status maintained, earnings over $10,000 in the past 12 months ($20,000 for an agency) and at least one large contract in that time without a negative outcome.
Total earnings: Total earnings is the lifetime amount a freelancer has earned on Upwork, shown on the public profile in rounded steps and counting hourly pay, milestones, Project Catalog sales, bonuses and other client payments released for withdrawal.
Video introduction: A video introduction is the optional YouTube video a freelancer links in the sidebar of an Upwork profile so clients can see and hear them before making contact, and it counts toward profile completeness.

Agencies

Account admin: Account admin is the Upwork team role that configures the account: it sets up APIs and integrations, manages memberships and assigns roles, receives finance notifications and, with the owner, is the only role that can edit exclusive members' rates, visibility and earnings privacy.
Agency account: An agency account is the company-level account a freelancer opens inside their single Upwork account to work as a team, with its own profile, membership plan, Connects and earnings balance, separate from the owner's freelancer account.
Agency badges: Agency badges are the Upwork talent badges an agency itself can hold, Rising Talent by invitation and Top Rated or Top Rated Plus for strong results, shown on the agency profile and its proposals and, under set rules, on its exclusive members' profiles.
Agency Connects: Agency Connects are the single shared Connects balance an Upwork agency on Agency Plus buys and every member draws from, for agency proposals and for members' profile boosts or Availability Badge, kept separate from any Connects a member holds as a freelancer.
Agency Job Success Score: An agency's Job Success Score is Upwork's JSS calculated over all of an agency's contracts, by exclusive and non-exclusive members alike, shown on the agency profile and, once the agency qualifies, on its exclusive members' profiles in place of their own.
Agency manager: Agency manager is an Upwork team role whose listed permissions are sending offers, creating contracts, tracking onboarding and requesting hiring approvals; on its own it cannot change exclusive members' rates, visibility or earnings privacy.
Agency member: An agency member is a freelancer whose profile belongs to an Upwork agency, exclusively or alongside independent work, who can submit proposals from the agency's shared Connects and be assigned to the agency's contracts.
Agency owner: The agency owner is the freelancer who created an Upwork agency and holds full access to and responsibility for its account, including being the only person who can close it.
Agency Plus: Agency Plus is Upwork's paid agency membership that lets an agency bid on jobs, appear in search, add team members, share one Connects balance and see competitor bid values; the free Agency Basic plan can browse jobs but not bid on them.
Agency profile: An agency profile is the public Upwork page for an agency as a whole, combining a name, logo, overview, services, skills and portfolio written by the owner and admins with statistics Upwork calculates, such as the roster, jobs, hours, earnings and the agency's Job Success Score.
Agency roster: The agency roster is Upwork's list of the people in an agency, members and business managers, shown on the agency profile and managed under Find Work, Agency Roster, where the owner or an account admin sets exclusive members' displayed rates, visibility and earnings privacy.
API Key Manager: API Key Manager is an Upwork team role that lets its holder create an API key for the organization, update the key's scopes and maintain key rotation, without the wider configuration powers of an account admin.
Bid identity: Bid identity is the Upwork profile a proposal is submitted as: on Upsight, the agency member a campaign chooses for each job, or the agency's own profile, sent through a connected Business Manager login, which decides whose history, rate and badges the client sees.
Business Manager: A Business Manager is an agency role on Upwork that can submit, edit and withdraw proposals on behalf of any agency member and is the only role that can accept an offer for the agency.
Exclusive agency contractor: An exclusive agency contractor is an agency member who works on Upwork only through that agency, with agency-branded profile and proposals, payments routed through the agency, and a profile rate, visibility and earnings privacy set by the agency instead of the freelancer.
Finance admin: Finance admin is an Upwork team role that gives access to the account's financial reports, lets its holder export custom reports and approve budgets for hiring, without the configuration powers of an account admin.

Account rules

Account on hold: An account hold is a temporary limit Upwork places on an account until something is fixed, most often a failed billing charge or a missing identity verification, and it lifts once the user completes the update.
Account suspension: An account suspension is Upwork restricting or revoking an account's access after a Terms of Service violation or an unresolved account issue, ranging from a temporary limit the user can clear themselves to a permanent block.
AI-generated proposals: AI-generated proposals are Upwork proposals whose cover letter or answers were drafted by an AI tool; Upwork builds AI drafting into its own products and lets AI agents draft proposals, but the person submitting reviews the proposal and explicitly confirms it.
Communication outside Upwork: Communication outside Upwork means sharing or asking for contact details, or moving a conversation to email, phone or chat apps, before a contract starts, which Upwork's Terms of Service forbid except for Enterprise clients and a few listed reasons.
Fee avoidance: Fee avoidance, which Upwork calls circumvention, is moving payment for a relationship that began on Upwork off the platform without paying the Upwork Conversion Fee, a Terms of Service violation that can end in permanent suspension.
Multiple accounts: Upwork allows one account per person for life, so opening a second account, including after closing or losing access to the first, violates its Terms of Service; freelancer, agency and client profiles all sit inside that one account instead.
Upwork automation policy: Upwork's automation policy forbids bots, scrapers, crawlers, scripts, browser extensions and third-party services that send requests, collect data or act on Upwork faster or more often than a person could, except through an approved API key used within its approved scope.
Upwork Terms of Service: Upwork's Terms of Service are the legal terms every user accepts on joining, including the User Agreement, the Terms of Use and an API section, which together set what is allowed on the platform and what Upwork may do when a rule is broken.

