Elance.com, Guru.com, oDesk.com and RentACoder.com are the major online freelance/consulting sites. You can spend hours searching for and bidding on projects on all of these sites (leaving you little time to do the work if you actually win a project). As mentioned in oDesk, Guru, Elance and RentACoder - Are they worth it?, to a large degree all of these sites tend to provide the greatest benefit to businesses that are able to obtain work at lower costs than possible using local labor, and to developers in lower cost countries who are able to get access to what for them is high paid work. But U.S. workers who are smart, professional and keep their eyes open can find good opportunities as well.
In terms of choosing which site to focus on, the following table can help you get a sense of the key differences between them. Be sure to visit their online help systems for more details and the latest information. These refer to individual freelance membership only. Project counts are for today.
| Elance.com | Guru.com | oDesk.com | RentACoder.com | |
| php projects | 1831 | 271 | 887 | 425 |
| Technical Writing projects | 18 | 89 | 42 | 51 |
| Sales & Marketing projects | 302 | 127 | No category | 147 |
| Alexa rank (lower is better) | 4960 | 14833 | 13768 | 18859 |
| Free option | Yes - limited bidding | Yes - higher fee on jobs | Yes | Yes |
| Fee | 6.75% to 8.75% based on volume | 10% for free membership level. 5% for premier level. | 10% | 15% or $3 minimum. Lower rates for direct payments and bonuses. |
| Premier Membership Fee | $9.95/Month. Up to 20 bids (up from 3). Up to 2% fee discount | $29.95-$99.95/quarter depending on field for each subject area (profile). 50% off for annual membership | None | None |
| Limit on bids | 3 for free level/mo. 20 for premier. Fees for additional bids | 10 for free level/mo. 100 for premier. Fees for additional bids | None | None |
| Dispute Resolution | When Escrow service is used | When Escrow service is used | Hourly jobs only | Yes |
| Escrow service | Yes | Yes | Hourly jobs only | Yes |
| Online tests & certifications | Yes | No | Yes | No |
13 responses so far ↓
1 Edward J. Stembler // Nov 14, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Nice comparison! But you’re missing the “Homework projects” category which is so ubiquitous on RAC.
2 Michael Driscoll // Nov 14, 2008 at 9:24 pm
We’ve had mixed success trying all of these sites — none of which offer a smooth or particularly friendly experience. Both eLance and Guru, in particular, seem intent on charging nickels for nearly every action on the site: additional bids, profiles, on top of the hefty 5-10% they take from every payment.
In their greed, these sites are relegated to serving as an introduction tool for buyers and sellers of services. Once a relationship is formed, buyers & sellers continue it outside of these sites.
3 somebody // Nov 14, 2008 at 9:56 pm
how could you leave out getafreelancer.com????
4 Dan // Nov 14, 2008 at 10:06 pm
>how could you leave out getafreelancer.com????<
I’ll do a followup as others point out their favorite sites.
5 Sameer Alibhai // Nov 24, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I wanted to comment that using alexa rank in this context sometimes can be misleading. For example if you have a site catering to say “Ruby on Rails” programming, and you have one of the best following and a very high quality of readership, and someone might misunderstand the high alexa rank (i.e. not such a popular site) as meaning its a low quality site, which is not true.
6 Neil // Nov 24, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Hiring people on these sites takes the same skills as hiring for a regular job. If you have no experience hiring in the real world don’t expect to pick up a rock star coder on your first attempt.
Because the hiring is so easy, people who know nothing about a field will request almost impossible jobs. There are plenty of people wanting ‘facebook clones’ who will no doubt be disappointed.
From my experience with these sites, oDesk is far superior.
7 Dan // Nov 24, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Alexa rank is, of course, a very rough tool (as is Google Trends, which I also used in my evaluation to provide a bit of a reality check).
8 Freelancer // Nov 25, 2008 at 2:52 am
I have tried all of these sites and my personal favorite is Rent a Coder because most of the buyers actually choose a bidder. I agree that many bidders from some particular country bid the lowest. There are many genius people in that country like any other, but I have found many who only do the ‘talking’ and below average quality in work (I always check resumes of people who made me loose a bid). The thing is many buyers does not care about the quality. Even the buyers from so called high economy countries choose cheapness over quality. That is how those low quality but cheap work gets high demand. There are tasteful buyers too but very rare. Do not try freelancing if you are not a good marketing person yourself. It’s truly like running your own company with all the pros and cons.
9 Abhishek // Dec 3, 2008 at 4:57 am
oDesk does have a limit on bids i.e. 20 bids per week maximum. You start with 10 bids per week and you can increase that to 20 by giving tests or fetching projects.
My favorite is oDesk as it has focus on hourly jobs. These jobs are win win situation for buyers and providers. Buyers get to see what providers are doing using the oDesk tools (which are brilliant) and Providers know for sure that they will be paid for the work they have done.
We are working on Elance and GetAFreelance also but Elance is an costly affair and GetAFreelancer is for small projects.
10 Blake // Dec 5, 2008 at 1:20 am
1st time user on odesk. Without escrow you have very little protection as the buyer. Working with a russian team that delayed delivering just long enough to ensure that the period to lodge a dispute had passed. When a developer gets a bad review they just get new listings and start a new associated company. Buyer beware.
11 Software Experts // Dec 10, 2008 at 9:03 am
The issues expressed with the job boards are on point, I would add that they are all difficult to use, they cater to price and unsophisticated buyers, like ebay, buyers and sellers often distort, and it is buyer beware, well it’s seller beware also.
I would jump to a site that offered a flat fee for bidding and optional fee for escrow. The bidding is important as it provides a bazaar for buyers and sellers. Yet in some cases we want third party and others not. The escrow services as a separate tool might be useful for non bid jobs.
BTW there are a lot of bidding tools on my site OSMXP.com for downloading. I often coach or represent developers on the boards, and although I don’t like the predatory pricing of some they are a necessary evil. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a stratification Ie a subsite for say homework, a subsite for first time buyers, or a classification of developers by size and skill. It is the equivalent of medieval bazaar and it will mature into a shopping mall but not soon enough for me.
12 Rick // Mar 17, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Does anyone have a rundown on which sites support rss? It seems to me that getting an rss feed is critical as it is a means to allow for analysis of projects. One can add programmatic (or at least better searching/sorting) extensions to weed out the garbage.
There is so much garbage, this seems like a must.
13 mart // Jun 19, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I am a programmer and I have used RAC to find specialists to help me through tricky technical issues and help me create models for languages or environments that I am not familiar with.
I have found a mix of characters including students who will do anything for experience and more senior experienced programmers with rare specialties who like the freedom of picking their projects.
It is definately buyer beware situation. For large projects, start with a prototype or model. This is important to guage quality of your partner and help iron out issues and misunderstandings early and raise level of confidence.
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