Freelancer.com Scraper

Pull active project listings from Freelancer.com at scale — titles, full descriptions, skills tags, fixed and hourly budgets, bid counts and average bid amounts, employer country, posted and bid-close dates, and seven quality badges including Featured, Urgent, Sealed, NDA-required, Recruiter-assisted and Preferred-Freelancer-only. Built for sales teams, agencies, and market-research analysts who need fresh freelance-marketplace demand signal without building and maintaining their own data pipeline.

Why This Scraper?

• 16 top-level Freelancer categories — Websites/IT/Software, Mobile & Computing, Writing & Content, Design Media & Architecture, Engineering & Science, Sales & Marketing, Translation, Trades & Services, and 8 more — selectable from a single dropdown.
• 7 project-quality badges per row — Featured, Urgent, Sealed, NDA-required, Recruiter-assisted, Preferred-Freelancer-only and IP-agreement — surface high-intent posts at a glance. Recruiter-assisted fires on roughly 1 in 8 active projects, and Preferred-Freelancer-only on 1 in 14, so they are working filters rather than rare curiosities.
• 50-country employer filter, matched on the client's own country — not on the currency they pay in, so a Malaysian client paying in US dollars is found under Malaysia. Pinpoint clients in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, UAE, Germany, Singapore, Brazil and 41 more, with a 2-letter ISO country on every row of a country-filtered run.
• Every budget priced twice, natively and in dollars — budgetMin / budgetMax in the project's own currency, budgetMinUsd / budgetMaxUsd on the same row in USD, plus the ISO currency code. Roughly half of all active projects are posted outside the dollar, so this is the difference between a rate benchmark and a number that mixes rupees with pounds.
• Live bid intelligence, comparable across all 9 currencies Freelancer prices in — USD, EUR, GBP, INR, AUD, CAD, SGD, NZD and HKD. Every row carries bidCount, bidAvg in the project's own currency, and bidAvgUsd converted to dollars, so you can average going rates across a mixed result set instead of hand-converting each row.
• Posted and closing timestamps — submitDate and bidEndDate ISO 8601, plus a human-readable timeLeft string like "3 days left" or "Closes today".
• Direct URL pasting — drop any Freelancer.com URL (/jobs/<skill>, /jobs/<skill>/<page>, /search/projects?q=...) into the input and it's parsed into the right filters automatically.
• Four sort orders — Relevance, Newest first, Lowest budget first, Highest budget first.
• Up to 10,000 results per run, spread across searches — any one search term or URL returns about 5,000 projects at most, so stacking two or more searches is what fills a full 10,000-row snapshot in a single pass.

Use Cases

Lead Generation

• Build outreach lists of clients posting projects matching your service area
• Filter by minimum budget to target premium clients with real spend
• Capture employer country to prioritize same-timezone leads
• Identify Featured and Urgent posts where clients want to move fast

Market Research & Demand Tracking

• Track freelance demand by skill, region, and budget range over time
• Compare project volume across the 16 Freelancer categories
• Measure average budgets per skill to benchmark market rates
• Spot rising and declining technology demand week over week

Competitive Intelligence

• See exactly which projects competing agencies are bidding on
• Monitor average bid counts to gauge how saturated a niche is
• Track which client countries dominate a given skill category
• Watch a competitor's preferred client patterns by mirroring their search filters

Pricing & Rate Benchmarking

• Compute average fixed-price and hourly budgets per skill
• Compare US-employer budgets against India, Philippines, or UK budgets
• Build internal rate cards anchored to live marketplace data
• Detect when premium-budget projects appear in your niche

Recruiting & Sourcing

• Find clients who post recurring work in a specific skill area
• Identify long-bid-window projects ideal for thoughtful proposals
• Track NDA-flagged, Sealed and IP-agreement projects for high-trust opportunities
• Chase Recruiter-assisted and Preferred-Freelancer-only posts, where the client has already paid to narrow the field

Getting Started

Search by Keyword

The simplest way to start:

{
    "searchQueries": ["shopify"],
    "maxResults": 100
}

Filter by Category and Budget

{
    "searchQueries": ["react native"],
    "category": "websites-it-software",
    "projectType": "fixed",
    "minBudget": 500,
    "maxBudget": 5000,
    "sortBy": "newest",
    "maxResults": 200
}

Target Premium US Clients

{
    "searchQueries": ["seo", "content marketing"],
    "country": "us",
    "minBudget": 1000,
    "sortBy": "budget_high",
    "maxResults": 500
}

Paste Freelancer.com URLs Directly

{
    "searchUrls": [
        "https://www.freelancer.com/jobs/web-development",
        "https://www.freelancer.com/job-search/?q=wordpress&fixed_min=500&fixed_max=3000"
    ],
    "maxResults": 300
}

Input Reference

Search Inputs

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array of strings	["seo"]	Free-text keywords. Each query produces its own result set.
searchUrls	array of strings	[]	Paste Freelancer.com category, search, or project URLs. Filters in the URL are honored.

