Terms & Condition
Terms & Condition
User Agreement
This Agreement was last modified on 1 June 2023.
This User Agreement describes the terms and conditions which you accept by using our Website or our Services. We have incorporated by reference some linked information.
In this User Agreement:
"Account" means the account associated with your email address.
"Buyer" means a User that purchases Seller Services or items from Sellers or identifies a Seller through the Website. A User may be both a Buyer and a Seller under this agreement.
"Contest" means a contest that is promoted by a Buyer and in respect of which a Seller can submit one or more entries via the Website.
"Contest Brief" means the document setting out the scope of a Contest, including but not limited to items such as a design brief.
"Contest Handover", in respect of a Contest, means the agreement between the Buyer and one or more winning Seller(s) under which each Seller will transfer to the Buyer ownership of the winning entry or entries.
"Dispute Resolution Process" means the process to be followed by Buyers and Sellers in accordance with the Dispute Resolution Services.
"Entrant" means a Seller who has entered a Contest.
"Freelancer", "we", "our", "company" or "the company" or "us" means Freelancer International Pty Limited (ACN 134 845 748).
"Freelancer Enterprise" provides organizations access to a global workforce of over 42 million freelancers. Freelancer Enterprise enables large organizations to accelerate their growth for less.
"Verified by Freelancer" Users have been satisfactorily verified under the Know your Customer and Identity Verification Policy.
"Inactive Account" means a User Account that has not been logged into for a 6 month period, or other period determined by us from time to time.
"Intellectual Property Rights" means any and all intellectual property rights, existing worldwide and the subject matter of such rights, including: (a) patents, copyright, rights in circuit layouts (or similar rights), registered designs, registered and unregistered trademarks, and any right to have confidential information kept confidential; and (b) any application or right to apply for registration of any of the rights referred to in paragraph (a), whether or not such rights are registered or capable of being registered and whether existing under any laws, at common law or in equity.
"Local Job" or "Local Jobs" means a service we provide to match a Buyer with a Seller in relation to the provision of location specific services.
"Milestone Payment" means a payment made by the Buyer for the provision of Seller Services under a User Contract and which will be released in accordance with the section "Milestone Payments" of these terms and conditions.
"Project" or "Listing" means a job offered or awarded by a Buyer via the Website, which may include a Project or Contest listed by a Buyer, a Project awarded by a Buyer (for example through HireMe), a service bought by a Buyer from a Seller, and service awarded by a Buyer to a Seller as a result of a Contest or competition hosted via the Website.
"Seller" means a User that offers and provides services or identifies as a Seller through the Website. A User may be both a Buyer and a Seller under this agreement.
"Seller Services" means all services provided by a Seller.
"Freelancer Services" means all services provided by us to you.
"User", "you" or "your" means an individual who visits or uses the Website, including via the API.
"User Contract" means: (1) this User Agreement; (2) the Code of Conduct as amended from time to time; (3) any other contractual provisions accepted by both the Seller and Buyer uploaded to the Website, to the extent not inconsistent with the User Agreement and the Code of Conduct; (4) the Project terms as awarded and accepted on the Website, to the extent not inconsistent with the User Agreement and the Code of Conduct; and (5) any other material incorporated by reference from time to time.
"Website" means the Websites operated by Freelancer and available at: Professionaler.com and any of its regional or other domains or properties, and any related Freelancer service, tool or application, specifically including mobile web, any iOS App and any Android App, or API or other access mechanism.
1. Overview
By accessing the Website, you agree to the following terms with Freelancer.
We may amend this User Agreement and any linked information from time to time by posting amended terms on the Website, without notice to you.
The Website is an online venue where Users buy and sell Seller Services and items. Buyers and Sellers must register for an Account in order to buy or sell Seller Services and/or items. The Website enables Users to work together online to complete and pay for Projects, buy and sell items and to use the services that we provide. We are not a party to any contractual agreements between Buyer and Seller in the online venue, we merely facilitate connections between the parties.
We may, from time to time, and without notice, change or add to the Website or the information, products or services described in it. However, we do not undertake to keep the Website updated. We are not liable to you or anyone else if any error occurs in the information on the Website or if that information is not current.
2. Scope
Before using the Website, you must read the whole User Agreement, the Website policies and all linked information.
You must read and accept all of the terms in, and linked to, this User Agreement, the Code of Conduct, the Freelancer Privacy Policy and all Website policies. By accepting this User Agreement as you access our Website, you agree that this User Agreement will apply whenever you use the Website, or when you use the tools we make available to interact with the Website. Some Websites may have additional or other terms that we provide to you when you use those services.
