Bid packs and Open Lance Ultra
The two ways to get bids, what an Ultra subscription actually changes including zero commission on your earnings, how to work out whether it pays for you, how billing and renewals work, and how to cancel.
Applying to work costs bids. There are two ways to have them, and which is right depends entirely on how much you earn here.
Bid packs
A one-off purchase of a quantity of bids. Buy them when you need them, they do not expire, and there is no commitment.
Larger packs cost less per bid. Ultra subscribers get better pack pricing on top of their included bids.
Right for you if you are new and finding your footing, or if you work here occasionally alongside other sources of work.
Open Lance Ultra
A subscription, billed per cycle, that changes three things.
Zero commission on your earnings. This is the one that matters. Without a subscription, a percentage is deducted from standard contract work when it is released to you. Ultra subscribers pay nothing on that work and keep the whole amount.
Bids included each cycle, so ordinary applying is covered without buying packs.
Better bid pack pricing if you need more than your cycle includes.
Note that Drop-In sales and monthly engagements carry their own flat commission that applies to every seller regardless of subscription. Ultra removes commission on standard contract work, not on everything. This is stated on the plan and worth understanding before you subscribe on the assumption it is universal.
Working out whether it pays
The arithmetic is simple and worth doing rather than guessing.
Take what you expect to earn from standard contract work in a month. Apply the non-subscriber commission percentage to it — the live figure is shown on the plan page and in your earnings breakdown. If that number is larger than the subscription price, Ultra pays for itself on commission alone, before counting the included bids.
For most freelancers there is a monthly earnings figure above which it is clearly worth it and below which it clearly is not. Work out roughly where yours is rather than subscribing hopefully.
If you are just starting, packs are usually the better call. Subscribe once you have steady work rather than in anticipation of it.
If you are earning consistently, the commission saving usually dwarfs the subscription price and it is a straightforward decision.
Buying either
Both are under Billing.
Your wallet balance is used first if you have one, with your card covering the difference. If your available balance covers it entirely, no card charge happens at all — a reason some freelancers keep a small working balance rather than withdrawing everything.
Bids are credited immediately, and a subscription activates immediately. You do not wait for a cycle boundary.
Both produce an invoice and a receipt as PDFs, emailed and kept in your billing area. These are ordinary business purchases from Open Lance, so they carry our company details and are exactly what you need for your accounts. See Invoices and receipts.
Renewals
A subscription renews automatically at the end of each cycle. You are charged wallet-first, then card.
If a renewal fails, you are notified and the subscription lapses rather than silently continuing. Commission returns to the standard rate on work released after that point. Fix the payment method and resubscribe.
A renewal produces its own invoice and receipt, marked as a renewal so your records show which was which.
Cancelling
Cancel from Billing. The change takes effect at the end of the current cycle — you keep what you paid for rather than losing the remainder.
Bids already credited to your balance are yours and stay. Cancelling does not remove them.
Commission returns to the standard rate for work released after the subscription ends. Work released while it was still active was already released at zero.
Bids in your balance
Bids do not expire and are not lost when a subscription ends.
Free bids — from the welcome grant or from referrals — are spent before paid ones, so a grant is used first rather than sitting unused while you burn a pack you paid for.
Your balance and its full history are under Billing. You are warned when it runs low.
Refunds
Bids and subscriptions are digital goods delivered immediately, so they are not routinely refundable.
If something went wrong — charged twice, charged after cancelling, a subscription that did not activate — open a ticket with the receipt number and it will be dealt with properly. That is a billing error, not a refund request, and it is treated as one.
Getting more from what you spend
The best way to reduce what bids cost you is to waste fewer of them. A freelancer applying to everything runs out constantly; one applying to twelve well-chosen jobs a month rarely does and wins more.
Also: referrals grant free bids, and invitations from clients do not require you to have found the job yourself. A complete profile that attracts invitations reduces how many bids you need to spend to get the same work. See Your freelancer profile.
A worked way to decide
If the arithmetic in the previous section feels abstract, do it concretely.
Look at your last three months of earnings from standard contract work. Take the monthly average. Apply the non-subscriber commission percentage shown on the plan page. That is what commission costs you per month today.
Compare it against the subscription price. If commission is larger, Ultra pays for itself and everything else it includes is free. If it is smaller, buy packs and revisit in a few months.
Do the calculation again whenever your income changes materially. Freelancers frequently stay on packs long past the point where a subscription would have been cheaper, simply because nobody re-checked.
What a subscription does not change
Worth being explicit, because assumptions here cause disappointment.
It does not raise your rank or your search position. Those are earned through completed work.
It does not remove commission on Drop-In sales or monthly engagements, which carry their own flat rate for every seller.
It does not give you more visibility to clients, priority in proposals, or any form of promotion. There is no pay-to-win here, deliberately.
What it changes is your commission on standard contract work, your included bids, and your pack pricing. That is the whole list, and it is worth being clear about so nobody subscribes expecting placement.
If money is tight
If you are between contracts and short, two things worth knowing.
Free bids from referrals cost you nothing and are spent before paid bids. Referring one freelancer who completes their setup, or bringing an existing client onto the platform, can cover a month of applying.
And a small wallet balance is useful precisely here: a bid pack bought entirely from wallet balance involves no card charge at all, which matters if a card is close to its limit.
Timing a subscription
If your work is seasonal or lumpy, timing matters.
Subscribe when you have contracts running or clearly imminent, because the commission saving only accrues on money actually released to you. Subscribing during a quiet month costs the subscription and saves nothing.
Equally, do not cancel reflexively during a quiet spell if you have work about to complete: the commission on those releases may well exceed the subscription price on its own.
The cycle boundary is the natural decision point. Look at what is likely to be released in the coming cycle and decide from that rather than from how the last one felt.
Keeping track of what you spend
Under Billing you can see your bid balance, its full history, your subscription state and every purchase.
Two habits worth having. Check your bid balance before a week of heavy applying, so you do not run out mid-flow. And glance at the history occasionally to see how many bids you are spending per contract won — that ratio is the single most useful number about your own targeting, and most freelancers have never calculated it.
If it is high, the problem is which jobs you apply to rather than how many bids you have.
Which to choose, briefly
If you are new or working here occasionally, buy packs. There is no commitment and no risk of paying for a month you did not use.
If you have steady contract income, run the commission arithmetic once. For most freelancers earning consistently, the subscription pays for itself several times over on commission alone, and the included bids are effectively free on top.
Revisit the decision whenever your income changes materially. The common mistake is staying on packs for a year after a subscription became clearly cheaper.
Common questions
Do bids expire? No.
Do I lose bids if I cancel a subscription? No. Bids already credited are yours.
Can I pause a subscription? Cancel it and resubscribe when you want it. It runs to the end of the paid cycle.
Does Ultra remove commission on everything? No. It removes commission on standard contract work. Drop-In sales and monthly engagements carry their own flat rate for every seller.
Related
Did this answer your question?
Did this not answer it?
Open a ticket and a person will read it. You do not need an account.