In order to cope with different levels of control, costs and opportunities on digital platforms operating in Brazil, care workers – cleaners, nannies and caregivers for the elderly – develop strategies to make their experiences more profitable and/or less costly. In this paper we aim to address this dimension of work mediated by care platforms in Brazil. To do so, we mobilize the results of research conducted as part of the project “Who Cares? Rebuilding care in a post-pandemic world”. The objects of the research were the platforms Parafuzo, GetNinjas, Odete, Sitly and Famyle, five among several others, that allow us to illustrate the heterogeneity of the sector in Brazil – something that studies on the platformization of work in the country end up losing sight of by focusing on ride-hailing and delivery. The research mobilized two methodological procedures: 1) document research based on news about the platforms and their websites, focusing on what the companies say about themselves; and 2) 34 semi-structured interviews with workers from these platforms. The interviews allowed us to consider what drives workers to the platforms, based on their working trajectories; the reasons why they prefer one platform to another; and what determines their permanence on one or more platforms. By establishing a comparison between the different platforms that mediate care work in Brazil using this variety of data sources, we have responded to a gap identified in research on the subject in Brazil. Among the results, we highlight that professionals sometimes move between different platforms, but only stay on those where they can find work on a recurring basis and say they won't accept “anything”, in spite of how the platform works. The workers frequently calculate between costs and opportunities and, faced with high levels of control, they try to find loopholes and alternatives, such as looking for private services through other channels, like referrals and social media (Instagram and Facebook). Furthermore, although the very design of the platforms makes it difficult for workers to talk to each other, they have built up their communication networks in WhatsApp groups where they circulate information, tips and grievances. In doing so, they are building collective know-how about how digital platforms work, which contrasts with the companies' opacity and asymmetry of information, something well-documented by the literature on platform labor.