Upworker AI Research · 2026
New Fiverr gigs held at about 393,000 a month on both sides of ChatGPT's launch; writing gigs rose 19%.
Fiverr gig supply before and after ChatGPT: monthly snapshots, Oct 2022 – Aug 2023
Advertised services in archived sitemaps, not orders or earnings. This before-and-after comparison does not establish a causal effect of ChatGPT.
Live gig stock was flat
Complete snapshots show 3,071,020 live gigs on December 1, 2022, versus 3,065,363 on July 1, 2023. Personal Growth & Hobbies changed by -11.2%, while Video & Animation rose +7.6% and Music & Audio rose +7.5%.
| Top category | 2022-12 | 2023-01 | 2023-03 | 2023-06 | 2023-07 | Dec → Jul |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALL | 3,071,020 | 3,120,830 | 3,068,809 | 3,036,669 | 3,065,363 | -0.2% |
| Business | 135,607 | 136,292 | 129,388 | 136,167 | 137,367 | +1.3% |
| Data | 130,004 | 130,792 | 128,258 | 127,906 | 131,533 | +1.2% |
| Digital Marketing | 357,057 | 370,433 | 344,579 | 344,160 | 348,577 | -2.4% |
| End-to-End Projects | — | — | — | — | 46 | — |
| Finance | 18,494 | 18,840 | 18,582 | 20,057 | 20,387 | +10.2% |
| Graphics & Design | 1,157,223 | 1,168,461 | 1,164,667 | 1,127,969 | 1,139,391 | -1.5% |
| Music & Audio | 99,505 | 99,578 | 101,966 | 107,072 | 107,000 | +7.5% |
| Personal Growth & Hobbies | 95,598 | 95,937 | 93,395 | 89,848 | 84,846 | -11.2% |
| Photography | 5,559 | 5,452 | 6,613 | 7,906 | 9,065 | +63.1% |
| Programming & Tech | 563,077 | 568,450 | 536,740 | 550,520 | 557,882 | -0.9% |
| Unlabeled | 34 | 27 | 25 | 28 | 38 | +11.8% |
| Video & Animation | 187,652 | 191,743 | 190,896 | 195,743 | 201,850 | +7.6% |
| Writing & Translation | 321,210 | 334,825 | 353,700 | 329,293 | 327,381 | +1.9% |
No aggregate drop in new-gig entry
Pre-launch entry averaged 393,147 gigs per 30 days across October and November 2022. Post-launch entry averaged 392,695 across December 2022 and June 2023. These count gigs first seen within each window and still live at its end.
| Top category | 2022-10 | 2022-11 | 2022-12 | 2023-06 | Pre average | Post average | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALL | 378,388 | 407,906 | 371,112 | 414,278 | 393,147 | 392,695 | -0.1% |
| Graphics & Design | 134,984 | 142,141 | 125,147 | 137,030 | 138,562 | 131,088 | -5.4% |
| Programming & Tech | 69,787 | 73,687 | 67,182 | 79,102 | 71,737 | 73,142 | +2.0% |
| Digital Marketing | 50,249 | 56,818 | 49,462 | 50,764 | 53,534 | 50,113 | -6.4% |
| Writing & Translation | 41,509 | 45,754 | 50,913 | 52,827 | 43,632 | 51,870 | +18.9% |
| Video & Animation | 22,002 | 24,545 | 22,379 | 28,301 | 23,274 | 25,340 | +8.9% |
| Data | 21,929 | 22,071 | 19,945 | 23,543 | 22,000 | 21,744 | -1.2% |
| Personal Growth & Hobbies | 13,203 | 15,381 | 12,891 | 13,081 | 14,292 | 12,986 | -9.1% |
| Business | 13,597 | 14,217 | 12,015 | 14,820 | 13,907 | 13,418 | -3.5% |
| Music & Audio | 8,919 | 10,499 | 8,439 | 10,541 | 9,709 | 9,490 | -2.3% |
| Finance | 1,589 | 1,713 | 1,725 | 2,036 | 1,651 | 1,880 | +13.9% |
| Photography | 621 | 1,080 | 1,012 | 2,219 | 850 | 1,616 | +90.1% |
| End-to-End Projects | — | — | — | 12 | — | 12 | — |
| Unlabeled | — | — | — | 2 | — | 2 | — |
October → November and November → December form the pre period; December → January and June → July form the post period. Only these one-month windows are compared, because longer windows lose more gigs to removal. A dash means no reported value, not zero.
