Freelancer.com Statistics (2024): User Growth, Revenue, Demographics, Top Skills in Demand, and AI

As technology continues to connect people across borders, long gone are the days of working 9-5 jobs inside an office. In the gig market, Freelancer.com Statistics has emerged as a key player in fostering a digital marketplace with no frontiers.

In this article, I’ll go deep into some of Freelancer.com's most relevant statistics to unravel its impact on the freelancing industry.

Freelancer.com User Growth

By 2023, according to the latest available company’s annual report, Freelancer.com had a vast user base of over 64 million registered users, showing a 28% growth from the previous year’s 50 million users. This reflects its widespread popularity and reach in the global freelancing market.

Freelancer.com Global User Base

The platform is a powerhouse that’s present in over 247 countries, regions, and territories, accumulating 53 different regional websites, 34 different languages, and 38 currencies. Out of these countries, the top 5 that bring the most traffic are India, Bangladesh, United States, Egypt, and Pakistan.

Freelancer.com Traffic Demographics

Taking a closer look at the website traffic, we can note that the group that most visits Freelancer.com is people aged 25-34 with 41.13%. The second largest group is made up of people between 18 and 24 with 19.94%, and the third one consists of adults aged 35-44 with 18.92%. Also, Freelancer.com’s audience is predominantly male, with 61.18% compared to the 38.82% females that enter the website.

Freelancer.com Job Postings Data

According to the last available annual report, by the beginning of 2023, there were 22.2 million total jobs posted. 67% of these projects received bids within 60 seconds, 87% received bids within 5 minutes, and, on average, all projects in the platform received 41 bids.

Freelancer.com Revenue Trends

Reports showed that Freelancer.com’s net revenue reduced in FY22, closing with $55.7 million — a 3.1% less compared to FY21’s net revenue of $57 million. Not only did revenue reduce, but gross profit also went from $47.7 million in FY21 to $46.9 million in FY22, going down by 1.7%. Lastly, the total gross payment volume — which is the total of payments made by users purchasing services through Freelancer, went down by 11%, going from $1.26 billion in FY21 to $1.12 billion in FY22.

Freelancer.com Top Completed Project Categories By Volume

If we take a look at the company’s reports, we can see that there were over 2,700 job categories as diverse as Aerospace Engineering, Biotechnology, Sales, Manufacturing, Mechanical Engineering. The most completed ones (by volume) were:

Websites, IT & Software (31%)
Design, Media & Architecture (29%)
Writing & Content (11%)
Data Entry & Admin ( 7%)
Sales & Marketing (6%)
Engineering & Science (6%)
Business, Accounting & HR (3%)
Translation & Languages (3%)
Mobile Phones & Computing (3%)
Others (1%)

Freelancer.com Contests Statistics

According to the company’s annual report, the contests received more than 1.1 million entries per month, averaging over 13 million entries throughout the year. Each contest averaged 320 entries, and 91% of contests received entries within 1 hour.

Freelancer.com's contests are a feature where clients can post a specific project or task and invite freelancers to submit their best work or ideas. These contests are often used for creative projects like logo design, website design, or other artistic endeavors. Freelancers participate by submitting their entries in the hope of being selected as the winner, who then receives a prize or payment as specified in the contest details. This format allows clients to get a variety of ideas or designs before choosing the one that best meets their needs.

Freelancer.com and NASA Collaboration

Freelancer has worked with NASA since 2015 to crowdsource solutions to complex problems faced by astronauts on the cutting edge of space exploration. According to a study made by both companies, NASA has saved between 80-99% in costs when compared to traditional methods, and has been able to implement 30% faster than standard agencies or vendors.

Up until the most recent data available, the Freelancer.com and NASA program has 7,440 freelancers participating, from 138 different countries, and there have been 16,086 designs submitted to date.

Freelancer.com and U.S. Government Partnership

Apart from NASA’s, Freelancer.com is also working with the U.S. Government in the fields of:

Computational fluid dynamics
Electrical engineering
Physics
Data science
Machine learning
Network science
Advanced manufacturing
Transcription
Information security
Physics
Mechanical engineering
Graphic design
UI/UX design
Software engineering

How Many Freelancers Use AI?