3. Eligibility
You will not use the Website if you:
- are not able to form legally binding contracts;
- are under the age of 16;
- a person barred from receiving and rendering services under the laws of Australia or other applicable jurisdiction;
- are suspended from using the Website; or
- do not hold a valid email address.
All free user accounts are associated with individuals. Login credentials should not be shared by users with others. The individual associated with the account will be held responsible for all actions taken by the account, without limitation.
Subject to your local laws, a person over 15 but under 18 can use an adult's account with the permission of the account holder. However, the account holder is responsible for all actions taken by the account, without limitation.
Users may provide a business name or a company name, which is associated with the User's Account. Users acknowledge and agree that where a business name or company name is associated with their Account, this User Agreement is a contract with the User as an individual (not the business or company) and Users remain solely responsible for all activity undertaken in respect of their Account.
A company, corporation, trust, partnership or other non-individual corporate entity may be a User subject to an eligible corporate account which pays corporate subscriptions.
We may, at our absolute discretion, refuse to register any person or entity as a User.
You cannot transfer or assign any rights or obligations you have under this agreement without prior written consent.
4. Using Freelancer
While using the Website, you will not attempt to or otherwise do any of the following:
- post content or items in inappropriate categories or areas on our Websites and services;
- infringe any laws, third party rights or our policies, such as the Code of Conduct;
- fail to deliver payment for services delivered to you;
- fail to deliver Seller Services purchased from you;
- circumvent or manipulate our fee structure, the billing process, or fees owed to Freelancer;
- post false, inaccurate, misleading, deceptive, defamatory or offensive content (including personal information);
- take any action that may undermine the feedback or reputation systems (such as displaying, importing or exporting feedback information or using it for purposes unrelated to the Website);
- transfer your Freelancer account (including feedback) and Username to another party without our consent;
- distribute or post spam, unsolicited, or bulk electronic communications, chain letters, or pyramid schemes;
- distribute viruses or any other technologies that may harm Freelancer, the Website, or the interests or property of Freelancer users (including their Intellectual Property Rights, privacy and publicity rights) or is unlawful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, invasive of privacy, vulgar, obscene, profane or which may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person;
- download and aggregate listings from our website for display with listings from other websites without our express written permission, "frame", "mirror" or otherwise incorporate any part of the Website into any other website without our prior written authorisation;
- attempt to modify, translate, adapt, edit, decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer any software programs used by us in connection with the Website;
- copy, modify or distribute rights or content from the Website or Freelancer's copyrights and trademarks; or
- harvest or otherwise collect information about Users, including email addresses, without their consent.
- use Freelancer to facilitate money exchange including, but not limited to, cryptocurrency (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum, etc).
5. Intellectual Property Rights Infringement
It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged intellectual property rights infringement. Our Copyright Infringement Policy is designed to make submitting notices of alleged infringement to us as straightforward as possible while reducing the number of notices that we receive that are fraudulent or difficult to understand or verify. If you believe that your Intellectual Property Rights have been violated, please notify us via this link on our Website and we will investigate.
6. Fees and Services
We charge fees for certain services, such as introduction fees for Projects, listing upgrades and memberships. When you use a service that has a fee, you have an opportunity to review and accept the fees that you will be charged based on our schedule of Fees and Charges, which we may change from time to time and will update by placing on our Website. We may choose to temporarily change the fees for our services for promotional events (for example, discounts on memberships) or new services, and such changes are effective when we post a temporary promotional event or new service on the Websites, or as notified through promotional correspondence.
Unless otherwise stated, all fees are quoted in United States Dollars.
0% Fees Promotion
Project commissions charged for Sellers who refer new Buyers that do not have an existing account on Freelancer and who join and create a new account, will be reduced from 10% to 0%, for all future Projects performed by the referring Seller ("Referrer") for the referred Buyer ("Referee").
This is subject to the following conditions:
- Referees must be referred using the specific promotional links on https://professionaler.com//no-commission
- For the avoidance of doubt, the reduced Project commission of 0% applies only in relation to new work performed by the Referrer who has successfully applied for this promotion for the specific Referee to whom the application relates. The new Projects must commence after the Buyer creates a new account on Freelancer and be initiated using that new account.
- Project commission fees for the freelancer only are lowered from 10% to 0% under this promotion. All other fees and charges remain unaffected including but not limited to Buyer commissions and transaction fees.
- This promotion does not apply to Contests.
