I have experience with both sites (Freelancer and Upwork), and am happy to share my two cents on them.
In both sites there's a huge advantage to experience and the amount of work you've previously done (and the reviews you've gotten for it). So if you didn't start using them early on you're at a serious disadvantage because you don't have any track record and therefore are less likely to get jobs. Also, both sites suffer from people who just apply to everything, regardless of whether or not they're even capable of doing the job. They also bid very low, hoping to get the project and then figure it out or sub-hire someone else to do it for them, for a slightly lower price, I'm guessing (you'll see many times that a project is posted by one person, and then an exact copy of it is posted by another, with a lower budget. The websites do little to fight this, and why would they? They get a cut from each project, after all). It's very difficult to stand above the crowd in such an environment.
Both sites also have various membership programs that cost different amounts and in exchange charge you different percentages from your earnings, or provide you with different amounts of "tokens" that allow you to bid on projects. At some point I calculated what's the optimal plan for me, based on the amount of projects I get and how much I earn on average per month. You can usually switch between programs quite easily, though.
One thing I really hated in oDesk (which was later on merged into Upwork) was that you had to select a category of expertise and could only apply to jobs posted under that category. So if someone created a job for developing a PDF form with scripts, for example, but put it under "Office Work" (or whatever it was called) instead of under "Programming and software development" and you were registered under the latter then you couldn't bid on it, unless you paid extra. There are a lot of these kinds of up-sell tricks in those sites, so you have to be careful when bidding. When you bid on a project in Freelancer you can "sponsor" your bid for $25, so that you bid appears at the top of the list, or you can "highlight" your bid for $1 (so it's more visible in the list of bids the employer sees), etc. I tend to avoid all of that as much as I can. Let your work and professionalism talk for you, not the cash in your pocket.
Freelancer has one really good feature which is the Milestones system. This is basically an escrow system for the project: The employer deposits the agreed-upon amount, in advance, under one or more milestones and you agree with them on what each milestone represents. For example, let's say you're developing a piece of software that extracts data from a site. You can agree that the first proof-of-concept output is the first milestone, the GUI is the second milestone and the third is the full application. That way you know the money is available and can get at least some of it while the project is on-going. Unfortunately, not all employers are aware of this system or know how to use it, and you often need to explain it to them.
I'm not aware of other websites having this system (at least not as advanced) which leaves the freelancer quite exposed in case things go wrong.
When things do go wrong then you have a Disputes system. I didn't have to use it yet (thankfully) in Upwork, but I did in Freelancer, several times.
I have to say that in my opinion they tend to side with the employer, unless you can provide really cut and clear proof of wrong-doing on their side.
It's very important to have a CLEAR and FULL description of the project BEFORE YOU ACCEPT IT. I can't stress this enough. Once you agreed to the project you're basically bound to it, and you usually pay a non-refundable fee (usually around 10%), so you have to make sure that both you and the employer know what the project entails, and what it doesn't.
One last, but not least, point is withdrawing money. Both sites have their own quirks about this, but in Freelancer they recently (about half a year ago, I would say) really made it very very difficult to withdraw your payments to a bank account or to PayPal. You basically have to provide multiple forms of identification, including a picture of a national ID card or passport, a recent utility bill with your name and address on it and a picture of yourself holding a code they send you (!). But once you do that then it's back to normal and I withdraw my earnings from there without a problem so far.
With Upwork it's less difficult, but they have all kinds of weird rules about when you can withdraw your money (above a certain amount only, IIRC), and they also started charging a pretty hefty fee recently for the projects you get.
Hopefully that's not too much info. And just to clarify this is only from my own experience with these two sites. Others might have experienced it differently, of course.
TL;DR: I use both sites. Both of them work fine for me, but you need to know how to use them, what to expect and what to be careful of.
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