Terms of Service

Effective August 12, 2026.

Freelance Clearing LLC is a California limited liability company operating freelanceclearing.com. These terms are the agreement between you and us. By creating an account or using the site, you accept them.

Questions: contact@freelanceclearing.com

What we do

We connect people who want work done with people who do it, and we hold the payment until the work is done.

We are not a party to any agreement between users. We do not employ freelancers, supervise work, verify identity, credentials or right to work, or review anything delivered.

You are dealing with strangers. Every user's history on this site is public. Read it before you hire or bid.

Who can use it

You must be at least 18. Give accurate information at signup and keep your email address current, because we use it to reach you about your account and your money.

You are responsible for all activity under your account, including anything done with an API key you generated or an application you connected. If you believe someone else has access, change your password: that revokes every API key and disconnects every connected application.

How jobs work

Posting. You describe the work, set a price, and post it. A posting fee applies. The job is public immediately.

Bidding. Any user with a payout account can bid. A bid is an offer to do the described work for the stated amount. While a job is open, the poster sees all bids and each bidder sees only their own. You may withdraw a bid at any time before it is accepted, but you get one bid per job: a withdrawn bid cannot be replaced, and you cannot bid on that job again.

Accepting. When the poster accepts a bid, we charge them and hold the funds in our account with Stripe, our payment processor. Every other bid on the job becomes public at that point.

Completing. When the poster marks the job complete, we release the funds to the freelancer, less our fee. This confirms the work was delivered and cannot be reversed. Ownership of the work passes to the poster at that point.

Canceling. Either party may cancel a job in progress, with a reason, which becomes public. Held funds return to the poster, less 5%, which covers Stripe's payment-processing fee, already spent. A freelancer who cancels is not paid.

Fees are set out on the Payments and Trust page, which forms part of these terms.

Stripe processes every payment on this site. Their terms apply to your use of the payment system alongside ours. Stripe can restrict an account or hold funds on their own authority, and we cannot overturn that decision.

Abandonment

If your counterparty has stopped responding before the job is complete, the remedy depends on which side you are on.

Posters: cancel the job. You will receive a 95% refund.

Freelancers who have completed the work: request to close the job. The poster then has 7 days to mark it complete or cancel. If the poster does nothing in that time, the payment is released to you automatically, less the platform fee. You do not need to contact us first.

A message from the poster clears the request and stops the clock. You may request to close again immediately, and a new 7 days begins.

Automatic release requires your payout account to be in good standing at the time of release. If it is not, the release is retried and the payment remains in escrow until the account is corrected.

If neither path resolves the matter, email contact@freelanceclearing.com and describe what happened. We will review what the site records and may hold, release or refund the funds at our discretion. We do not promise a specific outcome or timeline, but we will respond.

Public record

Almost everything you do here is permanently public, including to people without an account: your jobs, your bids once a job is no longer open, your ratings, your completed and canceled counts, your stated cancellation reasons, and your total transacted.

There is no mechanism to edit, hide, dispute or remove any of it. Ratings you receive are permanent. Deleting your account removes your identity from this record while the record itself remains, as described in the privacy policy.

Automation

You may use our API and authorize applications to act on your account.

Anything done this way is done as you. It carries your username, appears in your public record, and is your responsibility. An agent acting on your behalf enters real agreements and spends real money in your name.

Public data on this site may be read automatically.

Conduct

What you may not do

• Use another person's identity, or claim credentials you do not hold.
• Use the payment system to move money unrelated to work performed.
• Initiate a chargeback in place of contacting us.
• Harass, threaten or abuse another user, in messages or in a rating.
• Post or accept work that is illegal, or that requires breaking the law.
• Use the site for a business or product that Stripe restricts. Stripe publishes that list, and it applies here in full.
• Break, overload or circumvent the site's access controls.
• Distribute malware, or deliver work containing it.

Suspension and removal

We may suspend or remove an account for anything listed above, for repeatedly abandoning jobs in progress, or for conduct we reasonably believe puts other users or their money at risk.

We monitor accounts for the conduct listed above. An account used for restricted business activity is removed immediately.

Funds held for a removed account's jobs are resolved case by case, normally returned to whoever paid them. The account's public record remains under an anonymous placeholder, as after a voluntary deletion.

We will tell you the reason, and you may reply to contest it.

No guarantees

The site is provided as is. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, including that the site will be available or error-free, that any user is honest, competent, solvent or accurately represented, that a job will attract bids, or that delivered work will meet your expectations.

Our liability is limited. Our total liability to you is limited to the fees you have paid us, or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses.

This limit does not apply where the law does not permit it, or to our gross negligence or deliberate wrongdoing.

Funds we hold for you are unaffected by this section.

Other

Changes. We may change these terms. The effective date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect. Continued use after a change constitutes acceptance.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California. Disputes between you and us go to the state or federal courts located in California. These terms contain no arbitration clause and no class action waiver.

Contact. Freelance Clearing LLC, contact@freelanceclearing.com