RakshaIf you’ve used PeoplePerHour for a while, you’ll know the story: good access to global talent, but rising competition, variable quality, and platform fees that can hit 20% on the first £500 you spend with a freelancer, dropping to 7.5% and 3.5% as the relationship grows.
For many businesses, that’s the trigger to start exploring alternatives to PeoplePerHour.
This guide walks you through 10 of the best PeoplePerHour alternatives, focusing on what each platform excels at so you can make the right decision.
What to Look for in a PeoplePerHour Alternative
Before we get into the list, it’s worth being clear on what you’re optimising for:
- Talent quality & vetting – Does the platform pre-screen freelancers, or are you doing all the filtering yourself?
- Total cost (not just headline fees) – Look at freelancer commission, client fees, payment charges and any “extras” like boosting or connects. Upwork, for example, now runs variable freelancer service fees of 0–15% plus client-side marketplace fees.
- Specialisation – Creative-heavy projects, hardcore engineering, or performance marketing all benefit from different platforms.
- Geography & time zones – Especially if you need overlap with a specific region or want nearshore teams.
- Project management tools – Escrow, milestones, workrooms, communication tools, NDAs and contracts can all save you admin time.
Keep these criteria in mind as you compare PeoplePerHour alternatives below.
10 Best PeoplePerHour Alternatives
1. Twine
Best for: Vetted creative, tech and marketing freelancers
Twine is a freelance marketplace built specifically around tech, creative and marketing talent, connecting a global network of 900,000+ freelancers with tens of thousands of clients across 195 countries.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Curated network: Twine vets applicants so you’re not combing through hundreds of low-quality pitches.
- Creative + technical focus: From app developers to motion designers and SEO specialists, roles are organised into 150+ specialisms.
- Project-led matching: You post a brief and Twine’s matching process surfaces the most relevant experts, rather than a race-to-the-bottom bidding war.
- Transparent pricing: It’s free to post a project; pricing is clear and baked into the process, without confusing tiers of commissions.
When to choose Twine over PeoplePerHour
- You care more about quality and reliability than getting the cheapest bid.
- You’re hiring for design, video, animation, development, music or marketing work and want specialists who already live in those worlds.
- You don’t have time to manually vet every freelancer from scratch.
Hire vetted freelance experts on Twine: post your project for free and start receiving tailored pitches from trusted specialists.
2. Upwork
Best for: Huge talent pool and flexible budgets
Upwork remains the biggest general-purpose freelance marketplace, with around 18 million freelancers and nearly 800,000 active clients, processing over $4B in annual spend.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Scale: Virtually any skill exists here, from data science and DevOps to email copywriting.
- Hiring flexibility: Hourly or fixed-price contracts, short-term gigs or long-term engagements.
- Robust profiles & reviews: You get detailed work histories, portfolios and client ratings.
Things to watch
- Complex fee structure: Between marketplace fees, contract initiation charges, and variable freelancer commissions, the total cost can add up quickly.
- Noise: At this scale, you’ll often get dozens of low-fit proposals per job, which can be time-consuming to sift through.
Choose Upwork if you value variety and volume, and you’re willing to invest time in screening.
3. Fiverr
Best for: Fast, pre-packaged creative and marketing tasks
Fiverr popularised the “gig” model: set-price services (e.g. “Logo design – 3 concepts in 48 hours”) that you can buy off the shelf. It’s widely used for lower-friction creative and marketing work.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Predictable pricing: Clear packages at different tiers make budgeting simple.
- Fast turnaround: Ideal for quick, one-off deliverables like thumbnails, reels, simple landing pages, or copy edits.
- Huge seller base: A massive global network of creatives at every price point.
Things to watch
- Commission-heavy: Fiverr’s fee model typically takes around 20% from seller earnings, which can affect the rates you see and negotiate.
- Mixed quality: As with any open marketplace, you need to vet portfolios carefully and avoid buying purely on price.
Fiverr works best when the scope is tight and repeatable; for complex, strategic projects, something like Twine or Toptal is usually a better fit.
4. Freelancer.com
Best for: Budget-conscious projects with competitive bidding
Freelancer.com operates on a familiar model: post a project, receive bids, and select a freelancer from a global pool covering thousands of skill categories.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Massive category coverage: Good if you’re running lots of small, varied projects.
- Bidding dynamics: Works well when you want to see how different freelancers would approach and price a job.
Things to watch
- Fee layers:
- Clients: typically 3% or a small minimum per project.
- Freelancers: usually 10% of the project value or a minimum fee.
- Quality spread: As with PeoplePerHour, there’s a wide range of experience levels, so expect to spend time on shortlisting.
Freelancer.com is useful if you’re comfortable with auction-style hiring and want to keep headline rates low.
5. Guru
Best for: Long-term relationships with flexible payment options
Guru is a long-standing marketplace with features specifically designed for ongoing business–freelancer relationships, including its WorkRooms collaboration spaces and multiple payment types (hourly, milestones, task-based, recurring).
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Lower commissions: Guru’s “job fee” for freelancers typically ranges from 5–9% depending on membership tier, while employers usually pay around a 2.9% handling fee.
