Want to travel the world on a budget? Or perhaps more importantly, want to make money as you travel? Maybe you’re trying to decide which companies to book your trip with or what the best way to get from one place to another is overseas. Want to figure out how to live your best life as a digital nomad? For any of the answers to these questions, you’ve come to the right place.
As a small team of mostly millennials, we’ve already spent a significant portion of our lives as digital nomads here at The Remote Traveller. Through our own experiences as travelers, entrepreneurs, and remote workers, we’ve had the chance to see a vast slice of the world and learn the do’s and don'ts of travel along the way.
As you begin globetrotting, you figure out pretty quickly that not every hotel is accurately measured by its star ranking, not every taxi driver or tour operator is ethical, and not all airlines are created equal. Having said that, once you’ve figured out what services to use and what to pack, your life as a digital nomad is going to get exponentially better — and believe me, if you can make it happen, there are few things more rewarding than being a digital nomad.
The sections below are dedicated to helping you travel smarter, better, and cheaper. All of the items and services we recommend are ones that we, along with our Remote Traveller community of digital nomads trust.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below and on this site are affiliate links, including Amazon links, and, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you make a purchase. I use all the companies listed here and/or offer them as recommendations because they have been pointed out to me by other digital nomads and friends that I trust deeply. If you are looking to become a full-time or a part-time digital nomad or you’re just ready to book your trip and would like to support this website, using these links is one way to do that. If you have any questions about the companies please email us in the contact form.
Booking Cheap Travel
Skyscanner for flights
If you’re feeling spontaneous, Skyscanner has an “everywhere” destination option, which means the world is truly your oyster. Skyscanner is the ultimate flight search engine. If there’s a flight available, it will show up in your search on this service. You can also browse through entire countries and peruse through an entire month if you have flexibility in your travel schedule.
RVShare for RV rentals
RVShare is essentially the AirBnB of rental vehicles. Whether you’re a solo traveler or you have digitally nomadic family, this platform allows you to live the ultimate untethered, road trip-ready life.
Omnio for trains
Omnio is the one-stop shop for booking cheap train travel (it’s particularly handy in Europe). Train travel can be tricky because of the various language barriers as you go from country to country and many of them actually try to make you go to their own websites. However, Omnio is easy and best of all, the cheap way to travel by train.
Hertz for rental cars
Hertz is a digital nomad favorite because you can pick up cars, vans, and trucks straight from airports around the world!
RentalCars.com for rental cars
RentalCars.com aggregates all of the possible rental cars available from the existing platforms, ensuring you get the best price possible every time.
Booking Accommodations
Hotels.com for cheap hotel booking
Hotels.com is a wonderful hotel aggregator, crawling several sites simultaneously to find you the most competitive rates. Compared to other booking sites and aggregators, Hotels.com performs extremely well in the price department.
VRBO for long and short-term rentals
On VRBO, you can browse through and book cabins, condos, and beach houses. If you can think of it, you can be sure this rental site has it. The main difference between AirBnB and VRBO is that VRBO is a lot more customizable.
AirBnB for short-term rentals
AirBnB is a no-brainer. The largest site for vacation rentals in the world, you’ll find plenty of great stays with easy price comparison throughout virtually any city in the world. If you like a host, you can often turn it into a long-term rental and work something out offline as well. I’ve used it everywhere from Byblos, Lebanon to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and have had excellent experiences with both short and long-term stays.
This link will give you a discount on your first stay. If you haven’t used AirBnB before, get a discount on your first stay here (unless you’ve already used it). Please only book at a place with multiple reviews to ensure that you have an enjoyable stay. The host matters as much as location or any other factor.
Booking.com for hotels
Booking.com gives accurate search results based on your query, is easy to use, and offers an enormous selection of hotels for incredibly low rates and zero fees (HotelsCombined always includes Booking.com).
HostelWorld for cheap accommodations and hostels
HostelWorld includes guesthouses, bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels, and of course, hostels. In terms of getting the best bang for your buck, this is among the best for accommodations.
Agoda for Europe hotels
For booking hotels throughout Europe, Agoda is your best bet (remember that HotelsCombined also includes Agoda).
Other Paths to Accommodations
Couchsurfing for free stay and/or meetups
The original purpose of couchsurfing was to let travelers find cheap or even free accommodation as people welcomed them into their homes. It was actually a pretty radical concept at the time, but it’s proven successful. Some people also use Couchsurfing to find events and local meetups in different cities.
