Formerly known as GetAFreelancer.com, the company was founded in 2004 by Plendo Sweden, headed up by Magnus Tibell of Swedish web solutions company Innovate It. GetAFreelancer.com was bought on the 7th May 2009 by the Australian company Ignition Networks. The buyers changed the name to Freelancer.com in October 2009.

Users of Freelancer.com fall into two main categories: buyers and providers. Buyers are individuals or companies who wish to outsource their work. .

Freelancer.com has been 100% bootstrapped to date.
Startive Capital, a boutique venture capital fund and startup incubator based in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, provided the financing for the acquisition of Freelancer.com by Ignition.

Other leading sites that provide similar services are ODesk

ODesk

oDesk is a company with a global job marketplace and a series of tools targeted at businesses that intend to hire and manage remote workers. Based in Redwood City, CA, oDesk was founded in 2003 by Greek entrepreneurs Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis....

, Guru

Guru.com

Guru.com is a freelance marketplace. It allows companies to find freelance workers for commissioned work. Founded in 1998 in Pittsburgh as eMoonlighter.com and still headquartered there, it is one of the tech firms to survive the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s...

, VWorker

VWorker

vWorker is an online portal and virtual employment agency that enables companies to outsource projects and independent contractors to find work. Together with Elance, Freelancer, Guru, oDesk and Scriptlance it is one of the largest global freelance marketplaces of its kind.vWorker is owned by...

 and Elance

ELance

Elance is a global Internet platform for online employment, where businesses hire independent freelance professionals with online collaboration tools to help manage remote teams and projects online. Utilizing the platform, businesses can connect with and hire remote workers with skills such as...

.