- Freelancer reserves the right to review classifications of Referee as new Buyers for the purpose of this promotion, to ensure fair use of this promotion. The Referee must have worked with, and paid, the Referrer applying to use this promotion before the beginning of this promotion, for example from another platform. The Referrer s may be required to provide evidence of this prior work and payment before being eligible for the commission reduction. To be eligible for this promotion, The Referee must not have had any account on Freelancer prior to creating the new account.
- All other elements of the User Agreement continue to apply - see https://professionaler.com//about/terms.
- All other elements of the Fees and Charges component of the Additional Terms continue to apply - see https://professionaler.com//feesandcharges.
- Freelancer may require that both parties fill in and complete their profiles and/or pass identity checks before payments are released.
- Freelancer may require that the details for any Project for which the commission reduction applies are appropriately complete.
- This promotion may be withdrawn for a specific user, if significant reversals, fraud or chargebacks are observed, if Freelancer believes that there is a risk of funds being subject to reversal or chargeback, in cases of disputes between Referee and the Referrer, or for any other reason.
- Freelancer reserves the right to disallow use of this promotion in its sole and absolute discretion, with respect to fair use of this promotion, and to prevent any suspected fraud.
- Freelancer reserves the right to require submission of further information from any party applying to make use of this promotion, for investigating fraud and for risk management and related purposes.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion at any time.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel the promotion in any region if it is deemed or becomes unlawful to offer the promotion to any resident of that region.
- Freelancer reserves the right to recover the fees from any users participating in the 0% program should it discover at anytime that the users were found not to be acting in good faith
Referral Program
For a limited promotional period, Freelancer will provide site credits or reduced fees limited to certain users as a reward for referrals of new Buyer users. The promotion is based on existing users of the website ("Referrers") referring new Buyer users ("Referees") with the intention to post their first job. In some cases, the credit may be given in the form of coupon links or codes, where the Referrer in that case is the website itself.
This is subject to the following conditions:
- The Referrer must be an existing user of the Website.
- All members of the program, referrer and referees are subject to all other terms and conditions of the website, which in case of dispute, are held above this section.
- All members of the program must be over the age of 16 years.
- Referees must be referred using the specific promotional links on https://professionaler.com//give or https://professionaler.com//no-commission or via links in email or other promotional correspondence specific to this promotion.
- Users may be asked to provide verification of payment or other user information before receiving the credit.
- Any site credit that has been given in relation to this promotion may expire at any time determined by the Company.
- Referrers will receive credit when the relevant matching Referee user fully releases a minimum of $50 worth of milestone payments with respect to a new Project, or awards the prize with respect to a new Contest.
- This site credit may only be used for the purpose of establishing a milestone payment, funding a prize for a new Contest, or payment of site Project or Contest fees.
- Freelancer reserves the right to review classifications of Referees as new Buyers for the purpose of this promotion, to ensure fair use of this promotion. To be eligible for this promotion, Referees must not have had any active account on Freelancer from which a payment was made within the six (6) months immediately prior to creating the new account.
- Freelancer may require that both parties fill in and complete their profiles and/or pass identity checks before payments are released.
- This promotion may be withdrawn for a specific user or set of users, if significant reversals, fraud or chargebacks are observed, if Freelancer believes that there is a risk of funds being subject to reversal or chargeback, in cases of disputes between Referee and Referrer, or for any other reason.
- For any specific Referrer user, Freelancer may choose to cap the maximum value of site credit accrued by an individual or collection of users.
- Freelancer reserves the right to disallow use of this promotion in its sole and absolute discretion, with respect to fair use of this promotion, or to prevent any suspected fraud.
- Freelancer reserves the right to require submission of further information from any party applying to make use of this promotion, for investigating fraud and for risk management and related purposes, in particular to request evidence of bona fide work being done in relation to any Project or Contest funded with the site credit.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion at any time.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel the promotion in any region if it is deemed or becomes unlawful to offer the promotion to any resident of that region.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cap the total site credit available under the program.
- Any site credit may not be duplicated, sold, traded or transferred in any manner, including but not limited to being withdrawn for cash.
- Freelancer reserves the right to reverse credit earned if it determines that the referrers or referees are not acting as users of the site in good faith.
- Referrals should have unique payment sources in order to qualify the parent for the referral credit.
- Bonus credit is only reserved for referring users who act at all times in good faith and who signed up to the site with actual intent of using the website for its intended purposes.
- Freelancer reserves the right to remove credit or remove users from participating in the program if the company determines the users to be acting in bad faith and are abusing the program.
