Nomad List was designed by Pieter Levels, a self-described “digital nomad” and prolific internet entrepreneur, in July of 2014. It allows users to look for cities that are good for teleworkers, sorted by criteria like cost of living, internet speeds, safety, and quality of life.
Nomad List started as part of Levels’ “12 startups in 12 months” project, but it quickly gained a life of its own.
The information is entirely crowdsourced. The site started out as a public Google spreadsheet inviting other nomads to rank the cities they’d lived and worked in. Levels then ranked these cities using a formula to add up positive factors like mild climate, low cost of living, and friendliness to foreigners.
A few extra features have been added to the site, such as meetups for nomads in each city, a job board for remote work, travel guides written by users, and forums where people can talk to each other and ask questions about the places they’re interested in.
The Good
Nomad List has amassed a huge user-base, which increases the quality of the information on the site. It also looks like there is a large team of staff to manage the site and support the users. They even have “city editors” who are in charge of verifying the data submitted to the site to make sure the information is accurate.
People really seem to love this site. It’s gotten a ton of good press, and I have yet to find anything negative posted by its users.
The Bad
The interface is a little overwhelming at first. It’s combining a lot of information right on the front page, which also causes it to load a little slowly (even on my extremely fast Washington, DC internet!).
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking for remote work, or you already have a job that lets you work from anywhere and you’d like to travel the globe, Nomad List has you covered.
