GigRadar alternatives in 2026: what to use for each reason you're leaving
GigRadar costs $1,697 up front plus Upwork Agency Plus. Six alternatives, matched to why you are leaving, from free Telegram alerts to monthly auto-bidders.
Short answer: pick the alternative by the reason you are leaving. If the problem is the $1,697 up front, Vollna and UpHunt sell auto-bidding by the month ($59 and $89 to start). If you only used GigRadar to find jobs, Upwork X-Ray (ours) sends the same kind of alert to Telegram for free. If you want a cheap helper inside the browser, Upwex is $7.99 a month. Agencies sending hundreds of proposals a month are the people GigRadar is built for, and they may be better off staying.
Two products named here are ours, Upwork X-Ray and OLL.E. Everything about the other tools comes from their own pricing and feature pages on November 6, 2026. Prices change; check before you pay.
What GigRadar is, and what it costs
GigRadar is an AI bidder for Upwork. You set up campaigns with filters, it qualifies new jobs, writes a proposal and sends it, and it posts alerts to Slack or Telegram. The pricing page sells two lifetime plans rather than a subscription:
| GigRadar plan | One-time price | Credits | Profiles |
|---|---|---|---|
| START | $1,697 | 4,200 | 1 |
| LTD | $2,497 | 7,000 | 2 (more at $159/mo each) |
| Credit refill | $350 / $600 / $1,500 | 500 / 1,000 / 3,000 | – |
From gigradar.io/pricing, November 6, 2026. Both plans list Upwork Agency Plus ($20/mo, paid to Upwork) as a requirement. GigRadar estimates about $0.81 per proposal on START. No free trial is mentioned.
That is a good deal at volume. Spread over two thousand proposals, the per-proposal price is lower than most monthly tools. For one freelancer who sends a handful of proposals a week, the same money buys years of a monthly plan.
Why people look for a GigRadar alternative
- The upfront price. $1,697 is due before you know if the bidder wins you anything.
- The agency requirement. A solo freelancer has to add Upwork Agency Plus to use it.
- Only the scanner was in use. If the AI bidder stayed off, you paid for the half you don't use.
- They want to write their own proposals. A hand-written first line still reads as one.
- No trial. The pricing page offers a demo, not a free period.
GigRadar alternatives, matched to the reason
| If your reason is… | Look at | Starts at | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price, but you still want auto-bidding | Vollna Auto plans | $59/mo (50 proposals), $45 billed yearly | GigRadar's agency tooling and course |
| Price, and you want a score you can tune | UpHunt Auto-Apply | $89/mo (50 auto-applies, then $0.40 each) | Lifetime pricing |
| You live in the Upwork tab | Upwex | $7.99/mo | Telegram alerts (not mentioned on its pages) |
| You only want good matches, no bidding | GigUp | $9/mo (email); Telegram from $29 | Any auto-apply, by design |
| You only used the scanner | Upwork X-Ray (ours) | Free | Proposal writing and sending |
| You miss alerts when away from the phone | OLL.E (ours) | 7 days free, no card | It does more than Upwork, which you may not need |
Each tool's own pricing page, November 6, 2026.
Vollna: monthly auto-bidding
Vollna splits manual and automatic bidding. Essential ($24 a month, $16 billed yearly) gives 5 job filters, 250 AI cover letters and alerts by email, Telegram, push and RSS. Auto-bidding starts at Auto 50 ($59, or $45 yearly) and goes to Auto 800+ at $640. Every plan has a 14-day trial with no card, which GigRadar does not offer. Our longer write-up is in Vollna alternatives.
UpHunt: an AI score you write yourself
UpHunt reads each job against a prompt you write and scores it from 1 to 10. Basic is $27 a month; Auto-Apply is $89 with 50 automatic applications and $0.40 for each one after that. Alerts reach Slack, Telegram or a webhook. A 7-day free period comes with 20 apply credits.
Upwex: the cheapest helper in the browser
Upwex is a Chrome extension with a dashboard: a 0 to 100 fit score, AI cover letters, form autofill, an auto-bidding scanner and analytics, all on one plan at $7.99 a month ($89.99 a year) with 50 AI credits. It is the closest thing to GigRadar's feature list at a fraction of the price, but it lives in the browser. See Upwex alternatives if that is the problem.
