What Auto-Invitations does
When a client invites you to a job on Upwork, Lancer can detect that invitation the moment it arrives and respond immediately on your behalf — without you needing to check Upwork manually. To do this, Lancer uses email forwarding: your email provider forwards Upwork notification emails to Lancer as soon as they land in your inbox.
Lancer recognises both the standard Upwork invitation email and the newer Braze-powered "apply for free — no Connects needed" template (subject: Invitation to Interview for: …). Both formats are detected and handled automatically once forwarding is set up.
Your whole inbox is never forwarded
The setup wizard walks you through creating a filter — not a blanket forward. The filter has a single, narrow rule:
If sender contains
upwork.com→ forward to Lancer
That's it. Every other email you receive — from clients, colleagues, newsletters, anyone — stays in your inbox, private and untouched. The upwork.com domain (without the @) covers both invitation emails (@upwork.com) and message-notification emails (@email.upwork.com) in a single rule.
Running the setup wizard
Open Connected Accounts, find the bidder account you want to enable this for, and click Set up auto-invitations. The wizard takes about 1 minute and is the same across all supported providers:
Intro screen — confirms what forwarding is for and that only Upwork emails will be forwarded. Click Next to begin.
Add the forwarding address — paste Lancer's forwarding address into your email provider's forwarding settings. For Gmail and Google Workspace, Lancer auto-confirms the verification email sent by Gmail so you don't have to click anything.
Create the filter / rule — inside your email provider, create a rule matching
upwork.comsenders and forwarding them to Lancer. The wizard shows the exact steps and screenshots for your provider.
Supported providers: Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, iCloud, Outlook.com, Proton, Zoho, and a generic "custom" path for other providers. Yahoo Mail requires a paid Yahoo Plus subscription for forwarding rules.
After setup completes
You'll see one of two completion screens:
"You're all set" — forwarding is verified. Lancer is now listening for Upwork invitations sent to this account. To start auto-bidding on invitations, open the bidder account's settings and select a cover-letter template and a knowledge base profile.
"Forwarding pending verification" — your provider doesn't send a confirmation email, so Lancer can't verify automatically. Forwarding stays pending until the first real Upwork email arrives at Lancer's inbox — at that point the pending badge drops off automatically. No action is needed from you.
Tracking auto-applied invitations
The Invitations table on your dashboard shows a status chip for every invitation. Once auto-bidding is active, you'll see three states:
⚡ Auto-sent — Lancer detected the invitation via email forwarding and automatically submitted a proposal on your behalf.
✈ Sent — a proposal exists for this job, but you applied manually on Upwork rather than through Lancer's auto-bid.
Not sent — no proposal has been submitted for this invitation.
Both ⚡ Auto-sent and ✈ Sent chips link directly to the inbox conversation for that application, so you can read the proposal or reply to the client without leaving Lancer.
Troubleshooting
The pending badge hasn't cleared: wait for the next Upwork notification to arrive (an invitation, a job-update email, etc.). Once one comes through, verification completes on its own.
Invitations aren't being detected: double-check your filter matches
upwork.com(not@upwork.com) and that it's set to forward to the Lancer address shown in the wizard, not just to archive or label.Wrong Gmail account: if you have multiple Gmail accounts, make sure you're signed into the one that matches your Upwork account's email before creating the filter.
Still stuck: message us in the chat and we'll walk through it with you.