According to a research conducted by Freelancer.com, most freelancers are using artificial intelligence. Out of 8,100 freelancers, 73% are using generative AI tools in their work. However, the percentage of tasks that freelancers are automating via AI varies. Approximately 35% globally use AI to automate a quarter or less of their tasks and projects. And 16% say they use AI to automate between a quarter to half of their tasks. Only 9% of freelancers say they use AI to automate nearly all of their work.

Are Freelancers Concerned By AI?

From that same research, it was revealed that nearly half of freelancers, 48%, are very concerned about AI taking over their jobs, 31% are somewhat concerned, and only 21% are not concerned. Still, 28% of global freelancers are optimistic about new opportunities that AI may present, and 20% believe AI will make them more productive.

US Freelancers and AI Statistics

By looking at freelancers in the US data, Freelancer.com found that 75% are using AI in their work, and 33% of them are using AI tools all the time. ChatGPT is the most popular AI tool, with 57% saying they are using it, followed by Bard and Bing Chat with 21%, GitHub Copilot with 12%, and Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E with 10%. 58% of US freelancers are very concerned about AI taking their job, more than in any other region surveyed, and just 20% of US respondents are not concerned about it.

What Are The Most Boring Jobs?

According to a Freelancer.com survey with respondents across different world regions, generations, and industries, data entry tops the list of the most boring jobs, with 39% respondents saying so. Data Entry jobs typically include reporting, lead generation research, customer relationship management and database updating. Coming in equal second are Writing and Customer Service tasks, where one in five respondents, or 22%, revealed these are the most boring jobs for them.

What Makes a Job Boring?

The leading cause of boredom, according to that survey, are tasks that are too repetitive with 38% of respondents claiming this as the main contributor. Too many small tasks came second with 30%, and too much admin work was third with 27% as contributors to boredom while working.

What Are The Most Fun Jobs?

Not only did Freelancer.com find out what are the most boring jobs, but also found out that undoubtedly design tasks are the most fun and exciting for people around the world. According to the survey, almost half of respondents, 49%, rank design tasks as their number one task. This is followed by Writing tasks with 40% and IT related tasks with 31%.

Most Fun and Boring Jobs By Age And Generation

The survey also revealed which are the most and least preferred jobs depending on the age group of respondents. Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X have similar job preferences: they hate data entry jobs, love design and writing jobs, and become bored at work when tasks become too repetitive. The only difference between them is that Gen Z ranks data entry as their third preference, while Millennials enjoy IT tasks and Gen X find customer service tasks as a fun and exciting part of their day.

The most different age group are Baby Boomers who find IT, Design and Marketing tasks as their most boring, while ranking Writing tasks as their most fun job. Baby boomers also believe that boredom is caused by too much administrative work.

Most Fun and Boring Jobs By Region

When sorted by region, Freelancer.com’s survey showed that Data Entry was chosen as the most boring job across all regions: North America, Latin America (LATAM), Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). However, for the other boring options, there were differences depending on the region.

Respondents from North America, EMEA and LATAM all ranked Finance as their second most boring job, but respondents from APAC choose Writing as the second most boring option. Coming in third for both LATAM and APAC were Customer Service tasks, while North America picked IT jobs, and EMEA found Writing tasks as more boring.

Design and Writing were chosen as the most fun and exciting tasks by all regions. However, all of them picked different jobs for their third spot, with North America picking Marketing, EMEA selecting IT, LATAM deciding on Customer Service, and APAC selecting Data Entry.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the statistics shown in this article paint a vivid picture of a dynamic and evolving platform that's reshaping the landscape of remote work. By connecting millions of freelancers with a multitude of job opportunities around the world, Freelancer.com remains a crucial player in empowering individuals and businesses alike, proving to be not only a marketplace, but a thriving community where creativity meets opportunity in an ever-growing gig economy.