Three ways to make money from freelance services sit on completely different foundations. Freelancer.com rents you a seat on a crowded marketplace where you compete on price against thousands of other sellers and give up a cut of every project. Sharetribe lets you build your own branded marketplace without touching a server, but the rent never stops: you pay a subscription for as long as the marketplace exists, win or lose. WP Sell Services takes a third road entirely, a WordPress plugin you install once, license on your own terms, and own outright.
Last updated: 6 November 2026
Quick verdict: Pick Freelancer.com if you are a freelancer who needs clients today and accepts a project fee plus membership. Pick Sharetribe to launch a hosted, branded marketplace quickly, at $39 a month to build and $199 a month live. Pick WP Sell Services to own a marketplace on your own WordPress site, starting on a free plan.
Which one makes sense depends on whether you are an individual freelancer looking for gigs or a founder trying to build a marketplace brand of your own. This guide compares all three head to head: what each one actually costs over time, where each one is strong, where each one falls short, and which one wins for a realistic small-agency scenario. We pulled the WP Sell Services numbers directly from its own pricing and comparison pages, and the Freelancer.com numbers from its current fees and membership pages, so the costs below are not estimates.
Table of Contents
- Market snapshot
- A fast-growing market, three different ways to capture it
- Freelancer.com: pay to play on someone else’s marketplace
- Sharetribe: your brand, their server, forever rent
- WP Sell Services: a marketplace you actually own
- Real-world scenario: a two-person agency picks a path
- Cost comparison over 1, 3, and 5 years
- Feature-by-feature comparison
- Try it yourself
- Conclusion: which one should you actually pick
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources
Market snapshot
- The global freelance platforms market is projected to reach USD 24.16 billion by 2033, growing at 18.6% a year from 2026 to 2033, according to Grand View Research.
- Freelancer.com lists membership from $4.99 a month ($54 billed annually) with 50 bids, up to $49 a month ($39.90 a month, $478.80 billed annually) with 300 bids, and $99 a month ($958.80 billed annually) with 1,500 bids per the Freelancer.com pricing page (checked 6 November 2026).
- Sharetribe lists a Build plan at $39 a month for building and testing and a Live plan at $199 a month billed yearly with no transaction fees, each including 1M usage credits a month, with a free 14-day trial of Build per the Sharetribe pricing page (checked 6 November 2026).
- WP Sell Services lists a free plan, then Personal at $99 a year ($249 lifetime), Professional at $199 ($499 lifetime) and Agency at $249 ($629 lifetime) per the WP Sell Services pricing page (checked 6 November 2026).
A fast-growing market, three different ways to capture it
The global freelance platforms market was valued at USD 6.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow from USD 7.3 billion in 2026 to USD 24.2 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 18.6 percent. (Source: Grand View Research, Freelance Platforms Market Report)
That growth is exactly why the “which platform” decision matters more than it did five years ago. More freelancers are joining marketplaces, more buyers are hiring through them, and more agencies are realizing that renting space on someone else’s platform caps how much of that growth they actually capture. If you are a freelancer selling your own time, a crowded marketplace like Freelancer.com is still the fastest way to find buyers. If you are trying to build a business around other people’s services, that same marketplace becomes a ceiling: you never own the customer relationship, the data, or the brand.
The three options below sit at three different points on that spectrum. One is a marketplace you join. Two are marketplaces you build, and the difference between those two comes down to a single question: do you want to rent the infrastructure every month, or own it outright?
Freelancer.com: pay to play on someone else’s marketplace
Freelancer.com is one of the oldest and largest general freelance marketplaces, connecting independent contractors with clients across writing, design, development, data entry, and dozens of other categories. You do not build anything here. You create a profile, bid on posted projects or enter contests, and Freelancer.com takes a cut of what you earn plus whatever membership tier you choose to pay for better visibility.
The fee structure stacks two separate costs. First, a project fee on every piece of work: 10 percent of the project value or $5, whichever is greater, on fixed-price projects, and 10 percent on each hourly payment received. Win a contest and the same 10 percent or $5 minimum applies to the prize. Accept a Recruiter project through the Preferred Freelancer Program and the fee rises to 15 percent, charged only once you are paid.
Second, a monthly or annual membership that is effectively mandatory if you want to compete seriously. The Basic tier runs $4.99 a month, or $54 a year, which works out to about $4.50 a month paid annually, and includes 50 monthly bids. Plus offers a free one-month trial with 100 monthly bids and daily withdrawal requests. Professional jumps to $49 a month, or $478.80 a year at roughly $39.90 a month, with 300 monthly bids and bid insights. Premier tops out at $99 a month, or $958.80 a year at about $79.90 a month, with 1,500 monthly bids and free NDA projects. On top of all that, withdrawing your earnings costs $1 through PayPal, Skrill, Payoneer, or express withdrawal, or $25 for an international wire transfer, with a $50 minimum withdrawal after fees.
