How to close your Upwork account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 18 August 2026 · What this means

You cannot simply open a new account afterwards. Upwork states plainly that once you close, you will not be allowed to create a new one — returning means contacting support and asking them to reinstate the old account. Closing is not "starting fresh"; it is leaving the platform and hoping to be let back in.

And your Job Success Score and reviews cannot be rebuilt. Years of feedback are the entire basis on which clients hire you. If the goal is a break rather than an exit, set yourself unavailable instead.

Before you close

• End all active contracts properly, with final invoices sent.
• Withdraw your balance and confirm it reached your bank.
• Resolve disputes — you lose your side of an open case.
• Download earnings records and invoices for tax. Freelance income is reportable and you will need these.
• Save client contact details for anyone you want to keep working with off-platform, subject to Upwork's terms.

Close your account

Resolve everything active first — end contracts, withdraw proposals, let payments process. Upwork blocks closure until they clear.

1. Go to Account settings.
2. Select the option to close your account.
3. Answer your security question — Upwork may ask you to set one first if you never did.
4. Confirm.

Closing a freelancer or client profile closes your entire account, not just that profile.

Agencies and team members

• Agency owners: only you can close it, and only after removing every member, closing all agency contracts and withdrawing all agency proposals.
• Admins and managers who are not also a freelancer, agency owner or client company owner: go to Account settings → My Teams, choose Leave Team under Actions. Leaving every team closes your account.
• Enterprise members: contact your account team — you cannot self-close.

Upwork may retain records of contracts and payments after closure for legal and tax purposes.

Suspend your profile instead — it is the option most people want

Because closure is close to irreversible and the reputation is unrebuildable, the middle options matter more on Upwork than almost anywhere else on this site.

• Set availability to unavailable. You stop appearing in search and stop receiving invitations, while the profile, the reviews and the Job Success Score all stay intact.
• Make the profile private if you do not want clients or an employer finding it. The account survives; the visibility does not.
• Turn off Freelancer Plus if the monthly cost is the actual issue. That is a subscription, not the account.

A closed Upwork account is not a fresh start, it is an exit. Upwork does not let you open a new one, so the fantasy of clearing a bad Job Success Score by starting over does not work — you end up with no account rather than a clean one. If the score is the problem, the honest fix is new work, not deletion.

The tax records are the part you cannot replace

Freelance income is reportable, and Upwork is often the only place the evidence lives. Once the account closes you have no dashboard and no way to pull a statement.

1. Download every invoice and earnings report, for every year the account existed — not just the current one.
2. Export your transaction history, which shows fees as well as gross earnings. You will want the fee figures.
3. Save any tax forms Upwork has issued you.
4. Screenshot your work history and reviews. They are not in any export, and they are useful evidence of what you did for whom.
5. Note your client contacts, subject to Upwork's terms on working off-platform.

Upwork keeps its own records of contracts and payments for legal and tax reasons, which does not help you — those are its records, not a service it provides to you afterwards.

Clients: closing is different for you

A client account carries obligations to the freelancers working through it, and those come first:

• End contracts properly and release escrow. Money held in escrow on an abandoned contract is a dispute waiting to happen, and the freelancer is the one left waiting.
• Leave feedback before you go. It costs you nothing and it is part of someone else's livelihood.
• Download your invoices — you will need them to account for the spending.
• Check for team members on the company account, since closing yours can affect their access.

If you simply have no hiring planned, leaving the account dormant costs nothing. There is no inactivity deletion to race, and closing removes a hiring history that makes future freelancers more comfortable working with you.