The non-circumvention period is the 24 months after a client and a freelancer or agency first meet through Upwork, during which they must pay for any work between them through Upwork or pay a conversion fee to leave.
The clock starts when the two are introduced on the platform, by a proposal, an invitation, a message or a contract, and it runs for 24 months from that point. It does not start again with each contract, it does not pause when a contract ends, and it does not end because a contract was fixed-price, small or long finished. Two years after the introduction, the client and the freelancer may work together directly without any obligation to Upwork; before that, the only ways to work off the platform are the conversion fee paid by the client or the end of the period. Paying outside Upwork during the period is circumvention, and Upwork's Terms of Service treat both sides as responsible.
The period attaches to the relationship, so for an agency it covers the agency account and the member who did the work: a member who leaves the agency and takes the client with them, off Upwork, is in breach as much as the agency would be. It also covers clients who were introduced to a freelancer through an agency contract.
A relationship that began off Upwork is not caught by the rule. Direct Contracts exist for freelancers who want to bill a client they already had through Upwork's tooling without creating a non-circumvention obligation, and a client who brings their own contractor onto the platform can take them off again. The 24 months are Upwork's published term, set out in the Terms of Service.
How Upwork Insights uses it
This term describes Upwork's own rules or product rather than a figure the index measures; the pages that do carry live figures are the stats and rate pages.