freelance.com
What Freelance.com is (and what it’s not)
Freelance.com is not the same thing as big open marketplaces where anyone posts a job and thousands of people bid. It’s positioned more like a managed “external workforce” services provider for companies that hire independent consultants and specialized SMEs at scale. On its English site, the company describes itself as a global services provider for external talent, covering people, projects, and billing end-to-end.
That distinction matters because the problems are different. A marketplace mainly solves discovery and payment. An external workforce provider has to solve governance: how you source specialists fast, keep contractors compliant, track delivery across multiple projects, and pay reliably across different engagement models.
The core model: “Talent as a Service” for enterprises
Freelance.com frames its offer as “Talent as a Service” (TAAS), connecting large organizations with external talent and providing the process around it. On the investor site, it describes itself as a French market leader for intermediation services between companies and freelancers/SMEs, and emphasizes structured, reliable collaboration.
In practice, this type of model usually sits between procurement, HR, and delivery teams:
- Procurement wants supplier control, predictable invoicing, and auditability.
- HR wants clear worker classification boundaries and onboarding standards.
- Delivery teams want someone to find the right expert quickly and keep projects moving.
Freelance.com’s public descriptions map to that: people management, project management, and payment management.
What Freelance.com says it delivers
Talent acquisition and fast sourcing
A big promise on the corporate site is turnaround speed: it highlights a sourcing model that can respond within 48 hours and delegates the search to specialists so client teams save time.
This is typically most valuable when hiring managers don’t want to run a full sourcing process for every niche need (cloud security, ERP transformation, data governance, transition management, and so on). The value is not just “finding people,” but curating profiles that match constraints like start date, on-site rules, language, industry clearance, or rate ceilings.
Umbrella employment / “portage” services
The investor site lists “umbrella company arrangements” as a service line, which is especially relevant in France where “portage salarial” is a common framework that can sit between freelancer-style work and employment.
If you’re not familiar with the concept: the worker can operate with the flexibility of independent consulting while being employed by a portage company that handles payroll and certain administrative obligations. For enterprises, this can simplify contracting, invoicing, and risk controls—though it needs careful setup so the engagement is compliant and the operational responsibilities are clear.
Compliance management
Freelance.com also explicitly calls out compliance as a service, including procuring and verifying documentation for client service providers.
That may sound boring, but it’s often the part that breaks at scale. Enterprises deal with insurance certificates, right-to-work documents, safety training evidence, vendor due diligence, and customer-specific compliance rules. When this is handled inconsistently, payments get delayed and projects stall. A provider that operationalizes compliance can reduce friction—assuming they actually integrate with the client’s procurement and finance workflows.
Scale and footprint (based on public reporting)
Freelance.com presents itself as operating across six countries: UK, France, Germany, Morocco, Switzerland, and Belgium. It also publishes top-line “key figures” such as 2024 turnover and the size of its consultant community on its corporate site.
A more detailed snapshot appears in a June 2025 press release: it mentions a community of 150,000+ qualified consultants and experts, 19,000+ services delivered in 2024, around 380 employees, and pro forma 2024 sales of about €1,090.3 million, with presence in France and several international markets.
Those numbers don’t tell you everything, but they do tell you the firm is operating at enterprise scale, not as a small boutique staffing shop.
Recent corporate moves that hint at strategy
Looking at what a company buys and sells is often more informative than marketing copy.
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Sale of Provigis (June 2025): Freelance.com announced the sale of its Provigis subsidiary (a third-party compliance monitoring platform) to the CTAIMA Group, stating the activity was complementary but not strategic and represented less than 3% of consolidated sales and EBITDA.
That reads like portfolio cleanup: shedding a non-core software asset while continuing to focus on the broader TAAS and external workforce services model. -
Acquisition of STA (January 2024): Freelance.com announced the acquisition of the STA group, describing STA as a specialist in wage portage and connecting highly qualified consultants with companies, and noting combined revenue exceeding one billion euros.
This points to consolidation in “portage” services and deeper coverage of the consultant lifecycle, not just sourcing. -
Acquisition of Prium (October 2024): A press release (in French) states Freelance.com acquired 100% of the Prium group, a French “portage salarial” player created in 2012 with €56m revenue in 2023, positioning this as part of a wider strategy after OpenWork and STA.
Again, the pattern is pretty clear: strengthen the administration/payroll side of independent work so enterprise clients can engage talent through controlled channels.
Who should consider Freelance.com (and who probably shouldn’t)
Good fit
- Large organizations with recurring demand for independent experts and a need to standardize how they source, onboard, manage, and pay them.
- Companies expanding into countries where local contracting rules are complex and they want a partner that already has processes and entities in place.
- Procurement-led environments where vendor compliance and invoicing consistency matter as much as “finding someone.”
Not the obvious fit
- Small businesses hiring their first freelancer and mainly wanting the cheapest way to get a logo, website, or one-off task done. Those buyers usually benefit more from simple marketplaces or direct hiring, because they don’t need enterprise-grade governance.
Practical checklist for evaluating Freelance.com as a buyer
If you’re a company comparing external workforce providers, you’d typically want crisp answers to a few operational questions:
- How does the 48-hour sourcing claim work for niche roles—what inputs do they need, and what’s “good enough” to present candidates?
- What portion of engagements can run through portage/umbrella employment vs. classic contractor invoicing, and what changes by country?
- What documentation is collected for compliance, how is it validated, and how does it integrate with your procurement tools?
- Who owns project follow-up: your PMs, their PMO layer, or a hybrid?
- How do they handle disputes, scope changes, and payment timing so freelancers don’t get stuck waiting?
You can tell pretty quickly whether a provider is a real operational partner or just a broker with a nice website.
Key takeaways
- Freelance.com positions itself as an enterprise-focused external workforce services provider, not a mass bidding marketplace.
- Its public materials emphasize three pillars: people management, project management, and payment management, with services spanning sourcing, umbrella employment/portage, and compliance.
- Reported scale (community size, services delivered, revenue figures) suggests it operates at large-company volume.
- Recent M&A activity (STA, Prium) and the sale of Provigis hint at a strategy centered on consolidating the “managed independent work” stack rather than building standalone software products.
FAQ
Is Freelance.com the same as Freelancer.com?
No. Freelance.com describes an enterprise-oriented services model for managing external talent relationships end-to-end. Freelancer.com is a separate, open marketplace brand with bidding and job listings.
What does “Talent as a Service” mean here?
In Freelance.com’s framing, it’s a packaged way for enterprises to access external expertise plus the operational layer around it—sourcing, administration, and controls—rather than just a directory of profiles.
What is “portage” and why does it matter?
Portage (often “portage salarial” in France) is an arrangement where a worker can deliver consulting services while being employed by an umbrella company that handles payroll and administration. Freelance.com’s acquisitions and service descriptions show this is a central capability for them.
How fast can they really source talent?
The corporate site highlights a model that can respond within 48 hours, but real performance depends on role specificity, rate constraints, location rules, and how clean the brief is. The right way to evaluate it is to run a pilot request with your typical constraints and measure time-to-shortlist.
Where does Freelance.com operate?
Freelance.com states it has locations in six countries: UK, France, Germany, Morocco, Switzerland, and Belgium.
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