Freelancers Worldwide 2026: Up to 435 Million [Full List]

Between 154 million and 435 million people worldwide do online gig or freelance work, according to the World Bank’s 2023 report on the global gig economy. The range is wide because “freelancer” gets measured differently in every country and every study, but the underlying trend is not in dispute: independent work is growing everywhere researchers have looked, from the US and UK to India and beyond.

How many freelancers are there in the world?

The most-cited global estimate comes from the World Bank’s report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work, which puts the online gig workforce at between 154 million and 435 million people, or roughly 4.4% to 12.5% of the global workforce. The report is based on surveys across 17 countries, including Egypt, Argentina, Nigeria, Russia, and China, and it counted 545 online gig-work platforms headquartered in 63 countries with workers and clients spread across 186 countries. The low end of the range counts workers whose primary income comes from gig platforms; the high end includes anyone who has taken on gig work as a secondary or occasional source of income, which is a much larger group.

Figure 1: Independent worker counts by country, most recent measured year (rounded). Sources: MBO Partners (US, 2025); NITI Aayog (India, 2020-21); IPSE (UK, 2024).

No single country dominates the global count, but a few markets stand out for having reliable, named, year-stamped data: the United States, the United Kingdom, and India each publish their own independent-worker research on a regular cycle, which is where the rest of this post’s numbers come from.

How many freelancers are in the United States?

The US remains the largest single national freelance market with real data behind it. MBO Partners’s 2025 State of Independence report, its 15th consecutive year of research, counted 72.9 million independent workers in the US in 2025, up from 72.7 million in 2024. That figure spans the full spectrum of independent work, from full-time solo consultants to people who freelance occasionally alongside a traditional job. Separately, Upwork’s Future Workforce Index 2026 found that 39% of US workers did some freelance work over the past year, up about 4 percentage points from the prior year, and that independent workers collectively generated an estimated $1.5 trillion in earnings. The skilled-freelancer segment specifically grew even faster in the same report: 38% of skilled US workers freelanced in 2026, up from 28% in 2025, a jump Upwork attributes largely to AI tools making it easier for specialists to take on client work outside a single employer.

Figure 2: Share of US workers who freelanced in the past year, 2026. Source: Upwork Future Workforce Index 2026.

The two studies measure slightly different things (MBO counts people, Upwork measures a rate), but they point the same direction: freelancing is a mainstream way to earn income in the US, not a fringe activity. MBO’s research also found that 63% of independent workers say they chose self-employment rather than fell into it, and 59% report earning more than they did in a traditional job, which helps explain why the total keeps climbing year over year rather than reverting after economic downturns.

How many Americans earn $100,000 or more freelancing?

Six-figure freelancing is no longer rare. MBO Partners found that 5.6 million US independent workers earned $100,000 or more in 2025, up 19% from 4.7 million in 2024, and nearly double the 3 million recorded in 2020. The number has grown roughly threefold since MBO first started tracking it in 2011, when only 1.9 million independents crossed that threshold. The same 2025 report found independents are also faster to adopt new tools than traditional employees: 74% reported using generative AI in their work during 2025, compared with 69% of people in traditional jobs, a gap MBO frames as part of why top-earning independents keep pulling ahead of the broader freelance population.

Figure 3: US independents earning $100,000 or more, 2011 to 2025. Source: MBO Partners, 2025 State of Independence report.

How many freelancers are in the UK?

The UK’s dedicated freelance body, IPSE, puts the country’s freelance workforce at 2.046 million people as of its Self-Employed Landscape 2024 report, up 1% from 2023. Freelancers are a defined subset of the UK’s wider solo self-employed population, which stood at 4.199 million in 2024 and contributed an estimated £366 billion to the UK economy that year, up from £331 billion in 2023, a rise IPSE attributes largely to freelancers commanding higher day rates rather than to a jump in headcount. Freelancers make up just under half, 49%, of that total solo self-employed workforce, with the remainder made up of sole traders and other forms of solo self-employment that IPSE tracks as a separate category. IPSE has published this annual series for more than a decade, and across recent editions the freelance segment specifically has stayed close to the two-million mark even as the wider solo self-employed count moves more with the broader UK economy, which is one reason the organization treats the freelance figure as the more stable long-run indicator of the two.

