Best cities for freelancers

Overview

Fukuoka tops our ranking of best cities for freelancers at 7.8/10, just ahead of Valencia and Taipei. Choosing where to live is easier with numbers in front of you than with a gut feeling. Best cities for freelancers is exactly that: a data-driven answer, not a listicle opinion. Freelancers juggle their own health insurance and irregular income, so this ranking leans harder on affordability and healthcare access than our digital nomad list, which prioritizes internet speed instead. We started from 303 cities worldwide and narrowed the field to the 89 that fit this lifestyle, then re-weighted our usual seven criteria to reflect what this audience typically prioritizes. Average safety across this list sits at 6.9/10 and average climate at 6.4/10 — both well above a random sample of world cities, which says as much about the filtering as it does about any individual entry. Singapore posts the strongest individual safety score in this group at 10/10, a detail the blended ranking above can obscure if safety happens to matter more to you than to the average reader. Treat this as a starting shortlist — the recommender tool further down the site lets you push the underlying weights around if your own priorities don't match the defaults used here. The full ranking, full scorecards and links to each city's dedicated page are below.

Full ranking

Curious how the top two stack up criterion by criterion? Compare Fukuoka vs Valencia directly →

Methodology

Cities are scored 1-10 on seven criteria — cost of living, safety, environment, transport, climate, healthcare and internet — then re-weighted specifically for this list before ranking, rather than using a flat average across all seven. Want different priorities? Set your own weights in the recommender.

Understanding the criteria

This list leans hardest on the criteria that matter most for this lifestyle rather than treating all seven equally — a city can rank highly here even with a mediocre score on a criterion this audience typically cares less about, and miss the top spots despite strong all-round numbers if it's weak on the criteria that matter most for this use case.

Tips for using this ranking

• →Don't stop at the top result — compare your top 2-3 picks head-to-head using the comparator, since a 0.2-point gap in the overall score can hide a much bigger difference on the one criterion you actually care about.
• →If your budget is fixed, sort mentally by Tbilisi's cost-of-living score (9/10) as a floor, then work down this list rather than up it.

Who this ranking is for

This ranking is most useful for Digital nomads — remote workers who need fast internet and an affordable, pleasant base, Freelancers — independent workers balancing cost of living against healthcare access and Expats — expatriates relocating for work who lean on safety, healthcare and internet to stay settled and connected. If none of those match your situation, the recommender tool lets you set your own weights instead of relying on any preset list.

Strengths & limitations of this ranking

Frequently asked questions

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