Last updated on Mar 19, 2026

Understanding Connects

Connects are Upwork's virtual currency for submitting proposals. You spend them every time you apply to a job. This is intentional. It filters out spam applications and forces freelancers to think before applying. If you treat Connects as disposable, you'll burn through them fast and wonder why your account balance is empty with nothing to show for it.

How Connects work

  • Each Connect costs $0.15 USD and is purchased in bundles.
  • The number of Connects a proposal costs varies per job, and Upwork can change it while the post is still live. Check the figure on the apply screen rather than assuming a fixed price.
  • Some freelancers on the free Basic plan receive 10 Connects a month. It is a promotional allowance rather than a guarantee, so treat it as a bonus and not as budget you can count on.
  • The Freelancer Plus plan ($19.99/month) includes 100 Connects monthly and carries over unused Connects.
Refunds Connects come back to you in two situations only. The client cancels the job before any contract is formed, or Upwork removes the post for violating its terms. You do not get them back when the client picks someone else, when the post simply expires without a hire, or when you withdraw your own proposal. Returned Connects are credited to your account for reuse, not refunded as cash.

The real cost of a proposal

Most freelancers underestimate this twice over. The first mistake is assuming proposals are cheap. They are not. A run-of-the-mill entry level hourly job, nothing enterprise about it, can ask for 24 Connects, which is $3.60 at list price. Check the number on the apply screen before you decide, because it is the single figure that determines how many shots your month actually contains.

The second cost is time. A tailored proposal for a relevant job takes 15 to 30 minutes. A generic one takes less and does not work. Apply to a job you cannot win, whether the rate range is wrong, the skills are wrong or the budget is wrong, and you lose both the Connects and the half hour.

Price a single application at a few dollars of Connects plus twenty minutes of your time, and read the real Connects figure before each one rather than carrying an average in your head. That reframes the question from "can I afford to apply" to "is this job worth applying to".

How to spend Connects strategically

Check before you apply

Before spending Connects on any job, scan for these signals:

  • Payment verified. The client has a verified payment method. Non-verified clients can't actually pay you.
  • Client history. How many jobs have they posted? How many hires? A client with 20 posts and 1 hire is a warning sign.
  • Review score. Clients also receive scores from freelancers. Below 4.5 usually means difficult to work with.
  • Budget vs your rate. If their budget is $50 and your minimum is $500, applying wastes everyone's time.
  • Number of proposals. Shown on every job card and on the post, free. A job already carrying 50+ proposals is a much harder win than one with 5 to 10.

Apply early

Clients review proposals in batches. The first 5–10 proposals a job receives get read most carefully; by proposal 30, many clients have already shortlisted someone. Applying within the first hour of a job posting is a structural advantage, not because your proposal is better, but because it gets seen at all.

Quality over quantity

Sending 20 generic proposals is worse than sending 5 tailored ones. A 20% reply rate on 5 targeted proposals (1 reply) beats a 3% rate on 20 generic ones (0–1 replies), and costs fewer Connects. Track your reply rate. If it's under 10%, the problem is proposal quality, not volume.

Tip Use the "Most recent" tab rather than "Best matches" when you are trying to apply early. Best matches shows you ranked results, but they are often hours or days old by the time you see them.

Boosted proposals

Upwork lets you spend additional Connects to "boost" a proposal, pushing it higher in the client's list. The cost is set by a bidding system: you see the current going rate and decide whether to match it. Boosting is not a substitute for a good proposal, a boosted mediocre proposal still gets ignored. It's useful when you're confident in the proposal and the job is highly competitive. See Boosted Proposals for a full breakdown of when it's worth it.

Connects vs Freelancer Plus

Do not buy Plus for the proposal count. Every freelancer sees the number of proposals a job has received, on the job card in the feed, with no subscription. What Plus adds is deeper detail on top of that number, covering applicants, bids and the client's hiring activity.

That leaves volume as the honest reason to subscribe. At 100 Connects a month, Plus is worth roughly $15 of Connects at the $0.15 list price, so the plan pays for itself only if you would have bought that many anyway and you value the extra insight and the rollover. If you apply occasionally, or you work a niche quiet enough that competition is not your problem, the free plan is enough.

Don't burn Connects on jobs you find too late

TrendsOnUp alerts you the moment a matching job is posted, so you're in the first wave, when proposal counts are still in single digits.

Set Up Your First Alert, Free

Next

Writing Your Title →