CiteLadder asked Claude Sonnet 5.5 20 buyer questions about freelance marketplaces, three times each, in three conditions: from memory, with web search available, and told to search first. Upwork, Fiverr and Toptal were named most often in every condition. When Claude was told to search, its top five brands did not change, but its answers got shorter and named fewer brands. This page reports what Claude said through the Anthropic API. It is not a ranking of which platform is best, and the Claude apps can answer differently.
What was asked
The 20 prompts covered five kinds of buyer intent: best overall, a specific buyer or use case, budget or free options, feature-led questions, and comparison shortlists. Each prompt ran three times per condition, giving 60 answers per condition. The requests gave no current date.
Some of the prompts, quoted exactly:
- "What's the best freelance marketplace for hiring skilled developers?"
- "Which freelance marketplaces charge the lowest fees to freelancers?"
- "Which marketplaces pre-screen freelancers with skills tests before listing them?"
Others asked about specific roles, such as YouTube video editors, logo designers through contests, translators for a multilingual website, and white-label freelancers for agency overflow. Another model listed the brands named in each answer, and code counted the results.
What Claude named from memory
With no tools, Claude named 145 distinct brands across 60 answers, about 10.5 per answer. The top three brands took 22% of all mentions, so the lists were long and varied.
- Upwork appeared in 88% of answers. It was named first 28 times and appeared in every run for 15 of the 20 prompts.
- Fiverr appeared in 75% of answers but was never named first.
- Toptal appeared in 68% of answers and was named first 15 times, mostly on questions about vetted developers and experts.
- Contra appeared in 55% and Freelancer.com in 53%.
Further down, Claude often added design-focused names: 99designs at 38%, Dribbble at 37% and Behance at 27%. PeoplePerHour appeared in 33% and Braintrust in 23%.
Run agreement was 54%. Asked the same question three times, Claude kept about half of its brand list and changed the rest.
How often Claude searched when it could
When web search was available but not required, Claude used it in 8 of 60 answers, with 20 searches in total. Most answers still came from memory.
The results looked close to the no-tools condition. Upwork appeared in 90% of answers, Fiverr in 78% and Toptal in 68%. Lists were slightly longer, at 11.9 brands per answer and 183 distinct brands overall. Gun.io entered the top ten at 25%.
What changed when Claude was told to search
When the system prompt told Claude to search before answering, it searched in all 60 answers and ran 274 searches.
The top five did not change. Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, Contra and Freelancer.com stayed in the top five, no brand left it and no brand entered it. Upwork stayed the leader. Freelancer.com moved ahead of Contra in the order.
The answers got narrower. Claude named 91 distinct brands, about 5.9 per answer. Every top brand appeared in a smaller share of answers: Upwork in 75%, Fiverr in 62%, Toptal in 57%, Freelancer.com in 33% and Contra in 27%. The top three took 33% of all mentions, a larger slice of shorter lists. Upwork also moved closer to the top of each answer, with an average position of 2.1.
The lower half of the top ten changed. Guru appeared in 25% of answers, and Arc.dev and LinkedIn each appeared in 15%. 99designs, Dribbble, Behance and Braintrust were no longer in the top ten. Run agreement dropped to 49%.
What Claude searched for
Claude's queries were mostly short, list-style searches. Some repeated the buyer's question. Others named brands directly to check fees or compare options. Examples, quoted exactly:
- "best freelance websites for beginners 2025"
- "freelance marketplace fees comparison 2025 Upwork Fiverr Freelancer freelancer service fee"
- "Contra zero commission freelancers; PeoplePerHour Toptal Guru freelancer fees"
35% of queries included a year, and every year that appeared was 2025 (in 99 queries). The requests gave no date, so Claude added that year on its own. 33.9% of queries contained the word "best". Claude often ran a query with the year and then repeated it without the year, as in "best marketplaces to hire freelance translators website localization 2025" followed by the same query without the year.
Which sites the searches returned
Across the 60 searched answers, these hosts appeared most often in the search results:
- upwork.com, in 57% of searched answers
- en.wikipedia.org, in 52%
- fastlancer.org, in 48%
- jobbers.io, in 45%
- colorlib.com, in 43%
- useme.com and gigradar.io, each in 35%
- bestjobsearchapps.com, in 33%
- lemon.io, in 32%
- medium.com, in 30%
Only one marketplace's own site, upwork.com, appeared near the top. Most of the other hosts are list articles, comparison guides and smaller platforms that publish content about the category. None of the answers carried inline citations, so these are the pages Claude read, not sources it showed to the reader.
What a brand in this category can take from this
Claude's view of this category is stable at the top. Upwork, Fiverr and Toptal led from memory and kept their places after search. A newer or smaller platform is unlikely to move that top group quickly.
The lower positions are where things changed. When Claude searched, it dropped some brands it named from memory and added others, such as Guru and Arc.dev. Those slots depend on what the search results say.
- Make sure third-party comparison and "best of" pages mention your platform, with clear fees and use cases. Those are the pages Claude's searches returned most.
- Publish plain fee and vetting details. Many queries asked about commissions, fees and screening.
- Keep content current for the year Claude adds to its queries. In this study that was 2025.
