How Upwork Enterprise Can Help You Scale (2025 Guide)

At Upwork, we're all about overcoming skill gaps—and finding ways to support the ways our clients work, no matter where they are in the world.

Upwork Enterprise is one of the many ways we help companies, including one-third of the Fortune 500, scale their work.

And an Upwork Enterprise account can supercharge the way you work, too.

What is Upwork Enterprise?

Upwork Enterprise is our full-service platform designed for companies that are ready to work at scale.

With an Upwork Enterprise account, you can:

• Hire the top 1% of freelance professionals on Upwork
• Invite an unlimited number of freelancers to your jobs

• See key metrics about how your team uses (and pays) professionals on Upwork
• Be as involved as you want in the sourcing process—or get the help of a fully dedicated support team
• Pay your contracts via a single monthly invoice for simplified billing

How is Upwork Enterprise different?

Before we dive into how Upwork Enterprise can help you find just the right professional, let's look at how it's different from the Upwork account you may already have.

Upwork Talent Marketplace

Talent Marketplace™ is our work marketplace where independent professionals and clients of any size can connect and collaborate.

When you use Talent Marketplace, you can:

• Post a job and receive proposals from freelancers
• Browse profiles and invite specific pros to apply to your job (limits apply)
• Exchange messages and files
• Review time sheets
• Place funds into escrow and pay freelancers for completed work
• Create shortlists of your favorite profiles for future reference
• Start new contracts (hourly, fixed-price, or milestone-based)

Upwork Business Plus

Business Plus is a new type of Upwork account that is ideal for fast-growing companies that want access to some Enterprise features, but aren’t ready for a full Enterprise account.

With a Business Plus account, you can:

• View the top 1% of talent on Upwork
• Request curated freelancer shortlists for your job posts
• Export custom data fields from within your account
• Enjoy Net 30 terms and simplified billing (available for select accounts)
• Send more invitations and direct messages to freelancers before starting a contract

While you can carry out some of the same actions with a Talent Marketplace or Business Plus account and an Enterprise account, the processes and options available to you are different.

Finding professionals on Upwork

When you browse freelancer profiles on Upwork, you'll be able to see key information about their work on Upwork to date, including talent badges that give you an at-a-glance summary of their experience.

Everyone can see Rising Talent and Top Rated or Top Rated Plus badges. To see Expert-Vetted badges, though, you'll need to upgrade your account to either Business Plus or Enterprise.

This means that when you browse profiles as a Business Plus or Enterprise customer, you'll be able to see which professionals on the Upwork platform have completed our pre-vetting process.

Talent Marketplace users don’t have access to that information.

Paying talent on Upwork

The way you pay professionals is also different when using Talent Marketplace, Business Plus, and Upwork Enterprise. When hiring through Talent Marketplace, you’ll need to pay each professional separately through their active contract.

All Business Plus accounts start out with this same per-contract billing. However, select U.S.-based accounts can apply for simplified, Net 30 billing that streamlines the payment process.

Upwork Enterprise accounts always have access to this simple, monthly billing. It makes managing and paying for work easier, especially when you have a large number of active contracts.

How Upwork Enterprise works: key features

We're continually adding new features to our Enterprise platform—each designed to help users get more high-level creative, strategic, and technical work done.

Dedicated customer support

We provide support to every user—but as an Enterprise customer, you’ll get help from a dedicated team that feels like an extension of your own.

• Account managers work one-on-one with you to make sure that you—and your team—get the most from your Upwork Enterprise plan
• Solutions architects are on hand to help you develop customized solutions to meet organizational goals
• Program success managers help you stay up-to-date with how your account works, and will help you with any important changes
• Upwork Professionals support your team through the entire hiring process

Your Upwork support team will remain in regular communication with you—but you can reach out any time you have a question or need a little extra help.

Simple team and spend management

The Upwork Enterprise Dashboard gives you quick access to the tools you need to work with freelancers and your team. From the Dashboard, you can:

• Search for and hire freelance professionals
• See your total Upwork spend to date
• Invite colleagues to your organization's Upwork Enterprise account
• Onboard new hiring managers who will source freelancers on the platform
• Review a summary of your entire team's activity including jobs, offers, and enterprise contracts
• Complete essential check-ins and actions in your task list
• Reach out to your Upwork support team

Plus, we provide a selection of the top 1% of talent on Upwork right on your dashboard—keeping skilled pros at your fingertips.

Uma™, Upwork’s Mindful AI

Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, is built right into your everyday Upwork workflow. By drawing on Upwork’s data, Uma acts as your companion to help you find and hire the right pros.

Getting started with Uma is easy—simply opt in to the service in your account settings and Uma will begin appearing throughout your Upwork experience. Your data is governed by Upwork’s Privacy Policy and won’t be used to train third party service providers’ internal networks.

