Find vetted professionals for your next shift

Sunworker is a marketplace for self-employed hospitality professionals. Venues find chefs, waiting staff, bartenders, kitchen porters and kitchen assistants here for individual shifts — from a single evening to a whole season.

The difference from a staffing agency lies in who decides: the professional enters their own hourly rate, sees every request and accepts or declines. Sunworker provides the search, the credential checks and the payment processing — what is brokered is a contact, not an employment relationship. Pay is calculated to the minute, based on the actual time between check-in and check-out.

Nothing. Neither venues nor private individuals nor professionals pay for an account, a profile or a request. Money only changes hands once a shift has actually been agreed.

Sending a request to a professional and posting a job are free as well. Only once a shift is agreed does Sunworker keep a commission from the professional’s pay; venues additionally pay a service fee of 15% of the order value, private individuals pay none. How high the commission is, and how it falls with the level, is explained on the pricing page.

No. Sunworker does not lend out or employ anyone — the professionals are self-employed and contract for the shift directly with the client, whether venue or private person. Sunworker brokers the contact, handles the payment and charges a commission for doing so, plus a service fee for venues.

This separation is not a matter of wording; it determines what is possible on the platform. The professional sets their price, chooses their shifts and can decline any request; the venue describes the task and the time but gives no instructions beyond the agreed service. Anyone who regularly needs the same person for a fixed rota should employ them — that is not what Sunworker is for.

Sunworker suspends the accounts involved. Anyone who builds a de facto employment relationship through repeated one-off bookings is engaging in temporary agency work without a licence — that is prohibited, and the venue itself is the first to suffer.

This does not mean a professional working at the same venue several times; that is normal and expressly welcome. It means building a permanent relationship out of one-off bookings: fixed shift patterns instead of individual requests, instructions beyond the agreed service, integration into the venue’s organisation, requirements on the hourly rate. If Sunworker notices such patterns — through reports, conspicuous booking sequences or the messages exchanged during shifts — the accounts concerned are suspended and outstanding amounts are held until the matter is resolved. The platform does this not out of strictness but because, in the worst case, the damage falls on the venue: back payment of social security contributions for the entire period, a fine under § 16 of the German Temporary Employment Act (AÜG) and an employment relationship deemed by law to have been established.

The professional. They enter it in their profile, and it appears on every search result before anyone sends a request. Sunworker neither sets a rate nor negotiates one.

Surcharges are not negotiable either, but fixed: 25% for night work, 50% on Sundays, 100% on public holidays, with the highest rate applying — the rates are not added together. The amount billed in the end follows from the rate entered, the actual duration and these surcharges — visible to both sides before acceptance.

Yes. An uploaded document only counts once it has been checked, and only until its expiry date. That is why a profile shows not just a tick but the date until which the credential is valid.

If a credential expires, the professional drops out of the filters that require it and is reminded in good time beforehand. For shifts involving food, the briefing under § 43 IfSG is mandatory; without a valid certificate, such a shift cannot be accepted. On the profile, the venue sees not only that a credential exists but until when it is valid.

Immediately, as soon as the shift is agreed: on confirmation, the full amount is collected from the stored payment method. The money is held in escrow on the platform account until completion and only then goes to the professional.

Without a successful payment, a shift is not confirmed. At the end, the actual time is billed: if the shift runs longer, the difference is charged to the same payment method; if it ends earlier, it is refunded. With a fixed price, neither applies. Until completion, the money sits in the platform account rather than with the client, so the professional does not have to chase payment.

As short-notice as someone accepts — a professional dropping out on the same evening is exactly the situation Sunworker was built for. The search can be narrowed down to a specific day and only shows who is available that day.

In practice, short-notice staffing is the most common case: someone drops out, the evening is fully booked and the shift starts in four hours. The search therefore only shows professionals who are available that day and within the chosen radius. A request reaches them immediately — how quickly they reply depends on the professional, not the platform.

As long as the money is held in escrow, a dispute can be opened. Sunworker reviews check-in times, messages and both sides’ accounts and can split the amount. Any payout is put on hold until the matter is resolved.

Sunworker does not decide based on sympathy but on what the platform itself has recorded: check-in and check-out times, the course of the shift and the messages from both sides. Splitting the amount is also possible if part of the service was provided. Until the matter is resolved, the money stays in escrow and goes to neither side.