Наталя Хандусенко Work 2 October 2026, 11:10

Minus 34% of projects and a 52% jump in competition: how AI and war are testing Ukrainian freelance

According to Freelancehunt analytics, in August 2026, 31% fewer new projects were published on the platform than in January. Against the backdrop of a decrease in orders, the number of specialists themselves did not decrease, but the number of offers from them increased, which caused a jump in competition for each task. Similar negative dynamics are recorded by global platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer.com and Fiverr.

The reason is not only general economic factors, but also the active implementation of artificial intelligence: cheap and standardized tasks disappear the fastest. In Ukraine, the situation is further complicated by the war, which causes projects from domestic customers to fail significantly faster than from foreign ones.

Specifics of the Ukrainian market: military pressure and orientation towards the West

For the Ukrainian freelance sector, the impact of artificial intelligence is amplified by the war factor. Domestic businesses are forced to work with a short planning horizon, cut unnecessary costs, and launch new initiatives with extreme caution.

Dynamics of the decline: from January to August 2026, the number of projects from Ukrainian customers decreased by 34%, while from foreign customers - by only 24%. This trend has been intensifying since the beginning of the summer: from May to August, Ukrainian demand fell by 25%, and foreign - by 16%. In August, the foreign segment practically stabilized, while the Ukrainian segment lost almost another 10%.
Financial gap: reorientation to the foreign market becomes a matter of survival for specialists. In 2026, the average check for a foreign project on Freelancehunt is about 22,700 UAH, which is more than four times higher than the average check from a Ukrainian customer (about 5,400 UAH).

"The average foreign project here is four times more expensive than a Ukrainian one, and such demand is decreasing more slowly. For a freelancer, the choice is obvious. But for the country, this means that more and more specialists will not work for the Ukrainian economy," notes Oleg Topchiy, founder of Freelancehunt.

Changing the customer journey and reformatting tasks

Artificial intelligence is not only reducing the number of standard vacancies, but also changing the way we search for performers. The number of registrations on Freelancehunt from AI-related sources has increased 3.5 times since the beginning of the year. Users are increasingly looking for solutions directly within ChatGPT or other assistants, bypassing traditional Google searches.

In addition, much of the routine work simply ceased to be separate “projects.” Typical tasks, such as basic text, simple design, layout, or a small piece of code, are now routinely performed using ChatGPT, Claude, or Codex.

Among the categories on Freelancehunt, the most requested during the year were:

HTML/CSS: –70% of projects;
Copywriting: –69%;
Data parsing: –66%;
Web programming: –60%.

Budget distribution also clearly shows this limit: the number of paid projects worth up to UAH 2,000 fell by 45%, in the range of UAH 2,000–7,000 — by 32%, while orders from UAH 7,000 lost only 5%.

"Today, landing pages for 2,000 UAH and copywriting are disappearing. Tomorrow, projects for 10–30 thousand UAH, which one person with Claude Code/Codex/agents can complete instead of a team, may come under pressure. This is probably the key negative risk for the forecast for 2027," warns Oleg Topchiy.

Global trends

Similar processes are observed on international freelance platforms.

Upwork: According to UpHunt, the number of open projects fell by 26.5% from January to July 2026 (from 180,734 to 132,921). GigRadar monitoring shows a drop of 14.2% in the second quarter of the year alone.
Freelancer.com: recorded a decrease in the volume of new projects by approximately 26% between January and July.
Fiverr: does not disclose the number of projects, but in the second quarter of 2026, the number of active buyers of services decreased by 21.9% compared to the same period last year.

AI significantly reduces the cost of the actual execution process. On Upwork, the number of content writing projects fell by 63.3% from January 2025 to June 2026, while editing & proofreading projects fell by only 17.5%. This indicates that customers are willing to entrust the creation of basic text to algorithms, but require expert assessment and final editing by a person.

What's next for the market?

The loss of about a quarter of new projects in the first seven months of 2026 on key platforms indicates the emergence of a new norm: the growth of digital work no longer automatically means an increase in the number of orders for freelancers.

For performers, simply being able to use AI tools is no longer a competitive advantage — it is becoming a basic requirement. Those specialists who are able to delve deeper into the client’s business context, combine tools, and take full responsibility for the end result will win.

For Ukraine, the challenge remains twofold: to adapt to rapid transformations through artificial intelligence technologies and to actively enter foreign markets in conditions of limited domestic demand due to the war.

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