Fiverr
Freelance marketplace in Money & business
Criticized more than recommended: critics say quality varies widely and cite a 2026 exposure of private customer files; those who recommend it cite quickly hiring affordable freelancers and finding freelance work.
9 people recommended Fiverr in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 43 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from the comments below.
55 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- mixed feelings
- 3
- warn against or regret it
- 43
The record
Recommended in 7 of 12 months
In 10 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 10 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 11% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 40 of the 66 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Private customer files exposed publicly
“switching the existing media library from public to authenticated breaks every existing URL across the whole platform”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” “This is really bad, just straight up people's income, SSN and worse just right there in the search results”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” “they've gutted enough of their internal processes that they literally can't restrict access to these files”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” - Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable”
- Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable”
- Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable”
- Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable”
Poor treatment of sellers and income
“a company whose whole brand is based on hiring people for $5 turns out to not respect the workers who created value on their platform”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” “a lot of "Top Rated" sellers, who were raking in good amounts of money saw their income fall drastically”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” “taking a cut of other people's work while taking zero responsibility for even their own app's quality”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” Company denied or dismissed the leak
“They patched the "non-existent" issue it seems. And totally denied it happened in the first place.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” “Fiverr's response was everything was fine and there was nothing they could do about it”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable” Budget sellers give inconsistent quality
“I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models.”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible” “I paid like $1000 for a “premium experience” to be offered 6 or so stencils like this”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Tell HN: Fiverr left customer files public and searchable”
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap hiring for small jobs
“You can find someone on Fiverr that’ll do a better job than this for $100.”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol” “At the end I found a developer on Fiverr who fixed my script for $20”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription” “I'd rather spend $50 on Fiverr and get human generated content.”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Pomelli” Ready source of freelance work
“spend your other time building skills, doing freelancing on Fiverr, Upwork”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “A list of all sites to make money online” “you can freelance as a software developer on Fiverr or something”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Unemployed almost a year after graduating MIT – a rant” “Have a profile on Upwork/Fiverr/Contra.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Ask HN: How do I get freelance developer jobs?”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FiverrThis page | 9 | 3 | 43 | 17% | 7 | — | — |
| Upwork | 5 | 2 | 14 | 26% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 66 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Maybe Fiverr is not the best place to hire freelance”
“I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models.”
“since Opus 5.0 it was just able to do this for me without fiverr”
“Even now it’s terrible (we get to clean up some the experiments”
“The two times I tried to use fiverr I literally got ghosted.”
“You can find someone on Fiverr that’ll do a better job than this for $100.”
“You're an American and speak English, so you've got a leg up over a lot of your potential competitors.”
“I've pretty much have had the same thing to me happen on Fiverr about 10 months ago.”
“being dismissed for not replying to a message in 5-10 minutes is insane”
“At the end I found a developer on Fiverr who fixed my script for $20”
“Have a profile on Upwork/Fiverr/Contra.”
“we received a fraudulent charge for 4 tickets to (of all places) SEAWORLD”
“They patched the "non-existent" issue it seems. And totally denied it happened in the first place.”
“switching the existing media library from public to authenticated breaks every existing URL across the whole platform”
“The links to all the delivered projects are publicly accessible.”
“a lot of "Top Rated" sellers, who were raking in good amounts of money saw their income fall drastically”
“Fiverr probably hired someone from Fiverr to do the web build security.”
“It is just a public list of files, either everyone has access to your file, or do not, including you.”
“Fiverr, for instance, should be facing an investigation that threatens to shut down the business”
“I paid like $1000 for a “premium experience” to be offered 6 or so stencils like this”
“my post got deleted on for 'violating community rules”
“Users should have to be authenticated to access the resource, not just rely on the URL being a secret.”
“The dispute process did not seem designed to deal well with coordinated abuse”
“taking a cut of other people's work while taking zero responsibility for even their own app's quality”
“never specifying how these metrics are calculated, making it very hard for freelancers to do something about it.”
“a company whose whole brand is based on hiring people for $5 turns out to not respect the workers who created value on their platform”
“they've gutted enough of their internal processes that they literally can't restrict access to these files”
“judging by their response to this issue, I'm glad I've been boycotting it”
“they aren't set up for anyone to actually contact them and expect a resolution”
“Fiverr's response was everything was fine and there was nothing they could do about it”
“the core decision not to use signed/expiring URLs is nothing less than good old security by obscurity”
“they try to claim a bunch of AWSs certs by proxy on their security page, which is ironic”
“This is really bad, just straight up people's income, SSN and worse just right there in the search results”
“really bad stuff in the results. very easy to find API tokens, penetration test reports, confidental PDFs”
“Leaking form 1040s is egregious, let alone getting them indexed by Google”
“I used Fiverr this year for civil engineering and got scammed”
“you can freelance as a software developer on Fiverr or something”
“spend your other time building skills, doing freelancing on Fiverr, Upwork”
“Generic platforms treat music as a side category; the algorithm doesn’t know/care about genre, scenes or long-term careers.”
“I'd rather spend $50 on Fiverr and get human generated content.”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.