Introduction

Lancer finds Upwork jobs that match your campaigns, decides which ones are worth bidding on, writes the proposals, and submits them. New to Lancer or fuzzy on the concepts? Start with How Lancer works.

Most people run Lancer entirely from the web app, but everything important is also available programmatically. These docs cover the two surfaces you can build on:

MCP server

Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client and let your AI agent configure and run Lancer: knowledge base, campaigns, cover letters, inbox, and pipeline.

External mode

Flip a campaign to external and Lancer streams matching jobs to your system over webhooks. You decide what to bid and what to write through the API. Lancer still handles the Upwork submission.

Which surface do you need?

You want to	Use
Set up or optimize Lancer by chatting with an AI agent	MCP server
Pull matching jobs into your own system and control every bid	External mode, which pairs webhooks with the API
Get notified in your own tooling when something happens	Webhooks, usable on any campaign
Submit a bid or reject a lead from a script	The API

Requirements

A Lancer account with an organization. Sign up at lancer.app.
An active subscription or trial. The Public API and webhooks require a paid plan; the MCP server works during trials too.
For anything that touches Upwork, at least one connected Upwork account (called a bidder account) in your organization.

Base URLs

Surface	URL
Web app	`https://1.lancer.app`
API and MCP host	`https://api.lancer.app`
MCP endpoint	`https://api.lancer.app/mcp`
External mode API	`https://api.lancer.app/v1`

Built for AI agents

Every page has a Copy Markdown button next to its title, ready to paste into any AI assistant. For agents that fetch URLs themselves, append .md to any page URL for raw markdown, or use https://docs.lancer.app/llms.txt (an index of every page) and https://docs.lancer.app/llms-full.txt (the entire documentation as one markdown file).