Quick answer: Studies conducted by Ramp Economics Lab showed the amount of business spending on freelance websites between 2021 and 2025. As a result, it was found that the percentage of the budget spent on freelance sites fell from 0.66% to 0.14%. At the same time, between the same years, the number of expenses for AI services rose from almost 0% to almost 3%. At least 50% of companies employing freelancers in 2022 no longer use them by 2025. However, this trend is not equally relevant to all types of freelance jobs, and what is most important is the knowledge of where the budget is being spent.

If you feel that freelance jobs have become harder to find, then this is true, especially since the research has been made. But this is not a poll which shows the plans of companies but a real observation of their actions in four years.

What the Ramp Data Actually Shows

According to Ryan Stevens, director of applied science at Ramp, the analysis was made possible by studying expenditure trends at a company level over two categories: labor marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr, and AI model providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Stevens tracked the same set of companies during Q4 2021-Q3 2025.

As shown in the data provided below, the proportion of freelance marketplace spend to the total company spend decreased from 0.66% to 0.14%. However, spend on AI providers, starting with almost zero, rose up to 3% of the total spend. Companies with the largest spend on freelancers were among those that moved fastest towards AI, not the slowest.

It is worth mentioning the limitation of this data. This information comes from the customer base of Ramp, consisting of primarily startups and mid-market companies using corporate cards frequently. Thus, it is valuable but not comprehensive.

It's Not All Freelance Work. It's Commodity Freelance Work

Here's where the story gets more specific, and more useful if you're trying to figure out what this means for you.

Fiverr's own Q2 2026 earnings results back this up from a different angle. The company's peer-to-peer marketplace revenue, the transactional, quick-turnaround work that built Fiverr's original business, fell much harder than its higher-touch services revenue, which actually kept growing. Fiverr's leadership pointed directly at AI absorbing the low-value, high-volume tasks that used to fill freelancers' order queues.

Put the two data sets side by side and a pattern emerges. Companies aren't necessarily cutting freelance spend across the board. They're cutting the freelance work that AI tools can now do just as well, basic content, simple design tweaks, routine data entry, and redirecting that budget toward AI subscriptions instead. Complex, judgment-heavy freelance work is a different story.

Where the Budget Is Still Growing

Even as total freelancer marketplace spending has declined, the demand for AI-savvy freelancers has not. According to reports from Upwork, there has been significant year over year growth in demand for freelancers that have AI capabilities, as a result of firms needing people who can implement AI processes, develop custom machine learning models, and automate operations in their business.

It is a critical difference. The freelancers that have seen reductions in income are those that are in competition on the basis of speed and cost with regard to commoditized services. The freelancers that continue to earn steadily or even increase income are the ones that cannot be replaced with a subscription-based AI model.

What This Means If You're a Freelancer

The uncomfortable part of this data is real, and it's worth sitting with instead of brushing past. If your freelance business is built around fast turnaround on standardized, low-complexity tasks, that segment of the market is genuinely shrinking, and it's shrinking because of forces bigger than any one platform or client relationship.

The more useful question is what to do next. A few things worth considering. Look honestly at whether your current services are the kind AI tools now do competently on their own. If they are, that's not a reason to panic, but it is a signal to evolve what you offer. Consider positioning around outcomes and judgment rather than raw output, since that's the part of freelance work that's proving durable. And build a track record that's easy for a client to verify, since trust is becoming a bigger differentiator as the market gets noisier with AI-generated work at every price point.

If you're tired of competing purely on speed and price in a market that's shrinking underneath you, BeGig focuses on connecting vetted freelancers who do complex, judgment-heavy work with companies that value that over commodity output. It's built for the segment of freelance work this data shows is actually holding up, not the segment that's disappearing. Browse how BeGig vets talent to see if it's a better fit for where your skills already are.

What This Means If You're a Company Rethinking Freelance Budget

From the point of view of being a recruiter, the data provided should be taken as a guide in planning rather than just as another statistic to put in the news. The tendency to reduce expenses on freelancers and replace the work of such specialists with AI solutions is understandable since it concerns repeatable and routine tasks. At the same time, the data indicates that businesses continue to use freelancers and get more selective regarding what kinds of freelance work are to be paid for.

In my opinion, the selectiveness of businesses should be used deliberately rather than unintentionally. In order to cut off a freelancer and substitute his work with an AI solution, it should be questioned first if there is anything that makes this task to require any judgment or any accountability from the worker.

FAQ

Is AI replacing freelancers? 

From what we see in the data above, AI does not seem to replace all types of freelancers but instead, it replaces the standardized, repetitive and less-complex freelancing gigs. From Ramp's study, there has been a sharp decline in the spending in freelance marketplaces in 2021. However, there has been an increase in AI tools' spending and growth in demand for freelancers with AI skills.

Which skills cannot be replaced by AI? 

There is no particular skill that cannot be replaced by AI but it is true that some work which involves the exercise of judgement, business knowledge and being able to correct AI errors would be better performed by freelancers than AI tools.

Should I stop hiring freelancers and rely solely on AI? 

Depends on what kind of work you want to do. For standardized and repeatable works, the AI tools could be more efficient but for the complex works requiring judgement, business skills and accountability, hiring freelancers is still more advantageous.

Is it a temporary change or a permanent one?

Since the capability of AI tools keeps on improving, it is very hard to predict if this change is temporary or not but at least for now, we have seen an ongoing multi-year trend.