- Own a specific use case. Toptal was named first often on vetted-talent questions, and design brands showed up on design prompts.
CiteLadder can track how often your brand is named for your own prompts, across runs and conditions.
Brand shares in each condition
Share of the 60 answers (20 prompts, three runs) that named each brand. "Prompts named in every run" counts the prompts where the brand appeared in all three runs from memory.
| Brand | From memory | Prompts named in every run | Told to search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upwork | 88.3% | 15 | 75% |
| Fiverr | 75% | 12 | 61.7% |
| Toptal | 68.3% | 11 | 56.7% |
| Contra | 55% | 8 | 26.7% |
| Freelancer.com | 53.3% | 9 | 33.3% |
| 99designs | 38.3% | 6 | not in top 15 |
| Dribbble | 36.7% | 5 | not in top 15 |
| PeoplePerHour | 33.3% | 5 | 20% |
| Behance | 26.7% | 2 | not in top 15 |
| Braintrust | 23.3% | 2 | not in top 15 |
| Guru | not in top 15 | 25% | |
| Arc.dev | not in top 15 | 15% | |
| not in top 15 | 15% | ||
| Gun.io | not in top 15 | 11.7% |
Sites Claude's searches returned
When told to search. Share of answers whose searches returned at least one page from the site.
| Site | Answers | Share of searched answers |
|---|---|---|
| upwork.com | 34 | 56.7% |
| en.wikipedia.org | 31 | 51.7% |
| fastlancer.org | 29 | 48.3% |
| jobbers.io | 27 | 45% |
| colorlib.com | 26 | 43.3% |
| useme.com | 21 | 35% |
| gigradar.io | 21 | 35% |
| bestjobsearchapps.com | 20 | 33.3% |
| lemon.io | 19 | 31.7% |
| medium.com | 18 | 30% |
The 20 prompts
- What's the best freelance marketplace for hiring skilled developers? (best overall)
- Which freelance platforms are most trusted by clients right now? (best overall)
- Top websites for finding freelance work as a beginner? (best overall)
- Best overall site to hire freelancers for small projects? (best overall)
- Where should a startup hire vetted freelance software engineers quickly? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best freelance platform for copywriters looking for long-term clients? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which marketplace is best for hiring a freelance video editor for YouTube? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Where can enterprises find top-tier freelance consultants and finance experts? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best freelance sites for students wanting part-time remote gigs? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which platform is best for hiring a freelance logo designer through contests? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Good marketplaces for finding freelance translators for a multilingual website? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Where do agencies find reliable white-label freelancers for client overflow? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which freelance marketplaces charge the lowest fees to freelancers? (budget or free)
- Cheapest place to hire a virtual assistant online? (budget or free)
- Are there free freelance job boards that don't take a commission? (budget or free)
- Which freelance platforms offer escrow payment protection for both sides? (feature-led)
- Freelance sites with built-in time tracking and hourly billing? (feature-led)
- Which marketplaces pre-screen freelancers with skills tests before listing them? (feature-led)
- Compare the top freelance platforms for fees, quality and payment speed. (comparison shortlist)
- Give me a shortlist of freelance marketplaces and their pros and cons. (comparison shortlist)
Frequently asked questions
Which freelance marketplace did Claude name most often
Upwork. It appeared in 88% of answers from memory, 90% when search was available and 75% when Claude was told to search. This shows what Claude said in this study, not which platform is best.
Did searching change which brands Claude recommended
Not at the top. The same five brands made the top five from memory and when told to search, and Upwork led both times. Searching made answers shorter, about 5.9 brands per answer from 10.5, and changed the lower half of the top ten.
How often did Claude search when it was allowed but not told to
Rarely. It searched in 8 of 60 answers, with 20 searches in total. Most answers came from memory.
Will the Claude app give the same answers
Not necessarily. These results come from Claude Sonnet 5.5 through the Anthropic API at low effort, with no current date in the request. The Claude apps can use different settings and give different answers.
Track how often Claude recommends you
CiteLadder tracks whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews mention your brand in answers to your buyers' questions, along with position, sentiment and the competitors named beside you. Every result is tied to the recorded answer, so you can check what was actually said.
Visibility over time
| Series | 8 Sep | 15 Sep | 22 Sep | 29 Sep | 6 Oct | 13 Oct | 20 Oct | 27 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Analytics | 27.9% | 29.6% | 30.2% | 31.8% | 32.5% | 33.1% | 34.2% | 38.4% |
| Northwind | 46.0% | 45.2% | 45.8% | 44.6% | 44.1% | 43.5% | 42.9% | 41.7% |
| Lumen | 30.4% | 31.0% | 29.8% | 30.6% | 29.9% | 29.2% | 28.8% | 27.5% |
412 answers to 120 prompts across 4 engines, week of 27 Oct – 2 Nov 2026
Brands
| Brand | Visibility | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Northwind | 41.7% | down 1.2 pts |
| Acme Analytics | 38.4% | up 4.2 pts |
| Lumen | 27.5% | down 1.3 pts |
| Fathom Labs | 16.9% | down 0.2 pts |
Acme Analytics by engine