Where to find IT contracts in Germany: every project board, freelance platform and agency

Where do IT freelancers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland find their next contract? This page lists 106 sources – project boards, the project pages of staffing agencies, marketplaces, job boards and public tenders – each with its operator, its cost for freelancers and who posts there. Most projects appear on a few boards: of the new listings on the 5 project boards Projectmatch reads, most went to freelancermap.de (52%), freelance.de (35%) and gulp.de (8.1%) in Q3 2026.

By David Neuy. List as of 2 November 2026. Published 2 November 2026, last updated 2 November 2026.

Where are most IT freelance projects listed?

On the large project boards. Of the 39,296 new listings on the 5 boards Projectmatch reads every hour, most went to freelancermap.de (52%), freelance.de (35%) and gulp.de (8.1%) in Q3 2026. The projects there are almost always posted by staffing agencies and project brokers, rarely by the end client: of the quarter's 28,289 distinct projects, 77% name the posting company, and that is almost always an agency. Most projects were posted by SOLCOM (1,490), SThree (1,228) and Hays (1,080). How the boards differ in contract type, remote share and roles is shown in the comparison of the IT project boards; which agencies post the most projects in The largest IT recruitment agencies.

Freelancers themselves name the project boards first, too: in freelancermap's survey Freelancer-Kompass 2025, 34 % of the respondents win most of their projects through project platforms, 23 % through their personal network, 16 % through staffing agencies and 14 % through referrals. The respondents are freelancermap users, so their answers likely favour the boards.

How to choose a project board

• Who posts? On the large boards mostly staffing agencies; end clients are reached more often through curated networks, corporate portals, marketplaces and your own network. An agency earns the difference between the client's rate and yours.
• What does it cost? Three models: a subscription for freelancers (project boards), a commission on the fee (marketplaces and networks), or a margin the agency keeps (staffing agencies). The column "Cost for freelancers" gives what each site publishes.
• How much IT? Some sites list IT projects only, others IT next to design, marketing or engineering.
• Where? Austria and Switzerland have boards of their own; international marketplaces mostly work in English with clients from all over the world. How often German projects allow remote work is shown in How remote are IT freelance projects in Germany?
• How many boards? The same project is often listed on several boards at once – following two or three large boards and registering with the agencies covers most of the market.
• Part-time? None of the boards Projectmatch reads offers a search filter by workload. How many projects accept fewer than five days a week, and on which board, is shown in Part-time IT contracts in Germany.

General project boards (9)

Clients and staffing agencies post projects here, and freelancers apply. For the boards Projectmatch reads, the last column gives the new listings per month and their share of all these boards' listings.

Curated IT networks and corporate portals (7)

Networks that admit freelancers after an application or a test and place them with clients, and portals on which a corporation posts its own projects. We found no live project board for SAP freelancers only: SAP projects are on the general boards and with specialised agencies such as RED Global or Amoria Bond.

Project pages of staffing agencies and project brokers (34)

The large agencies keep project lists and freelancer pools of their own; registering there also brings offers for projects that are never listed publicly. Many of their projects are on the project boards as well – often more than on their own site. The last column gives how many distinct projects each agency posted in Q3 2026 on the boards Projectmatch reads; the table is sorted by it.

Freelance platforms and marketplaces (17)

On international marketplaces freelancers from all over the world compete for the same work, mostly in English; the platform keeps a commission on the fee. Curated networks such as Toptal or Arc admit only after a test. For longer projects with German clients they matter less than the project boards. Contracts in Germany that need no German are covered in English-speaking IT contracts in Germany.

Job boards with freelance listings (13)

Job boards list freelance projects too, mostly behind a filter such as "Freelance" or "Contract". Most of these listings come from the same agencies as on the project boards.

Public tenders (6)

Public authorities award IT contracts through procurement platforms. Most do not suit a single freelancer – they ask for references, a minimum turnover or a team –, but smaller contracts and subcontracts of large providers occur.

Search engines and aggregators (3)

Instead of checking each board on its own, these services collect projects from several sources. Projectmatch, which publishes this analysis, is one of them.

Project boards in Austria and Switzerland

freelancermap, freelance.de, Malt and the large agencies are active in Austria and Switzerland as well. These sites address one of the two countries in particular.

