Client Marketplace Fee

Upwork's help article says "you pay a Client Marketplace Fee of up to 7.99% on all payments" to freelancers. The list of payments it covers is broad: fixed-price and hourly contracts, Project Catalog projects, bonuses, Direct Contracts, consultations, payroll, expenses and miscellaneous charges. The only discount the page names is for clients who live in the U.S. and qualify to use a bank account as their billing method, who pay a reduced 3%. The fee "is not refundable, even if a payment is reversed or refunded."

It sits beside a second client charge, a one-time Contract Initiation Fee per contract, priced on its own help page. Enterprise contracts and some promotional plans have their own fee terms. The page does not say how a client's percentage is set within the 7.99% ceiling.

Why a freelancer should care: the client fee is added to what the client pays and is never deducted from the freelancer, but it is part of the client's real cost of hiring. The same proposal costs a client more than its headline rate, and a client comparing an Upwork bid with an outside quote is comparing it with the fee included. Direct Contracts do not remove it: the client pays it there too.

The two sides' fees are independent. The freelancer's side is the Freelancer Service Fee, which varies by contract; the client's side is this one, charged on every payment including a bonus payment. Together they are the gap between what a client spends on Upwork and what reaches the freelancer.