If you’re working remotely or running a business but you aren’t made of money, where you choose to open up your laptop can have a huge impact on your monthly budget. Thankfully some of the best digital nomad destinations are places where you can really stretch your dollars or euros. In many cases, you’ll spend half or less what you would staying in the country of your birth.
As the author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, currently in its 5th edition, I know a thing or two about where the bargain places to travel are around the world. As the author of A Better Life for Half the Price, currently in its 2nd edition, I’ve also talked with hundreds of expats about what they’re spending where they’re living. Some have put down roots, but others bop around spending a few months here, a few months there as digital nomads.
I’m kind of in the middle, with a base in Mexico but several months a year in other places. Sometimes this is referred to as a hub and spoke system and it can be a lot less tiring than living out of a backpack or suitcase non-stop all year. Sometimes nomadic, sometimes with a home base.
Two years ago I spent more than four months in Europe and a month in Thailand. This past year I spent two months in Europe and a few weeks each in different parts of Mexico, also taking trips to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Panama where I kept working at least a few days.
The costs vary widely between the places you could choose. A routine train or bus trip from Oslo to Trondheim will cost you at least $85, while a VIP bus from Bangkok to Phuket can be as little as $36 for a longer distance.
A pint of beer in a bar in Singapore might cost you $8, while in Prague or Sofia it will probably be around $2.50. (And will taste better.) Groceries that are a dollar a kilo in Mexico or Colombia may cost you three times that much in the USA or Canada.
So with that in mind, here are some popular digital nomad destinations where the “table stakes” basics are already in place but the cost of living is quite low if you’re earning in US dollars, euros, or pounds sterling.
What are those essentials, the required items for people working remotely? Different traveling workers have different needs, but some are universal. To attract people who can work from anywhere, you generally need the following:
1) Fast internet
2) Reasonably priced short-term rentals
3) Decent places to eat and drink
4) Some other like-minded people to hang out with that speak a common international language.
Good weather helps, lots to do when you’re not working helps, and the ability to stay longer than a month is important—though Bali manages to still pull in the veggie yoga crowd by the thousands without that factor.
Some people would say co-working spaces are important, though plenty of serious remote business owners almost never set foot in one, including me. I’ve found that they’re much more popular with solo travelers looking for company than they are with those who are part of a couple or a family.
Still, you’ve got co-working spaces and the rest of the attributes in these 9 attractive countries, plus prices that even someone just getting started launching their business can afford.
Table of Contents
Thailand, the Original Digital Nomad Hotspot
It’s hard to talk about the history of backpackers and digital nomads without circling back to Thailand. One podcast for remote entrepreneurs calls Chiang Mai “the freshman dorm of online business ownership.” It has been a favored gathering place for people starting up an online venture about as long as there has been such a thing.
Now remote workers and business owners have branched out to Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Ko Samui, and a few other islands, in a country where you can live almost anywhere and have fast internet. What Thailand has that a lot of others don’t have is an excess of fun. Beaches, great nightlife, vibrant cities, excellent food… it’s difficult to be in Thailand and not enjoy it.
The big drawback amidst the fun and great prices was always the pain of sticking around. Border runs have been common for 20 years and that gets old after a while, leaving every two or three months just for a visa stamp. Thankfully it’s getting easier to live in Thailand now thanks to a new multi-entry visa good for five years.
Assume $300 to $800 for monthly rent unless you’re splurging and here’s a rundown on travel prices in Thailand.
Living in Vietnam
The other top contender in Asia is Vietnam, which is less of a hassle to stick around in than many of its neighbors and is also a country with bargain rentals and excellent food. Some expats living in Danang, Hanoi, or Ho Chi Minh City don’t even have a kitchen. It’s so cheap to eat out that they figure, “Why bother?”
You’ll find great coffee shops and co-working spaces if you don’t have a good set-up for working where you’re living. If you need help with a project, you’ll find plenty of English-speaking tech people you can hire for a small fraction of what you would spend to get help in the country where you came from.
Many people putting down roots here spend $500 or less for an apartment, even near the beaches of Danang, and it’s getting easier all the time to get around when you want a break. There’s still no great long-term visa option here for nomads, but you don’t have to leave too often and you’ve got Laos and Cambodia nearby for a cross-border vacation.
See this post on the cost of living in Ho Chi Minh City for an idea of what you’ll spend.
The Philippines for Easy English
While it’s fairly easy to get by in other Asian countries with just English, in the Philippines they actually speak it fluently like native speakers. Chances are you’ve talked to quite a few Filipinos if you’ve dialed up a call center for help or you’ve heard a cover band play on a cruise ship or at a resort.
