Upwork is a marketplace built for professional jobs that can typically be done remotely on a computer, rather than, say, physical labor. We want to be sure freelancers aren’t offered work that might pose safety, regulatory, or ethical risks. So it's “yes” to building an app, and “no” to building a fence; “yes” to writing a biography and “no” to writing a fake product review.

Here's a list of the approved categories on Upwork.

Jobs that aren't permitted on Upwork

Here are some examples:

• Academic cheating. Providing work for a student to submit under their own name for credit or taking a test on behalf of a student.
  
• Adult content. Creating or supporting sexually explicit or pornographic content, including erotic writing.
  
• Data mining or scraping of information you don't own or don't have the right to collect, including from the Upwork site.
  
• Deceptive marketing. Creating fake content or identities to boost a product, individual, company, etc. (like creating fake social media followers or writing fake product reviews).
  
• Disinformation. Creating any sort of false news reports or fake content intended to mislead.
  
• Free work. Asking freelancers to work for free, i.e. submit work as part of a contest or competition to “win” work without the expectation that the freelancer will be paid for work, or complete work for a fee that's below Upwork's required minimum rate.
  
• Hacking a website, person, company, or anything else.
  
• Harmful or dangerous jobs. Offering or requesting work that could be harmful to another person or entity or that could pose a danger to the person performing the task.
  
• Illegal or fraudulent jobs. Offering or requesting work that violates a law or is intended to defraud a person or entity. This includes jobs that have a high risk of fraud or violating a law or regulation as determined by Upwork.
  
• Investigating an individual in order to collect their personal data (like private investigations). This doesn’t include gathering names, emails, and phone numbers for lead generation or marketing purposes –– that’s allowed.
• Jobs without legitimate work deliverables or that don’t require experience or expertise. Offering or requesting tasks like signing up for a referral program or subscribing to a social media page.
  
• Phishing/security hazards. Creating phishing tools or anything else that would create an information security hazard for another website, person, company, or something else.
  
• Professional cheating. Doing a professional task on behalf of someone else (like taking their test or completing a professional certification for them).
  
• Self-harm content. Any content that encourages or promotes self-harm.
• Terms of Service (TOS) violations. Doing anything that breaks Upwork's or another company's or website's Terms of Service.
  
• Violent Content. Creating or supporting any content that glorifies or incites violence.

Here are a few other things that aren't allowed, per our TOS:

• Creating a job post for the purpose of advertising another website
• Posting multiple versions of the same job 
• Using Upwork to run ads encouraging people to give you work outside of our marketplace 
• Posting a job that requires a person under 18 to complete it (for example, child voiceover or acting work).