TL;DR: The experience level on an Upwork job post (Entry Level, Intermediate or Expert) is a box the client ticks in a few seconds when posting, and it describes the rate they hope to pay far more than the skill the work needs. Nobody checks it, and there is no matching level on your profile. Read it as a wish, then check it against the facts: the budget, the client's spend history, and the average rate they have paid before. A level and a budget that agree tell you something. A level and a budget that disagree tell you more. For new freelancers, Entry Level is usually the worst place to start. For established ones, filtering to Expert only hides some of the best clients on the platform.
Every Upwork job post carries a small label near the budget: Entry Level, Intermediate or Expert. Freelancers read a lot into it. Beginners assume Expert posts are closed to them. Experienced people skip Intermediate on principle. Both are reacting to a field that took the client less time to fill in than the job title, and neither is reading what it is actually for.
What the experience level field is
When a client posts a job, Upwork asks them to choose one of three experience levels. The wording changes with each redesign of the posting flow, but the classic version of the captions is the honest one, because it says out loud what the field is for:
- Entry Level: "I am looking for freelancers with the lowest rates."
- Intermediate: "I am looking for a mix of experience and value."
- Expert: "I am willing to pay higher rates for the most experienced freelancers."
Newer versions describe the levels in terms of how much experience the client wants, but the mechanics have not changed: the level is a client's declaration of what they expect to pay. Three things follow.
Nothing verifies it. Upwork does not check that an Expert job has an expert budget, or that an Entry Level job is simple. The client picks, and the label appears.
There is no matching level on your side. Your profile has a rate, a Job Success Score, badges and history, but no experience level field, and Upwork does not block you from applying to any post. The field describes the job, not the freelancer.
It travels with the budget. Upwork's posting flow has at times shown clients typical rate ranges for the level they picked, which is why the level and the budget usually rhyme. When they do not, that gap is the most useful thing on the page.
What each level tends to mean in practice
The captions tell you what the client was told. Watching the feed for a while tells you what clients actually do with the choice.
| Level | What the client is saying | What it usually looks like | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Level | Lowest rate wins | Small, loosely defined tasks, often from first-time clients | The heaviest competition on the platform and the thinnest budgets |
| Intermediate | Experience and value in balance | The bulk of real work: defined scope, a workable budget, a client who has hired before | Crowded, because most freelancers live here too |
| Expert | Paying up for the best | Specialised or high-stakes work, larger budgets, clients with real spend history | Draws the strongest applicants, plus clients who chose the word without the budget behind it |
Entry Level
Entry Level jobs are not necessarily easy. They are jobs where the client has decided that price matters most, and many are underfunded versions of real work posted by people who do not yet know what it costs. The clients are often new themselves, with no hire history, which is the profile that most often ends up among the jobs that never hire anyone.
Intermediate
Intermediate is the default. It is where a client lands without a strong opinion, and where most funded, ordinary, well-scoped work lives. Because it is the default for clients, it is also the default for freelancers, so proposal counts climb quickly. That is a reason to be fast and specific, not a reason to avoid the level.
Expert
Expert should mean a budget to match, and often it does. But the word is free to pick, and plenty of clients choose it because they want the best possible outcome, then type a budget that would not cover a day of an expert's time. Those posts still collect proposals, because the label attracts people who are proud of their work, and they are among the easiest ways to waste Connects on the platform.
Why the label is unreliable on its own
The field is filled in by the one person in the transaction with the least information about market rates. A first-time client has no idea whether their task is Intermediate or Expert, or what either costs. They pick the word that describes how they feel about the project and type a budget that describes how much they would like to spend. Neither has met the other.
That is why the level should never be read alone. Read it against three facts that are harder to fake:
- The budget or hourly range on the post. A fixed price or rate range is still a guess, but it is a guess in currency, and the budget field is easier to read once you know how clients fill it in.
- The client's spend history. Total spend, number of hires and hire rate show what this client has actually done, which outranks anything they say. How to spot good Upwork clients walks through those fields.
- The average hourly rate the client has paid. This is the most honest number on the page. A client whose past freelancers averaged a low rate is not going to pay an expert rate because they ticked Expert this time.
Once you read the level next to those, a few patterns show up repeatedly.
Expert level, tiny budget. The client wants expert work at entry prices. The mismatch is the whole story. Skip it, or, if the client's spend history is strong and the budget looks like a placeholder, treat it as a scoping conversation rather than a bid at their number.
