Malaysia3 routes
Immigration routes · By reason
Remote work and digital nomads
61 routes · 53 of 227 countriesWork remotely for clients abroad — Digital nomad, remote employee, freelancer with clients outside the country.
Country by country
Remote work and digital nomads: the 24 countries with the most routes on record
Each card names that country's routes and links to what we hold on each one — the requirements, the official source it was read from, and the date it was checked. Up to 6 routes are named per country; where a country has more, the card says so and links to its full list. The other 29 are listed on their own country pages, each with every route it holds.
Portugal3 routes
Hungary2 routes
Italy2 routes
Romania2 routes
Kazakhstan2 routes
Japan1 route
Greece1 route
Indonesia1 route
Taiwan1 route
Spain1 route
Brazil1 route
Panama1 route
Czechia1 route
Thailand1 route
Costa Rica1 route
Croatia1 route
Colombia1 route
Malta1 route
Iceland1 route
Sri Lanka1 route
Turkey1 route
Aruba1 route
South Africa1 route
Reasons that overlap
Where else this reason is served
A country will often grant the same person residence under a different heading. These are the categories that also serve this reason, with their own counts — they are not added into the figures above, so nothing is counted twice.
- Work1,406 routes · 225 countries
- Starting a business360 routes · 164 countries
- Living from your own income161 routes · 100 countries
What these numbers mean
Every route on this page is one entry in the same inventory the 227 country pages are generated from — one row per route, per country, held under the technical category the law itself uses. “53 of 227 countries” means at least one route of this kind is on record for that country. It does not mean the route is open to you, and it never means a country has no other way in that we have not yet recorded. A higher route count is not an easier move: it is a count, not a score.
Permits for people whose income comes from outside the country they live in. Many are marketed under the "digital nomad" name but are legally an independent-means or self-employment permit — so read the requirements, not the branding.
A “proven fact” carries all four things a claim about your life needs: a value, the official page it came from, a quotation that demonstrates that value, and the date it was checked. Anything short of all four is not counted here and is shown as unproven on the page that uses it. The evidence figure above counts eligibility criteria only — the rules that decide whether a route is open to you — read from the live database on 2026-08-07.
All 10 reasons to move · Browse the same inventory by country · How we verify our data
Which of these routes is actually open to you?
Answer 14 questions and get a verdict per country — eligible, almost, or not eligible — against this same inventory.