TrustedHousesitters for house sitting
House sitting can be a great way to travel for cheap. In fact, sometimes you can make money doing it. On TrustedHousesitters you receive free accommodations in exchange for taking care of people’s homes and pets while they’re gone. TrustedHousesitters offers the largest selection of house sitting directories and all users are vetted for trustworthiness and safety.
Booking Tours
G Adventures for group tours
G Adventures is focused on sustainable travel for both groups and solo travelers. They operate worldwide and come recommended by the top travel bloggers and digital nomads we’ve spoken with about the company.
JayWay Travel for private, custom tours of Europe
JayWay Travel works with you to develop custom tours as you travel around Southern, Central, or Eastern Europe. They are equally fantastic for planning trips to well-known and off-the-beaten path destinations. Whether you’re going to Croatia, Spain, or Armenia, they can offer their expertise.
AirBnB Experiences for tour, activities, and low-cost photoshoots
AirBnB Experiences lets you choose from all kinds of experiences and local guides. The photography aspect is just a bonus.
Viator for activities and tours
Between day trips, food tours, transfers from city to city, and really practically anything you need, Viator is an excellent choice. If you can think of it, they probably have that activity.
Flytographer for photoshoots
Flytogether hires elite photographers to capture you during the happiest moments of your travels. You’ll have guaranteed souvenirs and treasures to take with you wherever you call home.
CityPASS for discounted tours and activities
CityPASS sells discounted packages for groups of attractions in various metro cities and destinations including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California, Tampa Bay, and Toronto.
Banking While Traveling
Charles Schwab — as an American
You should use Charles Schwab as an American who travels frequently. They don’t charge transaction fees, they refund all of your ATM fees at the end of the month (especially important when it comes to dealing with pricey international ATM fees), and they don’t charge foreign transaction fees.
Transferwise — all nationalities
When it involves international transfers, Transferwise is the best, bar none. In case you don’t have a backup debit card hidden in your luggage — and even if you do — Transferwise allows you to have accounts in various currencies and they give you a contactless card, which is crucial in Europe (public transit systems in Europe often only take contactless cards) and extra useful in times of pandemic as we’ve seen.
Bitcoin IRA — paperless, borderless
Bitcoin IRA allows remote travellers to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. In fact, it’s one of the largest crypto trading platforms out there and is particularly useful for digital nomads when you consider that countries can go as far as blocking the exchange of U.S. dollars. I experienced this firsthand in Lebanon as the currency became hyper-inflated.
Travel Insurance
Travelex Insurance for remote travellers
Travelex covers gear, cancelled trips, medical expenses, and much more. Whether you’re worried about flying during a pandemic or contracting malaria, this insurance covers a wide range of potential risks and obstacles.
World Nomads for any and all trips
World Nomads travel insurance covers pretty much any situation you might find yourself in and you can extend it as many times as you need. Additionally, reporting claims is easy and the site is simple to navigate. Read the fine print to make sure the particular insurance you get suits your needs.
Remote Work and Jobs
UpWork connects businesses and agencies to individuals with special talents like you. The primary roles that users of UpWork can expect to find are categorized by design and creative, web / mobile / software, customer service, admin support, sales and engineering, data and analytics, customer service, and writing. This gig economy job board is perfect for digital nomads and it has a reputation of being fair to both sides of the transaction.
Fiverr is right up there with UpWork for the title of top gig economy job board for remote travelers and digital nomads. However, Fiverr works opposite of UpWork. On this nomad-friendly site, freelancer’s post a service and clients can essentially bid on working with you. The better you perform on your work, the more you’ll have clients chomping at the bit to collaborate because they see all those ratings and reviews along with your portfolio. You could offer writing, editing, retouching, and just about service you can think of and as long as you deliver quality, you’ll get an abundance of work out of Fiverr. In fact, that’s where we got our logo.
FlexJobs focuses explicitly on connecting talent to remote roles, temporary gig work, or contract positions. As the name implies, flexibility is the central theme to the types of opportunities you’ll see on FlexJob. It does require a membership fee, however, the perks are that you’re browsing through hand-picked and highly vetted listings that cater to your location independent life as a digital nomad.
