The Best Cities to Work From Cafes, Measured Rather Than Guessed

Nearly every ranking of cities for remote work is built from cost of living, visa rules and a writer's impressions. None of them measure the thing you actually spend your day inside, which is the cafes.

So we measured it. Every venue in nine cities, read from its public reviews and its posted opening hours, scored for Wi-Fi, for whether the room suits a laptop, and for whether it is still open in the evening. That is more than 2,000 cafes, and the results do not match the reputations.

City	Cafes read	Fast Wi-Fi	Laptop friendly	Open past 9pm
Berlin	499	58%of 228 rated	58%of 358	28%140 places
Barcelona	434	63%of 281 rated	60%of 248	57%249 places
Canggu	377	78%of 251 rated	76%of 280	61%229 places
Lisboa	308	74%of 140 rated	64%of 213	34%105 places
Chiang Mai	286	81%of 180 rated	75%of 208	24%68 places
Bangkok	220	80%of 61 rated	81%of 105	15%33 places
Madrid	195	67%of 39 rated	57%of 44	58%114 places
Porto	189	82%of 33 rated	79%of 48	49%93 places
Valencia	188	77%of 30 rated	75%of 40	45%84 places

What the table says

Canggu and Chiang Mai are in a different league on quality. Canggu rates its Wi-Fi fast in 196 of 251 rated venues and reads as laptop friendly in 212 of 280 judged; Chiang Mai is close behind. Both also carry the highest average venue scores in the catalogue, 3.88 and 3.73 out of five.

This is not a coincidence or a climate. It is what happens when enough of the local economy depends on people who work from cafes: the cafes compete on the things those people need, and the ones that do not compete close.

Barcelona owns the evening. 249 of its 434 cafes are still open at 9pm, the highest share of the European cities and one of the highest anywhere. Madrid is right behind at 114 of 195. If your working day is shifted late, whether by time zones or by preference, Spain is set up for you in a way northern Europe is not.

Berlin is the surprise, and not in a good way. It has the largest catalogue of the nine at 499 venues, and the lowest laptop-friendly share among the big ones: 208 of 358 judged. Its Wi-Fi ratings are the weakest of the large catalogues too.

Berlin's reputation as a remote work city is real and it is built on coworking spaces, not cafes. The cafes are excellent and many of them are simply not interested in being offices, which is a legitimate position for a cafe to take and worth knowing before you arrive.

Portugal is quietly good. Lisbon and Porto both run above 60% on laptop friendliness among judged venues, and Porto has 93 of its 189 cafes open past nine. Neither city gets written about for this.

What the numbers cannot tell you

Three honest limits, because a table like this invites more confidence than it has earned.

The denominators differ. Wi-Fi is rated on 1,243 venues and laptop friendliness judged on 1,544, out of a catalogue of more than 2,000, because these come from what reviewers chose to mention. We report each share against its own denominator rather than the full catalogue, which is why the columns do not add up to the same base.

Nine cities is not the world. There is no Mexico City here, no Tbilisi, no Buenos Aires, no Seoul. The absence of a city means we have not read it, not that it is bad.

Averages hide the thing you will actually use. A city with a mediocre average and forty superb cafes is better to live in than a city with a good average and none, and Berlin is exactly that city. The average is a starting point for choosing a neighbourhood, not a verdict on a place.

How to use this

Pick the city for the reasons people normally pick cities, then use the data to pick the district, and plan the day around more than one room. Every city we cover is broken down by neighbourhood, because a 500-venue city is not a useful unit and a 130-venue district is.

If your day runs late, weight the evening column heavily. It is the constraint that bites hardest and the one people plan for least: arriving in Chiang Mai on European hours means discovering that 218 of its 286 cafes have shut by the time your afternoon starts.

If your day is full of calls, weight the Wi-Fi column and read what actually breaks a cafe connection first, because the fix is usually not a better cafe.

The method, briefly

Each venue is read from its public reviews and its Google-listed opening hours. The judgements about Wi-Fi, noise, laptop friendliness and time limits come from what customers wrote, not from a visit and not from the venue's own description. Where reviewers said nothing on a dimension, the venue carries no judgement on it and is excluded from that column rather than counted as a negative.

Opening hours are parsed from the posted hours for each day, and a venue counts as open late if it is still serving at 9pm on at least one day of the week.

The numbers above are live: this table reads the catalogue when the page is built, so it moves as cities are added and venues are re-read.

Which city has the best cafes to work from?

On measured quality, Canggu and Chiang Mai lead: Canggu rates its Wi-Fi fast in 196 of 251 rated venues and reads as laptop friendly in 212 of 280 judged, with Chiang Mai close behind. Both carry the highest average venue scores in our catalogue. The reason is economic rather than cultural: enough of the local economy depends on remote workers that cafes compete for them.

Is Berlin good for working from cafes?

Less than its reputation suggests. Berlin has the largest catalogue of the nine cities at 499 venues and the lowest laptop-friendly share among the large ones, 208 of 358 judged. Its reputation as a remote work city rests on coworking spaces rather than cafes, and many of its best cafes are simply not trying to be offices.

Which city has the most cafes open in the evening?

Barcelona, where 249 of 434 cafes are still open at 9pm, followed by Madrid at 114 of 195. This tracks the local dinner hour rather than anything about coffee culture. Chiang Mai is at the other end, with only 68 of 286 open that late.

How was this measured?

Every venue was read from its public reviews and its posted opening hours rather than from visits. Wi-Fi, noise, laptop friendliness and time limits come from what customers wrote; where reviewers said nothing on a dimension, the venue is excluded from that column rather than counted as a negative, so each share is reported against its own denominator.