- Relationship-friendly: Designed to support repeat work with the same freelancers through shared dashboards and WorkRooms.
Things to watch
- Smaller overall volume than giants like Upwork, which can mean fewer options in very niche categories.
Guru makes sense if your priority is ongoing collaboration with a small group of freelancers, rather than constantly meeting new ones.
6. Toptal
Best for: Enterprise-grade tech, design and product talent
Toptal positions itself as an exclusive network of the top 3% of freelance talent across software development, design, finance, product and project management.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Heavy vetting: Multi-stage screening (tests, interviews, trial projects) means you get highly filtered talent.
- White-glove matching: You work with a talent specialist who finds and proposes candidates for your role.
- Trial period: Many engagements come with a short trial, reducing the risk of a bad fit.
Things to watch
- Premium pricing: Toptal is aimed at teams with enterprise-level budgets, not one-off logo jobs.
If you were using PeoplePerHour mainly for high-stakes technical work, Toptal is a serious upgrade in quality, though not in cost.
7. 99designs
Best for: Logos, branding and graphic design
99designs (now part of Vista) is focused almost entirely on design work, from logos and brand identities to packaging and web design. It offers both contests and direct 1:1 hiring.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Contest model: Launch a design contest and see multiple creative directions from different designers before you choose a winner.
- Verified designer levels: Designers are categorised (e.g. “Top Level”) so you can quickly filter for experience.
Things to watch
- Less suitable for long-term relationships: You can absolutely hire designers 1:1, but many clients treat it as a one-off contest tool.
- Design-only: Great for visual work, but you’ll need another platform for, say, your developer or copywriter.
99designs is ideal if your primary reason for using PeoplePerHour was design contests or logo work, and you’re now ready for a design-first platform.
8. Contra
Best for: Commission-free relationships and modern independents
Contra blends elements of a freelance marketplace with a professional network. It’s built to be commission-free for freelancers, who keep 100% of what they earn, with revenue instead coming from optional Pro plans and modest client fees.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- 0% freelancer commission: Because the platform doesn’t take a cut from talent, you may get more competitive rates or more motivated freelancers.
- Portfolio-first profiles: Creators can showcase projects and case studies in a modern, visually led format.
- Built-in contracts and invoicing: Useful if you want to centralise paperwork for multiple contractors.
Things to watch
- Still maturing: Job volume and category coverage are smaller than in older marketplaces.
Contra works best if you’re building a small bench of regular freelancers and want a clean, low-friction way to manage them.
9. Flexiple
Best for: Vetted freelance developers and designers
Flexiple specialises in handpicked developers and designers, positioning itself explicitly as a higher-quality alternative to marketplaces like PeoplePerHour for technical and product work.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Rigorous vetting: Flexiple screens talent through tests and evaluations, accepting only the top slice of applicants, often described as the top 1%.
- Modern tech stack coverage: From React, Node and Flutter to backend and cloud roles.
- Curated matching: The platform helps match you with a short list of candidates instead of an open bidding process.
Things to watch
- Tech & design only: It’s not a generalist marketplace for every possible skill.
If you previously posted dev projects on PeoplePerHour and were frustrated by hit-or-miss technical quality, Flexiple is worth considering.
10. Floowi
Best for: Nearshore marketing & creative teams in Latin America
Floowi targets a very specific niche: it helps US-based marketing agencies and growth-focused startups hire top-tier offshore creative and marketing talent from Latin America, usually within 15 days.
Why it’s a strong PeoplePerHour alternative
- Niche focus: Roles like graphic designers, SEO specialists, account managers and project managers—all tailored to marketing teams.
- Done-for-you recruitment: Floowi operates more like a talent partner than a pure self-serve marketplace, screening and presenting candidates to you.
- Nearshore benefits: Latin American time zones work well for North American businesses; you often get strong English skills plus cost efficiency.
Things to watch
- Region- and function-specific: Great if you’re a US agency or startup building a LATM marketing pod, less relevant for unrelated roles or regions.
Floowi is a good PeoplePerHour alternative if your freelancer needs are marketing-heavy and US-based, and you want a partner to run the hiring process.
Final Thoughts
PeoplePerHour still has its place, especially for UK and European clients, but you’re no longer limited to a single marketplace. Between:
- Curated platforms like Twine, Flexiple and Toptal
- High-volume giants like Upwork and Freelancer.com
- Specialist options like 99designs, Twine, Contra and Floowi
…you can build a freelance hiring stack that actually matches how your business works, instead of forcing everything through one platform and hoping for the best.
If you’re looking to replace or supplement PeoplePerHour, a practical approach is:
- Pick 2–3 platforms aligned to your main project types.
- Run a small test project on each (same brief, same budget cap).
- Compare not just the output, but also communication, speed, and how much time you spent managing the process.
You’ll very quickly see which marketplace feels aligned with your team.
💼 Connect with top freelance talent on Twine: post your project on Twine for free and start building a reliable bench of creatives, developers and marketers for your next launch.
Vicky
