OpenAI and Upwork Find AI Freelance Projects Carry Larger Budgets

OpenAI and Upwork found that freelance projects involving AI covered a broader mix of tasks, carried larger fixed price budgets and required more hours than other projects, as detailed in a company research post. The research compared Upwork job postings with activities performed through ChatGPT. It is part of OpenAI's Work at the Frontier series.

Of 63 matched work categories, 43 showed a pattern in which activities that were relatively common in ChatGPT lost share among Upwork postings, while activities less common in ChatGPT gained share. The other 20 categories showed the reverse, and OpenAI wrote that the findings do not point to a simple substitution story. Writing represented a larger portion of ChatGPT use, while video and animation represented larger shares of freelance requests.

The mix of tasks in AI related postings became 45% more diverse between early 2023 and late 2025, rising from the equivalent of about 15 equally common tasks to about 21. Clients requested AI across chatbot development, video production, marketing automation and application integration, often combining capabilities that had rarely appeared together in earlier jobs.

Posted hourly rates were similar for AI related and other work. AI related projects had larger fixed price budgets and involved more hours of work.