Whether you're about to pitch your first UpStage brief, finishing your profile, or curious about Project #4 Singapore — here's how it works. Have a question we missed? Reach us at rachelloh@upstage.network.
Choosing the right role helps UpStage send you to the right next step.
Find Talent is the buyer role for discovering and hiring actors, creators, and performers. Producer is for people or companies producing projects: you create a producer profile, post briefs, and manage opportunities. A match or pitch is only an introduction and does not guarantee a reply, booking, engagement date, or other outcome.
Choose Find Talent at /signup?as=buyer or Producer at /signup?as=producer. Find Talent users continue to /talent/edit to complete their profile. Producers complete /producers/onboard with a company name, verticals, and markets before posting briefs.
New accounts start with a 7-day trial. The current monthly plans are $19/month for Core and $50/month for Pro; check the pricing page for the features included in each plan. The trial or subscription gives you access to the platform, but it does not promise a match, reply, booking, engagement date, or outcome.
A Producer posts a brief, creating an open opportunity. Talent can be matched to it or browse Open Briefs, then self-pitch. The Producer reviews pitches, may start a direct message, and the two sides can move from an LOI to a signed LOA if they agree. A pitch or match does not guarantee a reply, booking, engagement date, or outcome.
The five things buyers most often push back on before they sign up — with our honest answers.
Read their profile, watch their intro video, and check their reels before you ever start a chat. Every seller sets their own rate, language, and showreel — no one is curated in or hidden from view, and there is no pay-to-rank placement outside of explicit Pro placement upgrades. We don't pre-approve or reject sellers for subjective style — that's what your eyes and your brief are for. Pro buyers also get a curated top-10 each week, ranked by AI against your brief.
Project fees don't flow through UpStage — they settle directly between buyer and talent on whatever terms the LOA records, so no one is holding your money waiting to deliver. You agree scope, rate, dates, and revisions in the LOA before any work starts; the LOA is signed by both sides in-app with timestamped, immutable records. If a talent genuinely doesn't deliver what's signed for, the LOA itself is your standing record — we can read the message history and the LOA terms to help mediate, but the document of record is the one both parties signed.
Backstage and Voices.com are free to post, but they take 20% from the talent side once a deal closes — that cost gets baked into higher day rates you end up paying. UpStage flips the model: the seller pays a flat $19/month (or $50/month for Pro buyers with AI matches) and the platform never takes a percentage of project fees. For a buyer posting 5–10 briefs a year, the subscription is typically cheaper than the 20% mark-up baked into a talent's day rate — and the talent keeps more of what you pay them.
Yes. The LOA is a binding agreement between two named parties and works the same way regardless of where each side is based; usage rights, IP transfer, and revisions are all captured in the document. Stripe handles multi-currency settlement, and UpStage's AI matching and in-app DMs are translated automatically across 10+ languages so you can vet talent before you commit. For cross-border work we recommend specifying which country's law applies in the LOA — reach out to rachelloh@upstage.network for standard clauses if you'd like a starting point.
Fiverr and Upwork are gig-marketplaces with a 20% seller fee and tiered algorithms — you post a task and the platform pushes the lowest bidder. UpStage is a direct talent marketplace: no fees on project work, no gig-style bidding, and no agency tier above you. Buyers post briefs or browse talent directly; messaging is 1:1, the LOA replaces platform-driven dispute flows, and AI matching reads meaning across 10+ languages instead of keyword overlap. The closest analogue is having your own shortlist of vetted talent — minus the agency retainer.
How talent self-pitches work in the Open Briefs feed — and what to expect after you send one.
Buyers post a brief to Open Briefs; signed-in talent sees it in /dashboard/talent and can self-pitch — a short note about why they fit, plus a link to their profile — directly to the buyer. Buyers review pitches in their buyer dashboard and start a 1:1 DM with the talent they want to chat with. Everything runs in-app: there is no agent middleman, no bidding war, no algorithms ranking who sees what.
Only the buyer who posted that one brief. Pitches are not searchable, not shared with other buyers, and not visible to other talent. The buyer sees your self-pitch text, your profile link, your languages, and your rate fields — that's it. They reply in-app if they want to chat; if they don't, nothing else happens.
Yes. Pitch as many briefs as you genuinely fit. You'll see a 'Pitched' badge on briefs you've already responded to, so you don't double-submit. Buyers see your pitch only against their own brief — they're never shown a list of every other buyer you've pitched — so pitching widely is the expected pattern, not a negative signal.
If the buyer opens a chat, you'll get an in-app DM. From there it works like every other UpStage conversation: align on rate and dates, send an LOI when you're both ready, upgrade to a signed LOA before any work starts. If the buyer doesn't reply, nothing further happens — there's no auto-follow-up, no nag email — and you keep your pre-pitch profile state intact.
What a finished profile looks like — and how UpStage's no-views-required, no-gatekeeper positioning shapes what we ask for.
A complete profile has: a short bio (who you are, what you've done), 1+ intro video or reel link, your languages (multi-select from 7 supported), your location, your day rate range, and your availability. None of those fields are gated behind a paywall — you can fill them in before you start your subscription. Buyers decide whether to DM you based on whatever fields you've completed, so the more you fill in, the more you get found.
No. UpStage does not require a minimum number of views, followers, or credits to list a profile. You pay for the work — not the views. The platform is built so non-union actors, micro-creators, and underrated performers without a built-in audience can be discovered on the strength of their reel and bio, not their audience size.
Most talent finish in 10–15 minutes. The longest field is the bio (2–3 sentences works fine); the rest is checkbox + URL input. You can save a draft and come back — anything you leave blank just won't appear on your public profile, and you can fill it in later from /talent/edit.
An active UpStage brief recruiting Singapore-based talent right now. Here's what's open and how to throw your name in.
Project #4 is an UpStage brief based in Singapore. Its requirements and dates are shown in the authenticated Open Briefs feed at /dashboard/talent once you're signed in as Talent. The brief is an opportunity to review and pitch; it does not promise selection, a booking, an engagement date, or another outcome.
Roles, age ranges, languages, and shoot windows for Project #4 are listed on the brief itself. Sign up as Talent, head to /dashboard/talent, and search the live Open Briefs feed — Project #4 sits at the top with the recruiting call. If your profile languages and location aren't a match for Project #4, skip it; UpStage will still surface other briefs that fit you via weekly AI-match notifications.
Three steps: (1) Sign up free at /signup?as=talent — no card needed for the 7-day trial. (2) Complete your profile bio, languages, location, and rate. (3) Open the Project #4 brief in /dashboard/talent and self-pitch with a short note about why you fit. The buyer sees your pitch in their queue and starts a 1:1 chat if they want to move forward.
Your profile is visible to logged-in buyers and producers actively browsing or matching. It is not indexed by external search engines. Briefs stay private until you express interest — you opt in to a project, not the other way around. You can pause or delete your profile at any time from Account settings.