A free directory of cafés, libraries and community spaces that genuinely welcome laptops.
Wi-Fi speed, minimum spend and stay limit, known before you walk in. We designed it, built it, and shipped it as our own house product in four weeks.
94spaces
Field verified at launch
7cities
Lisbon to Bali
4weeks
Idea to App Store
∞free
No ads, no trackers
// the spark
Anyone who has tried to find a decent place to work from on a laptop in a new city knows the pain. You open a guide, scroll past four sponsored cafés, read a paragraph of search-engine filler, and still walk in to find no Wi-Fi, no sockets, and a polite reminder that laptops are not really the vibe.
The remote workforce has roughly quadrupled since 2019. The directory it deserves never arrived. The tools that exist optimise for ad revenue, not for the person on the other side of the screen trying to find somewhere to open a laptop.
So we built the one we wished we had. Then we put it online, free, forever.
// what we shipped
A web app, a native iPhone app and a vendor dashboard, all reading from the same data spine.
A global directory built for speed. Browse by city, filter on the things that matter, drop into a full-screen map with every venue pinned. City pages, venue pages, a discovery view, and a proper "Where are you?" flow for when the IP guess lands you in the wrong place.
A native app submitted to the App Store with a full privacy manifest. It opens straight to the map on your nearest desk, caches the last session for instant second launches, and never asks you to make an account just to look around.
Where venue owners claim a listing with a magic-link sign in, fix their hours, upload photos, and upgrade to a paid tier for richer placement. It is the only surface where money changes hands, which is exactly what keeps the visitor side free.
// inside the product
A directory that treats you like an adult. Every listing leads with the facts you need before walking in, then gets out of the way.
Discover
Every laptop-friendly venue in one scroll, ranked on merit, never on who paid.
Venue page
Wi-Fi, minimum spend and stay limit on the card. Verified facts, no marketing fluff.
City page
Land on your city automatically. The best of Bali, Lisbon, London and four more.
// the build log
In the time most agencies spend scoping, we field-verified 94 spaces and shipped to the App Store.
Week 01
We sat in cafés. We went to libraries. We asked baristas about laptops, librarians about plug sockets, and remote workers about the last time a "quiet coworking spot" turned out to be neither. Four facts kept coming up. Wi-Fi, minimum spend, stay limit, vibe.
Week 02
We built the venue page around those four facts, not flowery copy. Verified Wi-Fi, visible before you arrive. A coffee, a meal, or nothing at all. Two hours, or all day. No sponsored placements, no paid ranking. If a library beats the café next door, the library wins.
Week 03
Web, iPhone and the vendor dashboard, all reading from a single source of truth. Until an owner claims a listing, cards say "details pending", because we would rather admit what we do not know than guess and lose your trust on day one.
Week 04
Field-verified the first 94 spaces across seven cities. Submitted the iPhone app to Apple with full metadata and hero screenshots. Hardened search, pushed the web app to production, wired up vendor billing. Launch day, it was live, free, and useful.
// things we built for ourselves
Cowork Free exists because we wanted it to exist. It is the clearest proof we can give that a small team goes from idea to in-market in weeks, not quarters.
Most agencies tell you what they could build. We would rather show you a thing that is live, in-market, and used by real people. Cowork Free is designed, built, launched and operated by Ikaroa, top to bottom.
No ads, no affiliate rails, no tracking pixels on the visitor side. The whole business model sits on the vendor platform. The kind of free the internet used to be good at, run as a deliberate product decision.
Every listing is structured so search engines and AI assistants can read it cleanly. Ask an assistant for a good spot to work in Lisbon, and we want Cowork Free to be part of the answer. That only happens when the data is verifiable.
// start a build
Tell us the itch you cannot scratch. We come back with a plan to ship it, fast, honest, and well.