Working from the same coffee shop table every day has a ceiling — spotty wifi, no reliable outlet, and the particular guilt of nursing one coffee for four hours. A coworking day pass solves that, but booking one directly, city by city, gets old fast. The apps built around this — Croissant, Deskpass, and LiquidSpace — all solve the same basic problem with different pricing philosophies, and which one fits depends mostly on how often you actually need a real desk.
Coming from a consulting background, I default to evaluating pricing structure and long-term cost before comparing features line by line.
What actually matters for a freelancer specifically
- Pay-as-you-go vs a committed monthly plan — if your need for a desk is irregular, a subscription with unused hours is money left on the table
- City coverage, if you travel or split time between locations — a platform with a small footprint in your specific city isn't useful no matter how good its pricing looks on paper
- Whether unused time rolls over or simply disappears — this matters more the less predictable your schedule is
- Guest or drop-in access cost, for the occasional day you need a desk outside your usual plan
Quick comparison
| Croissant | Deskpass | LiquidSpace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Tiered monthly hour packages (10/40/120 hrs) | Pay-as-you-go, hot desks from ~$15/day | Book by day or flexible terms |
| Unused time | Rolls over to next month | N/A — pay only for what you use | N/A — pay per booking |
| City coverage | Limited to select major cities | 290+ cities | Around 3,000 cities |
| Best for | Predictable, regular desk use in a covered city | Occasional or irregular use, wanting the lowest commitment | Booking specific day offices or meeting rooms, broadest coverage |
Croissant — predictable cost, if your city is covered
Croissant works like a subscription: pick a monthly hour package (commonly 10, 40, or 120 hours), and unused hours roll over rather than disappearing. Pricing runs roughly $35-$249/month depending on your home market and hour tier, with guest/drop-in access available around $6/hour beyond your plan. The predictability is genuinely useful for a freelancer with a regular in-person routine, but Croissant's city coverage is narrower than Deskpass or LiquidSpace, so it's worth confirming your specific city (and any city you travel to regularly) is actually covered before subscribing.
Best for: freelancers with a fairly predictable, recurring need for a desk in a city Croissant actually covers.
Deskpass — pay only for the day you actually use
Deskpass skips the subscription model entirely in favor of pay-as-you-go pricing, with hot desks starting around $15/day across a much larger footprint of 290+ cities. For a freelancer whose need for a desk is irregular — some weeks none, some weeks three — this avoids the core problem of a monthly plan: paying for capacity you don't reliably use. The trade-off is that at very frequent, predictable use, a flat monthly plan (Croissant, or a single space's own membership) can end up cheaper than paying day-by-day.
Best for: freelancers with an irregular, unpredictable need for coworking space who don't want to commit to a monthly plan.
LiquidSpace — the broadest coverage, built for booking specific spaces
LiquidSpace's core strength is sheer reach — around 3,000 cities — and a booking model built around reserving a specific day office or meeting room rather than a general drop-in hot desk. That makes it a strong fit for a freelancer who needs to book a specific type of space (a private day office for a client call, for instance) rather than just "somewhere to sit with wifi" for general work.
Best for: freelancers who need to book a specific space type, like a private office or meeting room, rather than a general hot desk.
Bottom line
For most freelancers whose coworking needs are occasional rather than a fixed daily routine, Deskpass's pay-as-you-go model and broad city coverage make it the lowest-risk starting point. Choose Croissant if your usage is predictable and regular in a city it covers well, since the rollover hours reward consistent use. Reach for LiquidSpace specifically when you need to book a particular kind of space — a private office or meeting room — rather than a general desk. Whichever gets you out of the coffee shop, a VPN is worth pairing with any of them for the shared wifi — see our VPN guide for freelancers for that part of the setup.
Pricing, city coverage, and plan structures in this category change frequently and vary significantly by market. Confirm current details directly on each platform's site before subscribing.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to just get a day pass directly from a coworking space?
Sometimes — a direct walk-in rate at a specific venue can occasionally beat an app's listed price, and it's worth checking if you have one preferred spot you'd use regularly. The apps earn their value from access to many different spaces in one account, not necessarily the lowest possible price at any single one.
Do these apps work if I travel between cities?
Yes, this is one of their main advantages over a single coworking membership — Deskpass covers 290+ cities and LiquidSpace covers around 3,000, making either useful for freelancers who split time between locations rather than working from one fixed spot.
What happens to unused hours or credits at the end of the month?
This varies by platform. Croissant's hour-based plans roll unused hours over to the following month, while pay-as-you-go models like Deskpass simply charge only for what you use, with no unused balance to track.
Is a coworking app worth it if I only need a desk once or twice a month?
Probably not as a subscription — at that frequency, a single day pass purchased directly, or a pay-as-you-go platform like Deskpass with no monthly commitment, is usually cheaper than committing to Croissant's tiered monthly plans.