Filters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
category	string	none	One of 16 Freelancer categories (e.g. websites-it-software, design-media-architecture, writing-content).
projectType	string	all	all, fixed, or hourly.
minBudget	integer	none	Keep only projects whose posted budget starts at or above this amount. Other currencies are converted to USD first.
maxBudget	integer	none	Keep only projects whose posted budget tops out at or below this amount. Open-ended budgets are excluded.
country	string	none	2-letter employer country code (e.g. us, gb, de). Matches the client's own country, not the currency they pay in. 50 countries supported.

Sort & Limits

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
sortBy	string	relevance	relevance, newest, budget_low, or budget_high.
maxResults	integer	1000	Total row cap across all queries and URLs. Maximum 10,000. Set to 0 to request the full 10,000-row maximum. Any one search term or URL returns about 5,000 projects at most, so 10,000 in one run needs two or more searches.

Output

Example Row

{
    "projectId": 38492013,
    "projectName": "Shopify Plus migration with custom theme",
    "projectDescription": "We are migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus...",
    "projectDescriptionHtml": "We are migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus...<br><br>Requirements:...",
    "url": "https://www.freelancer.com/projects/shopify-plus-migration-custom-theme",
    "seoUrl": "shopify-plus-migration-custom-theme",
    "jobType": "fixed",
    "currency": "USD",
    "budgetMin": 1500,
    "budgetMax": 4500,
    "budgetMinUsd": 1500,
    "budgetMaxUsd": 4500,
    "budgetDisplay": "$1,500 - $4,500 USD",
    "bidCount": 27,
    "bidAvg": 2890.5,
    "bidAvgUsd": 2890.5,
    "timeLeft": "5 days left",
    "submitDate": "2026-05-06T14:22:01Z",
    "bidEndDate": "2026-05-13T14:22:01Z",
    "country": "us",
    "location": "Hayward, California, United States",
    "skills": ["Shopify", "Liquid", "JavaScript", "BigCommerce"],
    "featured": true,
    "urgent": false,
    "sealed": false,
    "nda": false,
    "recruiterAssisted": true,
    "preferredFreelancerOnly": false,
    "ipAgreement": false,
    "language": "en",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-05-08T10:31:42Z"
}

Core Fields

Field	Type	Description
projectId	integer	Numeric Freelancer project ID.
projectName	string	Project title.
projectDescription	string	Full plaintext description with line breaks.
projectDescriptionHtml	string	Same description with <br> tags for HTML rendering.
url	string	Direct link to the project page on Freelancer.com.
seoUrl	string	URL slug portion (e.g. shopify-plus-migration-custom-theme).
jobType	string	fixed or hourly.
language	string	Language code declared by the employer.

Budget & Currency

Field	Type	Description
currency	string	ISO 4217 currency code (e.g. USD, EUR, GBP).
budgetMin	number	Minimum budget in the project's native currency.
budgetMax	number	Maximum budget in the project's native currency.
budgetMinUsd	number	The same minimum converted to US dollars, so budgets from every currency sort and average on one scale.
budgetMaxUsd	number	The same maximum converted to US dollars. null only when the employer posted an open-ended budget with no ceiling.
budgetDisplay	string	Human-readable budget label (e.g. $1,500 - $4,500 USD). Open-ended budgets read from $10,000 USD or up to $500 USD. Hourly projects carry the rate unit, exactly as Freelancer.com shows it: $15 - $25 USD / hour, from $50 USD / hour.

Engagement & Bids

Field	Type	Description
bidCount	integer	Number of bids submitted so far.
bidAvg	number	Average bid amount in the project's native currency.
bidAvgUsd	number	The same average bid converted to US dollars, so you can compare going rates across projects posted in different currencies without supplying your own exchange rates.
skills	array of strings	Skill tags the employer attached (e.g. ["Shopify", "Liquid"]).

Employer & Location

Field	Type	Description
country	string	Lowercase 2-letter ISO country code of the employer. Taken from the location the employer published, otherwise from the country you filtered on. Filter by country and every row carries it; leave the filter blank and it is filled for the projects that publish a location, null for the rest.
location	string	City, region and country the employer published, e.g. "Hayward, California, United States". Country names always come back in English, so the same place groups cleanly no matter what language the employer posts in. Present on local projects, where the employer wants someone on site; null on remote projects, which have no location to publish.