Tools, API and AI

AI proposal generator: An AI proposal generator is software that drafts an Upwork cover letter, and often the screening answers, from the job post and the freelancer's profile using a language model, either inside Upwork or as a separate tool.
Auto-bidder: An auto-bidder is software that finds Upwork jobs and submits proposals with no person acting on each one, a practice Upwork does not define on its own page but governs through its rules on bots and its API.
Bidding pod: A bidding pod is a small team inside an agency or lead generation provider that owns the Upwork proposal funnel end to end, typically a lead, one or two bidders and a reviewer, a working structure rather than anything Upwork defines.
Bidding tool: A bidding tool is any software that helps with one or more steps of applying to Upwork jobs, from finding and scoring jobs to writing the letter, sizing the bid and tracking replies, whether or not it ever submits a proposal itself.
Browser extension: A browser extension is third-party software added to Chrome or another browser, and on Upwork it is the user's responsibility: Upwork does not screen or endorse any, and an extension that reads, changes or automates Upwork pages can get an account restricted.
Done-for-you lead generation: Done-for-you lead generation is a service in which an outside team runs an agency's Upwork bidding, finding jobs and writing and sending proposals on its behalf, a practice Upwork does not define but whose access rules it sets.
Job alerts: Job alerts are Upwork's instant notifications of newly posted jobs similar to ones you have already proposed to, available on the Freelancer Plus plan and driven only by proposals you submitted as an individual freelancer.
Proposal automation: Proposal automation is the use of software for some or all of the steps between a job being posted and a proposal being sent on Upwork, judged by Upwork step by step according to whether the software acts on Upwork and by which route.
Proposal template: A proposal template is a reusable cover letter structure, with placeholders filled from each job post, that a freelancer or agency starts from instead of a blank page; Upwork's proposal form has no template step of its own.
Uma: Uma is Upwork's built-in AI assistant, "Upwork's Mindful AI", that drafts and refines proposals for freelancers, answers questions in a chat, shortlists talent for clients and runs recorded video interviews.
Upwork API: The Upwork API is Upwork's official programmatic interface, open only to accounts with an approved API key, through which software can read and act on an Upwork account for the key's approved use case.
Upwork API key: An Upwork API key is the credential Upwork issues, after reviewing an application, to one Upwork account for personal or internal use of the Upwork API, with eligibility thresholds on earnings, Job Success Score and verification.
Upwork bidder: An Upwork bidder is a person, usually at an agency, whose job is to find suitable Upwork jobs and write and submit proposals for the agency's members, a role Upwork does not name but which maps to its business manager permissions.
Upwork MCP server: The Upwork MCP server is Upwork's official Model Context Protocol endpoint, announced in August 2026, that lets a supported AI agent search, read and act on an Upwork account, with every write shown as a preview the person must confirm.
Upwork RSS feed: The Upwork RSS feed was a per-search feed of new job posts that any feed reader could follow, which Upwork discontinued after August 20, 2024 and has not replaced with an equivalent public feed.

