How to Delete Your Upwork Account: Close It the Right Way (or Hide It Instead)

Upwork calls it closing your account, not deleting it. On desktop, go to Account settings > Contact info, choose Close my account, and confirm. In the mobile app, go to Settings > Account management and control > Close account > Confirm. That only works once all your activity is resolved: every contract ended, every proposal withdrawn, and every payment received and withdrawn.

Before any of that, Upwork may ask you to answer the security question you set up, or make you create one. If you have never set one, that is the most common reason the close option does not appear at all.

Everything factual here comes from Upwork's own help center articles on closing an account, reactivating a freelancer account, multiple accounts, profile visibility and GDPR, checked on the day this was written. Upwork edits these pages often. If your settings screen looks different, trust your account.

Upwork will not let a freelancer or agency member close an account with anything still open. Its checklist is short:

Upwork's help center gives two reasons, and they are worth checking in this order:

This is the detail most likely to cause regret. Upwork says that if you have both a freelancer and a client profile, closing either profile type closes your entire account. There is no way to close just one side.

Upwork's own advice: if one profile is no longer needed but the other is, do not close your account. An unused client or freelancer profile can simply stay there and not be used. So if you stopped hiring but still freelance, leave it alone.

If you run an agency, closing the agency is a separate action from closing your own account. Only the agency owner can do it, and first they must remove all agency members, close all agency contracts, withdraw all agency proposals, and make sure all agency payments have been received and withdrawn. Then go to Account settings > Agency Profile and select Close my agency at the bottom of the page.

Per Upwork, closing an agency deletes the agency profile but leaves your freelancer account active. Your freelancer profile is no longer tied to the agency, and your Job Success Score and other stats update to reflect only your own contract history, including agency contracts where you were the one hired. If you are weighing whether to run solo or as an agency in the first place, see [Upwork agency account vs freelancer account](/blog/upwork-agency-account-vs-freelancer-account).

If you are only an admin, manager or team member on someone else's team (and not also a freelancer, agency owner or client company owner), you close your account by leaving every team: Account settings > My Teams, then Leave Team under Actions. Once you have left all teams, Upwork closes the account.

You can come back to the same account, but not by starting fresh. Upwork's multiple accounts FAQ says opening a new account with the same email after closing your old one is a Terms of Service violation, and that the right move is to reopen the closed account. The full rules on second accounts are in [can you have two Upwork accounts](/blog/can-you-have-two-upwork-accounts).

Reactivating a closed freelancer account is self-service in most cases: log in with your old credentials (including Google or Apple sign-in if that is how it was connected), select the link in the 'account is closed' message, and open the email Upwork sends. That link expires four hours after you request it. Upwork lists three cases where you need support instead: the account was set up as both freelancer and client, it has been inactive for more than five years, or it was permanently suspended for a Terms of Service violation, in which case there is no way back.

On data: Upwork's GDPR article says that regardless of where you live, you may close and delete your account or request deletion of all the personal information it has about you, through its Privacy Center. It applies the formal GDPR requirements to people living in the EEA, and for everyone else says it will delete data to the extent it reasonably can.

This part is my opinion, not Upwork policy. Most freelancers who want to delete their account actually want one of three things: a break, fewer messages, or a clean slate. Closing only really delivers the last one, and Upwork does not allow a clean slate anyway, since you cannot open a new account afterward.

Your account history is the asset. Reviews, earnings history and Job Success Score are what get you hired faster the next time you need work, and they take months to build. Closing does not erase them for good (reactivation brings the account back), but it adds friction at exactly the moment you want to move quickly.

If you want a break, change your profile visibility instead. Upwork lets you choose Public, Only Upwork users, or Private under Your profile > Profile settings > Visibility. Private hides you from search on and off Upwork, while clients with a direct link can still reach you. Changes can take up to 24 hours, and a public profile may stay in search engines for a few days. What Private status does to your profile is covered in [why is my Upwork profile private](/blog/why-is-my-upwork-profile-private).