Key strengths
- Built-in demand. Buyers are already there searching for freelancers, so you spend zero time or money on marketing to find your first client.
- No technical setup. Create a profile and start bidding the same day. Nothing to install, host, or configure.
- Dispute and payment protection. Freelancer.com handles escrow, milestone payments, and dispute resolution so individual freelancers are not chasing invoices themselves.
- Global reach across many categories. One account gives you access to buyers across writing, programming, design, engineering, and more.
Where it falls short
- Fees compound. A $49 monthly membership plus a 10 percent cut on every project plus a $1 to $25 withdrawal fee adds up fast, and none of it stops once you have found your buyers.
- You own nothing. No client list you control, no brand, no data to export. If Freelancer.com changes its algorithm or fee structure tomorrow, your business model changes with it.
- Race to the bottom on price. Competing against thousands of bidders on the same open project tends to push rates down, especially for newer freelancers without reviews.
- Not an option for building a marketplace of your own. If your goal is to run a marketplace where other people’s services are sold under your brand, Freelancer.com is simply the wrong tool. It is a destination, not infrastructure.
Sharetribe: your brand, their server, forever rent
Sharetribe is a hosted SaaS marketplace platform built for founders who want to launch a branded marketplace without writing code or managing a server. You pick a template, customize branding through their tools, and Sharetribe hosts, patches, and scales the infrastructure behind it. For straightforward marketplace shapes, it is a genuinely fast way to get something live.
The catch is the pricing model. Sharetribe runs on a monthly subscription for as long as the marketplace operates, according to its own published pricing page. There is no one-time license, no lifetime option, and no point at which the meter stops. Whether your marketplace is doing $500 a month in gross volume or $500,000, the subscription keeps billing on the same schedule. Deeper customization beyond what the no-code tools allow requires Sharetribe’s own developer marketplace or custom engineering work on top of their platform, at additional cost.
Key strengths
- No server to manage. Sharetribe runs patching, uptime, and scaling, which removes a real operational burden for a non-technical founder.
- Fast initial launch. A basic branded marketplace can be live in days using their templates and no-code configuration tools.
- Purpose-built marketplace logic. Listings, search, messaging, and transactions are designed specifically for two-sided marketplaces out of the box.
- Decent toolkit for common marketplace shapes. If your marketplace looks like the templates Sharetribe already supports, you will not need much custom work to get started.
Where it falls short
- The subscription never ends. You are renting your business infrastructure indefinitely. Cost scales with time, not with whether the marketplace is actually making money.
- Limited customization without developers. Anything outside Sharetribe’s no-code flexibility means hiring from their developer marketplace or hand-coding against their framework, both of which add cost on top of the subscription.
- Hosted means less control. Your data, uptime, and roadmap depend on Sharetribe’s infrastructure and business decisions, not yours.
- No ownership path. Unlike a licensed plugin, there is no year where the bill stops. Scale to a $10 million marketplace with dedicated engineering and Sharetribe or an enterprise platform may be worth it. For everyone building something smaller, it is a recurring cost with no ceiling in sight.
WP Sell Services: a marketplace you actually own
WP Sell Services, built by Wbcom Designs, is a WordPress plugin that turns any WordPress site into a service marketplace, the kind of thing people describe as “build your own Fiverr plus Upwork.” Vendors list services as fixed-price packages with add-ons, or buyers post a request and compare proposals. Checkout, order workflow, reviews, disputes, and vendor payouts are all built into the plugin itself, with no separate WooCommerce installation required to run the free version.
The free plan is not a stripped-down trial. It runs forever at $0, no card required, and includes catalog mode and buyer requests, three-tier pricing packages with add-ons, standalone Stripe, PayPal, and offline checkout, a full order workflow with requirements and revisions, reviews, disputes, commission handling, manual withdrawals, and the REST API. For a site owner who wants to launch and prove the concept before spending anything, that free tier alone covers the core of what Freelancer.com or Sharetribe would charge a monthly fee for.
Paid tiers add automation and scale rather than gatekeeping features behind a paywall. Personal is $99 a year, or $249 as a one-time lifetime license, for one site, and layers in WooCommerce integration with over 100 payment gateways, Stripe Connect payouts that pay vendors at the moment of sale, PayPal Payouts in a single batch, and vendor analytics with CSV export. Professional, the most popular tier, is $199 a year or $499 lifetime, and covers Pro across several marketplaces plus priority email support. Agency runs $249 a year or $629 lifetime for unlimited site licenses, built for agencies running marketplaces for multiple clients. Every Pro tier carries a 30-day money-back guarantee, and the free plan needs no card at all.