Project boards in Austria (8)

Project boards in Switzerland (9)

What became of …? (17)

Many lists of project boards name sites that no longer exist as such. These closed, were renamed or merged into another:

• Contractor Consulting (November 2026): Has been called Darize since 2 November 2026 and belongs to the 7N group. Today: Darize (vormals Contractor Consulting).
• tribeworks (Hays) (October 2026): Hays closed the platform on 30 October 2026. Today: Hays.
• top itservices (January 2026): Has been called FERCHAU Contract since January 2026; the address redirects to FERCHAU. Today: FERCHAU.
• Honeypot (February 2025): XING's developer platform redirected to XING Jobs from February 2025; today the address is offline.
• Allgeier Experts (November 2024): Allgeier sold the staffing business to emagine; the site is offline. Today: emagine.
• GULP (July 2024): GULP and Randstad merged on 1 July 2024; the project board continues at gulp.de. Today: GULP (Randstad Professional).
• GULP Schweiz (July 2024): Merged into Randstad Digital Switzerland on 1 July 2024; gulp.ch redirects to randstad.ch. Today: Randstad Digital Schweiz.
• Avantgarde Experts (May 2024): Part of the YER Group since May 2024; the address redirects to yer.de. Today: YER Deutschland.
• expertlead (May 2023): The curated IT network from Berlin filed for insolvency in 2023; WorkGenius took it over, and the address is parked today.
• twago (January 2023): The public marketplace ended around the turn of 2022/23; twago.com redirects to talent-pool.com, a Randstad Sourceright product for companies. Today: talent-pool.com.
• Comatch (March 2022): Acquired by Malt and now Malt Strategy. Today: Malt Strategy.
• Stack Overflow Jobs (March 2022): Closed on 31 March 2022.
• Modis (January 2022): Merged with AKKA into Akkodis (Adecco group). Today: Akkodis.
• Projektwerk (January 2021): Project board since 1999, run from the same Nürnberg address as freelancermap; has redirected to freelancermap since January 2021. Today: freelancermap.
• XING Projekte (February 2018): Integrated into the XING job market on 1 February 2018. Today: XING Jobs.
• Bosch freelancernetwork: The portal launched in 2021 is now called Bosch LegendsLab. Today: Bosch LegendsLab.
• Freelance Junior: Now called Junico; the old address is for sale. Today: Junico.

What do project boards and freelance platforms cost?

Freelancers meet three models, and the tables above give what each site publishes:

• Subscription: the large project boards let you search for free and apply a limited number of times; unlimited applications, the clients' contact details or a highlighted profile cost a monthly or yearly subscription. They take no commission on the fee.
• Commission: marketplaces and curated networks keep a share of the fee, mostly between 5 and 20 %, sometimes only in the first months of a contract; often the client pays a service fee on top.
• Margin: staffing agencies are free for freelancers. They bill the client a higher rate than they pay the freelancer; almost none publishes the difference. Which hourly rates listings state is shown in the analysis of the hourly rates.

Method

The list rests on the sites themselves: costs and operators come from their pricing, help and legal-notice pages; dates of closures and renamings from the operators' announcements and archived versions of the sites. What a site does not publish is marked "not published" in the table. Every address is requested automatically before each update; sites that no longer answer or redirect to another site are reviewed and moved. List as of 2 November 2026.

The figures on boards and agencies come from Projectmatch's own reading: it reads 5 project boards every hour from 6 am to 6 pm (German time) and counts every new listing. The listings per month count per board over the quarter's months in which it was read completely; an agency's projects count each project once, however often the agency listed it, and an agency with fewer than ten projects in a month does not count on its own in that month. How they are counted is described in the comparison of the IT project boards and in the analysis of the recruitment agencies. Projectmatch does not measure the size of the other sites.

Frequently asked questions

Every project of the large boards in one place

Projectmatch reads freelancermap.de, freelance.de, gulp.de, solcom.de and projekt-pool.de every hour and shows the current IT freelance projects of all these boards in one list; it matches new projects against your profile automatically. Try it now – or first see for free, without an account, which current projects fit your CV in the profile check.

See also: IT project boards compared, The largest IT recruitment agencies, IT headhunters in Germany, IT freelancer hourly rates and The IT freelance market month by month.