Entry Level, serious budget, real spend history. This is the underrated combination. An experienced client sometimes chooses Entry Level because the task is simple for someone who knows it, not because they want the cheapest person. The proposals on these posts are dominated by low bids, so a clear, competent, fairly priced one stands out more than it would on an Expert post.
Intermediate everything. Level, budget and history all agree. This is a normal job. Speed and fit decide it, which is the argument in being first to apply on Upwork.
Does the level change the Connects cost?
Upwork sets the number of Connects a proposal costs per job, and the number moves with how the platform rates the job's value and demand. It does not publish the formula, so treat any claim that a given level costs a given number of Connects with suspicion. In practice, larger budgets tend to cost more Connects to bid on, and since the level travels with the budget, Expert posts often cost more to apply to than Entry Level ones. You see the exact cost before you submit.
The practical reading is the same as for the level itself: the Connects price is Upwork's opinion of the job, not proof of it. An expensive Expert post from a client with no hires and no verified payment method is still a bad bet. Upwork Connects explained covers what that price actually buys you.
Which levels should you bid on?
This is the question most people are really asking, and the answer depends on where you are, not on what the label says.
If you are new to Upwork
The intuitive plan is to start on Entry Level jobs and work up. It is usually the wrong plan. Entry Level is where the lowest bidders in the world compete for the smallest budgets from the least experienced clients. Winning there teaches you to be cheap, and the reviews you collect come from clients who were shopping on price.
A better first target is a small, tightly scoped Intermediate job from a payment-verified client who has hired before. The competition is real, but the budget is more likely to be honest and the review means something. How to get your first job on Upwork lays out that approach, and the Rising Talent badge exists to give new profiles a lift on exactly those posts.
The other trap for new freelancers is the Expert job that looks doable. If the client has a strong spend history and genuinely wants expert work, your proposal is up against people with years of reviews in that niche. Save the Connects.
If you are established
Established freelancers make the opposite mistake: filtering to Expert only, on the grounds that anything less is beneath their rate. That hides a large share of good work. Many clients with excellent budgets and long hire histories post at Intermediate out of habit, and those posts are often less competitive at the top end than Expert posts, which draw every Top Rated freelancer in the category.
The better filter is your rate against the client's evidence. If the budget and the client's average rate paid can support your number, the level is irrelevant. If they cannot, an Expert label does not help. How to find high-paying jobs on Upwork goes deeper on reading those signals, and setting your hourly rate covers deciding the number the evidence has to clear.
Using the search filter well
Upwork search lets you filter jobs by experience level, and it is worth using as a noise reducer rather than a quality screen. If your floor is well above what Entry Level clients in your category pay, excluding Entry Level cuts feed clutter at no cost. Keep both Intermediate and Expert on unless you have a specific reason not to. The advanced search filters guide covers the rest of the native facets, including the ones that matter more than this one.
Writing the proposal when the level does not match you
Sometimes the right job carries the wrong label. Two adjustments handle it.
When the job is labelled above you. Do not pretend. Clients who picked Expert are alert to inflated claims, and a vague proposal reads as one. Be specific about the closest thing you have actually done, and offer structure instead of credentials: a small funded first milestone that lets them see the work before committing the whole budget. That is a far better offer than a free test project.
When the job is labelled below you. Do not open with your resume. A client who ticked Intermediate said they want a mix of experience and value, and a proposal that leads with fifteen years of credentials reads as expensive before they reach your price. Lead with the outcome and the plan, price the scope, and let the experience show in how precisely you describe the work. How to write an Upwork proposal that gets replies covers the structure.
In both cases, the level is a hint about how the client is thinking. Address the thinking, not the label.
The bottom line
The experience level on an Upwork job is a client's rate expectation, chosen quickly, checked by nobody, and sitting next to a budget chosen the same way. Read it against the facts around it: the budget, the client's spend and hire history, and the rate they have paid other people. Where those agree with the label, you have a normal job. Where they disagree, you have either a job to skip or an opportunity most of the feed will misread.
Reading all of that on every post, quickly enough to still be early, is the hard part, and it is the gap Upwork Scout was built for. It scans Upwork continuously, applies hard floors on client spend, hire history, payment verification, budget and proposal count, lets you choose the experience levels you want to see, and scores what survives against your profile before emailing you the jobs worth a Connect. The free tier lets you set your filters and start receiving matched jobs today.