Learn how Upwork’s Payment Protection keeps freelancers and clients secure with hourly tracking, milestone payments, and dispute assistance for safe collaboration.
To help protect your payments, we offer several levels of protection.
Hourly Payment Protection
For clients:
- You can monitor your freelancer's work diary to see work-in-progress snapshots and confirm what work is being invoiced to you
- If your freelancer logs hours not related to your project you can file a dispute for the previous week's hours. You will be refunded for any hours that do not qualify for Hourly Payment Protection
- Upwork Hourly Payment Protection doesn’t apply to bonuses or fixed-price projects. See the Upwork Terms of Service for full terms and conditions
For freelancers and agencies:
- On hourly contracts, you will invoice your time by logging it with our time tracker
- As long as your hours meet Hourly Payment Protection criteria you will be paid for the time you invoice
- Upwork Hourly Payment Protection doesn’t apply to bonuses, manual time, or fixed-price projects. See the Upwork Terms of Service for full terms and conditions
Fixed-Price contracts and dispute assistance
For clients:
- You and the freelancer agree on deliverables in the form of milestones and you deposit funds (minimum $5.00 USD per milestone)
- Work is submitted for your approval before funds are released
- You can ask for changes to the work or request an refund if necessary
For freelancers and agencies:
- Your client deposits funds before you start working and you submit work for their approval
- Funds are automatically released to you 14 days from submission if your client does not approve the work or request changes
- You can file a dispute if your client refuses to release the payment for a completed milestone. See the Upwork Terms of Service for full terms and conditions