- The decisions of management are final. No correspondence will be entered into.
- Management, employees of Freelancer and its related companies are not eligible to participate in this program.
- Any term or condition in these terms found to be void, unenforceable or illegal may be severed and the remaining terms and conditions will continue in full force and effect.
- Freelancer reserves the right to set the bonus credits for each individual referrer and individual referral users and to release said bonus credit in any currency the company sees fit.
- Freelancer is not liable for any loss or damage whatsoever which is suffered (including but not limited to, direct or consequential loss) or for any personal injury suffered or sustained in connection with entry into the competition or acceptance of the prize.
Credit Promotions
This section related to all promotions of free site credit provided under any program, including but not limited to the Referral Program, and other site or email promotions.
From time to time, Freelancer may provide site credits (for example US$20 off your next project) limited to certain users as a promotion. In these cases, the credit may be given in the form of coupon links or codes, emails, sms or advertisements.
This is subject to the following conditions:
- All members of the program are subject to all other terms and conditions of the website, which in case of dispute, this section will prevail over.
- All members of the program must be over the age of 16 years.
- Users may be asked to provide verification of payment or other user information before receiving the credit.
- Any site credit that has been given in relation to this promotion may expire at any time determined by the Company.
- Any site credit will expire no longer than 30 days unless otherwise written on the promotion.
- This site credit may only be used for the purpose of establishing a milestone payment, funding a prize for a new Contest, or payment of site fees including but not limited to project fees, contest fees, upgrades and memberships.
- Freelancer may require that redeeming users fill in and complete their profiles and/or pass identity checks before payments are released.
- This promotion may be withdrawn for a specific user or set of users, if significant reversals, fraud or chargebacks are observed, if Freelancer believes that there is a risk of funds being subject to reversal or chargeback, in cases of disputes, or for any other reason.
- For any specific user, Freelancer may choose to cap the maximum value of site credit accrued by an individual or collection of related individuals.
- For avoidance of any doubt, no individual or collection of related individuals may accumulate more than US$5,000 of site credit.
- Freelancer reserves the right to disallow use of this promotion in its sole and absolute discretion, with respect to fair use of this promotion, or to prevent any suspected fraud.
- Freelancer reserves the right to require submission of further information from any party applying to make use of this promotion, for investigating fraud and for risk management and related purposes, in particular to request evidence of bona fide work being done in relation to any Project or Contest funded with the site credit.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion at any time.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cancel the promotion in any region if it is deemed or becomes unlawful to offer the promotion to any resident of that region.
- Freelancer reserves the right to cap the total site credit available under the program.
- For avoidance of any doubt, the total site credit available under any program is capped to US$20,000.
- Any site credit may not be duplicated, sold, traded or transferred in any manner, including but not limited to being withdrawn for cash.
- Freelancer reserves the right to remove credit or remove users from participating in the program if the company determines the users to be acting in bad faith and are abusing the program.
- The decisions of management are final. No correspondence will be entered into.
- Management, employees of Freelancer and its related companies are not eligible to participate in this program.
- Any term or condition in these terms found to be void, unenforceable or illegal may be severed and the remaining terms and conditions will continue in full force and effect.
- Freelancer reserves the right to set the bonus credits for each individual user and to release said bonus credit in any currency the company sees fit.
- Freelancer is not liable for any loss or damage whatsoever which is suffered (including but not limited to, direct or consequential loss) or for any personal injury suffered or sustained in connection with entry into the competition or acceptance of the prize.
7. Taxes
You are responsible for paying any taxes, including any goods and services or value added taxes, which may be applicable depending on the jurisdiction of the services provided.
Depending on your residency or location, you may be subject to certain ad valorem or other taxes (for example, GST in Australia), on certain fees that we charge. These taxes will be added to fees billed to you, if applicable.
You acknowledge that you must comply with your obligations under income tax provisions in your jurisdiction.
Certain Sellers who are either registered or required to be registered for GST may be required to charge GST to Australian Consumers on certain projects. You will be notified and asked to confirm on award/accept of such projects the appropriate GST treatment.
For Indian Seller on Freelancer only: As of 1st of October 2018 Indian GST laws mandate a collection of 1% GST by Professionaler.com as tax on the net value of taxable supplies made by the Seller through the web portal of Freelancer. Accordingly, Freelancer shall collect a 1% tax from the net value of the taxable projects or listings made by the Buyer and will deposit the same to the Indian government exchequer in accordance with applicable GST laws. In cases where (i) the Seller is outside India and (ii) GST is payable by the Buyer under reverse charge basis, Freelancer is not required to collect this tax.
