Fiverr alternatives

Most people looking for an alternative to a gig catalogue are not unhappy with it. They have outgrown it. The work started as one defined thing and became a series of undefined ones, or the same person is now doing something every week, or the job needs a conversation before anyone can say what it is.

That is a shape problem rather than a quality problem.

What a gig catalogue is genuinely good at

A productised gig is a defined deliverable at a stated price. You do not write a brief, negotiate a scope or draft a contract; the package is the brief, and buying it is the agreement. For a logo, a subtitle pass, a short edit, a translation, a one-off cleanup — work you can describe in a sentence and would rather not spend an hour arranging — that is a better product than anything else on this page, ours included.

It also gives the shortest path from decision to delivery available anywhere. If your job fits in a package, buy the package.

When the shape stops fitting

The catalogue stops being the right tool at five identifiable moments:

The scope stops being describable in advance. Someone has to look at the problem before anyone can price it.

You want the same person every time. Continuity is a relationship, and a catalogue sells transactions.

The work becomes ongoing. A retainer, a few days a month, a standing arrangement.

You need to talk before you buy. A call, a question, a look at your existing setup.

You are choosing a person rather than an output. Their judgement is the thing you want.

Any one of those is a reason to change tools. All of them at once means you are hiring someone, not buying something.

The alternatives, by what the work has become

A marketplace with contracts and hourly work. Keeps the protections and the rails, and adds scope negotiation. Suits ongoing work where you still want money held until you accept it.

A directory, paid or free. You find the person and arrange everything else on your own terms. Suits a retainer or a repeat relationship, where the arranging happens once and the relationship lasts.

An agency or studio. Suits a bigger defined deliverable needing several skills — the case where the work outgrew a package by getting larger rather than vaguer.

A part-time contractor, hired directly. If it has become a standing weekly commitment, the description is a contractor, and contracting them as one is cheaper and clearer for both sides than routing it through anything.

The same person, off the catalogue. Frequently the correct answer and one nobody publishes. If the gig went well, ask them what they would rather do. Read the platform’s own terms on taking a relationship off it before you do.

What a buyer pays, here and on each of those

Fiverr. “The service fee covers Fiverr’s administrative costs. It’s 5.5% of your purchase amount, plus $3.50 for orders under $200.” (Fiverr’s help centre on paying for orders, read 2026-08-14.) Read the sentence precisely: the $3.50 is an addition on orders under $200 and not a floor, so a $50 order costs $50 plus $2.75 plus $3.50, and a $500 order costs $500 plus $27.50. One caveat matters if you go to check this and find nothing added at checkout — Fiverr is folding the fee into displayed prices region by region: “we have updated how prices are displayed in select regions so that the amount you see is the amount you pay” (Fiverr’s help centre on price upfront, read 2026-08-14). Same money, shown in a different place. On the other side, Fiverr tells the seller “you earn 80% of the purchase amount” (Fiverr’s help centre on the earnings page, read 2026-08-14) — which reaches you as the listed price. All three of those come from Fiverr’s help centre because `fiverr.com`’s terms of service and payment terms both returned HTTP 403 to this session.

A marketplace with contracts and hourly work. Freelancer.com charges the employer “a fee of 3% or $3.00 USD (whichever is greater)” at award and “a fee of 3%” on each hourly payment, and the freelancer “10% or $5.00 USD, whichever is greater” (Freelancer.com’s fees and charges page, read 2026-08-14). PeoplePerHour charges the buyer “£0.6 + 10%” on card, PayPal and most wallets, and charges the freelancer by lifetime billing per buyer: 20% below £250/$350/€300, 7.5% up to £5,000/$7,000/€6,000, 3.5% above (PeoplePerHour’s terms, §8, read 2026-08-14).

A directory. OnlineJobs.ph charges $69 a month for Pro and $99 a month for Premium, each with a capped allowance of worker contacts, and says “Hire direct. No salary markups or ongoing fees.” (onlinejobs.ph/pricing, read 2026-08-14).

An agency or studio. No agency was read for this comparison and none is quoted here.

One more thing, about taking the same person off the catalogue. Fiverr’s own terms are behind that 403, so this page does not tell you what its rule is — read it in your own account before you ask. It is worth reading, because a rule of that kind can carry a number: Upwork’s terms “require you to keep all work and payments on Upwork for the first two years”, and its fee for converting a relationship inside that window is “13.5% of a freelancer’s estimated annual earnings”, which its own worked example puts at $8,424 for a freelancer charging $30 an hour (Upwork’s Conversion Fee article, read 2026-08-14).

Where Mainstay fits

Mainstay sells no packages and no gigs. There is nothing to buy on the site except contact details: $49 a month for 100 reveals (pricing), and a reveal is one person’s email address, phone number and portfolio link. What you agree with them afterwards — scope, price, schedule, contract — is yours to arrange, and none of it passes through us.

What the register adds is a checked record rather than a catalogue listing. Every record was read against the standard before publication and prints which of its seven numbered clauses it cleared and when; identity is verified against a government-issued document, and the record prints which of the two checks read it: the automatic one, whose images sit with Stripe and never reach us, or a person here; and every Mainstayer answers a check every week or drops out of every list (how we verify).

That is useful when you are choosing a person to work with for a while. It is not useful when you want a thing delivered by Thursday.

When Mainstay is the wrong choice

Your job fits in a package. One small, well-defined deliverable is what a gig catalogue is for. Buying a month of this to arrange it yourself is more work and more money.

You want to hire one person for two hours and never again. $49 for a single introduction is bad value.

You want to buy and be finished within the hour. There is no checkout for work here, no delivery date and no defined package. You will be writing an email and waiting for a reply.

You want the money held until you accept the delivery. Nothing is held here. On a small one-off job that protection is worth more to you than any published standard.