Figure 4: UK freelancers as a share of the solo self-employed population, 2024. Source: IPSE, Self-Employed Landscape 2024.

How many freelancers are in India?

India’s gig and platform economy is growing from a smaller base but at a faster clip than either the US or UK figures above, and it is one of the 17 countries the World Bank’s own global survey drew on for the worldwide estimate cited earlier. NITI Aayog, the Indian government’s central policy think tank, reported that 7.7 million workers were engaged in gig and platform work in 2020-21, about 1.5% of India’s total workforce, and projected that number to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30, roughly 4.1% of the total workforce at that point. The same report breaks that workforce down by skill level: about 47% of India’s gig work currently falls into medium-skilled roles, 31% into low-skilled roles, and 22% into high-skilled roles, a mix NITI Aayog expects to shift toward higher-skilled categories as digital platforms mature and as more India-based professionals take on international clients rather than only domestic gig-platform work. That skill mix matters for the invoicing side of the picture too: a medium- or high-skilled freelancer billing overseas clients directly is far more likely to need a formal, itemized invoice than a low-skilled gig-platform worker paid automatically through an app, which is part of why India’s freelance invoicing habits differ so much by segment.

Figure 5: India’s gig and platform workforce, 2020-21 to 2029-30 projected. Source: NITI Aayog, India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy (2022).

That trajectory, a roughly threefold increase in under a decade, mirrors the six-figure earner growth seen in the US data above: different country, different metric, same underlying direction of more people building an income around independent work rather than a single employer.

Country / region	Measure	Count	Source, year
Worldwide	Online gig/freelance workers	154M-435M	World Bank, 2023
United States	Independent workers	72.9M	MBO Partners, 2025
India	Gig and platform workers	7.7M (2020-21), 23.5M projected by 2029-30	NITI Aayog, 2022
United Kingdom	Freelancers	2.046M	IPSE, 2024

Table 1: Freelancer and independent-worker counts by country or region. Each row uses that source’s own definition; the figures are not directly comparable to one another.

The Bottom Line

However it gets measured, independent work keeps growing: the US added roughly 200,000 independent workers between 2024 and 2025, the UK’s freelance count rose again in 2024, and India’s government expects a threefold jump in gig workers by 2029-30. The practical upshot for anyone running that kind of business is the same regardless of country: more people are billing clients directly, and getting paid reliably matters more the more of your income is freelance. A BillyPaid invoice is built for that, with a payable link and automated reminders included on every document rather than something to configure separately.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many freelancers are there in the world? Between 154 million and 435 million people worldwide do online gig or freelance work, according to the World Bank’s report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work, based on surveys across 17 countries. The range reflects how narrowly or broadly gig work is defined, from platform-only workers up to anyone who has ever picked up a gig alongside other income.

How many freelancers are in the United States? The US had 72.9 million independent workers in 2025, according to MBO Partners’s 2025 State of Independence report, up from 72.7 million in 2024. Separately, Upwork’s Future Workforce Index 2026 found 39% of US workers did some freelance work in the past year, up about 4 percentage points from the year before.

How many freelancers are in the UK? The UK had 2.046 million freelancers in 2024, per IPSE’s Self-Employed Landscape 2024 report, up 1% from 2023. Freelancers make up 49% of the UK’s broader solo self-employed population of 4.199 million, which contributed an estimated £366 billion to the UK economy in 2024.

How many freelancers are in India? India’s gig and platform workforce stood at 7.7 million workers in 2020-21 and is projected by NITI Aayog, the Indian government’s policy think tank, to grow to 23.5 million workers by 2029-30, roughly a threefold increase in under a decade.