GigUp: scoring without bidding
GigUp compares each new job with your profile and alerts you above a score you set. It says it never applies for you. Basic is $9 a month with email alerts; Telegram and Slack come with Pro at $29.
Upwork X-Ray: the scanner part, free
Ours. You set up to 10 keywords and the filters that decide whether a job is worth Connects: minimum hourly rate, minimum fixed budget, client countries, minimum client spend ($1k, $10k or $50k) and payment verified only. An AI check reads each match before it reaches Telegram. It doesn't log into Upwork and it doesn't bid, so there is nothing to configure about proposals. That is also its limit: you still write and send each one yourself.
OLL.E: when Telegram is too quiet
Also ours. A phone app for Android and iOS that watches Upwork, and your inbox and messages, and calls or sounds an alarm when something urgent arrives. It can draft the bid letter; you send it. 7 days free, no card.
Who should stay on GigRadar
An agency with several profiles, a bidding process and enough volume to spend thousands of credits a year. GigRadar adds a CRM inbox, conversion analytics, API and MCP access, and onboarding on the larger plan. None of the alternatives above matches all of that in one product. If you already paid for a lifetime plan, the money is spent; the question is only whether its proposals still win work.
Before you switch, check what you were paying for
Count the proposals you sent last month and divide your cost by them. Then look at where they went. Across 988,656 jobs in our data, 36% came from clients who had never hired anyone, and 36% from clients with no verified payment method. A bidder that sends to those jobs spends your credits and Connects on poor odds, however good the letter. Speed matters too: 21% of jobs already had invites out minutes after posting. Our numbers on that are in do Upwork clients actually hire and are Upwork Connects worth it.
If the honest answer is that you mostly needed to see good jobs early, an alert with client filters does that part, and you keep the writing. If you need volume you can't write by hand, compare the monthly auto-bidders in Upwork auto bidders, compared.
Test an alternative before you stop the old one
Run both for one week. Point the new tool at the same keywords and client filters as your GigRadar campaign, then compare two lists on Friday: the jobs each one found, and the jobs you would actually have applied to. Ignore the count. A tool that finds 40 jobs and you want 6 of them beats one that finds 200 and you want the same 6. Note the time each alert arrived, too; a match that shows up after the client is interviewing is worth little. Then cancel whichever lost.
Replace the scanner for free
Keywords, minimum rate, client country, client spend and payment verified. Free, no Upwork login, under a minute.
Create a Telegram alert →Prices and features: each tool's own pages, checked November 6, 2026. Job statistics: Upwork X-Ray, 2026-10-29, last 12 months. We make Upwork X-Ray and OLL.E and are not affiliated with Upwork or the other tools.
Questions people ask
- What is the best GigRadar alternative?
- It depends on what you want to replace. For monthly auto-bidding, Vollna's Auto plans start at $59 a month and UpHunt's Auto-Apply is $89. For a cheap browser extension, Upwex is $7.99 a month. For alerts only, Upwork X-Ray sends free Upwork job alerts to Telegram. GigUp scores jobs and never applies for you.
- How much does GigRadar cost?
- GigRadar's pricing page lists two lifetime plans: $1,697 for one freelancer profile and 4,200 credits, and $2,497 for two profiles and 7,000 credits. Both need Upwork Agency Plus, which is $20 a month paid to Upwork. Credit refills start at $350 for 500 credits. No free trial is mentioned.
- Is there a free alternative to GigRadar?
- For the job-finding half, yes. Upwork X-Ray sends new Upwork jobs to Telegram for free, filtered by keywords, minimum rate, client country, minimum client spend and payment verified. It does not write or send proposals, so it replaces GigRadar's scanners, not its bidder.
- Do I need an agency profile to use GigRadar?
- GigRadar's pricing page lists Upwork Agency Plus ($20 a month) as a requirement on both plans. The other tools in this post do not list that requirement on their pricing pages.
- Which GigRadar alternatives send alerts to Telegram?
- Of the tools here: Upwork X-Ray (free), Vollna (from its Essential plan), UpHunt, and GigUp on its Pro plan. Upwex's pages did not mention Telegram when we checked.
- Can I use a free alert tool and GigRadar at the same time?
- Yes. They don't interfere: an alert tool only reads public job posts and sends you a message, while GigRadar sends proposals. Running both for a week is the simplest way to see whether you still need the bidder.