Technology and Nomad Tools
At one point, there was a debate raging in the digital nomad community about which was the better computer between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro for remote travellers. However, Apple has continued to refine the Pro so that it’s gotten lighter and lighter. Both types of computer are ideal for digital nomads to tote around the planet.
The iPhones have become so advanced that it’s like having a phone, a computer, and a digital camera rolled into one. I keep my phone with me everywhere I go and it essentially turns even an amateur photographer like me into a full-fledged filmmaker — okay, maybe not, but you can take extremely high quality video and photos. Make sure to buy local SIM cards with data for the countries you travel to.
The MAXAH Universal Converter will save you some time and money as you travel because you won’t be desperately scrambling to buy new converters before your tech dies. Certain countries — like South Africa — have unusual plugs, but for the most part, the MAXAH has you covered globally.
The MyCharge Portable Charger and Rechargeable Power Bank possesses enough power to charge an Apple device, USB cord, micro device, or an iPhone up to four times. It also notifies you once charging is complete.
The Paperwhite beats out the basic Kindle. Here’s the thing, if you’re a reader and a digital nomad, you can’t exactly haul around your print book library, but you can bring your digital library with you. Whether you’re reading self-help, personal and professional development, or fiction, having a Kindle Paperwhite is a godsend for remote travelers. They are also made to be waterproof now, so you don’t have to worry about getting caught in the rain.
The Seagate Expansion 2TB External Hard Drive is essential for remote travellers — especially video content creators. If you have a Macbook Air and a good amount of pictures, you need a quality drive for an affordable price.
Digital Tools and Resources
SEMRush — for bloggers and website owners
SEMRush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit for pay-per-click, content, competitive research, and social media. However, this robust platform is best-known for its industry leading search engine optimization software. Companies such as ZipRecruiter, SnackNation, LeadRoller, and many other Fortune 500 marketing teams make use of SEMRush. It’s considered to be among the best, if not the best, of all the SEO tools out there. For digital nomads specializing in blogs and written content, give it a try here.
Stencil — for social media managers
Stencil is proof that you don’t have to be a designer to design beautiful posts for social media, flyers, site content, and other material. You can choose from more than 2 million royalty-free photos and pre-created concepts to elevate your branding. Click here for a closer peek at Stencil.
PureVPN — for access to restricted sites while traveling
As a remote traveller, you’ll run into the issue of internet restrictions more than you’d expect to. For instance, when I was living in Lebanon for about a year, many Israeli-based sites like Wix were blocked due to the contentious relationship between the two countries. That’s actually what led me to using SquareSpace to begin with, but that’s another story. Many Arab Gulf countries also don’t allow video calling apps and platforms, which can be problematic for business deals and team meetings. However, with PureVPN that’s no longer an issue. Click on the banner below to get your own virtual private network (VPN). This is a must-have for digital nomads.
Ontraport — for business automation
Ontraport is an automation software designed for solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, digital nomads, and small business owners and it includes eCommerce, reporting, autoresponders, and CRM functionalities. Highly recommend.
Opesta — for Facebook messenger automation
Opesta is the ideal Facebook messenger automation platform. Facebook is the hub of social media and on the cutting edge of advertising. With its seemingly impossible near monopoly of social and chat platforms, Opesta helps remote travellers take advantage of the Facebook web of products to leverage it for their businesses. Click HERE to get started with Opesta.
ConvertKit — for landing pages
ConvertKit is perfect for building fully-optimized landing pages. Mailchimp is a cheaper alternative, however, if you want the best of both worlds in terms of landing pages and email marketing with all-around superior functionality then ConvertKit is the right choice. Click HERE to get started.
For another alternative to PureVPN. Can’t go wrong with either one.
Society6 — for artistic digital nomads
Society6 is an art marketplace featuring premium products crafted by thousands of indie artists around the world. Each product is unique, and every purchase pays the artist who created your piece. In this case, that artist can be you if you decide to join the society. You won’t find Society6 products in retail stores. The primary niches artists on this platform specialize in are fashion, home decor, accessories, and gifting.
AWeber — for remote entrepreneurs
AWeber is an email marketing app that enables users to build landing pages, create email lists and capture relevant data, design newsletters, and automate emails by using autoresponders.
Beachbody — for digital nomads looking to stay fit
Beachbody made its name with Power 90, which evolved into P90X. The Santa Monica-based company develops both products and instructional training videos that are perfect for the abnormal travel schedule of a digital nomad.