While the Philippines might not be as popular as Thailand for remote workers, this is a nation of islands, so you’re never very far from a beach. It’s quite inexpensive to eat out, go drinking, or see a movie, plus the fun-loving population is friendly and easy to bond with.
Numbeo says that rent in the Philippines is 50% lower than Mexico and the overall cost of living in Cebu City is just slightly above the cost in Chiang Mai.
According to Speedtest.net, the average fixed broadband speed in the Philippines averages 98 mbps up and down.
In theory, you can only stay two months on a tourist visa. In reality though, foreigners frequently keep extending that for a month or two and the country doesn’t seem to crack down until you’ve been there for two or three years. So as a digital nomad, it’s a lot easier to spend six months here just passing through than it is for the two countries above.
You don’t have to choose between beaches and mountains if you live here: it’s a nation of islands that have had plenty of volcanic activity (and still do in some cases). The main downside is that all of them are frequently in the path of typhoons.
Other digital nomad destinations in Asia to consider: Malaysia, Laos, and Cambodia are all terrific values. Indonesia is a bargain, but its visa policy is a huge hurdle.
For those who can put up with the hassles and pollution, India has plenty of bargain places to live—though the infrastructure can present challenges with blackouts and overloaded systems. Sri Lanka is looking like a better bet these days.
The Growing Nomad Destination of Mexico
Despite the fact that Mexico is next to the USA and a quick hop from Canada, it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that digital nomads starting moving to the country by the thousands. Although there are close to two million foreigners here according to some estimates, the majority of those are retirees and snowbirds.
I live in Guanajuato City, where there are probably just a few hundred full-time expatriates and there are very few people like me working remotely on some online business. It’s a different story in many other places though, especially Mexico City, Playa del Carmen, and Puerto Vallarta.
There are loads of other places you could choose, depending on how much of a foreigner community you’re looking for, though be advised that the more expats with money there are, the higher prices tend to be, as in San Miguel de Allende or Los Cabos.
Because of that disparity, it’s hard to generalize about rental prices in this large country. You can rent a nice two-bedroom apartment for as little as $600 in the interior, but prices will start at that for a studio if you’re in a popular beach area where people land on vacation. You won’t spend a lot though on fruit and vegetables, beer and tequila, basic restaurants, and taxis outside the resort zones.
Mexico has two massive advantages for digital nomads though, even if there are cheaper places to live in Central America. First of all, you can stick around for 180 days on a tourist visa, which is rare. The other is that getting there in a first place is not going to break the bank like it might flying around the world. You can easily live in Mexico without a car too, thanks to a great overland bus system and a lot of domestic airlines with cheap fares.
Here’s my take on what you can get for a buck or less in Mexico and here’s a video on what rent prices are like in central Mexico where I live.
Living Short-term in Colombia
If Chiang Mai is the freshman dorm for this lifestyle, Medellin is the “moving off campus” option. The social scene is less robust in Colombia because people seem to be further along on their business journey and don’t need as much collaboration. The wheeling and dealing that’s going on is more likely to be real estate investing than course creation.
The expat scene in Colombia seems to be more male-dominated than in the other bargain nomad destinations though, which probably has more than a little to do with the attributes of the local females. There aren’t a lot of cities in Colombia besides Medellin that seem to have a sizable population of expats, though there are plenty of foreigners overall scattered around Cartagena, Bogota, and the cities of the Coffee Triangle.
I’ve written before about the cost of living in Colombia, based on my visits and interviews with expats, though be advised that the years of peso devaluation could reverse at any time. As I write this, living costs in Medellin are roughly 25% less than Mexico City or Budapest.
Who Doesn’t Love Argentina?
Since I first visited Argentina in the early ’00s, the country has been through more financial and political crises than most countries experience in a century. It has also been cheap/not cheap like a yo-yo, so it’s difficult to estimate costs. Until late last year, it had one of the highest inflation rates in the world and a two-tier exchange rate that is still hanging on, making cash king and ATM machines an exercise in frustration.
The inflation is down and the peso devaluation has leveled off, but that’s partly because the president put public sector jobs on the chopping block. Real unemployment is now more than 40% by some estimates, so more social unrest is probably on the way.
Through all the ups and downs, expats have kept flocking to Argentina, especially Buenos Aires, lured by the lust for life, good food, and good wine. Almost-free healthcare, a subway system that was one of the cheapest in the world, and a “we can’t be bothered” approach to tourist visa limits kept the foreigners coming. If you’re paid in dollars and spending in pesos, it has been hard to beat the value in Argentina.
