Where to put your desk.
834 destinations, 38 of them with a full dossier: seven criteria weighed by hand, a named visa scheme, the strengths and the caveats. The others get the same eight criteria, computed — and each one says where it comes from. The eighth, the visa, follows YOUR passport: change it above the ranking, and the ranking changes. Nothing is invented: the method sits at the foot of the page.
Choose a city: its dossier will open here.
For dossier cities: speeds commonly observed in flats and coworking spaces. For the others: a NATIONAL band — the country’s fibre and mobile coverage, never a measurement of the city.
For dossier cities: a full month, rent included, for one person living like a resident. For the others: the NATIONAL cost band anchors the figure (65 %), the lowest hotel rate surveyed in the atlas modulates it (35 %). A Norwegian hotel floor is not a Norwegian cost of living: read alone, it put Bergen on a par with Bangkok. 100 = the cheapest.
Safety as felt by a foreigner going out at night with a laptop. Outside dossiers it is a NATIONAL band: it tells no district from another, and says nothing about natural disasters or political risk.
For dossier cities: the real size and activity of the community. For the others: a PROXY — Carnet coverage, the existence of a nomad scheme, the density of surveyed places. A proxy shows a trend, not a figure.
The share of the year that is climatically workable, derived from the national climate and latitude. Working comfort over twelve months, not the beauty of the sky.
YOUR entry right, read from the visa matrix (39,402 pairs) for the passport picked above the ranking, raised where the country has a documented, dated nomad scheme. It is the one criterion that depends on who is asking — and it applies to all 834, dossiers included: a hand-written visa score assumes a passport, and is wrong for every other one. The dossier names the exact scheme, its length and its income threshold.
For dossier cities: the number, quality and price of workspaces. For the others: a PROXY — the density of places surveyed in the atlas. We do NOT count the Carnet’s cafés: it documents twenty per city almost everywhere, and a constant tells nothing apart.
Working hours shared with Western Europe and the US east coast, COMPUTED from the time offset. 95 = both; 50 = you will be rising early or staying up late.
The 38 dossier cities are written by hand: seven criteria weighed one by one, a named visa scheme, strengths and caveats. The other 796 destinations get the same eight criteria, COMPUTED — and the label under each criterion says where the figure comes from. Three are facts (surveyed price, time offset, national climate); two are acknowledged proxies (coworking, community); two are national bands (connection, safety) that place a country without telling one district from another. The eighth, the visa, is computed for EVERYONE from your passport: it is the one criterion no dossier can write in advance. We do not measure day-to-day air quality, nor live rent levels: for those two, cross-check with a local source before you book.