Fiverr Competitors and Similar Companies

Fiverr is an online marketplace for freelancers and businesses that are looking to hire freelancers. It mostly focuses on short-term contractual jobs in various sectors of the industry. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Fiverr was founded in 2010 by Shai Wininger and Micha Kaufman. The idea of such a two-sided market concept occurred to the duo a few months before they started working on it. The concept involved selling a number of services to both established businesses and start-ups in the form of freelancers.

Fiverr’s services are called “Gigs”. Did you know that their marketplace had crossed 1.3 million gigs within just two years of its launch? Indeed, they had taken the freelancing market by storm, but their early success was marred by several harsh criticisms and a major lawsuit initiated by Amazon. Nonetheless, Fiverr stayed strong and plodded on, settling the lawsuit and challenging the critics with a brave face. And it acquired many other online marketplaces along the way to boost its business.

Name	Fiverr
Founded	2010
Headquarters	Tel Aviv, Israel
SIC Code	7389
Status	Public, Independent Company
Industry Sector	Freelance Marketplace
Employees	545
Trading Symbol	NYSE: FVRR

How Fiverr Makes Money

Fiverr’s main source of revenue, which amounts to $297.7 million, is through transaction fees. When a freelancer offers a Gig that is accepted by a business, the latter pays the price of the Gig along with a 5% service charge to Fiverr. Upon completion of the Gig, Fiverr releases 80% of the payment to the freelancer, while the remaining 20% becomes a part of its profits. Thus, the company earns from both the business and the freelancer. The latter needs to shell out a higher percentage because Fiverr connects them to the opportunity.

Freelance Marketplace

As the name suggests, the freelance marketplace is a platform for freelancers to land clients, and in turn for businesses to hire freelancers. Fiverr is one of the top-rated websites in this industry, with nearly 6 million active businesses and over 800,000 freelancers. Thus, the opportunities of landing a client are more than plenty for freelancers. The Gig types at the company range from writing and web development to video editing and graphic design. Fiverr had become profitable long ago, and it presently nets an income of $24 million.

Companies Similar to Fiverr

Fiverr has had its share of ups and downs over the years, but it has become one of the premier online marketplaces for freelancers today. Do you feel that the amounts deducted for both the freelancers and buyers are high? Have you not been landing clients or getting the desired Gigs on the platform? Then you may wish to consider other options, and there are many of those. But don’t worry, we are here to help you find the perfect one!

Fiverr Similar Companies

The biggest rivals to Fiverr are Upwork, Freelancer, Toptal, 99designs, and PeoplePerHour. Their business models may not entirely be the same, but each of these companies offer similar freelance marketplaces. If you have been a freelancer for a long time, then you may already have heard about a few of these firms! Now let’s discuss these Fiverr competitors in more detail.

Upwork

Upwork is one of the earliest freelancing marketplaces, rather it was formed out of two of the oldest freelancing websites – Elance and oDesk. Founded in 1999, Elance is arguably the first online marketplace for freelancers. oDesk was launched around four years later. These two websites competed quite fiercely back then before merging into a single platform, Elance-oDesk, in 2013. The company was later rebranded to Upwork. And today, the competition between Upwork and Fiverr is equally fierce.

Freelance Marketplace

Upwork as a platform is more interactive than Fiverr. It enables clients to interview freelancers before hiring them on a contractual basis. It has two modes of securing a contract – hourly pay and fixed-priced pay through escrow. Its revenue model is similar to that of Fiverr and so are its charges, but they can become low depending upon the duration of the contract. Did you know that Upwork was featured in TIME’s list of the 100 Most Influential Companies this year? No wonder it has a freelancer base of well over 12 million!

Annual Revenue	Funding	Headquarters	Employees
$490M	$168.8M	Santa Clara, CA	540

Freelancer

Freelancer, or to avoid confusion, Freelancer.com, is a marketplace similar to Fiverr for freelancers and businesses. It claims to connect employers with employees smoothly. Based in Sydney, Australia, the company was founded in 2009 by Matt Barrie, who is actively involved with its workings as the CEO. Freelancer.com was charged with quite a few lawsuits in the past, but they were eventually either settled or dismissed. Nevertheless, it is one of the most preferred online marketplaces for many due to its low fees.

