The author considers the stages of formation of free employment and scientific knowledge about it in Russia, starting from the stage of emergence and development, ending with the current period. At different stages of formation, free employment was understood as different types and forms of flexible employment: self-employment, remote employment, freelancing, which is directly perceived by the majority as free employment. The methods used: historical analysis, general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, systems method, as well as a review of publication activity devoted to freelancing, made it possible to see and determine the stages of development of scientific knowledge about freelance with reference to different time periods and to see the dependence on certain socio-economic and legal processes. The results of the analysis show that at present, with the development of remote information technologies, freelancing is gradually moving to the Internet, narrowing down to electronic freelance ("e-lance"). At the same time, at the beginning of its appearance, freelance was perceived directly as free employment, and it was expected that over time there would be a mass transition of workers to freelancing without combining with their main activity. However, during the analysis of the results of freelancing studies, the author determined that throughout the entire period of formation and development of freelance, the share of part-time workers in general remains at the same level and is approximately half of all freelancers. This allows us to conclude that freelance in its current state is not entirely correct to call free employment. Therefore, in the context of free employment, it is more appropriate to use an expansive interpretation that includes various flexible forms of labor relations that reduce the alienation of labor: remote work, shortened work week, flexible schedule, hybrid forms of employment, etc.