Quality Badges

Field	Type	Description
featured	boolean	Featured listing — paid placement boost.
urgent	boolean	Marked urgent by the employer.
sealed	boolean	Bids are hidden from competing freelancers.
nda	boolean	NDA required to view full details.
recruiterAssisted	boolean	A Freelancer.com recruiter is shortlisting candidates for this client — usually a sign of a bigger, better-funded brief.
preferredFreelancerOnly	boolean	Only Preferred Freelancer Program members can bid, so the field is far less crowded.
ipAgreement	boolean	The client requires an intellectual-property transfer agreement before work starts.

Timestamps

Field	Type	Description
submitDate	string	ISO 8601 UTC — when the project was posted.
bidEndDate	string	ISO 8601 UTC — when the bid window closes.
timeLeft	string	Human-readable countdown (e.g. "3 days left", "Closes today", "Closed").
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 UTC — when this row was extracted.

Tips for Best Results

• Drop the keyword for pure budget sorts. When searchQueries is set, results are blended with a relevance score — for clean lowest-or-highest budget order, use searchUrls with sortBy=budget_low or budget_high and no query.
• Combine country=us with minBudget=1000 to surface premium US clients in your timezone — one of the highest-ROI filter combinations for outreach.
• Set the country filter when you want country on every row. Freelancer only publishes a client location on on-site "local" projects, so an unfiltered run fills country for those and leaves it blank elsewhere rather than guessing from the payment currency.
• Trim the page number off a pasted URL. A URL ending in a page number tells the actor to skip that many projects from the start of its own result order, which is not the order the Freelancer.com website shows you. You still get real, matching projects, just not the exact cards you were looking at. Paste the URL without the page number and let maxResults decide how deep to go.
• Set the budget boxes on Freelancer.com before you copy the URL. The Fixed Price and Hourly min/max boxes in the site's own filter panel come across with the URL, already converted to US dollars, so the run applies the same range you were just looking at. Fill only one of the two pairs: a fixed-price range and an hourly rate range describe different things, and only one can be applied per URL.
• Use searchUrls for category landing pages like https://www.freelancer.com/jobs/seo to ride Freelancer's own skill taxonomy instead of guessing keywords.
• Sort by newest for live monitoring. Run the actor on a schedule (every 30 minutes) with a tight maxResults to capture fresh posts the moment they appear.
• Filter by projectType=hourly when benchmarking long-term retainers — fixed-price posts skew toward one-off work.
• Watch bidCount for saturation. Categories with average bidCount above 40 are crowded; below 15 means less competition for your bids.
• Benchmark rates on bidAvgUsd, not bidAvg. Roughly half of all active projects are posted outside the dollar, so averaging the native column mixes rupees with pounds and inflates the result many times over. Sort or average on bidAvgUsd and every row is on the same scale.
• The default maxResults=1000 is the sweet spot for most queries — comprehensive enough to map an active niche, low enough to keep runs quick. Bump up to 10000 (or set to 0) for full-market snapshots — and split those across two or more search terms or URLs, because a single search tops out near 5,000 projects and cannot fill a 10,000-row run on its own.

Pricing

From $0.80 per 1,000 results. No compute charges — you only pay per result returned.

Apify's loyalty tiers discount every result you pull. Find your current tier in your Apify account billing page.

Results	No discount	Bronze	Silver	Gold
100	$0.095	$0.090	$0.085	$0.080
1,000	$0.95	$0.90	$0.85	$0.80
10,000	$9.50	$9.00	$8.50	$8.00
100,000	$95.00	$90.00	$85.00	$80.00

Each run also carries a one-off $0.00005 start charge, which is less than a hundredth of a cent no matter how large the run. Billing is rounded to the nearest cent, and runs that return 0 results cost nothing.

Integrations

• Zapier & Make — trigger downstream workflows when new high-budget projects appear.
• Google Sheets — push fresh listings into a sheet for your sales team to work each morning.
• Apify API & webhooks — kick off runs from your own backend or get notified the moment a run finishes.
• CRM systems — drop projectId, country, budgetMax, and skills directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, or Airtable as new lead records.
• BI tools — connect output datasets to Looker, Power BI, or Tableau for trend dashboards.

Legal & Ethical Use

This actor extracts only publicly listed active projects — content that Freelancer.com surfaces to anonymous visitors. It does not access freelancer profiles, private bids, or any logged-in user data.

You are responsible for using the data lawfully. Respect Freelancer.com's Terms of Service, applicable data-protection laws (GDPR, CCPA), and any sender-permission rules (CAN-SPAM, GDPR consent) before contacting employers based on extracted information. Do not use the data for spam or harassment.