Freelance Marketplace

The revenue model of Freelancer.com is more similar to Upwork than Fiverr. Businesses post contractual jobs on the website for freelancers to bid on. A certain percentage is deducted from both parties – when the employer submits the amount to escrow, and when the freelancer gets paid. The platform has more than 55 million users, employers and employees combined. It is available in various languages, right from English to Turkish.

Annual Revenue	Funding	Headquarters	Employees
$57M	$43.6M	Sydney, Australia	416

Toptal

Toptal is a privately held company whose offerings lie in its name, “TOP TALent”. It is a completely virtual freelancing company with no physical base of operations, but it was founded somewhere in New Jersey, the US itself. It was established in 2010 by Du Val, an ex-engineer at Fotolog and Slide.com, and Breanden Beneschott, who was studying at Princeton University at the time. Did you know that the company had already managed to generate a million dollars in revenue just before Beneschott graduated?

Freelance Marketplace

Toptal is a freelance marketplace quite similar to Fiverr, but it focuses on a niche set of experts like software developers, project managers, and web designers. Its employer base contains all kinds of industries, right from IT companies to firms in the solar energy industry. Despite being a remote company, Toptal managed to acquire one of its major competitors, Skillbridge, in 2016. Businesses from all over the world can pick and choose their preferred talent on demand on the website.

Annual Revenue	Funding	Headquarters	Employees
$200M	$1.4M	N/A	5277

99designs

99designs is a freelancing platform headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. As the name suggests, it focuses only on graphic designers and the companies that need them. The firm and the relevant marketplace were developed by Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle, not exactly from scratch. It used Sitepoint’s community of web designers, a website that was launched in 1998. Since many of 99designs’ freelancers hailed from the US, the founders established a branch office in Oakland, CA, in 2008.

Freelance Marketplace

99designs is a privately held freelance marketplace, currently run by Patrick Llewellyn as its CEO. It was acquired from the founders by Cimpress in 2020. Its business model is quite different from Fiverr’s, in the sense that it hosts contests for the designers on its platform and takes a commission from the winnings. These contests are funded by employers or individuals who wish to hire designers. 99designs is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have an in-house web design team.

Annual Revenue	Funding	Headquarters	Employees
$1.2B	$45M	Melbourne, Australia	3329

PeoplePerHour

What Upwork and Fiverr are for the US and Israel respectively, PeoplePerHour is for the UK! True to its name, the company provides people, or rather their talent, on an hourly basis. This privately held company was launched in 2007 by Simon Kitiris and Xenios Thrasyvoulou. The website can be accessed by any freelancer in the world, but PeoplePerHour has physical offices only in London, UK, and Athens, Greece. Did you know that the company was featured in Europe’s 100 Hottest Startups by Wired UK in 2012?

Freelance Marketplace

PeoplePerHour is a freelancing platform with a revenue model similar to that of Fiverr, but it charges the employers only on a per-hour basis. The jobs are called “offers” and the community of its freelancers is called the “talent cloud”. Despite having a low revenue of $3.3 million compared to the other freelance marketplaces on this list, PeoplePerHour remains the top platform for employers and remote employees in the UK.

Annual Revenue	Funding	Headquarters	Employees
$14.6M	$10.5M	London, UK	104

Conclusion

Fiverr biggest competitor is Upwork. It is currently the world’s reigning online marketplace for freelancers, not only in terms of the number of users but also based on its revenue. The competition between Fiverr and Upwork is not unlike the clash between two meal kit giants, HelloFresh and DoorDash. They are based in different countries and have dissimilar business models, but both of them have the same target audience. So, the obvious choice for those freelancers or employers leaving Fiverr is Upwork, hands down!