Invites sent

Clients invite from a freelancer's profile with Invite, or straight from the search results with Invite to Job where it is available, adding a short message and choosing the job. Upwork caps the number. A standard job post comes with 30 free invites, and a featured job allows 70 a day per post. A client on their first job post does not see the search-results shortcut but can still invite up to 30 freelancers in total.

What the number tells you. Invites sent measures effort: the client went looking. A job with several invites and few proposals is a client actively recruiting into a thin field, which is a better opening than a crowded job nobody is recruiting for. A job with many invites and many interviews may already be decided among the people the client picked.

Invites are not proposals. An invitation becomes a proposal only when the freelancer answers it. Those still waiting show separately as unanswered invites, and only replied invitations count in the job's proposals range.

For the invited. Responding quickly, whether accepting or declining, helps the client, and declining costs no Connects and does not affect future invitations.

How Upsight uses it. Upsight records invites sent with each reading of a job at fixed ages after posting. The late-bid preset Struggling to fill waits twelve hours and bids only on jobs with ten or fewer proposals, at least three invites sent and no hire yet: a client still recruiting, measured from the job's own counts rather than guessed.