Key strengths
- Free forever, not a trial. Catalog mode, buyer requests, checkout, order workflow, reviews, and the REST API all work on day one without paying anything.
- A license you own, not rent. Pro is a yearly license or a one-time lifetime purchase, self-hosted on your own WordPress. No monthly fee that grows as your marketplace succeeds.
- Full control of data and brand. It runs on your own WordPress install, so you own the vendor data, the buyer data, the branding, and the roadmap.
- Built for services specifically. The order workflow matches how service delivery actually works: requirements, delivery, revision, approval, not a physical-product checkout retrofitted to fit services.
Where it falls short
- You manage WordPress hosting. There is no managed infrastructure layer the way Sharetribe provides; you need a WordPress host, and you are responsible for updates and backups, though this is routine for anyone already running WordPress.
- Not for physical products. WP Sell Services deliberately does not handle shipping or inventory; Dokan, WCFM, or WC Vendors cover that use case instead.
- Smaller ecosystem than Sharetribe’s template library. Sharetribe ships more pre-built marketplace templates for niche verticals; WP Sell Services expects you to build on top of WordPress’s broader plugin and theme ecosystem instead.
- No built-in demand. Unlike joining Freelancer.com, you are starting a marketplace from zero traffic and need to bring or build your own audience of vendors and buyers.
Real-world scenario: a two-person agency picks a path
Say Priya and Daniel run a two-person creative agency and want to launch a niche marketplace connecting freelance podcast editors with independent podcasters, something more focused than a general marketplace like Freelancer.com. They have a small list of editors they already work with and a modest budget to get something live in the next month.
Option one is to skip building anything and send their editors to Freelancer.com. It is the fastest path technically, but Priya and Daniel never capture the relationship; their editors would be bidding against every other freelancer on the platform, Priya and Daniel’s own brand disappears entirely, and the 10 percent project fee plus a membership tier goes to Freelancer.com instead of funding their own business.
Option two is Sharetribe. They could have a branded marketplace live within a couple of weeks using Sharetribe’s templates, with no server to manage. But the monthly subscription starts immediately and never stops, regardless of whether the marketplace does $200 or $20,000 in bookings that month. Three years in, they will have paid three years of subscription fees with no equity built in the underlying software; it is purely an operating cost.
Option three is WP Sell Services on a WordPress site they already control. They start on the free plan to validate demand with their existing editors at zero cost beyond hosting they likely already pay for. Once bookings pick up, Professional at $199 a year, or $499 once as a lifetime license, adds Stripe Connect payouts and vendor analytics. After the first year, that cost either repeats at $199 or, if they chose lifetime, drops to zero while Sharetribe’s bill keeps arriving every month. For an agency planning to run this marketplace for years, not months, that is the difference between an investment and a permanent rent payment.
Cost comparison over 1, 3, and 5 years
The table below estimates total platform cost for each path, assuming a marketplace owner on Sharetribe’s or WP Sell Services’ mid-tier offering, and an individual freelancer on Freelancer.com’s Professional membership plus typical project fees. These are platform and membership costs only; they exclude the project fees Freelancer.com deducts from each payment, which scale with revenue on top of the membership shown.
| Platform | Year 1 | Year 3 (cumulative) | Year 5 (cumulative) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer.com (Professional membership, annual) | $478.80 | $1,436.40 | $2,394.00 |
| Sharetribe (monthly subscription, estimate continues indefinitely) | $2,388 ($199/month, Live plan billed yearly) | $7,164 | $11,940, no ceiling |
| WP Sell Services Professional (annual license) | $199 | $597 | $995 |
| WP Sell Services Professional (lifetime license) | $499 | $499 (paid once) | $499 (paid once) |
Freelancer.com’s number above is membership only; add the 10 percent project fee on every piece of work actually booked through the platform, which is where most of a working freelancer’s cost sits. Sharetribe’s Live plan is listed at $199 a month billed yearly, before any usage charges above the included credits, and the structural point stands regardless of the exact figure: it is a recurring monthly cost with no year where it drops to zero, unlike a WP Sell Services lifetime license, which is a single payment that then costs nothing forever after.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Feature | Freelancer.com | Sharetribe | WP Sell Services |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Membership ($4.99 to $99/mo) plus 10% project fee | Monthly subscription for as long as you run it | Free forever; Pro from $99/yr or a one-time lifetime license |
| You build your own brand | No, you are a seller on their marketplace | Yes, fully branded | Yes, fully branded |
| You own the data and roadmap | No | No, hosted by Sharetribe | Yes, self-hosted on your own WordPress |
| Server management | None needed, you are not hosting anything | None needed, fully managed | You manage WordPress hosting |
| Service-specific order workflow | Built in for bidding and milestones | Generic marketplace workflow, customizable | Requirements, delivery, revision, approval built in |
| Built-in checkout | N/A, payments flow through their escrow | Included in subscription | Stripe, PayPal, offline checkout included free |
| Withdrawal fees for sellers | $1 to $25 per withdrawal | Varies by payment processor used | Manual on Free; Stripe Connect and PayPal Payouts on Pro |
| Best for | Individual freelancers who want existing demand now | Non-technical founders wanting a fast hosted launch | Founders and agencies who want to own the platform long-term |
Try it yourself
The fastest way to judge which model fits your situation is to see the free plan running. Download WP Sell Services free and have a basic service marketplace live on your own WordPress site today, with no card required and no subscription clock running.
