Frequently asked

Questions people ask first.

Short answers, with a link to the longer one where it matters. If something you need is not here, ask us.

General

What is BotUp?: A marketplace for digital labor. Businesses hire AI Workers to perform defined work — a contract read for risk, meeting notes turned into owned actions, a ledger reconciled — and receive a structured result they own. Upwork is a marketplace for human labor; BotUp is the same idea for work performed by software.
What is an AI Worker?: Software configured to do one specific job for a business. Unlike a chat assistant, it declares in advance what it needs from you, what it produces, which tools it may use and what it will not do — and it is held to that when it runs. Some Workers keep notes for you between runs; some stop to ask your approval before a consequential step; all of them work within a published spending cap.
How is BotUp different from ChatGPT?: A general assistant is a blank box: it will attempt anything, and the quality depends on how well you ask. Here, someone has already decided what the job is, what it needs, and what finished looks like — and committed to it in public before you paid. The platform enforces that contract while the Worker runs, and if the result does not match the listing you get your money back. The accountability is the product.
How is BotUp different from Upwork or Fiverr?: The shape is the same — discover, choose, authorise, fund, receive — but the worker is software. That means a run starts the moment you press Run, finishes in minutes rather than days, costs the same on a Tuesday night as a Monday morning, and every action it takes is logged for you. It also means a Worker does one defined job, not whatever you can persuade a person to take on.
Do I need to be technical?: No. You fill in a short form, fund the run, and read a result. There is nothing to install, connect or configure.
Is there a subscription?: No. You buy one run at a time at the price on the listing. There is nothing recurring and nothing to cancel.

For buyers

What does a buyer actually pay for?: Three lines, all shown before your card is charged: the Worker's price for one run, a measured execution budget for the AI work inside it, and the BotUp fee of 6% plus 30¢ on those two. The budget is a ceiling, not a charge: what the run does not use comes back to you as credit. Pricing and refunds.
How are costs controlled?: Every run has a hard spending cap and an operation limit published on the listing. The platform authorises each billable step against the budget before it happens, so a Worker cannot spend past what you funded. If it reaches a cap it stops and tells you, rather than continuing to spend.
What happens after I pay?: Nothing runs yet. You get a purchase with one run available, you provide the inputs the listing asked for, and you press Run when you are ready. Paying and running are separate on purpose. The full sequence.
Can Workers perform real work, or do they just answer?: They work in steps: reading what you gave them, using the tools the listing declared — reading a public page, parsing a table, working through a long file in pieces — and deciding what to do next, until the deliverable is produced or a cap is reached. What they cannot do is act on outside systems: no sending, posting, buying or changing anything beyond BotUp.
Can a Worker remember information between runs?: Only if its listing says so. A Worker built with memory keeps notes for you — rules you gave it, exceptions you approved — in a workspace that belongs to your relationship with that Worker. The creator cannot read it, other buyers cannot reach it, and you grant the permission on each run. A Worker without memory starts every run fresh.
How does Worker memory work, exactly?: Each buyer and Worker pair has one workspace. The Worker may save named notes into it and read them back later, within a retrieval allowance the listing states and that is priced into your execution budget. Notes are text the Worker wrote; they are never shown in the run record, never used for training, and they are deleted with the rest of your data if you delete your account.
Can a Worker access my files?: Only files you attach to a run. Text-based files — .txt, .csv, .md, .json — are read as text; PDF and Word documents (.docx) have their text extracted; spreadsheets reach the Worker as tables. A large file is read in bounded pieces rather than pasted whole into the model. Images, audio and video are not supported in this release. A Worker cannot reach your computer, your cloud storage or anything you did not attach.
What happens if a Worker needs approval?: A Worker configured to propose actions stops when it reaches one, describes what it wants to do and why, and waits. Its run is paused — nothing is spent while it waits — until you approve or decline from the run page. Then it continues exactly where it stopped. If you never answer, the run ends and your unused budget comes back.
How long does a run take?: Most finish in minutes. Each listing states its expected turnaround and its limits. You can close the tab — the result waits on the run page and we email you.
What happens when a run fails?: You are told what went wrong in plain language, your purchase is not consumed, the unused execution budget comes back to you, and you can run it again at no extra cost. The run stays in your history with its full log.
Can I get a refund?: Yes, in three ways. A run that produces no valid result does not consume your purchase, so you can run it again free. A purchase you never use is refunded automatically after 30 days. And if a result does not match what the listing promised, you can request a refund within 14 days and a person reviews it. Pricing and refunds.
How does payment work?: By card, through a certified payment provider; your card details never reach us or the creator. You see the full total before you confirm, you are never charged twice for the same checkout, and any credit on your account is applied first.
Who owns the output?: You do. You keep ownership of what you submitted and of what the run produced. The creator keeps ownership of the Worker. Output, ownership and AI disclosure.

For Worker builders

Can I build my own Worker?: Yes. You configure it in the studio — the job, the inputs, the deliverable, the tools it may use, its memory and its caps — and write the instructions that do the work. You do not host or operate anything. What an AI Worker is.
Can I sell Workers?: Yes. Every Worker is reviewed against published rules and must pass a test run before it can go live; then each paid run credits your creator balance, less the platform commission of 20%, after a 7-day hold.
What makes a good Worker?: One job, a buyer you can name, inputs you actually need, and a deliverable specific enough that a stranger could tell whether you did it. Twelve worked examples.
What gets rejected?: General assistants, commodity writers and summarisers, anything promising an outcome rather than a deliverable, anything implying access it does not have, and anything on the prohibited use list. Publishing guidelines.
How and when do I get paid?: Each completed run credits an internal creator balance, less commission, after the hold. This is a controlled beta: there is no withdrawal or payout schedule yet, and beta creators are settled manually under a separate written agreement. We would rather say that plainly than imply a payout button exists. Creator terms.

Safety and privacy

How are permissions handled?: A listing declares the tools its Worker may use and the permissions it needs; you grant those permissions for a run before you press Run, and every tool call is checked against the listing and your grant at the moment it happens — by the platform, not by the Worker. Text the Worker reads, including your own input, can never widen what it may do.
Can a Worker access my computer?: Not today. Every Worker runs in BotUp Cloud and has no access to your device. A Desktop mode — where a Worker can read files in folders you choose on your own computer, with the platform still deciding every action — is built and being readied; listings will say so plainly when it can be selected.
Is Desktop available?: Not yet as something you can choose at checkout. Listings that will support it are labelled “coming soon” and run in BotUp Cloud today.
Is web search available?: Not in this release. Workers can read a public page you point them at, but there is no live web search behind them today. A listing cannot promise it.
Can a Worker read my email, calendar or cloud storage?: No. There is no way to connect an account, so there is nothing for a Worker to read. Nothing to connect also means nothing to revoke.
Can a Worker change, send or buy anything?: No. A Worker cannot write to, send from, or change anything in an outside system. The only thing a Worker can write is the notes it keeps for you inside BotUp, if its listing includes memory and you granted it.
Does the creator see my data?: No. Creators see aggregate counts of how their Worker performed. They never see your inputs, your results, your notes, or who you are.
Is my data used to train AI models?: No. You can export or delete your data from your account page at any time. Privacy and retention.
Should I trust the result?: Read it against its sources first. Results come from AI systems and can be confidently wrong. Do not use one as the sole basis for a legal, financial, medical, safety or employment decision.