8. Payment Administration Agent
You acknowledge and agree that we may in our sole discretion, from time to time, appoint our related bodies corporate, affiliates, or any other third party to act as our agent to accept or make payments (including merchant facilities) from or to Users on our behalf.
Such affiliates may include, without limitation, Freelancer Technology Pty Ltd, Freelancer India Pty Ltd Australia, Warrior Forum Pty Ltd, Warrior Technology Pty Ltd, Payments Pty Ltd, Payments International Pty Ltd, Payments Australia Pty Ltd, Payments IP Pty Ltd, Freelancer Networks (Canada) Inc., Freelancer Outsourcing Inc, Professionaler.com Pte Limited, Freelancer International GmbH, Freemarket (Switzerland) GmbH, Freelancer Online India Private Limited, Professionaler.com Philippines, Inc., Freelancer Outsourcing UK Limited and Freelancer (Shanghai) Information Technology Co., Ltd.
If your payment is made through a Worldpay Group gateway or an Adyen Group gateway in GBP, your merchant of record will be Freelancer Outsourcing UK Limited as Payment Administration Agent under this agreement.
If your payment is made through an NMI gateway, your merchant of record will be EC Services Corporation as Payment Administration Agent under this agreement.
Such a third party will have the same rights, powers and privileges that we have under this User Agreement and will be entitled to exercise or enforce their rights, powers and privileges as our agent or in their own name. In no event shall we be liable to any User for any loss, damage or liability resulting from the Payment Administration Agent's negligence and/or acts beyond the authority given by Freelancer.
9. Promotion
We may display your company or business name, logo, images or other media as part of the Freelancer Services and/or other marketing materials relating to the Website, except where you have explicitly requested that we do not do this and we have agreed to such a request in writing.
You acknowledge that we may use the public description of your Projects and the content of your profile information on the Website for marketing and other related purposes.
10. Content
We do not claim ownership to your User Content; however, you grant us a non-exclusive, sublicensable, irrevocable and royalty-free worldwide license under all copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, privacy and publicity rights and other intellectual property rights to use, reproduce, transmit, print, publish, publicly display, exhibit, distribute, redistribute, copy, comment on, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works based upon, publicly perform, make available and otherwise exploit such User Content, in whole or in part, in all media formats now known or hereafter devised and on third-party sites and platforms in any number of copies and without limit as to time, manner of frequency of use, without further notice to you, and without the requirement of permission from or payment to you or any other person or entity.
You acknowledge and agree that: (1) we act only as a forum for the online distribution and publication of User content. We make no warranty that User content is made available on the Website. We have the right (but not the obligation) to take any action deemed appropriate by us with respect to your User content; (2) we have no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any content, whether or not the content was actually made available on the Website; and (3) any and all content submitted to the Website is subject to our approval. We may reject, approve or modify your User content at our sole discretion.
You represent and warrant that your content:
- You will not infringe upon or misappropriate any copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property right or proprietary right or right of publicity or privacy of any person;
- will not violate any law or regulation;
- will not be defamatory or trade libellous;
- will not be obscene or contain child pornography;
- will not contain the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons
- will not contain material linked to terrorist activities
- will not include incomplete, false or inaccurate information about User or any other individual; and
- will not contain any viruses or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information.
You acknowledge and agree that we may transfer your personal information to a related body corporate and your information may be transferred outside of Australia or the EEC-area. If you wish to withdraw your consent, you acknowledge and agree that we may be unable to provide you with access to the Website and Freelancer Services and may close your Account.
Information on the Website may contain general information about legal, financial, health and other matters. The information is not advice, and should not be treated as such. You must not rely on the information on the Website as an alternative to professional advice. If you have specific questions about any matter you should consult your professional adviser.
We provide unmonitored access to third party content, including User feedback and articles with original content and opinions (or links to such third party content). We only act as a portal and have no liability based on, or related to, third party content on the Website, whether arising under the laws of copyright or other intellectual property, defamation, libel, privacy, obscenity, or any other legal discipline.
The Website may contain links to other third party websites. We do not control the websites to which we link from the Website. We do not endorse the content, products, services, practices, policies or performance of the websites we link to from the Website. Use of third party content, links to third party content and/or websites is at your risk.
In relation to deletion or hiding of any information or content, using the Website to delete, hide or otherwise dispose of information does not imply permanent deletion of content or information. Information may be retained for a period of time to fulfil record keeping, regulatory, compliance, statistical, law enforcement and other obligations.