Our Job Post Generator, powered by Uma, is just one of the ways that our Mindful AI can help you work more efficiently.

The way it works is simple:

1. First, provide a few straightforward details about the job you'd like to hire for; the generator will produce a draft for you to edit and review.
2. Next, make any tweaks you'd like, such as adjusting details and tone. You can also ask Uma to make edits for you.
3. Finally, when you’re happy with the content, post your job and begin reviewing proposals.

Users reported that the Job Post Generator cut job post creation time in half, allowing them to find professionals and hire faster than ever before.

Curated freelancer shortlists

All Upwork client accounts allow you to save favorite freelancer profiles and see who you've hired in the past—but Upwork Enterprise takes this one step further with two types of shortlists (formerly Talent Clouds).

You can either request help from your Upwork Support team to build a shortlist of qualified professionals, or create an internal list of people your team has worked with, interviewed, or otherwise vetted.

These are the pros who have proven track records with your team and are already familiar with your operations. Working with them on a repeat basis can help you continue to scale your work faster while still maintaining the highest possible quality.

And if you've worked with independent professionals outside of our platform in the past, you can bring them onto the Upwork platform via your Enterprise account.

Classification determination support

If you’re an Upwork Enterprise compliance WPP user, our Classification Compliance tool can help you mitigate the risks of misclassification while onboarding a professional you find on Upwork.

We do the work to interpret complex, ever-changing classification rules—then deliver a determination to help you best decide whether to work with someone as an independent contractor or employee.

Classification Compliance is built into the offer experience, so you’ll start receiving information and updates once you begin moving forward with a freelancer on Upwork. The determination you receive is based on your offer details, the professional you want to work with, geography, and applicable law.

Integrated solutions for remote work

We've built Upwork Enterprise to work the way you do, and that means we’ve built it to integrate with the leading HR, hiring, and procurement systems you're already using to run your operations.

How other companies use Upwork Enterprise

There's no size threshold a business has to hit to benefit from Upwork Enterprise—we work with everyone from small businesses and startups to multinational corporations.

• Microsoft turned to professionals on Upwork to help them produce nine high-quality videos in only 10 days
• Kinetic Investments relied on Upwork to find skilled generative AI professionals who helped the company launch two new business ventures
• Amway used freelancers on Upwork to coordinate a global video shoot across five countries—and saved $100,000 in the process
• A leading university relied on Upwork Enterprise support to help professors and department heads find pros for a range of projects, including building a mobile app

Which type of Upwork account is right for you?

Upwork Enterprise works for companies of all sizes because it’s a custom solution. We tailor the experience to your business needs and goals.

Whether you’re brand new to our platform or are a current Talent Marketplace or Business Plus customer, thinking about the points below can help you decide if it’s time to have a conversation about Upwork Enterprise.

1. You need specific skills right away

When you need new skills immediately, traditional staffing methods can feel frustratingly slow.

• Talent Marketplace can help you connect with pros faster than ever before, but you'll need the bandwidth to handle all aspects of the process yourself.
• Business Plus gives you added sourcing support and access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork. You’ll still be responsible for selecting freelancers you’d like to interview and potentially work with.
• Upwork Enterprise gives you the same access to the top talent on Upwork, diversity-certified talent, and a dedicated support team that can help make the burden of finding, classifying, and hiring someone much easier.

2. You don't know if you have enough work to fill an ongoing role

If you aren't sure whether you'll need certain skill sets on your team on a long-term basis, working with professionals on Upwork is a great solution.

• Talent Marketplace and Business Plus are perfect for finding professionals with the skills you need for shorter-term engagements.
• Upwork Enterprise gives you ongoing access to professionals used and trusted by your teammates—so you can keep tapping into an internally vetted pool of pros whenever you need it.

3. You want to work with skilled professionals

You can find the skilled help you need here on Upwork—whether you use Talent Marketplace, Business Plus, or Upwork Enterprise to find them comes down to how you prefer to work.

• Talent Marketplace is a strong choice if you plan to hire a handful of skilled pros and prefer to source them yourself.
• Business Plus is a good option if you’d like to access the top freelancers on Upwork and get more support, but are ready to still handle key sourcing and hiring activities yourself.
• Upwork Enterprise gives you the most support, with a dedicated team of Upwork account managers and solution architects to create custom answers to your biggest hiring problems.

Upwork Enterprise pricing options

Upwork Enterprise is your fully customized version of the world’s work marketplace—and that goes for pricing, too.

One-size-fits-all platforms could leave you paying service fees for features you don't need. With Upwork Enterprise, you get a customized subscription plan—and guided help from dedicated account managers and sourcing specialists.

Talk to the Upwork Enterprise team today

The best way to discover how Upwork Enterprise can work for you is to chat with one of our team members.

Schedule a demo to see how the platform works, ask questions, and discuss what a customized Enterprise membership could look like for your team.