This may be past tense though, depending on how the rest of the year plays out. Argentina is currently cheaper than Spain but a bit more expensive than Mexico overall, with the big advantage being that rent prices are still lower than both.
Where else are good bargain digital nomad destinations in the Americas? Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil (a recent development).
Bargain Living in Bulgaria

The Bansko Nomad Fest crowd
Twice I’ve attended the Bansko Nomad Fest in Bulgaria, where more than 600 then more than 800 remote workers and online business owners gathered to exchange ideas, find partners, and party. The fact that this small ski town in Bulgaria became a digital nomad hotspot in just a few years shows how fast things can happen when you combine cheap housing, good co-working spaces with community, and the great outdoors.
Bulgaria has a lot going for it, with lots of mountains and a good airport hub. The low taxes for EU citizens who move there and get residency has long been a big plus. At first it was mostly British retirees, but then the remote work explosion led to many young people moving here and finding what they needed in a new country.
It it hard to overstate how much of an impact cheap real estate can have on a digital nomad destination. I met many people living in Bansko who were paying less than $300 per month for rent. Others bought a condo for less than $40K and are basically using it as a glorified storage locker that they can sleep in now and then. They spend a couple of months of the year in town in summer and ski season, then travel the world for the rest of the year, leaving their belongings locked up in their crash pad.
See this video on Bansko living costs for an idea. Sofia is more expensive, of course, but it’s a surprisingly nice city with a great transportation system and is half the price of most other European capitals.
Up and Coming Albania
I’ll be the first to admit that Tirana isn’t a digital nomad hotspot yet like Tenerife, Barcelona, or Lisbon, but it’s only a matter of time before the word gets out. With some of the best rental bargains in Europe and dozens of beaches scattered down the coast that look like those in Greece and Croatia, the obscurity can’t last.
Albania has one huge advantage for Americans that only one other country (Georgia) can match: we can stay for a year after just waltzing in on a tourist visa. So you could alternate between here and the Schengen Zone of Europe if you wanted and have the best of both worlds for years on end.
Despite being part of an isolated communist dictatorship until not too long ago, Albania has better-than-average internet speeds, with 62 mbps on mobile and 80 on fixed broadband. There’s a major coffee culture in the country where people sip espresso all day, so if you need a place to work, they won’t kick you out after a couple of hours.
I was mostly in southern Sarande when I wrote this post about living costs in Albania, but just go pull up the monthly costs on Airbnb for Tirana and you’ll see what the top of the market looks like. Gorgeous places with loads of space and a balcony view for less than what people spend on their car each month in the USA or Canada.
The Joy of Georgia for Nomads
I mentioned above that Albania will let Americans stay for a year on a tourist visa. Well, Georgia said, “I call that bet and raise you the world.” Not the whole world maybe, but the citizens of nearly any country at least as wealthy as Georgia can hang out here for a full turn of the calendar.
As with some of the others on this list, the Republic of Georgia is a four-season country, so don’t come here if you want to bask in the sun all the time. I’m heading there in March for a ski trip, just to give you an idea, and it’s not far from Russia. They have one of the world’s oldest wine industries though, great hiking trails, interesting food, and even some Black Sea beaches.
Most of the expats are in the capital of Tbilisi, which has fair air connections to the world and great cheap ones to Europe. People who live there rave about the great food, the cheap taxis, and the free-flowing wine.
Oddly, Georgia has just so-so fixed broadband speeds (currently averaging 42 mbps) but is top-10 on the list of the world’s fastest mobile broadband speeds, at 142 mbps. I run down most of the expenses in my book A Better Life for Half the Price. Watch for an update on this Cheapest Destinations Blog when I return from there in a few months.
Other bargain nomad countries in Europe: Romania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Hungary, and Turkey.
This is not a comprehensive list, but this gives you plenty of places to start with. If you just spent three months each in these, that’s more than two years covered. By then you’ll know for sure what gets you excited and what doesn’t.
If you want to head down to the continent of Africa though, you’ll find clusters of working travelers in the cities of Morocco and Egypt, as well as at the other end in South Africa.
Interested in moving abroad in the near future? Click on “Cheap Living Abroad” in the navigation bar to get my monthly e-mail with advice on the subject. Or join me for four quick bites each week on the Nomadico newsletter for working travelers.
Sami
Monday 10th of February 2025
Great article! Picking the right place is so important for digital nomads, and I love how you focused on both cost and internet quality. Are there any new destinations becoming popular for remote workers in 2025? Excited to learn more!