Fiverr is reshaping its marketplace for a web where customers increasingly start their search with AI assistants. The company has launched an AI headhunting tool and public APIs that let agents find and carry out work on the platform, while its CEO warns that traditional search traffic faces years of pressure.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
Fiverr’s Mira tool is designed for AI-powered headhunting. Its new public APIs let AI agents match, scope and execute orders directly, according to PYMNTS, which reported the changes on 29 October.
The figures point to both the opportunity and the strain. PYMNTS says first-time buyer volume sourced through AI channels rose 64% quarter-on-quarter. Fiverr’s third-quarter revenue was $90.9 million, but core marketplace revenue fell 24.7% year-on-year and active buyers fell 25.8% to 2.4 million. Average spend per buyer rose 12.9% to $373.
The PYMNTS report also says orders worth at least $1,000 now make up 16% of completed order value. CEO Micha Kaufman said AI assistants are changing how people find services, and argued that agents will choose platforms for the quality of their results rather than brand loyalty or search advertising.
Why it matters
This is more than a new AI feature bolted onto a familiar marketplace. Fiverr is building ways for software agents to discover and commission work as conventional search becomes less dependable as a route to customers. For freelancers and buyers, the practical question is whether those agents bring useful new work, and on what terms.
The numbers make the shift worth watching, not a victory lap. AI-sourced first-time buyers are growing quickly, but the reported declines in active buyers and core marketplace revenue show that growth in one channel has not erased pressure elsewhere.
Our read
Fiverr is making a sensible bet on being findable by the next generation of customers, including the ones that arrive without a human clicking through search results. But the interesting test is not whether an agent can place an order. It is whether the work is good, the matching is fair and freelancers can still stand out when the intermediary is software with no brand loyalty and, presumably, no favourite gig seller.
What to watch
- Whether AI-sourced buyer growth continues beyond this quarter.
- How Mira and the APIs are used by buyers, agents and freelancers.
- Whether higher-value orders offset the reported fall in active buyers and core marketplace revenue.
Discussion spark: If AI agents increasingly choose where work gets done, should marketplaces compete mainly on the quality of their matches, or give freelancers more control over how agents represent and select them?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (29 October 2026, 18:30 UTC)
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