If you’re a freelancer or business looking for the best platform to hire or get hired, the question often comes down to Botpool vs. Upwork. Botpool is great from quick, and fixed-price, to complex projects with freelancers that are powered by AI while Upwork focuses more in collaborations and tailored hiring. Explore both to find the platform that suits your business or freelancing goals.

These two marketplaces look very similar at first glance.

Create an account, find your perfect freelancer, hire them, and you’re in business! However, Botpool and Upwork differ significantly in their services, talent vetting processes, and fee structures. Below, you'll find our comparisons of Botpool and Upwork based on our experiences as a buyer and a seller so you can choose the best platform for you. However, Botpool and Upwork differ significantly in their services, talent vetting processes, and fee structures. Below, you'll find our comparisons of Botpool and Upwork based on our experiences as a buyer and a seller so you can choose the best platform for you.

What is Upwork?

Upwork is one of the largest and most established freelance marketplaces in the world. With millions of freelancers across industries like writing, design, programming, marketing, and admin work, Upwork offers clients a wide talent pool. 

What is Botpool?

Botpool is an AI-first freelance marketplace designed for the future of work. Botpool brings together freelancers from all categories such as design, development, writing, marketing, and more, but with one unifying edge: they implement AI in their work.

By centering the platform around AI-enabled skills, Botpool creates a fairer and smarter ecosystem where:

⚪️ Freelancers keep more of their earnings with lower fees

⚪️ Talent that leverages AI gains higher visibility

⚪️ Public profiles are designed to be found by search engines and large language models (LLMs), giving freelancers wider reach beyond the platform

⚪️ Clients can find relevant freelancers faster without sorting through noise

Control

Botpool gives you full control over how you want to hire. Just like Fiverr, you can browse public profiles, compare skills, tools, and prices, and directly hire the freelancer who best matches your needs. Profiles are designed to be discoverable not only within Botpool but also through search engines and large language models, giving freelancers greater visibility and making it easier for clients to find the right talent quickly.

At the same time, Botpool also works like Upwork. You can post a job description, and freelancers will submit tailored proposals with their rates and portfolios. This lets you review, compare, and choose based on fit, expertise, and budget. Botpool’s AI-powered matching helps surface the most relevant candidates faster, reducing the time it takes to evaluate proposals.

1. Fixed prices:Transparent costs upfront.
2. Custom offers:Freelancers can tailor packages to buyers' needs.
3. Subscriptions:Freelancers can provide services on a fixed, ongoing basis.

In short, Botpool combines the speed of Fiverr-style direct hiring and purchasing gigs/products with the flexibility of Upwork-style proposals, giving you the best of both worlds in one AI-first platform.

Visibility and Public Profiles

Upwork Visibility

On Upwork, freelancers can set their profile to public, only visible to Upwork users, or private. However, even “public” profiles are limited. They are not optimized for search engine indexing or discoverability by large language models (LLMs). This means your visibility is mostly confined to within Upwork’s own platform. Combined with the massive volume of freelancers competing for attention, AI specialists often struggle to surface in searches against more general developers or designers.

Botpool Visibility

Botpool was built to solve this. Profiles are AI-focused and discovery is powered by AI-driven matching algorithms, ensuring freelancers get in front of the most relevant clients.

In addition, Botpool profiles are:

⚪️  Public by default and SEO-optimized, allowing them to be indexed by search engines

⚪️ Discoverable by large language models (LLMs), meaning your expertise can be surfaced in AI-driven queries outside the platform

⚪️  Designed to showcase AI tools, workflows, and case studies in a clear, structured way

For freelancers, this means Botpool dramatically increases visibility both inside and outside the platform, giving them reach that Upwork cannot match.

Competition and Marketplace Noise

• Upwork: Huge marketplace, but overcrowded. Clients face proposal spam and freelancers face endless competition.

• Botpool: Leaner, curated, and focused. Less competition means faster client discovery and better project fit.

Freelancers who adopt Botpool early also gain a first-mover advantage, building authority and reviews while competition is still relatively low.

Tools and Matching

• Upwork: Provides standard project management tools such as contracts, milestones, and time tracking.

• Botpool: Uses AI-powered matching to pair the right freelancers with the right projects, reducing friction and improving success rates. As Upwork, it also provides standard project management tools such as contracts and time tracking.

Upwork may be the giant in freelancing, but Botpool is the smarter choice for the AI era. With lower fees, higher visibility, and a focus on the most in-demand skills of the future, Botpool gives freelancers a fairer chance to grow their careers and businesses a faster way to find talent.

If you’re looking for an Upwork alternative in 2025, Botpool is the platform to watch. Whether you are a business ready to hire AI-powered talent or a freelancer looking to showcase your skills, you can join or hire on Botpool today and be part of the future of work.