Writing entry rose while design and marketing fell
Writing & Translation rose +18.9%, Video & Animation +8.9% and Finance +13.9%. Graphics & Design changed by -5.4%, Digital Marketing -6.4% and Personal Growth & Hobbies -9.1%.
Source: one-month entry CSV above. All top categories with reported changes are shown, including Photography’s rise from 850 to 1,616 gigs per 30 days. Entry changes and stock changes measure different things.
The gig ID counter is not a clean supply measure
Fiverr’s internal gig_id counter rose by about 4.7–4.9 million per 30 days in October–November 2022, versus 5.1–5.8 million in windows starting in 2023. Only about 6–9% of new IDs appear as live gigs in the sitemap. The December → January window was lower, as shown below.
| Window start | Window end | Days | New gigs / 30 days | New IDs / 30 days | Live share of IDs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-10-01 | 2022-11-01 | 31 | 378,388 | 4,657,042 | 8.1% |
| 2022-11-01 | 2022-12-01 | 30 | 407,906 | 4,876,358 | 8.4% |
| 2022-12-01 | 2023-01-01 | 31 | 371,112 | 4,125,251 | 9.0% |
| 2023-01-01 | 2023-03-12 | 70 | 373,943 | 5,753,246 | 6.5% |
| 2023-03-12 | 2023-06-01 | 81 | 308,201 | 5,140,372 | 6.0% |
| 2023-06-01 | 2023-07-01 | 30 | 414,278 | 5,449,372 | 7.6% |
| 2023-07-01 | 2023-08-12 | 42 | 332,719 | 5,802,263 | 5.7% |
Methods & caveats
Source. Wayback Machine captures of Fiverr’s public gig sitemap (sitemap_gigsN.xml.gz): roughly 64 files and 3 million gig URLs per month. Each URL gives gig_id, seller username, slug, Fiverr’s own leaf category from the image caption, and image count. We mapped leaves to top-level categories using the mapping from our 2026 census.
Snapshot dates. October 1, November 1 and December 1, 2022; January 1, March 12, April 1–28 (mixed), June 1, July 1 and August 10–14, 2023. February and May 2023 were not archived. September 2022 is excluded because its archived files are inconsistent with their capture dates.
Incomplete snapshots. December, January, March, June and July have 64–65 files and are complete. October and November have 59–60, April 54 and August 58. Files are sharded by gig_id range, so missing files drop specific ID ranges. Use complete months for levels; incomplete months are shown below only to document coverage.
| Month | Observed gigs | Sitemap files | Complete |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-10 | 2,863,865 | 59 | No |
| 2022-11 | 2,879,001 | 60 | No |
| 2022-12 | 3,071,020 | 64 | Yes |
| 2023-01 | 3,120,830 | 65 | Yes |
| 2023-03 | 3,068,809 | 64 | Yes |
| 2023-04 | 2,558,655 | 54 | No |
| 2023-06 | 3,036,669 | 64 | Yes |
| 2023-07 | 3,065,363 | 64 | Yes |
| 2023-08 | 2,758,086 | 58 | No |
Entry and survival. Entry means gigs whose ID falls between the 99.9th-percentile gig_id of consecutive snapshots, observed in the later snapshot. These are survivors only: gigs created and removed within the window are not seen. Only one-month windows are compared for pre/post because survival falls with window length.
Taxonomy changes. Fiverr reorganized its taxonomy in December 2022. “Website Development” appears while “WordPress” and “Web Programming” shrink; “AI Artists” appears by March 2023. Leaf-level changes across that date mostly reflect relabeling; top-level comparisons are more stable. The downloadable leaf comparison should be read with this limitation.
Earlier and later coverage. For 2021, only sitemap index files survived in the archive, giving totals but no categories: about 2.2 million gig URLs in January 2021, rising to 2.85 million in June 2022. From October 2023, Fiverr cut the sitemap to eight files, so later snapshots are not comparable.
Interpretation. Sitemap supply does not measure demand, revenue or work completed. This observational comparison cannot isolate ChatGPT’s effect. Upworker AI operates a deliverable service and has a commercial interest in this market; this research is not affiliated with Fiverr.
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