The client marketplace fee is the percentage Upwork adds to every payment a client makes to a freelancer or agency through the marketplace, charged on top of the agreed price at a rate set by Upwork and dependent on the client's plan.
For years Upwork's income came almost entirely from the talent side. The client marketplace fee changed that. When a client pays an hourly invoice, releases a milestone or sends a bonus, Upwork charges the client the amount plus a percentage, shown on the client's Upwork invoice as a separate line. The freelancer receives the agreed amount less the freelancer service fee; the client fee does not touch what the freelancer is paid. The rate is set by Upwork, is stated in the Help Center and may change; clients on Business Plus and Upwork Enterprise pay under different terms.
The fee sits alongside the one-time contract initiation fee, so a client's total cost for a contract is the rate, plus the percentage on each payment, plus the flat charge at the start. Freelancers rarely see any of it, but it affects them indirectly: a client comparing a bid of $50 an hour with the same work off-platform is really comparing $50 plus the fee, which is one source of pressure towards circumvention.
Upwork Inc. does not report the client fee separately. It is folded into marketplace revenue, and its introduction is one reason the blended take rate rose even as the freelancer fee was cut to a flat 10%.
How Upwork Insights uses it
The index cannot see what any client paid in fees; it sees the gross earnings Upwork publishes on agency pages. The client fee shows up only in aggregate, in the take rate of 20.3% in Q3 2026 that the Pulse page computes from revenue and gross services volume.