What Upsight measures

Approval mode: Approval mode is a per-campaign Upsight setting under which every drafted proposal waits in the queue until a person approves, edits or rejects it; with it off, drafts send on their own after a short review window unless someone stops them.
Auto mode: Auto mode is how an Upsight campaign sends when it is not set to require approval: each drafted proposal is announced with a deadline and goes out on its own after a short review window unless someone stops it, within the daily caps per account.
Best fit: Best fit is the Upsight bid identity setting in which, for each job, the bidder ranks the agency members the owner has cleared to be bid as by the skill evidence on their Upwork profiles and proposes the top one, using earnings, hours and Job Success Score only to break ties.
Boost refund: A boost refund is Upwork returning the extra Connects bid on a boosted proposal after its auction closes, which happens only when the proposal was not among the top four bids at the close and the client did not interact with it while it was boosted.
Boost settlement: Boost settlement is the point at which a boosted proposal's auction closes and Upwork releases the held bid and charges the winners, and the step in which Upsight reads that outcome from the Connects history to mark each boost as held or outbid.
Campaign: A campaign, on Upsight, is a saved Upwork job search with rules and a connected login attached: it catches matching jobs, scores each against the agency's knowledge profile, drafts letters for the suitable ones and files them as the chosen profile once approved.
Case study match: Case study match is how Upsight chooses which of an agency's case studies a proposal letter may draw on for a given job: pinned ones first, then the closest in meaning to the job post with a small bonus for each job skill named, five offered per letter.
Client View: Client View is Upsight's page that shows each sent proposal the way the client sees it on Upwork, grouped by job, with the proposal row, the profile behind it and the outcome, so an agency can review its bids from the reader's side.
Connects ledger: A Connects ledger is every line of an Upwork account's Connects history, fees, boost holds, charges, refunds, ads and purchases, kept permanently and matched to the proposal, boost or ad that caused it, so spend can be counted per proposal, member and campaign.
Connects per proposal: Connects per proposal is what a proposal actually cost in Connects once the base charge, the boost bid and any refund are netted, which Upsight computes per proposal from the Upwork Connects history rather than from the number printed on the job post.
Cost per hire: Cost per hire is what an agency spent to win one Upwork contract, which Upsight reports two ways: Connects spent on proposals divided by contracts won from them, and full acquisition cost, all spend plus the subscription, divided by every contract won in the period.
Cost per reply: Cost per reply is the Connects an agency spent on outreach proposals, application fees and boosts net of refunds, divided by the number of those proposals a client replied to, which makes it the price of starting a conversation on Upwork.
Dry run: A dry run is an Upsight campaign mode that runs every step of the bidder, from matching and scoring to the drafted letter, screening answers and approval, and files nothing on Upwork, so a new campaign or a newly connected login can be checked without spending a Connect.
Held boost: A held boost is a boosted Upwork proposal whose auction ended in a charge, because it was still in one of the four promoted slots when the auction closed or the client interacted with it while it was boosted, and its cost is the final charge, not the bid.
Keyword difficulty: Keyword difficulty is Upsight's 0 to 100 score for how contested a keyword's Upwork jobs are, computed from the average number of proposals those jobs showed about twelve hours after posting over the last 30 days, where an average of 60 or more reads 100.
Keyword rank: Keyword rank is the position at which a profile appears in Upwork's talent search results for a given keyword on a given day, which Upsight records daily for every tracked profile, including the agencies and freelancers ranked above it.
Knowledge profile: A knowledge profile is the written description of an agency that Upsight's AI reads before scoring a job or drafting a letter, covering its core services, tools and skills, projects to avoid, languages, locations and case studies, and a campaign cannot start without one.
Late bidding: Late bidding is proposing on an Upwork job hours after it was posted, once its measured activity shows the client is still looking, which an Upsight late-bid campaign does by checking each job at 1, 4, 8 or 12 hours against limits on proposals, invites, interviews and hires.
Outbid: Outbid is the state of a boosted Upwork proposal that other freelancers have bid more Connects than, so it drops out of the four promoted slots into the ordinary list, and it is charged for the boost only if the client interacted with it while it was still boosted.
Page one: Page one is the first ten profiles Upwork's talent search returns for a keyword, the results a client sees before moving to a second page, which Upsight records daily for tracked keywords together with what those ten profiles show.
Proposal funnel: The proposal funnel is the sequence a submitted Upwork proposal moves through, sent, viewed, replied, meeting booked and hired, which Upsight counts per proposal from Upwork's own records so that each stage is a share of the proposals that reached the stage before it.
Proposal view rate: Proposal view rate is the share of submitted proposals the client opened, which Upsight reads per proposal from Upwork's own record of when the client viewed it, counted per member, per campaign and per keyword with the denominator shown.
Proposals at 12 hours: Proposals at 12 hours is Upsight's measure of how contested a job is: the number of proposals a job post shows about twelve hours after it was published, read from the post's own activity count and averaged per keyword and per category over 30 days.
Rank movement: Rank movement is the change in a profile's position in Upwork's talent search for one keyword between two completed scans, read from the scan log so that a profile found in only one of them is reported as new or lost rather than guessed at.
Reply rate: Reply rate is the share of submitted proposals that received a message from the client, which Upsight counts from Upwork's proposal record per member, per campaign and per keyword, over proposals old enough to have been answered.
Search volume: Search volume, on Upsight, is the number of Upwork job postings published in a period that contain a keyword as a phrase in the title, a skill tag or the description, because Upwork publishes no figure for how often clients search a term.
Speed to bid: Speed to bid is the time between a job being posted on Upwork and a proposal to it going out, which Upsight reports as the median for each campaign, member and template over the proposals where both times are known.
Suitability score: The suitability score is Upsight's score out of 5 for how well a new Upwork job fits an agency, computed from three ratings an AI model gives against the agency's knowledge profile, business fit, budget maturity and strategic value, weighted and capped by a rubric the agency can edit.
Win rate: Win rate is the share of submitted proposals that became a contract, which Upsight reports as contracts won from outreach proposals in a period divided by outreach proposals sent in that period, with each contract tied to its proposal by Upwork's own record.