Conclusion: which one should you actually pick
If you are an individual freelancer looking for your next client, Freelancer.com gets you in front of buyers today, at the cost of a membership fee plus 10 percent of everything you earn, forever, with no brand or data to show for it afterward. That tradeoff makes sense for someone who wants gigs, not a business.
If you are building a marketplace brand of your own and want a managed, no-code path to launch, Sharetribe is a real option, particularly if you are not comfortable with WordPress and value never touching a server. The cost of that convenience is a subscription that runs for as long as the marketplace exists, with no point where the bill stops.
If you are building a marketplace you intend to run for years, and you are comfortable with WordPress, WP Sell Services is the only one of the three where the cost has a ceiling. Start free, prove the model, and move to a $199-a-year or $499-lifetime license only once the marketplace needs Stripe Connect payouts and vendor analytics. You own the plugin, the WordPress install, the vendor data, and the brand from day one, and a lifetime license means the platform costs stop entirely while a Sharetribe subscription or a Freelancer.com membership keep arriving every month for as long as you run the business.
FAQs
Is Freelancer.com free to join?
Creating a basic profile is free, but visibility is limited without a paid membership. Freelancer.com’s Basic tier starts at $4.99 a month, and every project you win is also charged a 10 percent fee, or $5 minimum, on top of whatever membership you choose.
Does Sharetribe have a free plan?
No. Sharetribe operates on a monthly subscription, according to its own pricing page, with a free 14-day trial of the Build plan but no free-forever tier comparable to WP Sell Services’ free plan.
Can I switch from Sharetribe to WP Sell Services later?
Yes, though it means rebuilding your marketplace on WordPress rather than a direct data migration, since the two platforms are architecturally different. Many founders start free on WP Sell Services specifically to avoid this kind of migration later.
Does WP Sell Services require WooCommerce?
No. The free plan includes standalone Stripe, PayPal, and offline checkout without WooCommerce. WooCommerce integration is an optional feature added in the Personal tier and above, for sellers who want access to 100-plus additional payment gateways.
What happens to my marketplace if I stop paying Sharetribe?
Since Sharetribe is a hosted subscription, the marketplace stops functioning for the public when the subscription lapses, because the infrastructure itself is rented, not owned.
What happens if I stop renewing a WP Sell Services annual license?
The plugin keeps working; free-tier features and anything already configured continue functioning. You lose access to new updates and priority support until renewal, but the marketplace itself does not go offline, since it runs on your own WordPress hosting rather than a vendor’s servers.
Is a one-time lifetime license actually better than an annual license?
For anyone planning to run the marketplace for more than two to three years, yes, mathematically. WP Sell Services Professional costs $199 a year annually or $499 once for a lifetime license, so the lifetime option pays for itself by year three and costs nothing afterward.
Can I run multiple marketplaces on one WP Sell Services license?
The Personal tier covers one site. Professional covers multiple marketplaces under one license, and Agency covers unlimited sites, which is built specifically for agencies managing marketplaces for several clients.
How does Freelancer.com’s fee compare to a typical marketplace commission?
Freelancer.com’s 10 percent project fee is in line with other large freelance marketplaces, but it is charged in addition to a monthly membership fee, which is less common. Platforms you build yourself, like WP Sell Services, let you set your own commission rate on vendor sales instead of paying someone else’s.
Which option is best for someone who just wants freelance work right now?
Freelancer.com, without question, if the goal is finding paying clients this week with zero setup. The tradeoff is ongoing fees and no ownership of the relationship. WP Sell Services and Sharetribe both make sense only if the goal is building a marketplace brand, not finding individual gigs.
How much does Sharetribe cost in 2026?
Sharetribe’s pricing page (checked 6 November 2026) lists a Build plan at $39 a month for building and testing, and a Live plan at $199 a month billed yearly with no transaction fees. Each includes 1 million usage credits a month, with extra usage billed separately. A free 14-day trial of Build needs no credit card.
Sources
- Grand View Research: Freelance Platforms Market
- Freelancer.com: Pricing
- Sharetribe: Pricing
- WP Sell Services: Pricing